Monday April 4th

US Homefront:

Doing what you can at home to help the war.

1. Selective Training and Service Act

First peacetime draft in US history

2. Women's role in WWII

Women can do jobs that men can't do because they're gone. Rosie the Riveter ("we can do it", represented women working in facories), nurses, stenographers, farm workers, salespeople, waitresses, bus drivers, taxi drivers, time keepers, elevator operators, messengers, laundresses, teachers, conductors, army WAC, WAVES (women's navy), WASP, Tokyo Rose

3. African-American's role in WWII

Worked in factories, joined military, segregation, discrimination

4. Asian's role in WWII

"

5. Hollywood's role in WWII

Entertained troops, put out propaganda films. USO tour sent actors overseas. Kilroy was here.

6. Office of Price Administration

Established to administer price controls, food rationing on sugar and meat, clothing on silk and nylon. Gasoline rationing, 5 gallons per week, automobiles issued stickers for importance and therefore more gas. Black market developed. Ration book.

7. War Production Board

Production wins war.

8. National War Labor Board

Make sure owners and workers get along.

9. Why the Homefront helped win the war

Women in factories. Henry Kaiser and people who had facories. Victory gardens.

10. How US/Allies fought back against U-boats

Speed. Intelligence gathering, detecting them. Convoy system, ships travel in large numbers. Hunter-Killers. Depth charges.

11. Intelligence gathering--Ultra/Magic

Intercepting and deciphering the enemies' messages. HF/DF was used to locate the sources of enemy radio transmissions such as subs. Ultra and Magic we were code names given to intercepting and deciphering codes from Germany (Ultra) and Japan (Magic). Enigma, system that Germany transferred their info through codes. 

12. Operation Barborossa (USSR vs Germany)

Hitler despised the ethnic Slavs ruled by their "Jewish Bolshevik" masters. Wanted Ukraine for farmland. Use people as slaves. Defeat USSR to further isolate Allies. Wanted oilfields in Caucasus Mountains. Lebensraum. Didn't trust Stalin-German propaganda showed that Stalin was planning to attack Germany. The Western Front fighting was over except GB. Hitler realllly wanted the Soviet Union.

Greatest land war in recorded in history, June 22, 1941. 4.5 million troops. 4 million died. Germans occupied 900,000 sq miles. Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad. Turning point was the winter. Hitler fired his commander-in-chief and took over the German Wehrmacht himself. Surrounded himself with inexperienced officers so they wouldn't question him. The Siege of Leningrad. Cannibalism.

13. Battle in Africa and Italy

Erwin Rommel (Germany), the Desert Fox. Bernard Montgomery (GB). George Patton. Operation Torch, British-American invasion of French North Africa. Casablanca Conference, no deals w/Germany="unconditional surrender". Italy's Appenine Mts. Tuskegee Institute, bombing raids in Italy and Germany.

14. US Generals-Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, Nimitz, Bradley

Marshall (chief of staff of the US military during WWII). General George Patton (treated soldiers rough). Ike, Patton, and Bradley.

15. D-Day-Operation Overlord

June 6, 1944. Allied invasion of Nazi controlled France. Two phases: airborne assault after midnight, amphibious landing on coast of France around dawn. Decoy ops to distract Germans. Largest amphibious invasion in world history. Scheduled for June 5th, needed full moon. 10,000 allied casualties. The Atlantic Wall, coastal fortifications built by Nazi Germany on western coast of Europe.

16. Battle of the Bulge

Winter of 1944-45. German/Belgium border. Coldest/snowiest weather. Malmedy Massacre. Worst battle to American Forces in WWII.

17. FDR Dies-Truman takes over

18. VE Day

19. Battle in the Pacific-Island Hopping, Philippines, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa,

20. Navajo Code Talkers

21. Doolittle's Raid

22. Manhattan Project

23. Hiroshima bombing

24. Nagasaki bombing

25. VJ Day

26. Yalta Conference

27. Nuremburg Trials

28. Japanese Internment Camps in US

29. Why We Won WWII

Intelligence gathering.

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