WWII was the most important and destructive war in the world's history, and it changed America forever, finally ending America's isolationism and transforming it into a proper global political and economic superpower.

The Precursors of War

WWII had a very complex beginning, involving many countries and political systems, and being closely linked to the ending of WWI. The Nazi party came into being because of anger towards what people believed were unfair war reparations. Soon, it took over Germany, which allied itself with Italy, a country ruled by a fascist regime. These were some of the precursors to the war in Europe.

Another factor leading up to the beginning of WWII was increasing militarization in Europe and in Japan. Even though treaties created after WWI and the Versailles treaty that ended the Great War discouraged this, countries all over the world increased their militaries for various reasons. Japan intended to continue conquests in China, and Nazi Germany was preparing for military expansions in Europe.

After the horrors of WWI, many countries took steps to ensure that another war like that would never happen again. One of these steps was the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1929, which sought to eliminate offensive war in countries all over the world. Representatives from fifteen major countries signed the pact that would pledge these countries to never again engage in war as a policy to deal with other countries. However, this act did not help in stopping WWII, as the pact was never enforced. For example, this pact did not stop Japan from invading Manchuria in China.

Many Americans, seeing the headwinds of another great war, determined to stay out of it this time, as WWI had taken the lives of around 116,000 Americans in the mere 18 months of involvement, to say nothing of the millions of dollars lost because of the war. America was also going through the Great Depression, and many believed that policies of isolationism would keep them out of the war and give America a chance to fix its economy in peace.

Meanwhile, in Europe and Asia, the Axis Powers were beginning to make moves to expand. Germany and Italy, already allied, became allies with Japan, beginning with the Three Power Pact of 1940. During this time, the Spanish Civil War was going on, and the Axis Powers supported Francisco Franco against the Socialist Republic. Germany had begun expansion two years earlier, relatively peacefully at first. Austria became absorbed in the Third Reich in 1938 after its chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg resigned. Germany also claimed part of the Sudentenland region of Czechoslovakia in 1939 because of its German-speaking minority, and 6 months after it was absorbed into the Third Reich, the rest of Czechoslovakia was taken with it. Japan was also expanding in 1938, conquering a large part of China in the midst of a Chinese civil war.

America in WWII

When WWII eventually started in Europe, many Americans, like Charles Lindbergh of the America First Committee, were cautious about joining the war on the side of the Allies. Many believed that the Allies were losing the war and did not want to get involved, and many were concerned that even if America entered the war, they would still lose as the country was not prepared for battle, without trained armies or significant navies and air forces. Lindbergh argued that even if America was prepared for war, they would not be able to significantly change the course of the war because of the lack of possible staging grounds in Europe, and America had a much better chance of defeating an invasion if it came to their shores than they had of helping the Allies win what he saw as a losing war.

Even though many Americans wanted to remain neutral during the war, the government was in favor of helping the Allies, especially the British, fight the Nazis. During the war, deals were made between these two countries, including the Destroyers-for-bases deal that would give Britain 50 old American destroyers to use as convoy protection and lend 90 bases all over the Pacific to the Americans for nine years. Later, the Lend-Lease program was also enacted, which would send the Allies, especially the British, various materials for wartime use, such as food, oil, and military equipment, provided they were used in defense of America and that they were returned to America by the end of the war, unless they were destroyed. The total value of supplies sent to the Allies was $50.1 billion by the end of the war. The United States also drafted a large army in case of attack.

One of the worst things that happened during WWII was the extermination of various minority groups in Europe, especially the Jews, who were the most abundant of these minority groups in Europe during WWII. This was called the Holocaust, and over 5 million Jews were killed in death camps all across Europe. Many countries, including the United States and England, refused to let fleeing Jews stay there until the war was over. Not only the Jews, but also gypsies and people with disabilities were killed in the death camps, and Hitler was also planning to exterminate the Slavic peoples.

The United States officially entered WWII with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, an important naval base in Hawaii, by the Japanese on December 7, 1941. Even though the Japanese got the surprise attack, none of America's most important ships, their aircraft carriers, were in Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack, and they remained unharmed. However, even before this attack, the United States was in an undeclared naval war with Germany, which was attacking American shipping to Britain with submarines.

After Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, many Americans were outraged at this surprise attack and called upon the government to do something about the Japanese who lived in America. Under pressure from state representatives, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which removed some 120,000 people of Japanese descent and placed them in concentration camps in the Western states, where most of them lived, by claiming that they were likely to be spies for Japan. However, out of the ten people convicted of spying for the Japanese during WWII, none of them were actually Japanese.

Life for other American citizens was not nearly as hard as it was for the Japanese, but it was still harder than it was before the war started. Rationing for commodities such as meats, fuel for cars, and tires went into effect as those materials were being used for the war. Other commodities like refrigerators, cars, and sewing machines became hard to find as the companies making them transitioned to helping the war effort, such as the Singer Sewing Machine Company, which made machine guns during WWII. Propaganda for the war effort went into full effect, encouraging all Americans to do their best to help their country win the war, such as enlisting for the army, or, for women, going to work in factories and shipyards to replace the men that were heading off to war.

