Air raid wardens led practice drills, including blackouts. By mid over 10 million Americans were civil defense volunteers. Though America's mainland was never invaded, there were dangers offshore. At least 10 US naval vessels were sunk or damaged by U-boats operating in American waters.
The need for workers led manufacturers to hire women, teenagers, the aged, and minorities previously excluded by discrimination from sectors of the economy. Plentiful overtime work contributed to rising wages and increased savings.
Military and economic expansion created labor shortages. To fill the gap, government and industry encouraged women to enter the workforce. Though most working women continued to labor in more traditional employment like waitressing and teaching, millions took better-paid jobs in defense factories. African Americans and other minorities also took high-paying industrial jobs previously reserved for whites.
In , black labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a protest march on Washington, D. Millions of women, including many mothers, entered the industrial workforce during the war. They found jobs in especially large numbers in the shipbuilding and aircraft industries. Though defense jobs paid far more than traditional "female" occupations, women were still often paid less than men performing comparable work. Moreover, at war's end, women were expected to leave the factories to make way for returning male veterans.
The first was landing craft, constructed of wood and steel and used to transport fully armed troops, light tanks, field artillery, and other mechanized equipment and supplies to shore. These boats helped make the amphibious landings of World War II possible. Higgins also designed and manufactured supply vessels and specialized patrol craft, including high-speed PT boats, antisubmarine boats, and dispatch boats. It could land soldiers, and even jeeps, on a beach.
From the Eureka Trappers and oil companies needed a rugged, shallow-bottomed craft that could navigate these waters, run aground, and retract itself without damaging its hull. Higgins developed a boat that could perform all these tasks: a spoonbill-bowed craft he called the Eureka. Over time he modified and improved his craft and found markets for it in the United States and abroad.
Navy in adapting his shallow-draft Eureka for use as an amphibious landing craft. The navy showed little interest, but Higgins persisted. After a long struggle, he finally secured a government contract to build modified Eurekas for military use. In its most advanced form the LCP L measured 36 feet in length. It could transport men from ships offshore directly onto a beach, then retract itself, turn, and head back to sea. Marines needed a boat capable of transporting vehicles to shore.
Higgins adapted the LCP L to meet this requirement. He replaced the LCP L 's rounded bow with a retractable ramp. The new craft was tested for the first time on May 26, , on Lake Pontchartrain. It carried a truck and 36 Higgins employees safely to shore.
The LCVP became the military's standard vehicle and personnel landing craft. Thousands were in service during the war. The whole strategy of the war would have been different. The city of New Orleans made a unique and crucial contribution to America's war effort. This was the home of Higgins Industries, a small boat company owned by a flamboyant entrepreneur named Andrew Jackson Higgins. The story of Higgins' role in the war is little known today, but his contribution to the Allied victory was immeasurable.
World War II presented Allied war planners with a tactical dilemma--how to make large amphibious landings of armies against defended coasts. For America this was a particularly thorny problem, since its armed forces had to mount amphibious invasions at sites ranging from Pacific atolls to North Africa to the coast of France.
Higgins' contribution was to design and mass-produce boats that could ferry soldiers, jeeps, and even tanks from a ship at sea directly onto beaches. Such craft gave Allied planners greater flexibility.
They no longer needed to attack heavily defended ports before landing an assault force. His achievements earned him many accolades. The greatest came from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who called Higgins "the man who won the war for us. During the s and s America's military began exploring ways to make amphibious landings. The woman who gave birth for Hitler. The dark charisma of Adolf Hitler. The rise of Hitler.
Read more about Adolf Hitler. Nazi Germany. How did the Nazi party rise to power in Germany in ? Why did Hitler choose the swastika, and how did a Sanskrit symbol become a Nazi emblem?
Nazi Germany: everything you wanted to know. Read more about Nazi Germany. The Holocaust. Orchestrated by anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust saw the systematic murder of more than six million Jews.
The Auschwitz concentration camp is the site of the largest mass murder in the history of the world: around 1. A brief history of Auschwitz. Censoring Anne Frank: how her famous diary has been edited through history. Holocaust denial on trial: the story of Irving v Lipstadt. Aftermath of the Holocaust: how Europe dealt with the crimes of the Third Reich. A brief history of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Anne Frank died.
Read more on the Holocaust. Second World War battles. The 11 most significant battles of the Second World War. D-Day: 24 hours that changed the world. The real history that inspired WW2 film Greyhound. More on Second World War battles. The Normandy landings — aka D-Day — took place on 6 June , when Allied forces launched a combined naval, air and land assault on Nazi-occupied France. Codenamed operation Overlord, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history and marked the beginning of the campaign to liberate north-west Europe from German occupation.
Your guide to D-Day: what happened, how many casualties were there, and what did it accomplish? D-Day: a resounding success for the Allies. A new view of D-Day. D-Day: the WW2 battle through the eyes of the men who were there. Read more on D-Day. Our best Second World War podcasts. What followed was the first major campaign fought by opposing air forces. For four months the German Luftwaffe carried out attacks on British airfields, radar stations, and aircraft factories, and bombed British cities, too.
But the Stukas proved too vulnerable to being intercepted and the Germans couldn't mass enough planes to defeat the fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force in their Hurricanes and Spitfires. Heavy casualties forced the Luftwaffe to scale down operations.
Hitler's invasion plans were put on hold indefinitely. When Britain and France declared war on Germany following the Nazi invasion of Poland , many expected that war to be a retread of the infantry tactics actions of WWI.
