World War I and World War II

When World War I began in Europe in 1914, the United States stayed neutral. In early 1917, Germany announced that its submarines would sink, without warning, any ship—including American ships—sailing in the waters around Britain. On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson spoke to a joint session of Congress.

(1) The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken …

(2) … I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States …

(3) The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion.

When World War I began in Europe in 1914, the United States stayed neutral. In early 1917, Germany announced that its submarines would sink, without warning, any ship—including American ships—sailing in the waters around Britain. On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson spoke to a joint session of Congress.

(1) The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken …

(2) … I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States …

(3) The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion.

(1) When World War I began in Europe in August 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared that the United States would stay neutral. American banks and businesses, however, traded heavily with Britain and France.

(2) Germany tried to cut off that trade with submarines. On May 7, 1915, a German submarine sank the British passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans. After U.S. protests, Germany promised in 1916 to stop sinking passenger and merchant ships without warning.

(3) On January 31, 1917, Germany broke that promise and announced unrestricted submarine warfare. Earlier that month, German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann had sent a secret coded telegram to the German minister in Mexico. British code breakers intercepted it and passed it to the United States, and it was published in American newspapers on March 1, 1917. It began:

"We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral."

If that failed, Zimmermann proposed an alliance with Mexico on these terms:

"make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona."

(4) Americans were outraged. After German submarines sank several American merchant ships in March, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war on April 2, 1917, and Congress approved it on April 6. Fresh American troops helped the Allies stop Germany's last great offensives, and the fighting ended with the armistice of November 11, 1918.

On January 8, 1918, about nine months after the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson spoke to Congress about the kind of peace he wanted after the war. His plan had fourteen points. Before and during the war, several European powers had made secret treaties with one another.

(1) What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in …

(2) I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

(3) II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war …

(4) IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

(5) XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

Point XIV led to the League of Nations. The U.S. Senate, however, refused to approve the Treaty of Versailles, and the United States never joined the League.

(1) After the stock market crash of October 1929, banks failed, factories closed and unemployment soared. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933 and launched the New Deal, a set of programs for relief, recovery and reform. Agencies such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (1933) and the Works Progress Administration (1935) hired millions of people, and the Social Security Act (1935) created old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.

(2) Unemployment fell after 1933 but rose again during a sharp recession in 1937–1938. It did not return to its 1929 level until the nation mobilized for war. Starting with Lend-Lease aid to Britain in 1941, and especially after the United States entered World War II in December 1941, factories ran around the clock to build ships, planes and tanks, and more than 16 million Americans served in the armed forces.

Source 1. In a radio "fireside chat" on December 29, 1940, President Roosevelt spoke about the war in Europe, where Britain was fighting Nazi Germany almost alone.

(1) There is far less chance of the United States getting into war if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat … We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself.

Source 2. On December 8, 1941, Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress.

(2) Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. …

(3) I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

Source 1. In a radio "fireside chat" on December 29, 1940, President Roosevelt spoke about the war in Europe, where Britain was fighting Nazi Germany almost alone.

(1) There is far less chance of the United States getting into war if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat … We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself.

Source 2. On December 8, 1941, Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress.

(2) Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. …

(3) I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

About 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry—roughly two-thirds of them U.S. citizens—were forced from their homes on the West Coast and held in camps during World War II.

Document 1: Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt, February 19, 1942

(1) Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities … I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate … to prescribe military areas … from which any or all persons may be excluded …

Document 2: Civil Liberties Act of 1988, passed by Congress and signed by President Reagan

(2) The Congress recognizes that … a grave injustice was done to both citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry by the evacuation, relocation, and internment of civilians during World War II. As the Commission documents, these actions were carried out without adequate security reasons and without any acts of espionage or sabotage documented by the Commission, and were motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.

The 1988 law also included a formal apology and a payment of $20,000 to each surviving person who had been held.

Franklin D. Roosevelt became president on March 4, 1933, during the worst year of the Great Depression. About one in four workers had no job, and banks across the country were closing. These excerpts come from his first inaugural address, as he delivered it.

(1) So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. …

(2) Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. … It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war …

(3) … I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

(1) When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the federal government quickly took on new powers. The Selective Service Act of May 1917 required men to register for a military draft, and about 2.8 million men were drafted. Americans bought Liberty Bonds—loans to the government—to help pay for the war.

(2) Congress also passed the Espionage Act (1917), which made it a crime to interfere with the draft or with military operations, and the Sedition Act (1918), which punished disloyal or abusive language about the government and the war. More than 2,000 people were prosecuted under these laws. In Schenck v. United States (1919), the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Charles Schenck, a Socialist Party official who had mailed leaflets urging men to resist the draft. The Court ruled that, in wartime, speech that creates a "clear and present danger" of harms that Congress has a right to prevent is not protected by the First Amendment.

