American literature - přednášky

World War II

• Principal belligerents were the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan

• The Allies—France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China

• 40,000,000–50,000,000 deaths

• escalating conflict between China and Japan influenced U.S. relations with both nations

• few U.S. officials recommended taking a strong stance prior to 1937, and so the United States did little to help China for fear of provoking Japan

• Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing

• In 1940 and 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt formalized U.S. aid to China

• the United States combined a strategy of increasing aid to China through larger credits and the Lend-Lease program

• “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”

• the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy on September 27, 1940

• Vichy France enabled Japanese forces to move into Indochina and begin their Southern Advance

• The United States responded to this growing threat by temporarily halting negotiations with Japanese diplomats, instituting a full embargo on exports to Japan

• Japanese planes bombed the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan, and it soon entered into a military alliance with China.

• Germany stood by its ally and declared war on the United States, the Roosevelt Administration faced war in both Europe and Asia.

• Formosa-based Japanese bombers struck Clark and Iba airfields in the Philippines, destroying more than 50 percent of the U.S. Army’s Far East aircraft

• no indication that the Allies were ready for a negotiated peace

• The U.S. Pacific Fleet bombed the Marshall Islands on February 1, 1942, Wake Island on February 23, and Marcus Island (between Wake and Japan) on March 1.

• Japan planned to occupy New Caledonia, the Fiji Islands, and Samoa and also to seize eastern New Guinea

• Japanese troops occupied Lae and Salamaua in New Guinea and Buka in the Solomon Islands in March 1942 and Bougainville in the Solomons and the Admiralty Islands (north of New Guinea) early in April.

• April 18, 1942, 16 U.S. bombers raided Tokyo

• the four-day Battle of the Coral Sea

• the Japanese lost so many planes in the battle that their enterprise against Port Moresby had to be abandoned

• the U.S.-Soviet alliance of 1941–1945

• marked by a great degree of cooperation and was essential to securing the defeat of Nazi Germany

• in July of 1940, a series of negotiations took place in Washington between Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles and Soviet Ambassador Constantine Oumansky

• Roosevelt blocked attempts to exclude the Soviet Union from receiving U.S. assistance

• The most important factor in swaying the Soviets eventually to enter into an alliance with the United States was the Nazi decision to launch its invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

• The Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced on July 26 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee), and U.S. President Harry Truman—met in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II

• Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, and the Allied leaders agreed to meet over the summer at Potsdam to continue the discussions that had begun at Yalta

• the lack of a common enemy in Europe led to difficulties reaching consensus concerning postwar reconstruction on the European continent

• The Allies established occupation administrations in Austria and Germany. The former became a neutral state, non-aligned with any political bloc. The latter was divided into western and eastern occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union.

• the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 as a common standard for all member nations

• The great powers that were the victors of the war—France, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States—became the permanent members of the UN's Security Council

• The five permanent members remain so to the present, although there have been two seat changes, between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in 1971, and between the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991

• Post-war division of the world was formalised by two international military alliances, the United States-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact

• The long period of political tensions and military competition between them, the Cold War, would be accompanied by an unprecedented arms race and proxy wars

• WACs

• WASPs