WW2 & The Great Depression

Andrea Aldaba
WWII and the Great Depression
The Great Depression:
After WWI, the United States became really rich. In 1929, though, the country’s economy failed terribly. On October 24, the stock market started to fail, and the crash increased on the following Thursday. This led to a major impact all over the world, an era known as the Great Depression.
The stock market grew over a period of time in the 1920’s. Then the stock prices began to fall and people in the U.S began to panic and quickly sold off their large numbers of stocks and shares.
The U.S suffered because of the Great Depression, but not just the U.S; the Great Depression had a global impact. A lot different countries relied on the wealth of the U.S. American factories bought raw materials from other countries, and American consumers bought goods that were imported overseas. During the depression the demand of goods suddenly dropped and bank loans were withdrawn. Bankruptcy and unemployment rose throughout the world.
People believed that extreme measures where needed to be made. Germany and Japan were strongly hit by the Great Depression. Germany lacked oil and japan had a few natural resources, and because they both needed to supply their industries, they thought it was imperative to take over the countries that had them, which is why the Great Depression is one of the reasons for WWII.
Dust Bowl of the 1930’s:
The period of time when dust storms were destroyed people’s lives lasted about a decade. It ended in the fall in 1939 when rain finally came, ending the drought. Its biggest dust storm happened on April 14, causing great damage and earning the name of “Black Blizzard”. The Dust Bowl of the 1930’s played a great part in the Great Depression.
Millions of acres of topsoil of farmlands and barren fields were blown of and carried away by the many dust storms that happened during the 1930’s. The dust storms started in southeast Colorado, southwest Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, but eventually the entire country was affected. Farmers began to lose their businesses and homes, so some were forced to move to California or to the cities to find work. Many ended up being homeless.
In the spring on 1935, people started dying of dust pneumonia. By 1940, 2.5 million people moved out of the Plains states, and about a fourth of the population in the affected states left.
In the fall of the 1939, rain finally came and with the start of WWII two years later. The prices of crops rose. People were prepared, though, when another drought hit in the 1950’s.
In the year of the Great Depression ended, 1939, Amelia Earhart was pronounced dead, after disappearing on 1937. Clyde Tombaugh discovered the dwarf planet Pluto on February 18, 1930.
WWII:
WWII was the biggest and deadliest war in history. It was unlike any other war. Instead of fighting on battlefields, WWII was a “people’s war”. Innocent people were at the center of the action, and the war was fought wherever and in any possible climate. War began on September 1, 1939. Germany invaded Poland with an army of about two million men. They used a new type of warfare called blitzkrieg, or “lightning war”. Its main features were surprise and speed. It took almost a month for Germany to conquer Poland. Nazi Germany and their leader, Adolf Hitler, were left in control of all of central Europe. Within two days of the attack, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany, marking the beginning of WWII.
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest battle in WWII, from 1939-1945. Germany attacked Allied merchant ships bringing food, oil, and important supplies across the Atlantic to the U.S. using German submarines called U-boats that would sink the boats. Sometimes the submarines would travel in large groups called wolf packs. A wolf pack would follow a ship and attack with torpedoes after a few nights. In total, the German submarines sank 2,603 ships during the battle of Atlantic, and over 30,000 British and Allied sailors died.
Sunday December 7, 1941, was a turning point in WWII. Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japan that day. The attack was planned by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. The Japanese sank or badly damaged 18 ships and killed 2,335 U.S servicemen. After the attack, the U.S joined WWII and the world was now literally in a world war.
Unlike Japan and Germany, the U.S had a lot help in the war effort. Since most men joined the Army, women, teenagers, and the elderly started to work in war factories. In the factory productions, the U.S was already a world leader. In the aircraft business, competing aircraft companies joined forces during the wartime. In the Soviet Union, women started to the take up the jobs left by the men, like the women in the U.S. even the children of America helped by getting jobs and younger children became Junior Commandoes. They collected many things that could help make weapons or other thing that would help in the war.
The Axis powers, Germany and Japan, could not compare with the Allies. Women were not allowed to work in factories, so war factories had to use foreign workers from conquered lands. Both Germany and Japan used foreigners as slave labor.
New technology and weapons were made during the war. The Vergeltungswaffen, or revenge weapons, was one of Hitler’s new weapons. These were used to avenge the bombing of German cities. The Proximity fuze was a radio transmitter and receiver fitted into the nose of a shell. It was one of the Allies greatest inventions. The Atomic bomb was the most deadly invention them all. The first bomb was made by the Allies, and it was tested out in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in July 1945. The new type of medicine in that time saved millions of lives of soldiers and civilians.
Japan knew the war was lost by October 1944, but they refused to surrender. On 1945, the U.S Marines landed on Iwa Jima, a small island six-hundred miles away from Tokyo. It took almost five weeks for them to capture; 6,825 Americans died and more than 25,000 were wounded. Almost all of the Japanese were dead, with only 1,083 taken as prisoners. Meanwhile, the U.S bomber planes were bombing the Japanese homelands. The Japanese didn’t fight back much. On March 9, 1945, 279 bombers attacked Tokyo. About 100,000 civilians were burned to death in a great firestorm.
The Soviet Red Army fought its way into Berlin on late April. Tough the German soldiers were outnumbered, they held on. 70,000 Soviet soldiers died in the fight, but twice as many Germans died. Hitler spent the last three months of his life in an underground bunker in Berlin, which moved into on January 16, 1945. Hitler shot himself on April 30, as the Red Army fought towards his bunker. Germany had been defeated and by May 8 the war was over in Europe.
On August 1945, the U.S had only two atomic bombs left, and President Truman intended to use them. On August 6 the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. It was nicknamed “Little Boy.” It destroyed most of the city of Hiroshima, created a giant mushroom cloud, and killed more than 66,000 civilians. The second one was dropped on Nagasaki. It was nicknamed Fat Man. Almost 100,000 people died from that explosion.
Germany was divided into two different republics and Japan’s government was changed after the war also. There were many celebrations after that. The world changed, though, since 1939, when the war started, it was a different place after 1945.