(3) The war also changed who worked where. Factories needed workers to fill war orders just as the war cut off most immigration from Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners moved to Northern cities such as Chicago, Detroit and New York for factory jobs and to escape segregation laws and racial violence in the South. This movement became known as the Great Migration.

(4) Women took jobs in factories and offices and volunteered with the Red Cross; others served as Navy yeomen and Army nurses. In 1918, President Wilson urged the Senate to pass women's suffrage, calling it a war measure. The Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote, was ratified in 1920.

The two views below were written for this app by fictional historians. They describe a real debate among historians.

Historian A (Dr. Ruth Calder, fictional)

(1) On August 6, 1945, a U.S. bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and a second bomb destroyed Nagasaki on August 9. Japan announced its surrender on August 15. American planners expected an invasion of Japan's home islands, planned for November 1945, to be extremely costly; the battle for Okinawa that spring had killed more than 12,000 Americans. In my judgment, President Truman made the only reasonable choice: the bombs ended the war quickly and saved lives on both sides.

Historian B (Dr. Samuel Ortega, fictional)

(2) The two bombs killed well over 100,000 people, most of them civilians. Japan was already badly weakened: U.S. firebombing had burned many of its cities, and a naval blockade was cutting off food and fuel. On August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and it invaded Manchuria the next day. I believe Japan's leaders might have surrendered without the bombs, especially if the United States had promised that Japan could keep its emperor.

(1) The timeline shows ten events between the start of World War I in 1914 and the end of World War II in 1945.

On January 8, 1918, about nine months after the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson spoke to Congress about the kind of peace he wanted after the war. His plan had fourteen points. Before and during the war, several European powers had made secret treaties with one another.

(1) What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in …

(2) I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

(3) II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war …

(4) IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

(5) XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

Point XIV led to the League of Nations. The U.S. Senate, however, refused to approve the Treaty of Versailles, and the United States never joined the League.

Franklin D. Roosevelt became president on March 4, 1933, during the worst year of the Great Depression. About one in four workers had no job, and banks across the country were closing. These excerpts come from his first inaugural address, as he delivered it.

(1) So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. …

(2) Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. … It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war …

(3) … I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

About 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry—roughly two-thirds of them U.S. citizens—were forced from their homes on the West Coast and held in camps during World War II.

Document 1: Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt, February 19, 1942

(1) Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities … I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate … to prescribe military areas … from which any or all persons may be excluded …

Document 2: Civil Liberties Act of 1988, passed by Congress and signed by President Reagan

(2) The Congress recognizes that … a grave injustice was done to both citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry by the evacuation, relocation, and internment of civilians during World War II. As the Commission documents, these actions were carried out without adequate security reasons and without any acts of espionage or sabotage documented by the Commission, and were motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.

The 1988 law also included a formal apology and a payment of $20,000 to each surviving person who had been held.

(1) After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States fought in both Europe and the Pacific. On June 6, 1944—D-Day—about 156,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, opening a new front against Nazi Germany. Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, celebrated as V-E Day (Victory in Europe).

(2) As Allied soldiers advanced into Germany and Poland in 1944 and 1945, they found the camps where the Nazi regime had carried out the Holocaust: the planned, state-sponsored murder of about six million Jews—roughly two-thirds of the Jews of Europe. The Nazis also murdered millions of others, including Roma, disabled people, Polish and Soviet civilians, and Soviet prisoners of war. Persecution had begun with laws: the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 took away German Jews' citizenship. After the war, Nazi leaders were tried for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg (1945–1946).

(3) The war in the Pacific continued. On August 6, 1945, a U.S. bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. That day President Harry S. Truman announced: "Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima … That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T." He warned Japan's leaders: "If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth."

(4) A second bomb destroyed Nagasaki on August 9. By the end of 1945, more than 100,000 people, most of them civilians, had died in the two cities. Japan announced its surrender on August 15 and signed the formal surrender on September 2, 1945. Historians still debate whether the bombs were necessary to end the war without an invasion of Japan.

Document 1. On January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his annual message to Congress. Nazi Germany controlled most of Western Europe, and Britain was fighting on almost alone. The United States was not at war.

(1) In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

(2) The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.

(3) The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

(4) The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

(5) The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

(6) That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.

Document 2. On March 11, 1941, Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act. Section 3 allowed the president to have U.S. departments supply military goods to "the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States." Among other things, the government could:

(7) To sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of, to any such government any defense article …

By the end of the war, the United States had sent about $50 billion in Lend-Lease aid, mostly to Britain and the Soviet Union.

