The usa in World War II

World War II came to the United States via Asia, where Roosevelt so wanted to avoid it in order to concentrate American resources on the defeat of Germany. After Japanese troops occupied French Indochina in July 1941, Washington ended trade with Japan. Japan, in its turn, demanded to stop US naval expansion in the Pacific.

Fearing that they could not win a prolonged war, the Japanese plotted a raid on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. On December 7, 1941, in a surprise attack they destroyed 19 ships, 150 planes and killed more than 2,300 soldiers, sailors and civilians.

On December 8, Congress voted for the declaration of war against Japan, three days later Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

The attacks on Pearl Harbor gave way to the quick military mobilization, but the fear of Asia espionage resulted in the internment of Japanese-Americans. In February 1942, thousands of Japanese-Americans were removed from their homes and interned into "relocation centers" – the camps far from the coast. In spite of this unjust treatment many Japanese-Americans fought bravely in Europe or served as interpreters and translators in the Pacific.

For forty-five months Americans had fought abroad to subdue the Nazi and Japanese aggressors. In 1943, the Allies invaded Italy, making the Italian government surrender in two months. Meanwhile the Soviet army was pushing the Germans out of the USSR and Britain had driven German and Italian troops out of North Africa. In June 1944, the Allies opened the Second Front in Normandy, from where the liberation of France started. The day of invasion, June 6, 1944 went down into the history as D-Day. A large fleet of 600 warships and 400 smaller boats carried 17,600 soldiers towards France; the Allied planes bombed the German positions in France.

The Second Front marked the beginning of the end for Germany. In February 1945, the leaders of the "Big Three" countries – Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met in Yalta to decide about the shape of post-war Europe. The Soviet Union agreed to join the United Nations and to enter the war against Japan in return for territorial gains in Manchuria.

Two months after his return from Yalta President Roosevelt died. Vice President Harry Truman, former senator from Missouri, assumed the presidency.

In May 1945, Germany surrendered – to the Allies in Italy on May 2 and in Germany itself on May 7.

Nearly two months later the leaders of the "Big Three" countries met at the Potsdam Conference to discuss the future of Germany and post-war Europe. The day before the Potsdam Conference began Americans tested an atomic bomb created as the Manhattan Project. President Truman used this testing as a tool in negotiations with allies; he also promised to use an atomic bomb in Japan if the Japanese did not surrender by August 3.

The Potsdam Conference confirmed the division of post-war influence between Britain and the USA on one side and the USSR on the other – Soviet influence spread over much of Eastern Europe, and later these divisions developed into the Cold War.

As Japan did not want to surrender, Americans dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Two days later the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The bombs, each having the force of thousands of tons of explosives, totally devastated the cities and hastened the end of the war – on September 2 Japan surrendered. The Second World War was over.