Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (60 page)

September 28
Germany and Russia partition Poland, which Russia invaded from the east on September 17, two weeks after Germany entered Poland from the west. The United States refuses to recognize the partition, and maintains diplomatic relations with a Polish government-in-exile in Paris.

October 11
A letter written by Albert Einstein is delivered to Roosevelt by Alexander Sachs, a financier and adviser to the president. In it, Einstein discusses the implications of a nuclear chain reaction and the powerful bombs that may be constructed. He says, “A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port, together with some of the surrounding territory.” Roosevelt orders a plan to develop the atomic bomb, which becomes the Manhattan Project.

November 4
The Neutrality Act is signed. This measure will allow the United States to send arms and other aid to Britain and France.

1940

January
“The Battle of the Atlantic.” German submarines begin torpedo attacks on Allied shipping, sinking nearly 4.5 million tons of ships in the first two months of the year.

March 18
Mussolini and Hitler announce Italy’s formal alliance with Germany against England and France. Mussolini calls this the “Axis” on which Europe will revolve.

April 9
Norway and Denmark are overrun by Germany.

May 10
Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands are invaded by Germany. On the same day, Winston Churchill replaces the disgraced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister.

May 26–June 4
Dunkerque. Pressed to the coast of France, British and French troops converge on this small coastal town on the Dover Strait. The Royal Navy, assisted by hundreds of small fishing and merchant ships, evacuates more than 300,000 troops as the advancing Germans bomb and shell the fleeing troops. Churchill makes one of his memorable speeches: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and the streets. . . . We shall never surrender.”

June 5
Germany invades France. Ten days later, Paris falls. By June 22, France surrenders and a pro-German government is installed in the city of Vichy. In London, a Free French government headed by General Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) vows to resist.

June 10
President Roosevelt announces a shift from neutrality to “non-belligerency,” meaning more active support for the Allies against the Axis.

June 28
The Alien Registration Act (the Smith Act) is passed. It requires aliens to register and makes it illegal to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

July 10
The Battle of Britain. The first aerial attack on England by the German air force begins the devastating air war over England. For four months, German bombers pound London and other strategic points. Taking heavy civilian and military losses, the staunch British air defense destroys 1,700 German planes. Failure to control the airspace over England is a key factor in the Nazi decision not to launch an invasion across the Channel.

July 20
Congress authorizes $4 billion for the construction of a two-ocean navy.

September 3
Roosevelt gives fifty American destroyers to England in exchange for the right to construct bases in British possessions in the Western Hemisphere. This trade inspires the Lend-Lease program.

September 16
The Selective Training and Service Act requires men from twenty-one to thirty-five years of age to register for military training.

September 26
President Roosevelt announces an embargo on shipments of scrap metal outside the Western Hemisphere, aimed at cutting off supplies to Japan.

November 5
Roosevelt wins reelection to an unprecedented third term, defeating Republican Wendell Willkie by 449 electoral votes to 82.

December 29
In a year-end “fireside chat,” Roosevelt says that the United States will become the “arsenal of democracy.” Many peacetime factories are converted to war production, and this shift to a wartime economy shakes off the last effects of the Great Depression. During the war, America will produce 297,000 planes, 86,000 tanks, 12,000 ships, and enormous quantities of other vehicles, arms, and munitions. As in the case of the North in the Civil War and the United States in World War I, the American industrial capacity to mass-produce war materials provides the margin of victory. America and its allies do not so much outfight Germany and Japan as outproduce them.

1941

March 11
The Lend-Lease Act is signed into law. It narrowly passes Congress as isolationist sentiment remains strong.

May 27
A limited state of emergency is declared by President Roosevelt after Greece and Yugoslavia fall to the Axis powers. An American merchant ship,
Robin Moor
, is sunk by a U-boat near Brazil.

June 14
German and Italian assets in the United States are frozen under President Roosevelt’s emergency powers. Two days later, all German consulates in the United States are ordered closed, and on June 20, all Italian consulates are also shut down.

June 22
Germany invades Russia, breaking the “nonaggression” pact signed in 1939. Two days later, President Roosevelt promises U.S. aid to Russia under Lend-Lease.

July 25
After the Japanese invade French Indochina, President Roosevelt freezes Japan’s assets in the United States, halting trade between the countries and cutting off Japanese oil supplies. This move is later cited by the Japanese as a cause for attacking the United States.

August 14
After meeting secretly on warships stationed near Newfoundland, Roosevelt and Churchill announce the Atlantic Charter, a document that lays out eight goals for the world, including open trade, international economic cooperation, safe boundaries, freedom of the seas, and abandonment of the use of force. Its call for “self-determination” is aimed at freeing nations under Axis domination rather than the many Allied colonial interests in such places as India, Indochina, and the Philippines.