(1) About 4.7 million Americans served in the armed forces during World War I, and about 16.1 million served during World War II. In all, 116,516 Americans died in service in World War I and 405,399 in World War II.

(2) The graph shows how those service members died. In World War I, more died from other causes than in battle. Disease was the main reason: the influenza pandemic of 1918 swept through crowded training camps and troop ships.

(3) In World War II, battle deaths were far higher. Americans fought for nearly four years on two sides of the world—in North Africa and Europe against Germany and Italy, and in the Pacific against Japan. Better medicine, including the new antibiotic penicillin, helped keep deaths from disease lower.

(1) When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the federal government quickly took on new powers. The Selective Service Act of May 1917 required men to register for a military draft, and about 2.8 million men were drafted. Americans bought Liberty Bonds—loans to the government—to help pay for the war.

(2) Congress also passed the Espionage Act (1917), which made it a crime to interfere with the draft or with military operations, and the Sedition Act (1918), which punished disloyal or abusive language about the government and the war. More than 2,000 people were prosecuted under these laws. In Schenck v. United States (1919), the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Charles Schenck, a Socialist Party official who had mailed leaflets urging men to resist the draft. The Court ruled that, in wartime, speech that creates a "clear and present danger" of harms that Congress has a right to prevent is not protected by the First Amendment.

(3) The war also changed who worked where. Factories needed workers to fill war orders just as the war cut off most immigration from Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners moved to Northern cities such as Chicago, Detroit and New York for factory jobs and to escape segregation laws and racial violence in the South. This movement became known as the Great Migration.

(4) Women took jobs in factories and offices and volunteered with the Red Cross; others served as Navy yeomen and Army nurses. In 1918, President Wilson urged the Senate to pass women's suffrage, calling it a war measure. The Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote, was ratified in 1920.

The two views below were written for this app by fictional historians. They describe a real debate among historians.

Historian A (Dr. Ruth Calder, fictional)

(1) On August 6, 1945, a U.S. bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and a second bomb destroyed Nagasaki on August 9. Japan announced its surrender on August 15. American planners expected an invasion of Japan's home islands, planned for November 1945, to be extremely costly; the battle for Okinawa that spring had killed more than 12,000 Americans. In my judgment, President Truman made the only reasonable choice: the bombs ended the war quickly and saved lives on both sides.

Historian B (Dr. Samuel Ortega, fictional)

(2) The two bombs killed well over 100,000 people, most of them civilians. Japan was already badly weakened: U.S. firebombing had burned many of its cities, and a naval blockade was cutting off food and fuel. On August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and it invaded Manchuria the next day. I believe Japan's leaders might have surrendered without the bombs, especially if the United States had promised that Japan could keep its emperor.

Franklin D. Roosevelt became president on March 4, 1933, during the worst year of the Great Depression. About one in four workers had no job, and banks across the country were closing. These excerpts come from his first inaugural address, as he delivered it.

(1) So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. …

(2) Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. … It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war …

(3) … I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

The two views below were written for this app by fictional historians. They describe a real debate among historians.

Historian A (Dr. Ruth Calder, fictional)

(1) On August 6, 1945, a U.S. bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and a second bomb destroyed Nagasaki on August 9. Japan announced its surrender on August 15. American planners expected an invasion of Japan's home islands, planned for November 1945, to be extremely costly; the battle for Okinawa that spring had killed more than 12,000 Americans. In my judgment, President Truman made the only reasonable choice: the bombs ended the war quickly and saved lives on both sides.

Historian B (Dr. Samuel Ortega, fictional)

(2) The two bombs killed well over 100,000 people, most of them civilians. Japan was already badly weakened: U.S. firebombing had burned many of its cities, and a naval blockade was cutting off food and fuel. On August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and it invaded Manchuria the next day. I believe Japan's leaders might have surrendered without the bombs, especially if the United States had promised that Japan could keep its emperor.

(1) About 4.7 million Americans served in the armed forces during World War I, and about 16.1 million served during World War II. In all, 116,516 Americans died in service in World War I and 405,399 in World War II.

(2) The graph shows how those service members died. In World War I, more died from other causes than in battle. Disease was the main reason: the influenza pandemic of 1918 swept through crowded training camps and troop ships.

(3) In World War II, battle deaths were far higher. Americans fought for nearly four years on two sides of the world—in North Africa and Europe against Germany and Italy, and in the Pacific against Japan. Better medicine, including the new antibiotic penicillin, helped keep deaths from disease lower.