Unit 7 National Crisis

GPS 17 - The student will analyze the causes and consequences of the Great Depression.

  1. Describe the causes including over production, under consumption, and stock market speculation that led to the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. [658 – 660]
  1. Explain the impact of the drought in the creation of the Dust Bowl.[663]
  1. Explain the social and political impact of widespread unemployment that resulted in developments such as Hoovervilles. [661, 662, 663, 672]

EQ 124 -Why did the stock market crash in 1929?

  • Stock Market speculation – buying stocks on “margin”
  • Margin Calls
  • End of 1929
  • No new money into Stock Market
  • Selling more than buying stock prices go down
  • October 29 Black Tuesday – Steepest drop in prices
  • Crash not a cause of Great Depression
  • Undermined economy
  • Weakened Banks
  • Lent money to investors
  • Invested in stocks
  • Less credit available
  • Bank closures, depositors losers

EQ 125 - What were causes of the Great Depression?

  • Overproduction – KEY cause of Great Depression
  • Efficient machinery – farms/factories
  • Rise in production not matched in rise in incomes
  • Low consumption led to cut-down in manufacturing
  • Cut-down in manufacturing led to unemployment
  • Unemployment led to less consumption – cycle downward
  • Hawley-Smoot Tariff
  • Highest tariff rate in US History
  • Damaged American sales – contributed to unemployment
  • Federal Reserve
  • Did not raise interest rates during 1920s
  • Encouraged banks to make risky loans
  • Encouraged investment in production which led to overproduction
  • When depression hit Federal Reserve raised rates by mistake
  • Less credit available

EQ 126 -How did drought bring about the Dust Bowl that drastically changed the lives of the people who experienced it?

  • Great Plains – homesteaders plowing of grasses
  • Wheat Fields uncultivated when crop prices dropped
  • 1932 Drought
  • Dust Storms 22/1934 to 72/1937
  • Bank foreclosures forced families off farms held for generations
  • Farm families migrated out west - Okies

EQ 127 -How did the Great Depression change society and politics in the US?

  • Social Impact – Unemployment
  • Bank failures – Life Savings disappeared
  • 1929 – 650 banks closed
  • 1930 – 1300 banks closed
  • 1933 – 9000 banks closed
  • Business failures
  • 1932 – 30,000 companies out of business
  • Unemployment 25 % highest ever
  • Hunger/starvation
  • Soup Kitchens/Bread lines
  • Hollywood Escapes
  • Rise in movie attendance
  • Rise in radio popularity
  • Political Impact – Unemployment
  • Roaring 20s credited to Republicans/Hoover
  • Depression 30s blamed for Republicans/Hoover
  • Hoovervilles - shantytowns
  • Slang for makeshift villages built by homeless
  • Term indicates public perception of who to blame – Hoover/Republicans
  • Bonus Army
  • Violent dispersion of marchers
  • Public critical of Hoover
  • Reconstruction Finance Corporation
  • First Federal agency created to help economy
  • Democrats/FDR – realignment election
  • First time since civil war Democrats in control of government

GPS 18 - The student will describe Franklyn Roosevelt’s New Deal as a response to the depression and compare the ways government programs aided those in need.

  1. Describe the creation of the TennesseeValley Authority as a works program and as an effort to control the environment. [684 & 685]
  2. Explain the Wagner Act and the rise of industrial unionism. [692 – 694]
  3. Explain the passage of the Social Security Act as a part of the Second New Deal. [694]
  4. Identify Eleanor Roosevelt as a symbol of social progress and women’s activism. [696]
  5. Identify the political challenges to Roosevelt’s domestic and international leadership including the role of Huey Long, the “court packing bill”, and the Neutrality Act. [690, 697, 726]

EQ 128 - Why was the TVA created?

  • Purpose of TVA
  • works program for southerners – purpose JOBS
  • effort to control the Tennessee/Cumberland River

Floods

Rural electricity

Seven States involved

  • Statistics
  • 40,000 workers, 20 dams, Reforested millions acres
  • Fertilizer factories, Power plants, Recreation areas

EQ 129 -How did the Wagner Act encourage the rise of unions?

  • Wagner Act
  • Established National Labors Relations Act [Wagner Act] – represents a sea change in national labor policy
  • Can be viewed as Laborer’s Bill of Rights
  • Right to organize unions
  • Right to bargain collectively
  • 1894 Pullman Strike Fed Gov Anti Union
  • Wagner Act Fed Gov Pro Union

EQ 130 -Why was the passage of the Social Security Act a significant shift in the role of government?

