A Brief Overview of the Start of World War II

Pearl

Harbor

Bell Aircraft;

the Savannah and Brunswick shipyards

A Brief Overview of the Start of World War II

Having lost World War I, Germany, was largely and unfairly required to take complete

responsibility for starting World War I (Article 231, The War Guilt Clause of the Versailles Treaty). Although Germany endured heavy losses too in the war, it was forced to give up territories and taxes were also levied to pay for war damages to various Allied nations, especially France.

Adolph Hitler became a leader of what was called the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, or Nazi party. Hitler convinced many of his people that they were a superior race and would experience years of prosperity while under his leadership. However, all of the promises were made for only certain German citizens. One of the groups of people he excluded intentionally was the Jewish people or Jews. (Hitler and many Germans blamed the country's defeat in World War I on pacifists, Communists, and Jews.) They were to blame for all of Germany’s problems. And Hitler encouraged the instilment of hatred for Jewish people in German children, from their youngest age.

Hitler also promised the German people that he would once again make Germany a powerful and well respected nation. He eventually demanded and won over their support. The Nazi party ended up winning more votes than any other political party in Germany as Hitler had many of his opponents arrested and murdered therefore managing to fully take over the government. On January 30, 1933, Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. To provide the German people with the Nazi enabled “Lebensraum” (“Living Space”) idea, he planned to make room for Germans, the so called “superior race”, in Europe. He began this quest in 1938 by annexing Austria. That same year, he successfully coerced major European powers though threat of war if the western portion of Czechoslovakia (called Sudetenland by the Germans) was not allowed to be annexed to Germany as well. This arrangement was agreed to by many European countries so as to appease Hitler and avoid another war.

But that was not enough. According to most historians, World War II officially began when Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany, ordered German troops to invade Poland on September 1, 1939. The main Allied Powers were Great Britain, France as they declared war on Germany for the invasion of Poland. German troops later also successfully invaded, the Netherlands (Holland), Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Denmark, Norway, the remaining portions of Poland and Czechoslovakia and North Africa. By autumn of 1940, a small island nation was the only bastion of freedom remaining in Western Europe. The Battle of Britain had begun.

Bombing of Pearl Harbor

For now (mid 1941), the U.S. was not officially in the war. But President Franklin D. Roosevelt also known as FDR (America’s 32nd President), declared a state of national emergency due the dire situation that the world was in and approved United States assistance to Britain, Free France, the Soviet Union, and other countries defending themselves from Nazi German aggression under what was called the Lend Lease Act. The United States provided those countries with all types of food, supplies and equipment to include tanks, ships and aircraft that could be used to help repel or at least delay Hitler’s onslaught.

Due to Japan’s aggression in Asia, the U.S. soon ceased to sell scrap metals such as steel and oil by August of 1941. With this action, Japan lost 80% of its normal supply of imported oil which threatened to cripple both the Japanese economy and military strength once strategic reserves were depleted (projected in 2 years), unless alternative oil-sources could be found. Like China, soon other Asian countries, Western colonies and territories would also experience brute response and assimilation into the Japanese Empire.

Japan, feeling embittered and economically isolated, decided to implement their plan to destroy the only floating obstacle in the Pacific, the United States Navy’s 7th Fleet. Only with this action, as far as they were concerned, enable unhindered Japanese advance into British held Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. There, Japan would have access to natural resources such as oil and rubber. The Japanese thought was (in particular, Prime Minister/General Hideki Tojo) that once the U.S. Pacific fleet was neutralized, the American people would have no choice but to accept Japanese reign in the Pacific and Asia. They could not have been more wrong.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese naval and air forces (to include 6 aircraft carriers laden with nearly 360 aircraft, and 5 midget submarines) attacked Pearl Harbor and other military installations in and throughout the U.S.territory of Hawaii with immense precision and surprise. Although no U.S. aircraft carriers were present at the time, nine ships of the U.S. fleet were sunk and twenty-one ships were severely damaged. Sadly, 2,350 Americans were killed and almost 1,200 were wounded. The overall death toll reached 2,350, including 68 civilians, and 1,178 injured. (Of the military personnel lost at Pearl Harbor 1,177 were from the Battleship, USS Arizona alone.)

