Theme 1 WW2 PDF

H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929 - 1945) PART 3: THE SECOND W...

H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929 - 1945) PART 3: THE SECOND WORLD WAR (ppt 1 - slide 1) Objectives This chapter examines the defeat of France, Collaboration and Resistance, the extent and violence of WWII, the brutality of the war on the eastern front and in order to understand the crimes against humanity of the Holocaust. Focus will also include wartime US, and the Pacific theatre of conflict ending with the use of the atomic bombs on Japan, and the circumstance of the end of the war in Europe that led to its bipolar division. The emphasis can be put on: - a world conflict: protagonists, phases of the war and theaters of operation; - war crimes, violence and mass crimes, Shoah, genocide of the Romani; - France in the war: occupation, collaboration, Vichy regime, Resistance; - the United States and the war in the Pacific. Points de Passage et  June 1940 in France: to continue or stop the war; d’Ouverture  The socio-economic impact of the war in the United States: American Women at War;  September 29-30, 1941: the Babi Yar massacre;  The U.S. War in the Pacific and the Atomic Bomb (with a quick look at the internment of Japanese Americans). Exam Questions Analyze the impact of WWII on civilian populations Key Questions 1. Analyze the use of violence in WWII. 2. What political choices did French citizens make after their defeat and occupation? 3. Why and how was the Shoah carried out? 4. Analyze the role of the ‘Home Front’ in WWII. (What were the social consequences of the war in the US from 1941 to 1945?) 5. Evaluate whether the dropping of the atomic bombs by the United States was justified. 6. How did World War II sow the seeds of the Cold War? Learning Objectives ❖ Analyze the choices French citizens were confronted with in June 1940. ❖ Compare the circumstances and the development of the Vichy regime and the National Revolution and the development of the Resistance and the CNR. ❖ Understand the nature and impact of the Holocaust and the mass destruction of the war (genocide, war dead, displaced populations). ❖ Evaluate the impact of the war on US civilian life (incorporating the role of women and the issue of Japanese internment). ❖ Evaluate how the circumstances surrounding the decision and use of the two atomic bombs contributed to the emergence of the Cold War Key Terms Vichy Regime National Revolution Collaboration Accommodation Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR) Einsatzgruppen Holocaust (Shoah) D Day Manhattan Project Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 1  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) INTRODUCTION With an estimated deaths toll of 70-85 million people (military and civilian), the Second World War (WW2) remains the deadliest and most violent conflict in modern times, and a major rupture in the 20th century slide 2. The First World War (WW1) had been the first total war in modern history, where the barrier between the front line and the home front had been partly blurred, mobilizing all the forces of nations to defeat a demonized the enemy. WW2 represented a further degree in war mass violence, where civilians represented a larger number of casualties than soldiers in arms. If WW1 had contributed to accommodate European societies to a higher degree of personal and collective violence (George Mosse’s “brutalization”), WW2 displayed forms of violence at and global and industrial scale slide 3. This war of annihilation (guerre d’anéantissement) was characterized by: - new forms of industrial warfare, served by technological innovations (radar, atomic bomb) - a globalization of the conflict involving modern powers with imperial ambitions, multiplying war theatres all over the world slide 4 - the commitment of human atrocities (genocides, massacres) of unprecedented magnitude, triggering a deep crisis of human conscience and the emergence of new concepts of the War (crime against humanity, redefinition of war crimes slide 5) - a major change of global geopolitics, shifting world power and responsibilities from European countries to the United States and the Soviet Union. How is World War II a total war? + explaining diagram 1. A GLOBAL WAR (phases, war theatres, protagonists) slides 6-7 Premises:  Hitler’s repeated violation of the Versailles’ treaty, and the territorial expansion of Germany in Europe slide 8  Italy’s imperialism in Southern Europe and Africa (Albania, Libya, Ethiopia) slide 9  Japan’s imperialism in Asia since 1931. slide 10  The Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis (Pact of Steel, 1939; Tripartite Pact, July 1940) slides 14-17  The non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union (August 1939) slide 18 1.1. The conquest of Europe by the Axis powers slide 19 Within the course of two years, the combined forces of Germany and, to a lesser extent, Italy were able to defeat the armies of most of the European states. Their succession of military victories was explained by slide 20 a higher level of military equipment, despite the general rearmament of Europe in the late 1930s, by innovative strategic choices that outperformed their adversaries, and by the existence of a single western, then eastern front, that allowed a concentration of the military might of the Axis powers. 1.1.1. The defeat of Poland and France slide 21 The double invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 resulted in the defeat of the Polish army and the complete occupation of the country by German and Soviet forces, as agreed by the secret protocol of Spring 1939. slide 22 Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 2  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) After the German armies had quickly subdued Poland, the war in Europe settled into a long, quiet lull that lasted through the winter and spring—the “phony war” slide 23. The only real fighting during this period occurred not between the Allies and the Axis, but between Russia and its neighbors. Hitler then directed the Wehrmacht to open a western front, invading and occupying most of Scandinavian countries slide 24 were governments of collaborators, such a Norway - subjected their countries to the status of vassal states of the Reich slide 25. By the early Spring of 1940, German armies launched Blitzkrieg offensives against the neutral states of Belgium and the Netherlands, to circumvent the fortified Ligne Maginot that was meant to protect France from a German invasion in the east. slide 26 Thanks to the massive use of air artillery and motorized infantry (tanks), German generals unexpected invaded the French territory via the Ardennes forest that was meant to be a natural protection. Breaking the French-British lines, the Wehrmacht operated a double u-turn, blocking the French in the east, and forcing the allies to a run “to the sea”, forcing the dramatic maritime evacuation of the British army, rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk by a flotilla of military and civilian vessels assembled miraculously quickly slide 27. 