One of the most impactful areas in America during WWII was the state of Washington, which grew massively in population as people from all over the country moved there to work in its wartime industries, such as airplane and ship construction. Before WWII, the state, like many others, was severely hit by the Great Depression, but with America's entrance into the war came plentiful jobs. As well as manufacturing many of the Boeing B-17 and B-29 bombers that served in the war, radioactive ingredients, such as plutonium, were also mined and refined in Washington State.

As with every country that participated in WWII, the United States turned out a large amount of propaganda. It was designed to encourage its citizens to persevere and work hard to help win the war. Another use was discouraging discussing troop movements and encouraging the sale of war bonds. These are some of the most interesting (in my opinion) propaganda posters the United States issued during the war.

WWII was mainly fought in Europe and in the islands around Japan, as well as in China, North Africa (to get to Italy), and Italy (to try attacking Germany through its weakest ally). Some of the most important engagements of the war were the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Midway, and the invasion of Normandy. The Battle of Stalingrad turned the war in Europe in the favor of the Allies, as German troops attempted to invade the Russian city of Stalingrad. After a five month long siege, the German Army was pushed back, as they had been underprepared for the brutal Russian winter. In the Battle of Midway in the Pacific, American troops started pushing back the Japanese advance, sinking most of their aircraft carriers. In the invasion of Normandy, Allied troops attacked the beaches of Normandy, in France, eventually driving back the Germans from France and getting all the way to Berlin, helping end the war in Europe.

The most important invention to come out of WWII was the atomic bomb, first tested at Los Alamos, in New Mexico. By using nuclear fission to split the atoms of radioactive materials, typically the isotopes uranium-235 or plutonium-239, a tremendous amount of energy can be released very quickly with the side effect that dangerous radioactive fallout will contaminate the area around the explosion. The first atomic bombs and the only ones ever detonated in war were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a successful attempt to get Japan to surrender. The development of the atomic bomb led to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lasted from 1947–1991, and to the development of nuclear reactors, which provide cheap electricity for millions of people all over the planet.

During the war, many conferences, like the Tehran and the Yalta conferences were held between the major Allied leaders, especially between the British prime minister, Churchill, and the American president, FDR. The Russian leader, Stalin, also took part in some of these, and the Western Allies made many concessions to the Soviet Union because they needed its promise to help in the war with Japan after Germany was defeated. These conferences explored the question of what would happen after the Allies inevitably won WWII, especially the questions of how Germany and the Eastern European states would be treated after the war. Eventually, it was decided that Germany would be left as an industrial nation to help reconstruct Europe, but it would be temporarily split between four major nations: the USSR, America, Britain, and France, and all traces of the Nazis would be purged from its government. To ensure that the Soviets would help in the war with Japan, the Allied leaders promised Stalin that the Soviet Union would have influence in Eastern Europe to create a protective barrier for Russia against potential future attacks from Europe.

Conclusion

WWII was arguably the most important war in the world's (and especially America's) history. An estimated 50-56 million people died as a direct result of the war, and 19-28 million people died from diseases and famine caused by the war. Coming out of WWII, the world would never be the same again. Europe's borders were changed yet again, and an "Iron Curtain" fell across Eastern Europe as it came under the influence of the Soviet Union. America had become a global industrial and military superpower, having developed the atomic bomb, which gave it an edge in military strength until the Soviet Union also developed an atomic bomb.

This clash between the ideals of the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union led to a 44 year long Cold War between the two countries during which both created and tested increasingly destructive nuclear weapons. However, the Cold War period was very beneficial to the advance of technology, which improved very quickly during this time. The Space Race during the Cold War introduced the first ever man-made satellites into the Earth's orbit, which today help millions of people with communication and the invaluable GPS, which was first developed for military operations. Nuclear power is used in reactors, which help millions more get cheap electricity, and the first computer small enough to rest on a table instead of occupying an entire room, the Minuteman ICBM's D-17B, was built to guide nuclear missiles in 1961. Much of the technology we take for granted today was first developed out of fear of the Soviet Union shooting first.

Two of the most important organizations to come out of WWII were NATO and the UN. The UN, or United Nations, was created to prevent future world wars. At its creation in 1945, 50 nations were part of this organization, but today, that number has gone up to 193, almost all sovereign states in the world. NATO is a collective security organization, created during the Cold War, in which the member countries agree to protect each other from countries that are not in NATO. As of today, NATO has 32 member states (most of Europe, Canada, and the US).

After WWII was over, reconstruction efforts went into effect in Europe and Japan. One of the most important measures taken to speed up reconstruction was the Marshall Plan, which involved America providing $13 billion to countries in Europe to help rebuild their economies. In Japan, American General MacArthur oversaw the occupation and economic and political reconstruction of the country, encouraging the creation of a constitution and sending Japan relief funds as well.