In response, the United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941. Three days later the other two major Axis nations, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States. As the United States declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy, the Axis powers may have seemed invincible as it had already dominated large parts of Europe, Africa, East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. (The U.S. Strategy considered liberating Europe over the Pacific as their primary objective (“Europe First”). So, European commands had a priority for receiving military supplies, and equipment over those commands that were based in Asia and the Pacific.)

Ending WWII

But the Second World War was still not over as Allied troops were still fighting the Japanese. After the death of President Roosevelt in April of 1945, Harry S. Truman became the 33rd American President while the Battle of Okinawa raged. The battle had one of the highest number of casualties of any World War Two engagement. The Japanese lost over 100,000 troops, and the Allies (mostly U.S. troops) suffered more than 50,000 casualties, with over 12,000 killed in action. Believing in false Japanese government propaganda, and fearing Allied troops, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed and/or committed suicide to avoid capture. Approximately one-fourth of the civilian population died due to the invasion. Remembering the ferociousness and

cruelty of the Japanese fighting to the death spirit and with pressing civilians to become fighters in this and the many other Pacific and Asiatic battles, it was President Truman who authorized the use of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945. It was thought that only through this action it would save a projected one million Allied lives that would be lost in an invasion on Japan itself. By August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered and was commemorated in the United States as “Victory over Japan” Day (V-J Day).

World War II, the bloodiest war in human history, involved 61 countries with 1.7 billion people (three quarters of the world's population at the time). Many cities and countries were devastated and millions of people were homeless and children were without parents or even families. Out of nearly 73,000,000 people killed in World War II, 61 million were Allied people, and 11 million were Axis people.

Of the 15,000,000 Americans that served in the war, over 1,000,000 became casualties. And over 400,000 Americans of all races, creeds and genders were killed in World War II. The so called and well deserved title of “The Greatest Generation” literally saved the free world from a new “Dark Age” chapter in human history.

President Roosevelt and the Little White House

In 1921 Franklin Delano Roosevelt contracted what was thought at the time to be polio. One of the few things that seemed to ease his pain was immersion in warm water, and while in said water to bathe and engage in physical exercise. His first time in Warm Springs, Georgia, was October 1924. He went to a resort in the town whose attraction was a permanent 88-degree natural spring, but whose main house was described as "ramshackle". Roosevelt bought the resort and the 1,700-acre farm surrounding it in 1927 (the resort would become known as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation). Five years later, after winning the presidency for the first time, in 1932 he built a small pine-paneled house near the facility, which he called the Little White House. In total, he made sixteen trips to the Little White House during his presidency, usually spending two to three weeks at a time, as it took a day to reach Warm Springs from WashingtonD.C. by train.

World War II did affect Roosevelt's time at the Little White House. The only year he did not go to the Little White House was 1942, as he was preoccupied by the beginnings of US involvement in World War II. It is believed that he vacationed as much as he did in 1943-1945 at the Little White House because his real love for vacations, sailing on the Atlantic, was too dangerous to do during wartime, even if it was just on inland waterways like the Chesapeake Bay or the Potomac River. One major change was that soldiers from FortBenning were stationed at the Little White House to patrol the woods surrounding the farm.

His last trip to the Little White House was on March 30, 1945. He felt he did not achieve

enough rest at his Hyde Park home. According to some observers at Warm Springs, Roosevelt looked "ghastly". and his usual cordial waves to the residents were weak. Unlike his previous visits, he avoided the swimming pool he used to comfort himself in previous trips. On April 12, 1945, while at the Little White House, he complained about having a headache, and then slumped over. Roosevelt died two hours later.

Most of Roosevelt's property was willed to Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, who gained control of all the properties in 1948 except for the Georgia Wilkins Cottage, which Wilkins lived in until her 1959 death. A major attraction of the museum is the portrait that artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff was painting of him when he died, now known as the "Unfinished Portrait." It hangs near a finished portrait that Shoumatoff completed later from sketches and memory. Today the Little White House is part of Georgia's state park system. Much of it remains as it looked the day Roosevelt died. Items on display at the facility, besides the Unfinished Portrait, include his customized 1938 Ford convertible (in the bottom floor of the garage/servant house) and his stagecoach. Also, of interest, both John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Jimmy Carter in 1976 used the property for their campaigns to become president; Carter even launched his campaign there.