1.1.2. The worldwide expansion of the war slide 28 - The Battle of Britain (Spring 1940-Spring 1941) Having recognised the logistic difficulties of a seaborne attack on Great Britain, now facing the axis powers alone, Hitler’s launched a massive air campaign on the island, to compel Britain to agree to a negotiated peace settlement. In July 1940, the air and sea blockade began, with the Luftwaffe mainly targeting coastal-shipping convoys, ports and shipping centres, such as Portsmouth slide 29. In the following months the targets of the Luftwaffe were broadened to RAF airfields and infrastructure, factories involved in aircraft production and strategic infrastructure and eventually terror bombing on areas of political significance and on civilians (the Blitz), especially London slide 30. Despite Germany’s overwhelming superiority in the air, the campaign eventually failed, thanks partly to a decisive advance of Britain in detection technologies (radar). German raids could be shortly anticipated, allowing British officers to decide last-minute take-off of the small but highly skilled squadrons of “Spitfires” of the RAF, inflicting major losses to the German aviation slide 31. - The opening of the eastern front: Operation Barbarossa, 22 June 1941 Although he had no desire for a two-front war, Hitler became convinced that Britain was remaining in the war only because it expected Soviet support. If the Soviet Union was smashed; Britain’s last hope would be eliminated. Moreover, Hitler had convinced himself that the Soviet Union had a pitiful army and could be defeated quickly. The invasion was scheduled for the spring of 1941, but the attack was delayed because of problem in the Balkans, where Mussolini had failed to invade Greece. German armies then seized both Greece and Yugoslavia in April 1941, to secure the Axis southern flank. The massive attack on 22 June stretched out along a front some 1,800 miles (2,900 km) long slide 32. German troops rapidly capturing 2 million Russian soldiers. By November, the German armies having swept through Ukraine, were besieging the city of Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) and approaching Moscow, slide 33 but the early winter (no winter uniforms) and the fierce Soviet resistance halted the German advance for the first time since September 1939. Soviet Russia counter-attacked in December 1941 slide 34. - The expansion of Pacific war: Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941 Japan took advantage of the crisis that had preoccupied the Soviet Union and the two most powerful colonial powers in Asia, Britain and France, to extend its empire in the Pacific. In July 1940, Tokyo had signed the Tripartite Pact, a loose defensive alliance with Germany and Italy that seemed to extend the Axis into Asia slide 35. Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 3  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) The Roosevelt administration had perceived Japan’s conquest of China (1931-1941), and French Indochina (1940-41) as a prelude to a Japanese attack on Soviet Russia or the Dutch East Indies, threatening dramatically the US interests in the Pacific area. Roosevelt decided to freeze all Japanese credits in the US and cut off Japanese access to the American oil that was vital to them (embargo). So, Japan believed that a quick action was necessary due to its limited oil supplies, so they needed to neutralize American power by crippling the American Pacific fleet, especially its aircraft carriers. Most US officials were convinced that the Japanese would move first not against American territory but against British or Dutch possessions to the south. A combination of confusion and miscalculation led the government to overlook indications that Japan intended a direct attack on American forces—partly because Hawaii was so far from Japan that few officials believed such an attack possible slide 36. At 7:55 A.M. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a wave of Japanese bombers—taking off from aircraft carriers hundreds of miles away—attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor slide 37. A second wave came an hour later. Military commanders in Hawaii had taken no precautions against such an attack and had allowed ships to remain bunched up defenselessly in the harbor and airplanes to remain parked in rows on airstrips. The consequences of the raid were disastrous for America. Within two hours, the United States lost 8 battleships, 3 cruisers, 4 other vessels, 188 airplanes, and several vital shore installations slide 38. More than 2,000 soldiers and sailors died, and another 1,000 were injured. The Japanese suffered only light losses slide 39. The raid on Pearl Harbor did virtually overnight unify the American people in a fervent commitment to war. Within the next few days, the USA was at war with all the Axis forces slide 40. The first task facing the United States was less to achieve victory than to stave off defeat in the Pacific area: by Spring 1942, Japan airplanes had destroyed much of America’s remaining air power in the Pacific, and seized the US possessions of Guam and the Philippines, the British colonies of Hong Kong, Burma, and Singapore and the Dutch East Indies slide 41. 1.2. 1943: a turning-point slide 42 The formation of the Great Alliance between the USA, Great-Britain and the Soviet Union implied strategic choices to hold off the Axis powers. As the Soviets were asking for the (re)opening of a Western European front to relieve the Red Army resistance in the East, the British were favoring offensives around the edges of the Nazi empire—in northern Africa and southern Europe—before undertaking the major invasion of France. - Allied counter offensive in Africa and Europe, 1941-43 slide 43 At the end of October 1942, the British opened a counteroffensive against Nazi forces in North Africa under General Erwin Rommel, who was threatening the Suez Canal at El Alamein, and forced the Germans to retreat from Egypt. On November 1942, Anglo-American forces landed at Oran and Algiers in Algeria (Operation “Torch”) and at Casablanca in Morocco—areas under the Nazi-controlled French government at Vichy—and began moving east toward Rommel. The American offensive finally drove the last Germans from Africa by May 1943. In July 1943, American and British armies landed in southeast Sicily (Operation “Husky”) and then onto the Italian mainland. The Allied offensive on the Italian peninsula began on September 3, leading to the early fall Mussolini’s fascist regime as partisans’ insurrections seconded the Allies’ effort, but soon bogged down, especially after a serious setback at Monte Cassino that winter. Not until May 1944 did the Allies resume their northward advance and captured Rome on June 1944. - Soviet Roll-back: from Kursk to Stalingrad Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 4  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) After the capture of Crimea, German generals wanted to concentrate on the Caucasus region and its oil fields slide 44. Hitler however decided that Stalingrad, a major industrial center on the Volga river should be taken first. In perhaps the most terrible battle of the war between November 1942 and February 1943, the Soviet launched a counterattack. German troops were stopped, then encircled, and supply lines were cut off, all in frigid winter conditions. The Germans were forced to surrender and the entire 6th German Army – considered the best German troops – was lost slide 45. By the spring of 1943, Hitler knew that the Soviet Union could not be defeated. The Soviets had relocated their war industries, now producing at full speed massive amounts of equipment and vehicles. The Soviets then defeated the Germans in the Kursk Battle (July-August 1943), the greatest tank battle of WW2 slide 46. - US Counter Offensives in the Pacific slide 47 (first part) American strategists planned two broad offensives to turn the tide against the Japanese. One, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur slide 47 (second part), would move north from Australia, through New Guinea, and eventually back to the Philippines. The other, under Admiral Chester Nimitz slide 47 (third part), would move west from Hawaii toward major Japanese island outposts in the central Pacific. Ultimately, the two offensives would come together to invade Japan itself. US victory at the Battle of Coral Sea (May 1942) was followed by the enormous battle and US victory of Midway Island (June 3–6, 1942) giving the control of the central Pacific to the United States slide 48. By August 1942, American offensives targeted the islands of Gavutu, Tulagi, and Guadalcanal, abandoned by the Japanese forces after a 6-month ferociously fought battle. In both the southern and central Pacific, the initiative had shifted to the United States by mid-1943 slide 49 1.3. 