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Notes on video lecture:
America's Entry into World War II
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
incomplete, oil, one, Moscow, fatalism, Midway, camping, oil, horses, worse, sleep, fueling, deter, Germany, intelligence, Hawaii, USSR, fails, surprised, overextended, victorious, kill, total, meddled, aircraft
Critical gambles at the end of 1941
the grand strategy for the U.S. up to 1941 was "               First", so why did the war with Japan begin?
America hoped to            Japan from attacking
put sanctions on Japan constraining        and vital resources
wanted to keep the Japanese from attacking the Soviet Union, which succeeded (!)
America prodded Japan making it clear that if they                in the Pacific, they would have to deal with America
America hoped this would deter Japan from attacking America, but it didn't
what went wrong
America underestimated the                  of the Japanese leadership
GAMBLE #1: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
Germans then declared war on the U.S.
had promised the Japanese they would do this
Japanese were                      in the beginning of the war but not so much America had to fight Japan first and then Germany
GAMBLE #2: Germany gambled that it would rapidly defeat the         , but this went wrong
Germany vs. Russia was an extraordinary conflict
consider how modern armies in 1941 moved
army division was about 12,000 men
to move, they basically had to "go on a                trip" for weeks, for months, carrying all their materials
had backups behind the armies to take care of the front
the reality of a "camping trip" is you are tired, you don't get much           , you're cold and think about hot food, shelter, getting out of the rain, day in and day out, plus, occasionally, people are trying to          you
then there is the challenge of keeping up with the supplies off-road
German army of 1941 used millions of             , but much of the supplies had to be hauled over land by humans
occasional explosives sending shards of metal in every direction
it was dangerous to be on foot, but to be in an armored vehicle, you were an easy target
Germans are making extraordinary headway against a                    Soviet army
but their challenge is to great
but the Germans push beyond their limits
1941: into Ukraine, east past Crimea, Hitler's generals want one more desperate attempt to capture             
but winter 1941 sets in
soldiers are scattered all over the countryside
they are very vulnerable
December 5, 1941: Soviets hit Germans very hard
by early 1942 Germans' position is            than if they had just dug in for the winter
GAMBLE #3: Germans and Japanese can pin the Americans down in the Pacific so that American military power won't make a signficant difference in the rest of the world
this gamble            but it was a close call
Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor is substantial but                      because:
1. American                  carriers were not in the harbor but out of at sea, and they became the trump cards during the war
2. Japan didn't get the       
for the Americans to supply their ships in the Pacific, they can't carry the oil from California
so they use Hawaii as a giant                station, but the Japanese didn't bomb these facilities, although that would have been crippling for the United States
Japan's choices after early 1942
Japan had an advantage
options going into the war
1. big attack to occupy             , driving the U.S. back to California
2. attack Australia
3. raid around the Indian ocean and attack England in India
4. attack Soviets
they decide to do options 1-3
by choosing all three, they                          themselves
the              operation was key
Japanese were defeated in a close call
American in an                          coup was able to read messages of what the Japanese would do before it happened
Japanese 4 aircraft carriers against 3 aircraft carriers
American destroyed all 4 carriers and lost only       
by 1942 all powers are now locked in a global,            war

People:

######################### (1880-1959)
Chief military adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt famous for his leadership roles during World War II and after
  • was Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense
  • hailed as the "organizer of victory" by Winston Churchill for his leadership of the Allied victory
  • Marshall's name was given to the Marshall Plan
1914: Schizophrenic Germany
1914: The Balkan Whirlpool
1914: From Balkan Crisis to War
1914-1916: All War Plans Fail Horribly
The 1916 Missed Opportunity for Peace
WWI Pushes Warring Countries Toward Total States
Why the Allies Won World War One
Post-WWI: Filling the Void of Collapsed Empires
Post-WWI Communism vs. Anti-Communism
Post World War I: The Age of Uncertainty
1910s/1920s: Modern Women
The World of 1930
The 1930s World Crisis
1930s: The Decade of Contingency
America's Entry into World War II
WWII: Strategies for Total War
1945: Hour Zero
Post WWII: Imagining New Countries
Conflicts in Postwar Nation Building
The Two Europes That Emerged After WWII
1947 China: Undesirable Communists vs. Flawed Nationalists
Post WWII: The Age of America
Reasons for the Korean War
How WWIII was Avoided in the Korean War
1950-1952: The Cold War Comes to Main Street
1950-1954: The H-Bomb and the Nuclear Revolution
1950s: Loosening Empires and Building Confederations
The Emergence of the Third World
1958-1962: The World at the Brink
Third World Proxy Wars of the 1950s and 1960s
Managerial States and the Transnational Disruption of 1968
1970s Obstacles to Reducing Cold War Tensions
1970s Democratic Socialism Becomes a Non-Choice
1980s Political Polarization
1980s: Global Capitalism Transformed