Richard Russell

Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. (November 2, 1897 – January 21, 1971) was an American Party politician who was a long-time United States Senator from the state of Georgia. He worked to bring wartime opportunities to Georgia. He helped to bring over a dozen military bases to Georgia.

Carl Vinson

Carl Vinson. He was the first person to serve for more than 50 years in the United States Houseof Representatives.

In recognition of his efforts on behalf of the U.S. Navy, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was named for him, the USS Carl Vinson; Vinson became one of a handful of living Americans to have a Navy vessel named for them. On March 15, 1980, at age 96, he attended the ship'slaunching.

FDR’s Little White House

The Little White House; Warm Springs, GA

Elizabeth Shoumatoff had begun working on the portrait of the president around noon on April

12, 1945. FDR was being served lunch when he stated "I have a terrific headache" and then

collapsed of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Later that day Roosevelt died. Shoumatoff never

finished the portrait.

The “Big Three”

Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin

Pearl Harbor - Dec. 7, 1941

A date which will live in infamy!

President Roosevelt Signs the US Declaration of War

USS Arizona, Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor Memorial

2,887 Americans

Dead!

Horrors of the Holocaust Exposed

Mass Graves at Bergen-Belsen

Horrors of the Holocaust Exposed

Slave Labor at Buchenwald

Crematoria at Majdanek

Entrance to Auschwitz:
Work Makes You Free

Dead Bodies Waiting to be processed

The Holocaust and its impact on Georgia

In the spring of 1945, as Allied troops pushed into Poland, Austria, and Germany, nothing could have prepared them for what they found. Auschwitz, Buckenwald, Dachau, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, and other concentration camps were set up by the Nazis as the “final solution to the Jewish problem.” Those who were left alive in the camps were emaciated skeletons from years of starvation, disease, cruel treatment, and forced labor.

The Holocaust was the name given to the systematic extermination (killing) of 6,000,000 Jews. An additional 5 to 6 million people, labeled as “undesirables”, were also killed by the Nazis before and during World War II. In the camps, many died from starvation; others died from disease, mistreatment, and medical experiments. Prisoners, including children, were gassed in chambers they thought were showers. Their bodies were incinerated in huge ovens or thrown into mass graves. The deaths of these Jews, Poles, Czechs, Russians, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the mentally or physically disabled all fit Hitler’s plan to rid Europe of what he called “inferior” people.

In 1986, the Georgia commission on the Holocaust was established “to take lessons from the history of the Holocaust and use them to help lead new generations of Georgians beyond racism and bigotry. Through a variety of programs, the commission fosters tolerance, good citizenship, and character development among the young people of the state.” Each year, the commission sponsors an art and writing contest for Georgia middle and high school students.

The Bell Aircraft/ SavannahBrunswick Shipyards

After Pearl Harbor, the federal government decided to build additional aircraft plants to manufacture the B-29 bomber. Bell Aircraft Company of Buffalo, New York, won a contract to build the B-29 in a new plant in Marietta. The Marietta facility was the largest aircraft assembly plant in the world, with over 4.2 million square feet.

World War II brought prosperity to Georgia. Millions of federal dollars poured into the state, strengthening the economy. Because of its climate and the influence of politicians like Senator Richard Russell, Jr., Senator Walter F. George, and Representative Carl Vinson, the state became the site of several military installations.

Major military bases included FortBenning in Columbus, CampGordon in Augusta, FortStewart and Hunter Air Field in Savannah, and Warner Robins Air Field near Macon. FortBenning was the largest infantry center in the country. In fact, only Texas trained more military than did Georgia. In Marietta, 30,000 men and women built B-29 bombers at the Bell Bomber plant. The Atlanta airport became an air base in 1941.

A number of industries in Georgia were contributing to the war effort. One effort was the building of Liberty ships at Brunswick and Savannah shipyards. President Roosevelt named the cargo ships “Liberty ships” after Patrick Henry’s famous quotation, and the ships were essential to the war effort. The first of Georgia’s Liberty ships was launched in November 1942- the U.S.S. James Oglethorpe, which was sunk by a German submarine the next year. In all, 88 Liberty ships were built in Savannah by 15,000 workers, many of whom were women.

In Brunswick, over 16,000 men and women worked around the clock in 1943 and 1944 on six ships at a time. In December 1944, they set a national record by building seven ships in just one month. Both of Georgia’s port cities can be proud of their tremendous contributions to the war effort.

Liberty Ships