The Second World War and the rise of a superpower
After Pearl Harbor the United States enters the war, mobilises its vast economy, helps defeat Germany and Japan, drops the atomic bomb, and emerges as the world's leading power.
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
- Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 — James T. Patterson, Oxford University Press (1996)
- United States — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Americans were deeply reluctant to enter another European war, but Japan’s surprise attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941, killing about 2,400 Americans, united the country overnight. Germany declared war days later. American factories turned out ships, tanks and aircraft at an astonishing rate, and some 16 million Americans served in uniform. Women took factory jobs (“Rosie the Riveter”), and Black Americans fought abroad for freedoms denied them at home.
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
US forces fought across North Africa, Italy and, from D-Day on 6 June 1944, western Europe, while island-hopping across the Pacific. About 405,000 Americans died. In August 1945 atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan surrendered.
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
- United States — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
- Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America — Mae M. Ngai, Princeton University Press (2004)
The United States ended the war with half the world’s industrial output and a nuclear monopoly. It led the founding of the United Nations, rebuilt western Europe through the Marshall Plan, and formed NATO, beginning a Cold War with the Soviet Union that would last until 1991.
- Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 — James T. Patterson, Oxford University Press (1996)
Many Americans, especially of the war generation, believe the atomic bombs ended the war quickly and saved the lives of the huge numbers of soldiers and civilians an invasion of Japan would have cost.
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
Survivors in Japan and many critics elsewhere see the destruction of two cities and the killing of well over 100,000 civilians as unjustified; some historians argue Japan was close to surrender.
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
Why it matters today
For many Americans this is "the good war" fought by "the Greatest Generation", the moment their country saved the world from fascism. It made the United States a global superpower with bases, alliances and a sense of world leadership that Americans still argue about. The atomic bombings and the internment of Japanese Americans are its unresolved shadows.