Civi Américaine 5.03.12

Battle of the Bodge : A month for troops to reach the other riverbank.

1942-1945 : A lot of battles

• Bataan Death March Apr 1942 : Battle in the Pacific with the Japanese. There were many prisoners and a bad strategy was used, toops were walking and walking, going from a camp to another without any goal, it was a very good way to kill the enemies without doing anything
• Guadalcanal : It was in the Solomon Islands (1942).
• Midway Islands
• Guam : Big battle
• Okinawa
• Iwojima

General Douglas Mac Arthur was very famous, he's even represented in movies. The American army playes leapfrog in the Pacific ( saute-moutons). By 1945, the Soviets had taken over Poland, Austria, Bulgaria etc...They had drewn out the Germans out of many countries. They were chasing after Hitler.

February 4-11, 1945 : The Yalta Conference with Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt. They met together to discuss about the final assault on Germnay. They also begun to talk about and agreed on on peace organization (UN). They discussed about who would get what after the war.

Apr 12, 1945 : Roosevelt died. Truman started making demands on Staline about his control over Poland and about Polish people to have free elections. Stalin broke his promises of Yalta of not interferring with the eastern countries.

Apr 4, 45 :Hitler poisened himself.

VE Day : Victory in Europe, the 8^th of May 1945. The conflict with Germnay was done.

1942 : The Manhattan Project : Building very destructive weapons, it was a top secret project.

Robert Oppenheimer : Chief director of this project and there was a lot of testing sites especially out west ( Alamogordo, New Mexico).

A lot of military men developed sicknesses because of the nuclear effects.

June 1945 : There was a meeting in San Francisco, a lot of countries met and they framed the guidelines for the UN charter ( keeping international peace etc...).

1945 : Truman, Staline and Churchill issued in Postdam ( Germany) the Postdam Declaration ( A warn to Japan which needed to accept everything or would risk very prompt destructions). They discussed :

• There needed to be punishments and war tribunals for war criminals.

Japan : Bombs were droped on two cities : HIroshima ( August 6) and Nagasaki ( August 9).

Mac Arthur accepted on september 2^nd : Official declaration and surrender. Churchill said that the bomb was a miracle of deliverance. Truman and others realized that peace in Japan didn't mean peace in the whole world. In fact, Stalin's intentions were to create a buffer zone of socialist states surrounding the Soviet union. He wanted all the states to become socialist, this would be a zone of safety to protect the Soviet Union physically. Here comes the threat of the atomic weapon by the Americans. American's government position created a momentum for America and the Soviet Union to create absolutely the atomic union. These two countries became enemies, this is the cold war. There were a lot of confrontations, and the threat of the atomic war turned this cold war into a post war preoccupation of nuclear war.

1948 Truman was elected for the first time, when the war was over. 12 million people were in service and then there were only 1.5 million then. Reduction of the military force.

1944 Servicemen's readjustment Act : Actual GI Bill of rights. Many veterans had top job priotity and they were given 52 weeks of enemployment if needed. They had also hospital care free or very low-cost and they were elligible for very low homeloans.

During the war, many traditional values changed. A lot of men were forced to share small living spaces and with different people as far as religion or ethnicity are concerned during the war.

The gender discrimination was increasing. Because of a lot of traditions events or changes, most of the men were at war and women were working in factories, they were considered as subsitutes. There was an economic boom after the war. People had habits of saving ( habits coming from the depression). During the boom, a lot of people had liquid cash saved and a lot of goods and services were demanded for this liquid cash. They bought cars and Truman could inaugurate a very large public work project. He wanted to build interstate highways. It created a lot of pollution and it created the importance of oil, boom in the whole world and mobility. There was a baby and a housing boom. Many people went to live in the suburban life. It was the american dream because, for many families who longed for a good school, a own home, neighbourhoods like they were. People had a car but had also a TV. By 1946, one in every 18000 home had a TV. A lot of people were going to cinemas but teenagers ( kids born in the mid 30's) had seen war...lot of infedility, divorces..." latchkey kids".

America started producing at an amazing rate !Child rearing was the preoccupation of the post-war America and the idea was back that a woman had to be at home to raise the children and clean the house.

Benjamin Spoke became famous because of his advices to american women. He wrote " baby and child care". This was the bible of child rearing. Maney women refered to Spoke instead of their own mothers. Education was reinforced.