1944-1945: Ending the War slide 50 - The Liberation of Europe Since the autumn of 1943, the Allies had been planning an invasion of France from Great Britain across the English Channel slide 51. Finally, on 6 June 1944 (D-Day), Allies forces under U.S general Dwight Eisenhower landed on the Normandy beaches in history greatest naval invasion slide 52. The Allies fought their way past underwater mines, barbed wire and machine gun fire. There was heavy German resistance even though the German thought the battle was a diversion and a real invasion would occur elsewhere slide 53. The slow response enabled the Allied forces to set up a beachhead and build a huge artificial military port in Arromanches slide 54. Within 3 months, the Allies had landed 2 million men and half-million vehicles. Allied forces then pushed inland and broke though German defensive lines. After the breakout, Allied troops moved south and east. slide 55 In Paris, resistance fighters rose up and the city was liberated in August 1944. In March 1945, the Allied crossed the Rhine river and advanced into Germany slide 56. At the end of April, Allied armies in northern Germany moved toward the Elbe river where they linked up with the Soviets. slide 57 Since Kursk, Soviet forces had steadily advanced westward along a norther front, moving into the Baltic states in 1944, occupying Warsaw in January 1945 and entering Berlin in April slide 58. Meanwhile, Soviet troops along a southern front swept through Hungary Romania and Bulgaria, while Yugoslavia and partly Greece were liberated by their resistance forces. - The USA, Japan and the bomb (see correction of PPO#1) slides 59-64 2. Forms of Mass Violence in WW2 - War of Annihilation (ppt 2 - slide 1) Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 5  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. 2.3 billion). For the first time in contemporary conflicts, civilian casualties stand well above military deaths (approximately 2/3 against 1/3). This reflects new practices in the way war is waged on both European and Asian fronts. Violence against civilians is considered by belligerents, notably the Axis powers, an integral part of the conflict as distinctions between civilians and military are blurred slide 2. The currently best known and most studied aspect of mass violence in the war is the Holocaust/Shoah (with 6 million Jews killed). Although it has been at the basis of the most heated moral and historical debates, it appears as only a part of the total death toll during World War II. A striking feature in the process of mass violence is the way it is concentrated: 1) geographically slide 3 (in the Central European Bloodlands, with 10 million military casualties and 16 million civilian deaths on Soviet soil, and in China for example, with estimates varying between 10 and 20 million casualties, essentially civilian), 2) according to racial or social categories. Mass violence in Asia remains lesser known and unbiased scholarship in the field can still be obstructed by political pressure or nationalism. 2.1. Military operations and mass violence slide 4 - The European front as the place of violence slide 5 As Timothy Snyder has emphasized, mass violence is present during military operations from the very beginning of the war in Europe but concentrate in Eastern Europe (hence the coinage of Bloodlands as a concept). The joint German-Soviet occupation of Poland in September 1939 appears as a first example. The Einsatzgruppen multiply atrocities against the Polish population suspected of helping the Polish army slide 6. Whole villages are destroyed (in Zloczew, 200 villagers are executed in the course of the invasion). On the other hand, ethnic Germans are killed in reprisals during the invasion, as in Bydgoszcz, where 700/1,000 Germans are executed by the local population slides 7-8. In October 1939, Hitler decreets an amnesty on all atrocities committed by German soldiers against civilians, thus preparing the ground for further crimes. The Soviet Union is also responsible for crimes and arrests during its invasion of Poland and the Baltic countries. The NKVD arrests around 15,000 Polish officers after the victory and a majority of them are executed (and buried in common graves such as in the Katyń massacre, in March 1940). slide 9 A second stage in this cumulative violence is reached after the German invasion of the USSR, on 22 June 1941. Although Wehrmacht commanding officers still stick to traditional regulations, massive violence is committed in Soviet cities and villages during the fights. The first days of occupation, when German rule is not yet stabilized, see several cases of atrocities. Babi Yar (29 September 1941): This massacre which takes more than 33,761 Jewish lives comes after an episode on 24 September when numerous explosions happen in central Kyiv, destroying buildings and killing the Germans who occupy the city since 19 September. The Jews living in the cities are targeted as supposed adherents to communism and traitors slides 10-11 The Siege of Leningrad (Case Study) Military violence directed against civilians also took the form of strategic blockades, as the 900 days Leningrad blockade (September 1941-January 1944) which was part of the Nazi « Hunger Plan » designed Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 6  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) in May 1941, to starve Soviet cities in the 1941-1942 winter. It resulted more than 1 million deaths (6/700,000 during the siege). slide 12 - Military operations in Asia and war crimes In Asia, the Japanese expansion is characterised everywhere by mass crimes. Atrocities are notably registered in China during the 1937 campaign. One of the best documented massacres occurs in Nanjing, on 13 December 1937, when Japanese troops under prince Asaka enter the former seat of the nationalist government slides 13-16. The massacre is widely publicised in Asia and Western countries, due to the presence of foreign missionaries and residents, and becomes of the main charges during the Tokyo trials in the after-war. The massacre can be qualified as a war crime along three lines: 1) atrocities against unarmed soldiers and civilians (around 250,000/300,000 deaths) 2) violation of the Safety Zone created by foreigners 3) specific violence against women and children (more than 20,000 raped women). Similar massacres, although not to the same extent, happen in other Chinese cities. The battle for Shanghai between August and November 1937 claims between 100,000 and 200,000 Chinese lives. In the conquest of other regions in South-Eastern Asia, Japanese policies vary. The conquest of Manila in January 1942 takes places with relatively little bloodshed, since the city is declared open. slide 17 Atrocities are committed on American and Filipino prisoners of war in April 1942, after their surrender, with the forcible 128-kilometre « Bataan Death March » leading to very high casualties among