That line of thinking clearly led to the French strategy of constructing the heavy concrete fortifications of the Maginot Line. Those expectations where shattered in May when the Germans launched a fast-paced "Blitzkreig" "lightning war" spearheaded by Panzer tanks. Lacking heavy artillery, the Germans attacked French positions at Sedan with massed Stuka dive bombers.
The intense air assault quickly demoralized the defenders and the German forces easily broke through. France fell soon afterwards. Hitler's plan to attack Soviet Russia was called Operation Barbarossa, and it sure looked insane on paper given the Russian numerical superiority and the ignominious history of enemy forces invading Russia.
Hitler, however, believed the Blitzkrieg was unstoppable, and the Battle of Brody in western Ukraine would prove him right—for a time. Seven hundred and fifty German panzers faced four times as many Russian tanks.
But the Russian air force had been annihilated on the ground and the German Stukas were able to dominate the area. In addition to destroying tanks, they targeted Russian fuel and ammunition supplies and disrupted communications. Check this out: The Evolution of the American Tank. The confused Russian forces were completely out manoeuvred and their numerical superiority made no difference. The largest naval battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf off the Philippines was another step in the U.
All available Japanese forces were thrown into the area but the separate units failed to unite, resulting in several actions scattered over a wide area.
All four Japanese light carriers were sunk, as were three battleships. Louis was sunk after a Japanese kamikaze carrying a bomb deliberately crashed on its deck. Merchant ships took to sailing in large convoys, protected by screens of destroyers and corvettes armed with depth charges and sonar. Daring U-Boat commanders carried out torpedo attacks within the defensive screen, and when several submarines attacked at once, the defenders had little chance of striking back.
In the end, the Battle of the Atlantic was eventually won by technology. Radar to detect U-Boats from the surface, radio interception, and code-breaking all played a part.
By the end of the war more than 3, merchant ships had been sunk, as well as almost U-Boats. This produced the first naval battle fought at long range between aircraft carriers. Dive bombers and torpedo bombers attacked ships protected by screens of fighters.
It was a novel and confusing form of warfare, with both sides struggling to find the enemy and unclear about what ships they had seen and engaged. Luzon, the largest of the Philippine islands, fell to Japan in General Douglas MacArthur had famously vowed to return to the Philippines, which he saw as strategically vital, and commanded the invasion force in The Allied landings were unopposed, but further inland there was heavy fighting against scattered enclaves of Japanese troops.
Some of them withdrew to the mountains and continued fighting long after the end of the war. Japanese suffered extreme losses, with more than , killed compared to 10, Americans, making it the bloodiest action involving U.
Stalin aimed to drive back the invading German armies with an offensive that included more than a thousand tanks backed by aircraft. But Germany blunted the attack by air power when it flew more than planes into the area. The Germans then went on the attack and encircled the Russian forces with several Panzer divisions.
The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of what many believe are the rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled. The members of the Commission did not immediately agree on the form of such a bill of rights and whether or how it should be enforced.
The Declaration consists of 30 articles which, although not legally binding, have been elaborated in subsequent international treaties, economic transfers, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions, and other laws.
In , after the Covenants had been ratified by a sufficient number of individual nations, the Bill became an international law. The United Nations UN is an intergovernmental organization to promote international cooperation. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established after World War II to prevent another such conflict. During World War II, the Allies adopted the Four Freedoms—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, and freedom from want—as their basic war aims.
When the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany became apparent after the war, the consensus within the world community was that the United Nations Charter did not sufficiently define the rights to which it referred. For this reason, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a fundamental constitutive document of the United Nations.
In addition, many international lawyers believe that the Declaration forms part of customary international law and is a powerful tool in applying diplomatic and moral pressure to governments that violate any of its articles.
The Declaration continues to be widely cited by governments, academics, advocates, and constitutional courts, as well as by individuals who appeal to its principles for the protection of their recognized human rights. Even though it is not legally binding, the Declaration has been adopted in or has influenced most national constitutions since It has also served as the foundation for a growing number of national laws, international laws, and treaties, as well as regional, subnational, and national institutions protecting and promoting human rights.
Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. World War II. Search for:. Impact of War World II. Their terms of surrender included disarmament and occupation by Allied forces. Paris Peace Treaties : A series of document wherein victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of peace treaties with minor Axis powers, namely Italy though it was considered a major Axis Power , Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland, following the end of World War II in Casualties of World War II Some 75 million people died in World War II, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians, many of whom died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombings, disease, and starvation.
This represents the most military deaths of any nation by a large margin. Of the total number of deaths in World War II, approximately 85 percent were on the Allied side and 15 percent were on the Axis side, with many of these deaths caused by war crimes committed by German and Japanese forces in occupied territories. Nazi Germany, as part of a deliberate program of extermination, systematically killed over 11 million people including 6 million Jews. In addition to Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet gulags labor camps led to the deaths of 3.
Key Terms gulag : The government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labour camp systems during the Stalin era, from the s until the s. Roosevelt on February 19, , authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones, clearing the way for the deportation of Japanese Americans and Italian-Americans to internment camps.
The Atlantic Charter The Atlantic Charter set goals for the post-war world and inspired many of the international agreements that shaped the world thereafter, most notably the United Nations.
Learning Objectives Explain what the Atlantic Charter promised and who committed to it. Key Takeaways Key Points The Atlantic Charter was a pivotal policy statement issued on August 14, , that defined the Allied goals for the post-war world, including self-determination for nations and economic and social cooperation among nations. President Franklin D. In a September speech, Churchill stated that the Charter was only meant to apply to states under German occupation and not to people who formed part of the British Empire, a statement which became controversial and resulted in strong pushback from figures such as Gandhi.
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