“In developing American policy,” writes the historian David F. officials welcomed his National Fascist Party as a force for stability and a bulwark against Bolshevism (communism). Indeed, when Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922, U.S. and British governments were less concerned with the growth of fascist governments in Europe than with the spread of communism. The Soviet Union, by contrast, suffered 20-27 million fatalities, and China, 10-15 million.įrom the end of World War I to 1939, the U.S. military and civilian war deaths totaled 419,000, less than one percent of worldwide deaths attributed to the war.

An estimated 80 million people died from war-related causes in World War II, amounting to three percent of the 1940 world population of 2.3 billion.

Of these, 6,600 men were imprisoned for either refusing to register for the draft or rejecting alternative service work.

There were more than 43,000 conscientious objectors to war in World War II, three times as many as in World War I.

military commanders, including General Douglas MacArthur, believed the use of atomic bombs was unnecessary from a strategic-military vantage point. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 killed approximately 200,000 people on impact, and tens of thousands more from radiation poisoning and cancer. firebombed Tokyo on March 10, 1945, killing 90,000 Japanese civilians in single night. Army Air Force initially attempted “precision bombing” of enemy assets but by 1944 had moved to general “area bombing,” obliterating cities and killing civilians en masse.

Mass bombing of civilians became standard fare in the war.It also witnessed the first use of computers for military purposes. The war saw the creation of a dizzying array of new and horrifying military technologies including flamethrowers, bazookas, recoilless rifles, radar, guided missiles, PT “devil boats” armed with automatic weapons and torpedoes, napalm (jellied gasoline that burns the flesh) pilotless airplanes or drones.The British-American-Canadian “D-day” invasion took place on June 6, 1944. and Great Britain to open a Second Front in Western Europe, but British Prime Minister Winston Churchill repeatedly pushed for delays. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin urged the U.S.In the European theater, the Soviet Red Army accounted for three-quarters of German casualties and turned the tide of the war in January 1943.A presidential order forced 120,000 living in West Coast States to abandon their homes and businesses and live in barren internment camps for the duration of the war. Racial prejudice was also directed at American citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry.

war in the Pacific took on aspects of a racial war, with the Japanese described as “rats” and pictured with sinister features. The attack came on December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, ending a heated domestic debate on U.S. As of November 1941, the Roosevelt administration expected a Japanese attack but was uncertain as to when and where.By June 1939, the waiting list of Germans and Austrians seeking entry into the U.S. government did little to help European Jews seeking to emigrate. corporations such as Ford, General Motors, DuPont, and Standard Oil invested heavily in Nazi Germany, helping to build the Nazi war machine. officials supported Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini and were conciliatory toward German dictator Adolf Hitler until 1939, operating under the assumption that fascism was a force for stability and a bulwark against communism.

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