the 60,000 POWs involved. slide 17 - Violence by the victors in later stages of the war If violence was committed by the Germans and Japanese during their conquests are well-known, a controversy has emerged as to violence perpetrated by Allied powers in later stages of the war. Specifically, aerial bombings of cities have been denounced as war crimes, since they did not target exclusively military or industrial infrastructures, but also civilian neighborhoods. In 1944-1945, bombings intensify against German and Japanese cities. On 14-15 February, Dresden is submitted to intense bomb raids, with around 35,000 people killed and mass destructions in the city slide 18. Japanese cities pay a heavy toll to aerial bombings during the last months of the war slide 17. Firebombs kill in Tokyo more than 100,000 people and destroy a great part of the city slides 19-20. The atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6-9 August) kill approximately 200,000 people slides 21-22. Finally, the Soviet reconquest of Eastern Europe is accompanied by mass violence against German populations living in Romania, Eastern Prussia, Baltic Countries and Poland. Around 11 million refugees (Vertriebene) flee to Germany, while perhaps 2 million Germans are killed or disappear in the process slide 23 2.2. Occupation and mass violence slide 24 A key feature in Nazi as well as Japanese war violence is its uneven geographical distribution, linked to racial conceptions and imperial projects slides 25. Violence concentrated in zones which were to be the most closely integrated to the imperial power (i.e. Eastern Europe in the German Lebensraum and Central- Northern China for the Japanese).  Nazi violence in occupied Europe The Nazi occupation in Western occupation was not bloodless, but never reached the level attained in Eastern Europe. Repression remained relatively limited, notably to reprisals against partisans, but intensified in 1943-1944, with such actions as the Marseilles Roundup and destruction of the Old Port in January 1943 or the Oradour massacre by the Waffen SS (11 June 1944) slide 26. However, apart from repression against the Jews and opponents, violence did not become widespread and indiscriminate. Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 7  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) Violence in Eastern Europe was motivated by the Nazi desire to create a Lebensraum for the German people, by destroying, evicting local populations or subduing them into slavery. slide 27  Expelling: A first aspect of mass violence is the expulsion of populations, essentially in the General Government in Poland. Cities in Polish Prussia, annexed to the Reich, are emptied of their Polish population (Poznan loses 70,000 inhabitants). slide 28  Destroying and shooting: Mass killing is a feature of occupation in the Soviet territories. The « holocaust by bullets » is now recognized as a major phenomenon in the East. Three Einsatzgruppen (A in the Baltic countries, B in Belarus and C in Ukraine) are charged with the mass killing of the Jews in the Soviet countryside and cities. slide 29 E.g. Sonderkommando Dirlewanger slide 30. Created in 1940 under Oskar Dirlewanger, a former paramilitary, it was one of the most infamous units charged with mass terror. It is active in the Lublin region then in Belarussian territories from February 1942 on. It is massively staffed by former criminals and carries out vicious crimes. These mass massacres are viewed as part of the war effort and a preparation for German settlement of the East. Other aspects of mass destruction involve the « Hunger Plan » designed in May 1941, to starve Soviet cities in the 1941-1942 winter, which proved particularly deadly in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) and Kyiv.  Japanese violence in Asia. The scale of the Japanese war-time empire in Asia elicits a similar difficulty to encompass the diversity of mass violence. Outright atrocities concentrate in China, where the Japanese face a hostile population and resort to mass killing and violence as a way to quash support for the Communist and nationalist guerrillas. One of the most famous actions is the “Three Alls Policy”, launched in late 1940 to « Burn all, kill all, steal all » in Northern China slide 31. This scorched earth policy kills more than 2.7 million Chinese peasants, through direct murder or man-made famine and injuries. Similar campaigns are implemented in central China (« rural pacification » campaigns in the Yangtse basin). Other forms of violence include: - the work by the Unit 731 based near Harbin slide 32, which provokes more than 3,000 deaths as a consequence of biological and neurological experiments (similar to those performed by Nazi physicians in concentration camps) - the so-called « comfort women » (150/200,000 women, 80 % of them from Korea) dispatched in the Japanese occupied territories to serve Japanese soldiers sexually slide 33. 2.3. Deportation, forced labor and mass murder in concentration and extermination camps slide 34 - Asia In Asia, the main internments camps are held by the Japanese are devised for American, British, Dutch and Asian prisoners of war (POWs). Contrarily to what happens in German POWs camps (where mortality is below 4%), Japanese camps offer very harsh conditions (mortality above 27%). A racial dimension is very present and cruel treatment against Westerners is seen as legitimate in view of the Pan-Asian project. Whereas the Germans generally abide by international law as for the POWs, the Japanese repeatedly violate it (e.g. the Bataan Death March in the Philippines which claimed the lives of 1,500 American and 26,000 Filipino POWs in 1942) Another case is the « Burma-Siam Death Railway », slide 35 where the Japanese have used POWs to build a strategically important railway (in a breach of international law, since POWs cannot be used to contribute to the war effort against their own country). What is more, the death rate is very high. Out of 61,800 Western POWs, 12,300 die in the process. As for the 200,000 Asian forced labourers, 42/74,000 pass away. Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 8  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) Although very violent, the Japanese camp system remains relatively limited in scope compared to the Nazi camp system. - The Nazi camp system and the Holocaust/Shoah The process of extermination of Jews and Romani in Europe What were the steps and modalities of the extermination policy of Jews and Romani in Europe? The Jewish population of Germany had already declined by one-third since the beginning of 1933. A total of 135,000 Jews had left Germany up to the end of 1937. slide 36 Following the violent Kristallnacht, pogroms in November 1938, Nazi officials conducted mass arrests of adult male Jews throughout the country, the first time Jews were arrested en masse precisely because they were Jews. Over 30,000 German Jews were incarcerated in the Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps in Germany, initially until each could provide proof of their ability to emigrate. slide 37 The Nazi internment system encompass two different types of camps: 1) concentration camps (only 6 in September 1939 slide 38, with 21,400 prisoners, but 700,000 in 1945, in a wide network across Germany and Central Europe) slide 39 2) extermination camps (6 with lethal equipment, all in former Polish territories: Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor and Auschwitz). slide 40 The first death camp is built in October 1941 in Belzec. In 1942, 1.3 million Jews are killed in the « Reinhard Operation » at Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor. slide 41 slides 42-44 In January 1942, the Wansee conference which deployed the extermination program to occupied Europe: the “final solution to the Jewish problem”, i.e. the use of industrial means and rational administrative procedures to exterminate different categories of populations. Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination camp In Auschwitz, an internment camp is first built in 1940 to impress the local population. German companies IG Farben and Krupp settles there and exploits the available workforce slide 45. The camp is directed by the SS commander Rudolf Höss and then expanded at the request of Heinrich Himmler in 1941 slide 46. Auschwitz becomes a transportation hub for deported Jews, near the railway of Katowice and Krakow. In 1942, construction of Birkenau (Auschwitz II), then a rubber factory in Monnowitz (Auschwitz III) for IG Farben and Buna. Auschwitz becomes the main extermination site after 1943. slide 47 By late 1941, the first gas chambers in Auschwitz were used against Soviet war prisoners, and, in Treblinka, against Jewish prisoners. New gas chambers were built at Birkenau in 1943 to cope with the increase of the flows of deported Jews from all over Europe. The extermination process followed the same model:  sorting of prisoners according to their estimated resistance to forced labor  all prisoners’ possessions are confiscated, sorted and stocked  weakest deportees directly submitted to the “special treatment” = extermination in gas chambers  the strongest ones endured forced labor in awful conditions in the neighbouring factories under the surveillance of SS and Kapos. Underfed and mistreated. They resisted a few weeks and months at best.  Some prisoners were used for pseudo-medical experimentations (Doctor Josef Mengele) slide 48 1 million Jewish people and 300,000 non-Jewish died Auschwitz until it was liberated by the Red Army in 1945. slide 49 Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 9  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) We could also mention other forms of internment with the case of ghettos in Central Europe. They could become quite akin to death camps, since inhabitants lived in utter squalor. In the Warsaw ghetto, where 150,000 Jews live, mortality increases from 23,5/1000 in 1940 to 140/1,000 in 1942 slide 50. A total estimate of 400,000 Jews died in the Warsaw ghetto up to the failed uprising in May 1943, mostly by shooting, gas intoxication or starvation. slide 51 Beyond the obvious singularity of the Holocaust in numbers and intentions, it makes sense to reintegrate it within the more general framework of mass violence and to provide a broader comparison between Europe and Asia. The inquiry into mass violence demonstrates the nature of total war, where distinctions between civilians and military fall. - The Genocide of European Roma (“Gypsies”) (1939-45) Drawing support from many non-Nazi Germans who harbored social prejudice towards Roma, the Nazis judged Roma to be "racially inferior." slide 52 The fate of Roma in some ways paralleled that of the Jews. Under the Nazi regime, German authorities subjected Roma to arbitrary internment, forced labor, and mass murder. German authorities murdered tens of thousands of Roma in the German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union and Serbia and thousands more in the killing centers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. The SS and police incarcerated Roma in the Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald slide 53, Dachau, Mauthausen, and Ravensbrück concentration camps slides 54-55. In December 1942, Himmler ordered the deportation of all Roma from the so-called Greater German Reich. There were exceptions for certain categories, including people of “pure Romani blood” dating from ancient times, persons of Romani descent who were considered integrated into German society and therefore did not “behave like Romani,” and persons (and their families) who had distinguished themselves in German military service. At least 5,000 fell under these exemptions, although local authorities often ignored the distinctions during roundups slide 56. In general, the German police deported Roma in the Greater German Reich to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the camp authorities housed them in a special compound called the "Romani family camp." In the so-called Romani compound, entire families lived together. Some 23,000 Roma were deported to Auschwitz altogether, and around 20,000 died there slide 57. It is not known precisely how many Roma were killed in the Holocaust. While exact figures or percentages cannot be ascertained, historians estimate that the Germans and their allies killed around 25% of all European Roma. Of slightly less than one million Roma believed to have been living in Europe before the war, scholars believe that the Germans and their Axis partners killed up to 250,000. 3. FRANCE AND THE USA IN WW2 (ppt 3 - slide 1) Relations between the United States and France during the Second World War were complex. Refusing to engage in the fight against fascism in 1939 in the name of isolationism, the United States let Western Europe including France fall into the hands of Nazi Germany. Although America did become the Arsenal of Democracy from 1940 onward, its aid mainly benefited the United Kingdom. France (Vichy regime) was in fact considered an enemy in Washington. Roosevelt was late in recognizing Free France and distrusted De Gaulle slide 2. The United States offered only a marginal role to the French Liberation Army on June 6, 1944 during the Normandy landings slide 3 and Roosevelt even prepared a plan for the occupation of France (AMGOT) following the example of Germany and Austria slide 4. De Gaulle's tenacity and audacity will allow France to be recognized as a victorious country despite Roosevelt. Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 10  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) 3.1. France in WW2: Collaboration, Passivity, Resistance slide 5 - Military defeat, political collapse: Spring 1940 On 10 May 1940, the German army attacked Belgium, the Netherlands and France slide 6. On June 10, the Italian armies invaded France. Despite fierce fighting, the French army was quickly defeated. In less than a month, 100,000 soldiers were killed, 200,000 wounded and 2 million taken prisoner. The government withdrew to Tours, then to Bordeaux on June 15. The Germans entered Paris on June 14 slide 7. Nearly 8 million civilians flee the advance of the Wehrmacht and desert the major cities. This movement of collective panic and mass migration is called "the Exodus" slides 8-9. Carrying with them meager baggage, panic-stricken by Luftwaffe air attacks, the civilians fled to the west and south of France. Creating a gigantic chaos, they hindered the movement of French troops. On June 16, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud resigned, because the members of his cabinet willing to continue the war were a minority slide 10 (first part). slide 10 (second part) He is replaced by Marshal Pétain, considered a hero of the Great War. slide 10 (third part – click on Pétain) The very next day, convinced that the war was lost, Pétain announced to the French that "il faut cesser le combat" and asked for an armistice. The armistice was signed on June 22nd and put an end to the Battle of France. slide 11 Following this agreement, Alsace-Moselle was annexed by the Reich and the rest of the territory was divided into two parts: the northern zone, occupied by the German army, and the southern zone, administered from