Although Western Europe had fallen to the Nazis like a line of dominoes in 1940 and the Luftwaffe was tangling with British pilots over London, isolationist sentiment (led by the America Firsters and Charles Lindbergh) still ran strong in the United States. Recognizing Germany's threat to the United States, President Roosevelt seized the initiative by pushing through lend-lease for Britain. With his approval, the Selective Service act was also passed. At the same time, unemployment rates dropped as manufacturers began taking more orders from the military. While no one would dare say so publicly, clearly the country was gearing up for war.
The aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor
The year 1941 began with FDR delivering a memorable State of the Union address (he had handily defeated Wendell Willkie the previous fall) that enumerated the four fundamental human freedoms. The question for most Americans was whether the United States would join the fight to defend those freedoms. It was answered on December 7, 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Wartime battles weren't all fought overseas. While America joined the fight for democracy overseas, Japanese-Americans were rounded up for transport to concentration camps beginning in 1942, and in the following year race riots erupted in several major cities. D-Day marked the beginning of the end for Germany, and that fall the Dumbarton Oaks Conference laid the foundation for the organization of the United Nations, a process that was finalized at San Francisco the next spring.
In the summer of 1944, FDR made a decision that would have huge implications for the postwar years when he dropped Vice President Henry Wallace from the ticket and replaced him with Missouri Senator Harry Truman. FDR again easily gained a fourth term in November when he defeated New York Governor Thomas Dewey. The impact of his decision became tragically clear on April 12, 1945, when Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage, two months after he appeared shockingly gaunt when he was photographed at the Yalta Conference.
The good news of Germany's surrender was accompanied by shocking revelations of genocide at Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka, and the war in the Pacific continued throughout the summer until the two atomic bombs brought it to a close. For the remnants of Europe's Jewish community, their problems were not over. A postwar pogrom at Kielce made it clear for many of them that returning home was not an option. Thousands attempted immigration to Israel, although to do so they had to evade a British blockade. Soon after settling into their new homes, they faced war again after Israel declared its independence in May 1948.
In November 1945, captured Nazi leaders were put on trial at Nuremberg. Although the trials were being conducted jointly by the Allies, the cold war between them had already begun. The Potsdam Conference had been contentious. Less than a year later, in March 1946, Winston Churchill charged that the Soviet Union had drawn an "iron curtain" around Eastern Europe. The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan pledged millions in foreign aid to relieve suffering in Europe, but at the heart of both was a desperate effort to stem what the United States saw as Soviet aggression. It became a military matter when Truman ordered an airlift to aid beleaguered Berlin. To further corral the Russians, NATO was organized in April 1949.
Like World War II, the cold war was fought at home too. By executive order, Truman established the loyalty boards to test the fitness of government employees. Shortly afterward, the House Un-American Activities Committee held hearings about Communist infiltration in Hollywood. A number of so-called unfriendly witnesses, who refused to cooperate with the committee, were prosecuted and jailed. They became known as the Hollywood Ten.
Alger Hiss
In the summer of 1948, self-confessed former Communists Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers named their alleged confederates before HUAC. One of Chambers's targets, former State Department official Alger Hiss, denied the charge. He would later be indicted for perjury after denying before a grand jury that he had been a Soviet agent. Hiss would be tried at the same time as eleven Communist Party leaders who were being tried under the Smith Act. Also charged with Communist espionage was another former government employee, Judith Coplon.
HUAC's hearings in 1948 were aimed at helping the GOP recapture the White House for the first time in sixteen years. Despite a split in the Democratic ranks after Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats bolted, Truman was re-elected in a major upset over Dewey. In his inaugural address in 1949, he promised a Fair Deal and restated many of the liberal principles of the New Deal, which included the repeal of the Taft-Hartley law that had curbed many of labor's gains under FDR.
The postwar years produced a number of notable literary works about the war, including acclaimed novels by Norman Mailer, Irwin Shaw, John Hersey and James Michener. One of the war's most beloved correspondents, Ernie Pyle, produced two bestselling collections of columns before he was killed in the Pacific. Other important books of the decade included Native Son, You Can't Go Home Again, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and All the King's Men. Other major events in the 1940s that should be noted were the development of commercial television, the use of assembly techniques to create suburbs in rural America, the breaking of baseball's color line by Jackie Robinson and America's loss of its monopoly over the atom bomb when Russian exploded one of its own in 1949.
The 1930s
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