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Fear Itself (1920-1945)
The first half of the twentieth century wasn’t just a period of Americans involved in a foreign conflict but the world. On June 28, 1914, while visiting Sarajevo, the Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand was assassinated due to Austria-Hungary’s recent annexation of the country. There were increasing tensions in the Balkans in the past decade, but this escalated the conflict dramatically, citing it as the beginning of the Great War. Allied with Austria-Hungary as part of the Triple Alliance, both Germany and Italy entered the war within the year and would later be joined by the Ottoman Empire. On the opposing side was the Triple Entente: France, Russia, and Great Britain. The Great War changed the course of warfare forever, bringing it into the modern era. Trench warfare significantly expanded, largely on the Western Front and, in 1917, the Germans introduced mustard gas, a toxin heavier than air that slowly burned the skin and caused blindness. Not very deadly, victims suffered with the pain for large periods of time.
The United States entered the Great War on April 6, 1917. Two years prior, a German submarine sank the British ship, the Lusitania, on May 7, 1915, killing nearly 1,200 including 128 Americans. The United States currently had a noninterventionist policy at the time under Woodrow Wilson. Then, in January 1917, the British intercepted an encrypted message from German officials proposing an alliance with Mexico if the United States entered the war and would aid them in getting land back lost in the Mexican American War in 1848. The telegram enraged the public and in April of 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. The Great War progressed for two more years before reaching a stalemate with a catastrophic number of deaths on both sides, the war officially ended on November 11, 1918, when Germany signed an armistice for the fighting to stop. The following year in 1919, the Allied Powers alone met in Versailles to decide the next course of action. The Treaty of Versailles stated that Germany had to take full responsibility for the war and was banned from joining the League of Nations, an international organization dedicated to peace. Additionally, Germany had to pay approximately 132 billion gold marks, putting the country in significant debt in the ensuing decades. Germans were outraged by the treaty and its consequences, and the 1920s were a time of terrible inflation for the Weimar Republic, Germany’s first constitutional republic in history. The gold mark was essentially worth nothing and millions were unemployed. This allowed for the rise of fascism. The Nazi Party was formed in 1920 from the 1919 German Workers’ Party, of which Adolf Hitler quickly became a prominent member of. The Nazis were an extremist far right group who sought the supremacy of the Aryan race and the forced removal of anyone who didn’t fit into this ideal. People groups considered a “threat” to the German Aryan race included the disabled, the Roma, homosexuals, and the Jewish people. Hitler utilized Germany’s punishment in the aftermath of the Great War to rise to power and, in 1933, became the dictator of Nazi Germany. As leader, he began eradicating those the Nazis believed didn’t have a place in Germany. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were put into effect, which stripped Jewish people of their German citizenship. Throughout the latter half of the 1930s, further discriminatory laws were enacted: Mandatory registration of all Jewish property, Jews could not own retail businesses, and Jewish children could not attend school.
Fig 13. Selection at Auschwitz II-Birkenau
Source: Walter, Bernhard. Selection” of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, May/June 1944, 1944, photograph, retrieved from WikiCommons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Selection_on_the_ramp_at_Auschwitz-Birkenau,_1944_(Auschwitz_Album)_1b.jpg.
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The 1930s was also a difficult time domestically for the United States. On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed on Wall Street, infamously called “Black Tuesday” that sent the country into the Great Depression. The decade was characterized by economic instability and high unemployment. Many Americans turned their homes into boarding houses, offering spare rooms to others to rent so that they, in turn, could afford house payments. To counteract this, President Franklin Roosevelt implemented his New Deal plan, a set of political, economic, and social projects rolled out from 1933 to 1936 to aid the nation in a time of internal strife. Such programs included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which gave unemployed young men temporary jobs on public work projects around America, and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) in which the federal government reduced surpluses of agricultural products with the goal of raising prices, so farmers had stable incomes. While the New Deal brought short term relief to American citizens, it is often criticized for its lack of longevity.
While the United States attempted to recover on the domestic front, tensions heightened on the global sphere. On September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, starting the conflict that would become to be known as World War II, replacing the Great War of the 1910s with a new name, World War I. In 1939, Poland’s allies, France and Great Britian, came to its defense, cementing the three countries as the Allied Powers. Italy and Japan would, in the following year, and would be known as the Axis Powers. With World War II officially under way, Germany intensified its desired goal of the eradication of the Jewish people, first establishing ghettos, sections of town for them to live to segregate them from the rest of the German people. The Nazis then began sending Jews to concentration camps where men, women, and children performed forced labor, were given meager scraps of food, and wore threadbare clothing. As the war progressed, these camps would shift to extermination camps, the sole goal of which was the genocide of unwanted people groups.
As of 1941, the United States was not involved in the conflict, though with their allies France and Great Britain involved, President Franklin Roosevelt anticipated that it was inevitable. On January 6, 1941, Roosevelt spoke to the nation, giving his Four Freedoms Address where he stated, “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them.”[1] The four freedoms outlined in his speech were the freedom of speech/expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and the freedom from fear. His message was clear: the United States was likely to enter World War II. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked US soil through its bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, officially launching the United States into the conflict. In 1943, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed as Supreme Allied Commander for his intelligent military strategy.[2] This decision was instrumental in the Allied Victory of World War II as it was under Eisenhower’s command that the tide of the war shifted at D-Day. On June 6, 1944, over 150,000 American, Canadian, and British troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, France by route of the English Channel. With over 10,000 casualties on both sides, D-Day was an intense battle, but its victory achieved its goal of beginning to liberate France, completely changing the course of World War II.