Vichy by Pétain but occupied in turn from November 1942. Throughout the war, France was pillaged and had to pay 20 million marks daily to maintain the occupying army. This led to supply difficulties and the introduction of strict food rationing slide 12. - France Under Occupation: violence and collaboration On July 10, 1940, Pétain received full powers from deputies and senators to draft a new Constitution. The next day, he replaced the institutions of the Third Republic with those of the "l’Etat français", an authoritarian and reactionary regime whose motto was "Travail, Famille, Patrie". slide 13 Elections were suppressed, the media were controlled, and fundamental freedoms were trampled on. Pétain was the object of a personality cult slide 14, presenting him as the savior of France on two occasions: during the Battle of Verdun in 1916 and the defeat of 1940. Intense propaganda celebrated the "Révolution Nationale", which was to "regenerate" the country and fight against the "anti-France" allegedly responsible for the defeat (the Jews, the Communists and the Freemasons). Marked by xenophobia and anti-Semitism, the Vichy regime put in place legislation that discriminated against Jews and immigrants (Statut des Juifs, October 1940) slide 15 On October 24, 1940, Pétain met Hitler in Montoire-sur-Loire (Loir-et-Cher) and committed the country to collaboration with the Nazis slide 16. In order to provide Germany with labor, he created Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO) in 1943 slide 17. He also organized the deportation of Jews to extermination camps. On 16 and 17 July 1942, during the “rafle du Vel'd'Hiv slide 18, more than 13,000 people, nearly 1/3 of them children, were arrested in Paris and the suburbs by the French police. They were interned in the Vel'd'Hiv velodrome or in the Drancy camp before being deported. The French who adhered to the Nazi ideology joined the German army on the Eastern Front or the Milice. Founded in 1943 by Joseph Darnand, the Milice was responsible for helping the Gestapo hunt down resistance fighters and Jews slide 19. Historians refer to this commitment as collaborationism, to distinguish it from the state collaboration led by Pétain. The population, shocked by the defeat, preoccupied by the difficulties of daily life and influenced by Vichy propaganda, resigned themselves to the occupation of the country and were for the most part favorable to Marshal Pétain. Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 11  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) - The choice to resist France libre and internal resistance On 18 June 1940, refusing the armistice, General de Gaulle broadcasted a radio call for resistance from the BBC in London slide 20. slide 21 Supported by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, he founded the France Libre and succeeded in rallying the African colonies. Thanks to the first volunteers who joined him in England, he set up the Forces Françaises Libres (FFL), which fought alongside the Allies. In November 1942, the landings in North Africa made it possible to establish a French authority rival to Vichy. Algiers became the capital of France Libre, which set up a government, the Comité Français de Libération Nationale (CFLN) slide 22. At the same time, an Internal Resistance was born in France slide 23. Various actions were carried out to fight against the occupier: intelligence for the Allies, printing and distribution of leaflets or newspapers, sabotage, raids against the German army. To escape the Gestapo and the Milice, the resistance fighters hid in the maquis, usually in remote places or mountains (Vercors) slide 24. In 1941, the breaking of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact amplified the commitment of the Communists: attacked by Hitler, Stalin ordered them to fight against the Nazis. The French Communists created the movement of the Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP), which swelled the ranks of the internal Resistance slide 25. In 1943, Jean Moulin, commissioned by General de Gaulle, succeeded in unifying the various resistance movements within the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR). From resistance to Liberation On June 6, 1944, the Allies, including a handful of France Libre soldiers, landed in Normandy slide 26. With the help of the FFI, who multiplied sabotage actions and harassed the Germans, they managed to liberate the country after several months of fighting slide 27. On August 24, 1944, French troops led by General Leclerc entered Paris, whose inhabitants had starting an uprising a few days earlier slide 28. To prevent the Allies from placing liberated France under an occupying government - Allied Military Government of the Occupied Territories (AMGOT), on June 3, 1944 de Gaulle transformed the CFLN into the Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Française (GPRF), of which he was president. Refusing to recognize any legitimacy whatsoever for the Vichy regime, he affirmed slide 29: "la forme du gouvernement de la France est, et demeure la République ; en droit, elle n’a jamais cessé d’exister”. 3.2. The USA in the War: from neutrality to the politics of power slide 30 - From anxious observer to leader of the free world slide 31 slide 32 “This nation will remain a neutral nation,” F. D. Roosevelt declared shortly after the hostilities began in Europe in 1939, “but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well.” Roosevelt then believed; the United States should make armaments available to the Allied armies to help them counter the highly productive German munitions industry. In November 1939, the final Neutrality Act lifted the arms embargo and put all trade with belligerent nations under the terms of “cash-and-carry”: a belligerent could buy US arms if it used its own ships to carry it and paid cash. This actually helped Britain and France which, because their financial resources and control of the seas, were able to buy war materials in the United States as long as the goods never traveled on U.S. ships. With the defeat of France in June 1940, Roosevelt pushed neutrality one more step by persuading Congress to enact a law of compulsory military service. In September 1940, Roosevelt managed to help Great Britain by giving them 50 US destroyers in exchange for the right to build military bases on British islands in the Caribbean for 99 years. Roosevelt made this politically dangerous decision because of a major shift in American public opinion. slide 33 Lobbying groups such as the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies opposed the pro- neutrality campaigns of the America First Committee slide 34. Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 12  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) After his re-election for a 3rd mandate (November 1940), FDR ditched US neutrality by replacing cash- and-carry clause with the “lend-lease” system slides 35-38. It allowed the government not only to sell but also to lend or lease armaments to any nation deemed “vital to the defense of the United States”, on the basis of no more than a promise to return or pay for them when the war was over slide 39 (click on FDR to listen to the speech Arsenal of Democracy). Because of the increasing involvement of the US helping the British, Roosevelt understood the possibility that the US might soon be drawn into the war. So he arranged for a secret meeting in August with British Prime Minister Churchill in August 1941 slide 40.The two leaders negotiated the Atlantic Charter that affirmed what their peace objectives would be when the war ended; they agreed that the general principles for a fair peace would include self-determination for all people, no territorial expansion and free trade. Following U-boat attacks against U.S. Navy and merchant ships, the Senate passed a bill allowing the US Navy to escort British ships carrying lend-lease materials from US shores as far as Iceland slide 41. The President also allowed American destroyers to attack all German submarines and German ships on sight slide 42. In effect, the US was fighting an undeclared naval war against Germany, even if the US population was still not ready to be involved in a war. By the fall of 1941, lend-lease was extended to the German-invaded Soviet Union, toward creating a new relationship with Stalin that would ultimately lead to a formal Soviet-American alliance. The Roosevelt administration had secretly started a massive plan to expand the war industries and revealed in the press in December 1941 as the Victory Program slides 43-45. - From power to (nuclear) superpower: the new US world policy The war allowed the US to spread its influence. The Atlantic Charter foreshadowed the UN in which, from the start, the US had a leading role. Also, by liberating Italy and France, the US gained a right to take part into the reshaping of the European map (decided in Yalta, 1945). In Asia, the occupation of Japan helped strengthen the US maritime power.  In 1945, the USA finally played a major political role, equivalent to its economic power 3.3. The US society in the WW2: a nation at war slide 46 - The impact of the war on the US economy and society The huge war effort used the technical efficiency of the assembly line slide 47. Stimulated by wartime demand and governmental contracts, US industries boomed with an extraordinary output slide 48. The Depression was over by 1942 and by 1944, unemployment had practically disappeared slide 49. The war created important internal movement of population to the North from the South and the East to the West slide 50. The conversion of industry from civilian to war production impacted mainly the North East, as military shipbuilding and aircraft industries were developing on the West coast, especially in California, to supply the needs of the Pacific armed forces. Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle became major industrial centers specializing in the technology and defense slide 51. The overall composition of the American workforce changed, with labor shortages caused by 15 million men and women taken up by military service. The total workforce increased by 20%, especially women, minority workers and young people. The war significantly changed the geographic distribution of ethnic minorities on the American territory. 5 million African Americans migrated from the rural South to industrial cities in the North and West to find Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 13  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) better paying jobs and improve their overall living conditions slides 52-53. This “Second Great Migration” sometime raised racial tensions: the June 1943 Detroit racial riot caused 34 deaths slide 54. Early signs of the modern civil rights movement manifest, as Black labor unions opposed segregation in public facilities and discrimination in hiring and wages. The US Army began to integrate units during the war slide 55, but the process would only be achieved by 1946. A case-study on the home front: US Women in the War (PPO#2) (Case Study) slide 56 It is clear that women did make a tremendous contribution to the war but there were constant attempts to trivialize their role by the press, male soldiers and those who thought that a woman’s place was in the home. - Dramatic increase in female employment The war drew increasing numbers of women into roles from which, by either custom or law, they had been largely barred. The number of women in the workforce increased by nearly 60%, and women accounted for 1/3 of paid workers in 1945 (as opposed to ¼ in 1940). These wage-earning women were more likely to be married and older than most women who had entered the workforce in the past. Many women entered the industrial workforce to replace male workers serving in the military. But while economic and military necessity eroded some of the popular objections to women in the workplace, obstacles remained. Many factory owners continued to categorize jobs by gender. (Female work, like male work, was also categorized by race: black women were usually assigned more menial tasks, and paid at a lower rate, than their white counterparts.) Special recruiting materials for women made domestic analogies. Cutting airplane wings was compared to making a dress pattern, mixing chemicals to making a cake. Still, women did make important inroads in industrial employment during the war. Women had been working in industry for over a century, but some began now to take on heavy industrial jobs that had long been considered “men’s work.” - Rosie the Riveter … and the others The famous wartime image of “Rosie the Riveter” symbolized the new importance of the female industrial workforce slide 57 (first part and second part) Women workers joined unions in substantial numbers, and they helped erode at least some of the prejudice, including the prejudice against working mothers, that had previously kept many of them from paid employment. Most women workers during the war were employed not in factories but in service-sector jobs. Above all, they worked for the government, whose bureaucratic needs expanded dramatically alongside its military and industrial needs slide 58. Washington, D.C., in particular, was flooded with young female clerks, secretaries, and typists—known as “government girls”—most of whom lived in cramped quarters in boarding-houses, private homes, and government dormitories and worked long hours in the war agencies. Public and private clerical employment for women expanded in other urban areas as well, creating high concentrations of young women in places largely depleted of young men. By 1945, the various branches of the military had enlisted substantial numbers of women, and most of the units excluded partly or completely African American women. slide 59 140,000 in the US Army (Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps or WAAC) 100,000 in the US Navy (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service or WAVES) 1,000 in the US Air Force (Women Air force Service Pilots or WASPs) 23,000 in the Marines 13,000 in the Coastguards 74,000 in the army and navy nurse corps (with only 479 African American nurses) Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 14  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) However, most female work was limited to clerical jobs (emploi de bureau) Women in the United Service Organizations (USOs): gender conservatism and patriotic sexism? For the servicemen who remained in America during the war, and for soldiers and sailors in cities far from home in particular, the company of friendly, “wholesome” women was, the military believed, critical to maintaining morale. slide 60 USOs recruited thousands of young women to serve as hostesses in their clubs—women who were expected to dress nicely, dance well, and chat happily with lonely men. Other women joined “dance brigades” and travelled by bus to military bases for social evenings with servicemen. They, too, were expected to be pretty, to dress attractively (and conservatively), and to interact comfortably with men they had never met before and would likely never see again. The USO forbade women to have dates with soldiers after parties in the clubs, and the members of the “dance brigades” were expected to have no contact with servicemen except during the dances. Clearly, such regulations were sometimes violated. But while the military took elaborate measures to root out homosexual men and women from their ranks (unceremoniously dismissing many of them with undesirable discharges), it quietly tolerated “healthy heterosexuality.” slide 61 At the end of the war, the majority of women willingly gave up their wartime jobs and returned to their traditional pre-1941 “female” roles. In 1945, despite some progress in the position of women, there were still problems: - Women were generally excluded from the top, well-paid jobs. - On average, women earned 50–60 % of the wage that men earned for doing the same job. In 1944, the average weekly wage for working women was $31.21 and for men it was $56.65. - A woman could still be dismissed from her job when she married - A democracy at war The 1940 and 1944 elections; racial and ethnic politics slide 62 With Roosevelt effectively straddling the center of the defense debate, favoring neither the extreme isolationists nor the extreme interventionists, the Democratic party easily succeeded at the 1940 elections, where Roosevelt received 55% of the popular vote. The 1944 elections took place in a country fully mobilized by the war effort, but the conduct of the war was not an issue in the campaign slide 63. Instead, the election revolved around domestic economic issues and, indirectly, the president’s health as Roosevelt was in fact, severely ill, suffering from, among other things, arteriosclerosis. Roosevelt campaigned for an unprecedented 4th term, with Harry Truman, a skillful Missouri Congressman running for Vice-President they captured 53.5%. Democrats maintained control of both houses in Congress. World War I had produced widespread hatred, vindictiveness, and hysteria in America, as well as widespread and flagrant violations of civil liberties. World War II did not produce a comparable era of repression. The government barred some anti-Semitic and pro-fascist newspapers from publication but there was no general censorship. The most ambitious effort to punish domestic fascists, a sedition trial of twenty-eight people, ended in a mistrial, and the defendants went free. Unlike during World War I, the government generally left socialists and communists alone - most of whom strongly supported the war effort. Nor was there much of the ethnic or cultural animosity that had shaped the social climate of the USA during World War I. The June 1943 “zoot-suit” riots in Los Angeles (US sailors attacked Mexican Americans) and occasional racial conflicts in American cities and on military bases made clear that traditional racial and ethnic hostilities had not disappeared. On the whole, the war worked more to blur ethnic distinctions than to heighten them. The participation and frequent heroism of American soldiers of many ethnic backgrounds encouraged this change. Americans displayed relatively little hostility toward German or Italian Americans. Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 15  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) Xenophobia and human rights breaches: demonizing the Japanese enemy within The treatment of the small, politically powerless group of Japanese Americans contradicted the general rule of tolerance in America. From the beginning, Americans adopted a different attitude toward their Asian enemy encouraged by both public and private propaganda to believe, they were a devious, malign, and cruel people. This racial animosity soon extended to Americans of Japanese descent after the shock of Pearl Harbor. About 127,000 Japanese Americans lived in the continental United States, most of them concentrated in a few areas in California. slide 64 About 1/3 of them were un-naturalized, first-generation immigrants (Issei); 2/3 were naturalized or native-born citizens of the United States (Nisei). The Japanese in America, like the Chinese, had long been the target of ethnic and racial animosity slide 65; and unlike members of European ethnic groups, who had encountered similar resentment, Asians seemed unable to dispel prejudice against them no matter how assimilated they became. Many white Americans continued to consider Asians (even native- born citizens) so “foreign” that they could never become “real” Americans. slide 66 Partly as a result, much of the Japanese American population in the West continued to live in close-knit, to some degree even insular, communities, which reinforced the belief that they were alien and potentially menacing. Pearl Harbor inflamed these long-standing suspicions and turned them into active animosity slide 67. Hoaxes were massively circulated about how the Japanese in Hawaii had helped sabotage Pearl Harbor and how Japanese Americans in California were conspiring to aid an enemy landing on the Pacific coast slide 68. The real impetus for taking action against the alleged “fifth column” of came from the government. In February 1942, President Roosevelt authorized the army to “intern” the Japanese Americans and created the War Relocation Authority (WRA): more than 100,000 people (Issei and Nisei alike) were rounded up and taken to what the government euphemistically termed “relocation centers” in the “interior.” slides 69- 70 Conditions in the internment camps (mostly) located in the western mountains and the desert were not brutal, but they were harsh and uncomfortable. Government officials talked of them as places where the Japanese could be socialized and “Americanized” slide 71. But the internment camps were more a target of white economic aspirations than of missionary work. The governor of Utah, where many of the internees were located, wanted the federal government to turn over thousands of Japanese Americans to serve as forced laborers. Washington did not comply, but the WRA did hire out many inmates as agricultural laborers. The internment never produced significant popular opposition. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled in Korematsu v. U.S. that the relocation was constitutionally permissible. In another case the same year, it barred the internment of “loyal” citizens, but left the interpretation of “loyal” to the discretion of the government. Nevertheless, by the end of 1944, most of the internees had been released; and in early 1945, they were finally permitted to return to the West Coast— where they faced continuing harassment and persecution, and where many found their property and businesses irretrievably lost slide 72. Conclusion Point 3 All in all, the Second World War had a contrasting impact on the United States and France. Although both countries were officially considered victorious, as evidenced by their status as permanent members of the UN and as occupying forces of Germany and Austria, it can be said that the United States emerged considerably stronger from the conflict while France emerged weaker. In 1945, the American presence in the world was considerably strengthened by military bases and networks of alliances, while the French colonial empire was beginning to be seriously questioned before it was progressively torn to shreds. At the Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 16  H i s t o r y Theme 1 - Challenges to Democracy, Rise of Totalitarianism, and World War II (1929-1945) end of World War II, America assumed its status as a world power while France had to give up its own. The coming Cold War will only confirm this new world order, because "America's oldest ally" will be forced to play the role of vassal of the United States. Lycée Nelson-Mandela American Section 17