War Efforts, Discrimination, and Holocaust Tragedy: America's Role in WWII

1. Unit 6, Section 3 The War at Home and the Holocaust in Europe

2. America Mobilizes • After Pearl Harbor, Americans quickly mobilized for war • 5 million volunteers, Selective Service Act drafts another 10 million into service • Women serve in Women’s Auxiliary Corps (non-combat roles) • African Americans served in segregated units • Tuskegee Airmen most famous

3. Tuskegee Airmen in Italy, 1945 • trailer

4. Minorities Serve the Nation • 300,000 Mexican Americans • 1,000,000 African Americans • 50,000 Asian Americans • 25,000 Native Americans Windtalkers Fought in World War II.

5. Industry and Paying for the War • American industry grows to unprecedented level to support war effort – “production miracle” • War Production Board – organized industrial production for the war • Rationing became a way of life for the nation • Office of Price Administration – regulated prices and inflation • War bonds issued • Personal income tax rates increased

6. Labor Pitches In • 6 million women enter the workforce • Replacing men in industrial jobs; producing products needed for war effort • Rosie the Riveter as symbol • Opportunities afforded to African Americans, but still faced discrimination

7. Mobilizing Scientists • OSRD is created to get scientists involved in war effort • Secret development of Atomic Bomb – the Manhattan Project • Carried out in labs across the country • Led by J. Robert Oppenheimer

8. Discrimination at Home Japanese Internment – • Seen as a threat, Japanese Americans interned in camps-Smithsonian clip • Korematsu v. United States upholds decision African-Americans • CORE (Congress of Racial Equality)founded in 1942 Latinos • Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles reflect racial tensions in city

9. Persecution of Jews in Europe • While American mobilizes, Jewish people were being murdered in Europe • Long standing Anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe; Hitler scapegoats Jews for German problems • Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, outlines his plans • Nuremberg Laws of 1935 take away Jewish civil rights, forced to wear yellow star • 1938, Kristallnacht, Nazis destroy Jewish property, thousands are arrested • Jewish refugees try to flee, but Anti-Semitism across the world (including U.S.) makes it difficult

10. Final Solution • Nazi policy of genocide against the Jewish people • Jews relocated to ghettos, sent to Concentration Camps across Europe where they were enslaved or murdered outright • Notorious camps at Aushchwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau

11. The Final Stage • Mass Exterminations • In 1941, six death camps were built in Poland • These death camps had gas chambers that could kill 12,000 people a day.

12. To accomplish the Final Solution, the Nazis arrested people they identified as “enemies of the state” condemning this people to slavery & death. • In addition to Jews, the Nazis rounded up political opponents (Communists, Socialists, and Liberals), Gypsies, Freemasons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals ,the disabled & the terminally ill.

13. The Holocaust • Over 6 million Jews and other “non-desirables” are killed by the Nazis • Some camps were liberated by American or Russian troops as war progressed • Survivors often lost entire families • Some Jews were hidden by sympathetic peoples in Europe • Artifact study

14. Aftermath • Questions about how much German people knew about Holocaust • Questions about how much Allies knew about what was happening in Europe

15. Survivors • Some Jews however, were saved • Ordinary people sometimes risked their own lives to save Jews • Some Jews even survived the concentration camps, Elie Wiesel who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 is a survivor of Auschwitz. Passed away in 2016. Revisits Auschwitz