October 17
The U.S. destroyer
Kearney
is torpedoed by a U-boat, leaving eleven Americans dead. Two weeks later, the destroyer
Reuben James
is sunk by a U-boat, with 100 Americans lost. Hitler knows that war with the United States is now inevitable.

November 3
The U.S. ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew, warns of a possible Japanese surprise attack. Roosevelt and the cabinet receive his message on November 7.

November 17
Japanese envoys in Washington propose removing restrictions on trade. American secretary of state Cordell Hull rejects the proposal, calling for Japanese withdrawal from China and Indochina.

December 7
One day after President Roosevelt appeals to Emperor Hirohito to use his influence to avert war, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, the major U.S. base in Hawaii, killing 2,403 American soldiers, sailors, and civilians. Eighteen ships and 292 aircraft are destroyed or damaged. Defying all American expectations of their military capabilities, the Japanese make simultaneous strikes on Guam, Midway, and British bases in Hong Kong and Singapore. Japan declares war on the United States.

December 8
Addressing a joint session of Congress, Roosevelt asks for a declaration of war on Japan. The Senate vote is unanimously in favor; the House approves 388–1, with pacifist Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the House, the lone dissenter.

December 11
(Europe) Responding to the state of war between the United States and Japan, Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, giving President Roosevelt the fight with Hitler that he wanted.

December 17
(Pacific) Admiral Chester Nimitz (1885–1966) is given command of the Pacific fleet, replacing Admiral Kimmel, who was in charge of Pearl Harbor and is the scapegoat for the disaster. Nimitz will organize and direct the American counterattack in the Pacific.

December 23
(Pacific) The Japanese take Wake Island, an American possession in the middle of the North Pacific.

December 25
(Pacific) Hong Kong falls to Japan.

1942

January 2
(Pacific) Japan takes control of the Philippines as General MacArthur withdraws to Corregidor, an island fortress in Manila Bay.

January 14
(Home front) A presidential order requires all aliens to register with the government. This is the beginning of a plan to move Japanese-Americans into internment camps in the belief that they might aid the enemy.

January 26
(Europe) For the first time since the end of World War I, American troops arrive in Europe, landing in Northern Ireland.

February 20
(Home front) Roosevelt approves the plan to remove Japanese-Americans from their homes and send them to internment camps in Colorado, Utah, Arkansas, and other interior states. Eventually 100,000 Japanese-Americans will be moved, losing their homes and possessions. Many of the young men who are relocated join special U.S. Army units that perform with high honor.

February 23
(Home front) In one of the only assaults on the continental United States, an oil refinery in California is shelled by a Japanese submarine.

February 27–March 1
(Pacific) A Japanese fleet virtually destroys the American and British fleet in the Java Sea.

March 11
(Pacific) General MacArthur leaves the Philippines for Australia, vowing, “I shall return.” General Jonathan Wainwright (1883–1953) is left in command of the American forces, who move to the Bataan Peninsula.

A
MERICAN
V
OICES

G
ENERAL
B
ENJAMIN O. DAVIS,
commander of the Tuskegee Airmen and the first black general in the U.S. Air Force:

All the blacks in the segregated forces operated like they had to prove they could fly an airplane when everyone believed they were too stupid.

Benjamin O. Davis (1912–2002) was the son of the Army’s first black general, Benjamin O. Davis Sr. The first black cadet to graduate from West Point, he was one of the first black pilots in the military. His leadership of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, an all-black unit that was highly decorated during World War II, helped integrate the Air Force, and he became its first black general in 1954.

During his four years at West Point, no one would room with Davis. He later said, “Living as a prisoner in solitary confinement for four years had not destroyed my personality nor poisoned my attitude toward other people. When my father told me of the many people who were pulling for me, I said, ‘It’s a pity none of them were at West Point.’” At first rejected by the Air Corps, which did not accept blacks, Davis went to Tuskegee Army Air Field in 1941 when the Roosevelt administration told the War Department to create a black flying unit. Davis commanded the squad—the 99th Pursuit Squadron, better known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

In 1948, after the war, President Truman signed the order providing for the complete integration of America’s armed forces.

April 9
(Pacific) Seventy-five thousand American and Philippine troops surrender to the Japanese after a stoic resistance to overwhelming Japanese numbers. The captives are marched over 100 miles in the infamous Bataan Death March, during which thousands of prisoners are executed or die of starvation and thirst before they reach Japanese prison camps. A few weeks later, General Wainwright is captured by the Japanese, surrendering all American forces in the Philippines. (A classic photograph later shows an emaciated Wainwright embracing MacArthur after the Japanese surrender.)

April 18
(Pacific) Led by Major General James Doolittle, U.S. bombers raid Tokyo and other Japanese cities. Although the raids have little military effect, carrying the war to Japan provides an important psychological boost to American morale and alters Japanese strategic thinking.