CHAPTER SUMMARY

Totalitarianism In Italy, Benito Mussolini assumed control by promising law and order. Adolf Hitler rearmed Germany in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles and aimed to unite aU German speakers. Civil war in Spain and the growth of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin contributed to a precarious balance of power in Europe.

American Neutrality By March 1939, Hitler had annexed austria and seized Czechoslovakia. He sent troops to invade Poland in September of 1939, after signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. At last, the British and French governments declared war. The United States issued declarations of neutrality, but with the faU of France, accelerated aid to France and Britain.

Japanese Threat After Japan allied with Germany and Italy and announced its intention to take control of French Indochina, President Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the United States and restricted oil exports to Japan. The Japanese bombed the Pacific Fleet in a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

World War II and American Society White and black Americans migrated west to take jobs in defense factories; unemployment was soon a thing of the past. Farmers, too, recovered from hard times. Many women took nontraditional jobs, some in the military. About 1 million African Americans served in the military, in segregated units. Japanese Americans, however, were interned in “war relocation camps.”

Road to Allied Victory By 1943, the Allies controlled aU of North Africa. From there they launched attacks on Sicily and then Italy. Joseph Stalin, meanwhile, demanded a full-scale Allied attack on the Atlantic coast to ease pressure on the Eastern Front, but D-day was delayed until June 6, 1944.

The Pacific War The Japanese advance was halted as early as June 1942 with the Battle of Midway. The Americans fought slow, costly battles in New Guinea, then, in 1943, headed toward the Philippines. Fierce resistance at Iwo Jima and Okinawa and Japan’s refusal to surrender after the firebombing of Tokyo led the new president, Harry S. Truman, to order the use of the atomic bomb.

Postwar World In January 1942, the Allied nations signed the Declaration of the United Nations. The Big Three—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—meeting in Yalta in February 1945, decided that Europe would be divided into occupation zones.