  • “One of the most important pieces of legislation in American history.”
  • Directly touches the lives of more Americans than any other government program
  • Government responsible when family and self fail to care
  • Goals – range of programs to provide “social safety net”
  • Provide some security for elderly and unemployed
  • Monthly retirement benefit
  • Unemployment insurance

EQ 131 -Why did Eleanor Roosevelt become a symbol of social progress and women’s activism?

  • New kind of First Lady
  • Traveled country – Legs/Ears of the president –Fact Finding
  • Wrote newspaper columns/books
  • Urged women to enlist and join defense industries {Rosie the Riveter}
  • Influenced FDR to pursue socially progressive measures – Advocate for working women, blacks, tenant farmers
  • After FDRs death
  • Truman selected her as delegate to United Nations
  • Kennedy appointed her delegate to UN, advisor to Peace Corps, and chairperson of President’s Commission on the Status of Women
  • She quickly became the best-known (and also the most criticized) First Lady in American history. She evoked both intense admiration and intense hatred.

EQ 132 -How did FDR overcome the challenges posed by opponents of his domestic and foreign policies?

  • International political challenges
  • German and Japanese Aggressive actions/victories
  • Isolationist sentiment at home, appeasement abroad
  • Domestic political challenges – Left
  • Huey Long – Senator Louisiana – 27,000 Share our Wealth clubs
  • Domestic political challenges – Right
  • Father Coughlin – Priest, radio show, National Union for Social Justice\
  • Moving country toward socialism and communism
  • Communication, Character, and Policies overcame challenges
  • Fireside Chats – convinced millions to support his programs
  • Policy had positive impact/immediate help to millions of Americans
  • Personal characteristics – optimism while physically challenged inspired millions

GPS 19 -The student will identify the origins, major developments, and the domestic impact of World War II, especially the growth of the federal government.

  1. Explain A. Philip Randolph’s proposed March on Washington, D. C. and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response. [750]
  1. Explain major events including the lend-lease program, the Battle of Midway, D-Day, and the fall of Berlin. [727, 745, 758, 766]
  1. Explain the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the internment of Japanese-Americans.
  1. Describe war mobilization, as indicated by rationing, war-time conversion, and the role of women in war industries. [736 – 741, 753]
  1. Describe Los Alamos and the scientific, economic, and military implications of developing the atomic bomb. [769, 770]

EQ 133-Why did A. Philip Randolph want to organize a huge march on WashingtonD.C. and how did FDR respond?

  • Philip Randolph – head of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
  • Racism in hiring for factory jobs
  • March to secure jobs, integrate military
  • FDR’s Response
  • Executive Order 8802

“there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color or national origin.”

  • Fair Employment Practices Commission
  • first civil rights agency established by federal government since Reconstruction Era

EQ 134 - Why was the lend-lease program controversial?

  • Nye Committee on Causes of World War I
  • US Arms manufacturers selling to warring nations
  • More US Bank loans to Britain and France than Germany
  • Neutrality Acts 1939
  • Cash and Carry – policy to support Britain
  • Britain must pay cash and must carry US weapons on own ships
  • Britain running out of both cash and ships
  • Lend Lease Act
  • Weapons to any country ‘vital to the defense of the United States”
  • ‘Great Arsenal of Democracy”
  • Means to bypass Neutrality Act / Cash and Carry
  • Isolationists believed that Lend Lease would get US into war
  • Battle of the Atlantic – unofficial naval war against Germany

EQ 135 -Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?

  • FDR policy to support British against Germany
  • British fleet leaves Asia vulnerable to Japan
  • Economic Pressure on Japan to not attack Britain
  • Japan - 80% oil from America
  • Japan – strategic materials
  • After Japan invasion of China – FDR freezes Japanese assets
  • FDR Lend-Lease to China
  • Japanese Response to FDR
  • Alliance with Germany
  • Lack of oil/strategic materials – Japanese plan surprise attack on Pearl Harbor
  • No US Pacific Fleet to interfere with Japanese expansion into areas with oil and other strategic materials

EQ 136- Why were loyal Japanese Americans interned in prison camps on the West Coast?

  • Fear of Japanese Americans
  • Newspapers reports of Japanese spies
  • No belief in loyalty of Japanese Americans
  • FDR Executive Order
  • Military Zones on West Coast
  • 10 Internment Camps
  • Korematsu v. the United States
  • No Japanese American ever tried for espionage
  • Japanese American Citizens league
  • 20,000 compensation – Ronald Reagan

EQ 137 -Why was the Battle of Midway a turning point in the Pacific theater of war?

