World War II Notebook

Day 1 - Stalin's Soviet Union

Stalin's Soviet Union

• launched five-year plan to transform Soviet society along socialist lines

• Lenin & Bolsheviks face economic disintegration, famine, riots, rebellion
• New Economic Policy - reestablish economic freedom & rebuild agriculture & industry
• could sell surplus in free markets; railroads, banks, and heavy industry nationalized
• compromise with peasants, but brought rapid recovery to industry & economy
• power struggle after Lenin's death; Stalin won more support over Trotsky

• goal: industry up 250%, agriculture 150%, frenzy to modernize
• Stalin committed to socialism & want to catch up to capitalists
• peasants wanted land, thought they would become capitalists
• collectivize by creating state-controlled estates from individual peasant farms
• better-off peasants (kulaks) stripped of land, starved or in labor camps
• slaughter animals & burn crops in protest; not productive & no financial contribution
• wanted to destroy Ukrainian nationalism & break peasants' will
• purge political elite, high grain quota; great famine (Holodomor)
• industry up 4x, many migrated to cities to become industrial workers
• funds for factories collected by hidden sales taxes; labor discipline, no trade unions
• foreign engineers (Americans) hired to plan factories; modeled on America's

• reduced consumption, shortages, housing problems
• received pensions, medical services & education, day-care, no unemployment
• leave egalitarian policies, trained experts needed for industrialization, upper class
• Bolshevik Revolution gave women equal rights - Stalin wanted traditional family
• women work in farms & factories, became specialists; propaganda & indoctrination culture

• Sergei Kirov killed, launch reign of terror; Old Bolsheviks confess in show trials
• arrest & torture party officials & new members, & ordinary citizens
• executed or sent to gulags (labor camps) to fuel industrialization
• new Communist Party members join seeking opportunities & rewards

Day 2 - The Rising Sun: Japan Before WWII

From Liberalism to Ultranationalism in Japan

• most of Japan Japanese; build nationalistic, modern state, resisting imperialism
• master technology, victory against Russia and China, took German holdings
• economy expands as profits won markets Europe couldn't supply
• nationalists want to enlighten and protect Asia; some want peacefully
• naval limitation with West, give Shandong to China, reducing tensions
• democracy; men > 25 years could vote; 2 party competition, increased living standards & literacy rates
• few natural resources, vulnerable to ups and downs of world trade, support colonial empire
• colonies for prestige & defense; now needed for resources & economic growth
• zaibatsu in economy, dominated sector of unorganized farmers & peasants
• financial oligarchy, corrupt government officials, weak middle class
• elites (emperor, government officials, businessmen, military leaders), power struggle; ultranationalism
• ultranationalism: reject West (democracy, big business, Marxism), destroy old Japan
• stress emperor's divinity & samurai code of honor
• assassinate moderate leaders & armed uprisings against party politics
• foreign expansion, Kita Ikki, believed in "noble mission"
• Great Depression: exports & wages down, unemployment up, peasants starve

• young Japanese army officers in Manchuria from peasantry, army budget declined
• Chinese nationalism (Guomindang unification) challenge Japanese control, use aggression
• Japan made Manchuria an independent state, use Puyi (Qing) as puppet emperor
• resign from League of Nation to protest disapproval of aggression, army independent
• try to create economic bloc for industry in East Asia; news glorify empire
• for China, distract from modernization, boycott social reform, land reform & poverty
• unequal landownership, many own 1/6 land, starved & in debt
• nationalists with Jiang Jieshi try to destroy Communists, who retreated in Long March
• Mao Zedong rebuilt forces & won peasant support - (no pillage/rape, schools, health clinics, help peasants with agriculture, tried warlords & landlords
• Japan military & ultranationalists in control, general attack
• took Beijing & Shanghai, "Rape of Nanjing", in stalemate
• called the Second Sino-Japanese War - conflicting nationalism

Day 3 - Hitler and Nazism in Germany

Hitler and Nazism in Germany
The Roots of Nazism

• Nazism grew from extreme nationalism & racism, led by Adolf Hitler
• son of Austrian customs officer, join extreme Austro-German nationalists
• found racism, anti-Semitism & hate Slavs - Social Darwinism, racial conflict inevitable
• Jews direct finance capitalism, Marxist socialism, against German unity/race
• WWI gain meaning - blamed Jews & Marxists for surrender
• joined German Workers' Party - socialism would abolish capitalism - Nazi Party
• Weimar Republic hyperinflation, von Hindenburg became president, Hitler's unsuccessful coup