Fig 14. The atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan
Source: Levy, Charles. Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9, 1945, 1945, photograph, retrieved from WikiCommons, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#/media/File:Atomic_bombing_of_Japan.jpg.
The following year on Christmas Day, 1944, during what would later be termed the Battle of the Bulge, the 101st Airborne Division of the US Armed Forces was surrounded by German forces, outnumbered and running out of food. On December 22, the German Commander sent a message to Brigadier General McAuliffe, asking for an honorable surrender within two hours. McAuliffe replied with the infamous response: “Nuts!”[3] The Americans managed to hold out until reinforcements arrived before the battle resumed. At the end of January 1945, the Americans had reclaimed all lost territory and were going to Berlin, where all the Allied Powers met. The Battle of Berlin began on April 20, 1945, and was a decisive Allied Victory. With Germany’s imminent defeat, dictator Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945. A week later, on May 7, the German army surrendered, formally ending World War II on the European Front.[4] With Germany and Italy out of World War II, Italy having surrendered in 1943, Japan was the only major force remaining still in the conflict. The Japanese ideology firmly believed it was disgraceful to surrender at any cost and felt it was more honorable to die defending one’s country, so it was nearly impossible to find a way to end hostilities. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. When no surrender was issued, another atomic bomb was launched, this time on Nagasaki. The effects of the a-bomb were catastrophic on a scale never seen. Entire communities were instantly vaporized by the bombs and those that did not, died painfully within months of radiation poisoning, while others suffered the effects for decades after. Japan officially surrendered on August 15, 1945. Formally signed on September 2, World War II was over.[5]
The Alabama Angle:
The Great War caused economic instability as trade disruptions in Alabama began in 1915 as, though the United States was yet to join the war, the nation supplied the Allies Forces with necessary resources. Additionally, Great Britain needed supplies for war rather than cotton, Alabama’s biggest cash crop, sinking prices and worsening the economy. When America joined the Great War in 1917, congressmen acquired three training bases in the state. 5,000 National Guardsmen, 74,000 draftees, and 7,000 other volunteers from Alabama served in the United States Armed Forces during the war.[6] Governor Charles Henderson created the Alabama Council of Defense, the state’s chapter of the National Council of Defense, which managed the state sects of national war effort organizations. At the same time, those remaining at home also did their part for the war effort. Many joined the Red Cross, the YMCA, the YWCA, the Women’s Committee of the Council of National Defense, and other operations. In sum, Alabama played a large role in mobilizing the Great War efforts. One general, Edward H. Plummer, was quoted as saying, “In time of war, send me all the Alabamians you can get.”[7]
Fig. 15. USS Alabama
Source: USS Alabama, ca. 1939-1945, photograph, retrieved from the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/photograph-records/2015-10.
While the Great War, once the US entered, brought in millions of dollars for the state industry, the Great Depression of the 1930s further intensified the Alabama agricultural decline. Cotton prices were at their lowest since the 1880s.[8] Farmers either moved to cities or went into deeper debt. Many had to rent rooms of their homes to others to afford living costs. When the United States entered the Second World War in 1941, around 300,000 Alabamians served in the Armed Forces and more than 6,000 died.[9] Prominent Alabamian veterans included Marine General Holland Smith, who is considered the father of modern amphibious warfare, and John Persons, commander of the Thirty-first Dixie Division. Alongside war efforts on the home front, Alabama also housed four major prisoners of war camps for the Axis Powers at Opelika, Fort McClellan, Camp Rucker, and Aliceville. World War II significantly altered the makeup of the state, and it is estimated that Alabama’s urban population grew by 57% during the conflict.[10] Cotton prices rose dramatically as the product was crucial to the production of military equipment. As with the Great War, the state of Alabama played a notable role in World War II.
[1] “Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms Speech (1941).” The Exchange Club Freedom Shrine Historic American Document Collection, Freedom Shrine, https://freedomshrine.com/franklin-roosevelts-four-freedoms-speech-1941-2/.
[2] “Selection of General Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of Overlord (1943).” The Exchange Club Freedom Shrine Historic American Document Collection, Freedom Shrine, https://freedomshrine.com/general-eisenhowers-selection-as-overlord-commander-1943/.
[3] “General McAuliffe’s Christmas Message (1944).” The Exchange Club Freedom Shrine Historic American Document Collection, Freedom Shrine, https://freedomshrine.com/general-mcauliffes-christmas-message-1944/.
[4] “The German Instrument of Surrender World War II (May, 1945).” The Exchange Club Freedom Shrine Historic American Document Collection, Freedom Shrine, https://freedomshrine.com/german-instrument-of-surrender-wwii-1945/.
[5] “Instrument of Surrender in the Pacific (1945) World War II.” The Exchange Club Freedom Shrine Historic American Document Collection, Freedom Shrine, https://freedomshrine.com/japanese-instrument-of-surrender-wwii-1945/.
[6] “Alabama in World War I.” World War I Centennial. https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/alabama-in-wwi-home.
[7] Ibid.
[8] “Great Depression in Alabama.” Encyclopedia of Alabama, https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/great-depression-in-alabama/.
[9] “World War II in Alabama.” Encyclopedia of Alabama, https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/world-war-ii-and-alabama/.
[10] Ibid.