  • Doolittle Raid
  • US surprise attack – raise morale of Americans
  • Change Japan’s war strategy
  • Protect the Emperor/god
  • Destroy the US fleet by attacking Midway
  • Battle of Midway put an end to Japanese Offensive actions
  • Japanese losses
  • Four largest aircraft carriers
  • Heart of Japanese fleet defeated / destroyed
  • What if Japan won Battle of Midway
  • Could use Midway island to bomb West Coast
  • Could use Midway to take Hawaiian islands

EQ 138 -Why was D-Day a turning point in the European theater of war and led to the Fall of Berlin?

  • Operation Overlord – Invasion of Normandy, France – D-Day, The Longest Day
  • Greatest invasion force in history – German Occupied France
  • 1.5 million American soldiers, 12,000 planes, 5 million tons of equipment, 7,000 ship
  • D – Day = Beginning of the end of the Hitler’s Third Reich
  • “battle of the hedgerows”
  • Battle of the Bulge
  • Bastogne – Patton’s Third Army
  • Last German offensive – no German defense of Berlin
  • Soviets in the East, US in the West, Berlin in the middle
  • VE – Day Victory in Europe – May 8, 1945

EQ 139 -How did the US get ready for / support the World War II effort on the home front?

“The Industrial output of the United States during the war astounded the rest of the world. American workers were twice as productive as German workers and five times more productive than Japanese workers. American production turned the tide… In less than four years, the United States achieved what no other nation ever done – it fought and won a two-front war against two powerful military empires, forcing each to surrender unconditionally.”

  • Cost – Plus System = profit incentive for industry – more a company produced the more money it made
  • Reconstruction Finance corporation – loans to industry to convert to wartime production
  • Automobile Industry – produced 1/3 of all military equipment manufactured
  • Tanks, jeeps, trucks, artillery, rifles, mines, etc.
  • Modern warfare – fastest movers of supplies, men and weapons wins
  • Liberty Ships – basic cargo ship used during the war
  • Welded instead of riveted
  • More ships built than were sunk by German submarines
  • Convoy system – Battle of the Atlantic
  • Selective Service Training Act
  • First peacetime draft in US history
  • Segregated Army – Double V Campaign
  • Tuskegee Airmen
  • 761st Tank Battalion
  • US suffered the fewest casualties in combat
  • Women in military
  • War Production – ENDED THE GREAT DEPRESSION
  • 19 million new jobs, standard of living doubled
  • Rosie the Riveter – women in industry
  • 2.5 million women in industry
  • Changed women’s perception of self and roles
  • Changed American attitudes about women in workplace
  • Office of Price Administration
  • Rationing - meat, sugar, rubber, gasoline
  • Blue coupons / Red coupons
  • Victory gardens, scrap drives
  • E bonds – 100 billion dollars raise to pay for war

EQ 140 -Why did President Truman decide to use the atom bomb on Japan?

  • Savagery/Barbarism of Japanese forces
  • Rape of NanKing, China
  • Bataan Death March, Philippines
  • Douglas MacArthur – “I shall return”
  • Japanese view of POWs
  • Japanese view of surrendering
  • Island Hopping in the Pacific – Macarthur returns to the Philippines
  • Images of Tarawa– convincing evidence of Japanese resistance
  • Kamikaze planes at Leyte Gulf
  • Uncommon valor Iwo Jima [famous picture]
  • Okinawa – Japanese resistance evident
  • Unconditional surrender – Emperor of Japan/godunlikely without Atom Bomb
  • Atom Bomb or American casualties in invasion of Japan

EQ 141 -Why did the US build the atom bomb?

  • Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt
  • FDR sets up Manhattan Project
  • Fear Nazis would build one first
  • Firstnuclear reactorUniversity of Chicago
  • Los Alamos, New Mexico – Oppenheimer team

Town created to house laboratory team working on Manhattan Project

Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory also developed first Nuclear Fusion Bomb

Town still exists and is site of major nuclear research facility

  • July 16, 1945 First atom bomb detonated
  • Scientific Implications of Atom Bomb
  • Determining the power of E = MC2
  • Economic Implications of Atom Bomb
  • Nuclear energy possible for industrial/residential use
  • Military Implications of Atom Bomb
  • War – extinction of life on earth possible
  • Huge American/Japanese casualties involved in invasion of Japan
  • Atom Bomb could reduce the number of causalities