• denounce Weimar Republic, need legal power; Mein Kampf - anti-semitic, expansion, Fuhrer dictator
• built Nazis during stability, promise salvation during Depression, gain success
• reject free-market capitalism, advocate recovery - middle & lower classes & skilled workers
• many desert conservative & moderate for Nazis - become largest party
• appeal to German youth, national recovery, exciting change, & personal advancement appeal
• Depression made republican leaders look corrupt, Communists didn't unite with Social Democrats
• gain business & army support, thinking he would help them; von Hindenburg appoint chancellor

• blamed Communists for Reichstag building fire, made president abolish liberties & new elections
• Nazis lost election, outlaw Communists & arrest, sign Enabling Act, giving Hitler 4 years dictatorship
• Nazis top in government, outlaw strikes & unions, independent organizations to Nazis, publishers & schools controlled by Nazis, no modern art/architecture; dynamism & total obedience
• SS (elite personal guard) kill Nazi storm troopers, army surrender, Himmler & SS take over police
• Jews banned from work, Nuremberg laws take citizenship, many emigrate
• Kristallnacht - destruction of Jewish buildings, difficult for Jews to leave after

• public works, rearmament, standard of living up, employment up, profits up
• except Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, communists, and gays, more equality & opportunity
• relaxed educational requirements, tolerate privilege and wealth
• well-educated retain advantages (social leveling), hire women during labor shortages
• Communists & socialists, Catholics & Protestants, & army officers oppose

Day 5 - Japan: Empire in the Pacific

Japan's Asian Empire

• crush peasant Nationalists & Communists - Rape of Nanjing, Sino-Japanese War
• ultranationalists call liberation mission, worship semidivine emperor
• join Axis alliance, Vichy gave French Indochina to block aid for China
• U.S. supply 90% of oil, few reserves; embargo to Japan, declare war
• Pearl Harbor - sank American battleships (aircraft carriers at sea), destroy air force in Philippines
• Hitler declare war, Japan seize islands, Philippines
• support for Japan decline through war; no equal, no governments, cut wages, drafts
• kill wounded and POWs, rape nurses, Korean comfort women

Day 6 - The War in Europe and Asia

The Second World War, 1939 - 1945

• Britain, US, & Soviet Union form Grand Alliance

• Hitler's Blitzkrieg (lightning war) take Poland quickly
• Soviet Union took east Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, & Latvia
• Germans attack France through Belgium; Petain form Vichy, surrender
• French support Petain, but then he collaborated with the Nazis
• Battle of Britain - bomb with airforce before invading on land
• broke Soviet pact - take Leningrad/Moscow, winter stopped invasion
• racial imperialism dictate New Order: Dutch/Norway/Swede/Dane, French, Jews/Slavs
• hoped Poles, Ukrainians & Russians would die, more room for Germans

• force Jews into ghettos, German sent to Poland - arrest, camps, murder
• Catholics & Protestants rarely protest, most Germans sympathetic to Nazis

• Churchill's Europe First Policy - Hitler, then Japan, no treaties/division; best military

• Hitler defeated at Stalingrad, pushed back; Germany enlist women & slaves
• Allies attack through North Africa, British defeat at Battle of El Alamein
• Italians depose Mussolini, surrender; Germans save Mussolini for puppet government
• Germans surrender in Italy; Mussolini executed soon after
• Eisenhower (American & British) at Normandy, France, invade Germany; Soviets met at Elbe River

• America defend Port Moseby in Battle of the Coral Sea, won Battle of Midway for naval equality
• island hopping with Australia; bombing & hand to hand combat
• kill Japanese after Battle of Guadalcanal mercilessly
• MacArthur at Battle of Leyte Gulf, Japanese navy down
• Iwo Jima & Okinawa, bloodiest battles; destroyed by bombings
• Stalin gave Japan hope of diplomacy; plan to seize territories
• Potsdam Declaration demand surrender, unclear of emperor's safety
• atomic bombs, Soviet invade Manchukuo, avoid both by surrendering

Day 7 - The Start of the Cold War

Goals of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

• force the surrender of Japan
• establish America's supremacy in the world
• boost America's authority in postwar dealings with Soviet Union
• shock factor - psychologically force them to stop fighting
• beat Soviet Union to it, because they could have taken Japan themselves