World War II in American History:Teaching “The Good War”?

• Michael S. Neiberg• neiberg102@gmail.com

“The Good War”

The Good War

New Themes in Teaching World War II

Theme One: The US Role in the World

Europe in Ruins• 75% of Berlin’s buildings

uninhabitable• Food rationing continued in

Britain until 1954• 10,000,000 DPs, most in

Germany against their will• France lost 500,000

buildings• USSR lost 70,000 villages• Yugoslavia lost 75% of its

livestock

Europe in Ruins• Two-thirds of all German

males born in 1918 were dead

• USSR lost 20,000,000 men• 200,000 Polish children had

no parents alive• Hungary’s ration was 550

calories per day (US intake is 3,000)

• 5,000,000 Jews killed• Infant mortality in Europe

exceeded 25% in 1945

Potsdam Conference17 July to 2 August 1945

• Unconditional Surrender for Japan

• “The freely expressed will of the Japanese people” will determine its government

• Each power to take reparations from its sector of Germany

• Germany to be “denazified”• Surrender of Japanese

forces in Korea and Vietnam agreed.

Clement Atlee, Harry Truman, and Josef Stalin at Potsdam. France was not invited to send a representative.

Role of the USA• Marshall Plan

– $4.6 billion in aid to democratic capitalist states

• Rapid redevelopment of Germany

• Creation of NATO• Permanent place of the USA• Insertion of US firms into

European economy• Formation of the United

Nations, IMF

Theme Two: Home Front USA

Women welders at Ingalls Shipbuilders in Pascagoula, Mississippi, 1943

Aircraft Production

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Artillery Pieces

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Major Naval Vessels

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Major Naval Vessels (USA included)

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Steel (in millions of tons)

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Labor Forces• 90 Division Gamble and

Selective Service• US had three latent labor

pools (women, African Americans, Mexicans)

• US added 6,000,000 jobs in three years– GM alone added 750,000

• In Germany there were 400,000 fewer female workers in 1941 than 1939

Japanese Internment

Detroit Race Riot, 1943

(Un)intended Consequences?

What did the war really change?

Lunch counter sit inGreensboro, NC, 1960

Theme Three: World War II’s Uniqueness

Eisenhower and other senior American officers tour a liberated concentration camp

The American Century

Signing of the UN Charter, San Francisco, 1945

Unity

Contrast to Later Wars

“Police Action” in Korea

Vietnam

Some Further Reading

• Paul Fussell, Wartime• Studs Terkel, The Good

War• E. B. Sledge, With the

Old Breed• David Nichols, ed.

Ernie’s War• J. Glenn Gray, The

WarriorsStuds Terkel