State Historical Society of Iowa
Following World War I, the United States hoped to avoid further entanglement with European politics that had drawn us into war. A strong isolationist sentiment developed that questioned the wisdom of our entry into The Great War as it was then known. However, the rise of military government in Germany, Italy and Japan and their invasions of neighboring countries became a major concern for United States leaders including President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
In Europe, Adolf Hitler led the rise of the Nazi Party, which claimed that Germany was treated unfairly in the peace treaty that ended WWI. He also sought to unite all German-speaking peoples, a policy that put him at odds with several neighbors like Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Great Britain and France tried to negotiate an end to German expansion, but the Soviet Union on Germany's eastern front signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler that opened the door to Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939. France and England came to the aid of the Poles and declared war on Germany. Hitler's armies quickly overran Poland and then France, leaving Britain alone against German armies and air force. President Roosevelt wanted to come to the aid of our British allies, but public sentiment was not yet ready to send American soldiers to fight in another European war.
Meanwhile, Germany and Italy became partners with Japan that had designs on domination of Eastern Asia. Japan lacked natural resources like oil and rubber and created plans to attack neighboring countries that could supply them. They invaded Korea and Manchuria and then China. They also looked southward to the European colonies of Dutch East Asia and British Malaysia. They knew that the United States and Great Britain would fight to stop them. To weaken U.S. naval forces in the Pacific, Japan bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. America declared war on Japan, and on December 11, Germany and Italy lived up to their agreement with Japan and declared war on the United States. Iowan Henry A. Wallace had been elected vice president in 1940 and served there throughout most of the war.
Instead of putting all its efforts to fight Japan, the United States made Europe its first priority. Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, and they agreed that Hitler was a greater danger than Japan. German planes were bombing London regularly, and many expected a Nazi invasion. The United States began mobilizing armies, converting its factories to produce war supplies, and encouraging farmers to boost production. British and American generals developed a plan to invade Europe through Italy before attempting an attack across the English Channel against heavily fortified defenses. Meanwhile, German armies had invaded the Soviet Union and were imposing frightening losses on military and civilian populations alike. The Soviets, with the aid of a brutal Russian winter, halted the Nazi advance and forced a German retreat. Finally, in June 1944, a combined American-British invasion force landed on the French coast of Normandy, established a beach head, and from there began an offensive that led to a German surrender in May 1945.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy took the offensive in the Pacific against Japan. The route to Japan led through several Pacific Islands that the Japanese defended with determination. Two Allied naval victories broke the strength of the Japanese fleet and allowed the Allied forces to get close enough to establish air bases from which bombers could strike Japanese cities. The estimates of the loss of life that would be required to force the main Japanese islands to surrender reached a million. During the war, in a very secret project, U.S. scientists had developed a bomb that was hundreds of times more powerful than anything before. In August, 1945, President Harry Truman ordered atomic bombs to be dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing the world into the nuclear age. Japan surrendered within a matter of days, and WWII was over.
Some estimates of the loss of life due to fighting, disease and other war-related factors run as high as 60 million, or about 3 percent of the world's population at the time. The Soviet Union suffered the greatest cost, with some 20 million civilian and military casualties. The United States, protected by two oceans from the battlefields, sustained around 420,000 war-related deaths. Iowa soldiers killed or wounded are recorded as around 2,800.
| World War II: America's Motivation and Impact Source Set Teaching Guide |
| Printable Image and Document Guide |
The cartoon from The Pella Chronicle depicts events occurring in Europe over a year before the United States entry into war. The role of the Red Cross is highlighted in the image and shows the increasing destruction occurring in Europe.
This declaration is the Atlantic Charter, which was a pivotal policy statement issued during World War II by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The leaders of the United Kingdom and the United States drafted the work...
This black and white photograph shows the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, with the USS West Virginia shown on fire in the harbor. Disregarding the dangerous possibilities of explosions, United States sailors are seen manning their boats ...
On December 8, at 12:30 p.m., President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a joint session of U.S. Congress, and via radio, the nation, regarding the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii the day before. The U.S. Senate responded with a unanimous vote in suppor...
The article in the Postville Herald described the impact of World War II on life in the early days of the war. In addition, as typically done in small town news publications at the time, all of the soldiers stationed at Pearl Harbor were listed.
This article from the Pocahontas Record-Democrat in Centerville, Iowa, shows a map of the Pacific theater during World War II. The article lists local residents who were serving in some capacity in the Pacific.
Propaganda posters during World War II by public relations specialists who were advising the U.S. government believed that the most effective war posters were the ones that appealed to the emotions. The poster shown here, produced by General Motors Corpor...
The U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) published this 12-page pamphlet after the U.S. had entered World War II. The sketch shown above is of "The Unconquered People," and describes the European resistance to Adolph Hitler and Germany on the pa...
This political cartoon was created by the U.S. Department of War following the events at Pearl Harbor. The illustration shows Lady Liberty (with the words "Pearl Harbor" written on her) stabbed in the back by a Japanese soldier. The Japanese sol...
This song was written during World War II. John Work arranged the song with Bus Ezell. Bus Ezell heard an old blind guitarist in Mississippi sing a 1917 version of this song, in which President Woodrow Wilson and the German Kaiser were the chief protagoni...
The black and white photograph shows the destruction caused by a Japanese bombing raid that struck a Burmese village. The caption of the image from the war department stated, "(t)here was no military objective in this happy Burmese village. The objec...
In August 1942, Roosevelt appointed W. Averell Harriman to represent the United States at a conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin. The Moscow Conference sought a common understanding of Soviet and A...
The photograph shows individuals receiving aid in Mejex-El-Bab, Tunisia. A market was operated by the Allied civilian relief groups to sell food, clothing, kerosene and other supplies from the U.S. Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations. T...
In October 1943, the Detroit Evening Times used this map to update its readers on the status of the war in the Pacific Theater. The map and text that accompanied it discussed progress already made by the Allies and steps that could be taken to reach mainl...
In this assault in Buna, American light tanks, manned by Australian crews, smashed through Japanese pillboxes. In this photograph, taken during the actual fighting, an Australian mortar crew has fired on enemy troops 150 yards away fleeing from a busted p...
This document was the written statement from General Dwight D. Eisenhower that was delivered on the eve of D-Day. The statement was written to soldiers, airmen and sailors to show the scope of military action and how significant the joint action would be.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Harris, Jacob, "Infantrymen of the 255th Infantry Regiment move down a street in Waldenburg to hunt out the Hun after a recent raid by 63rd Division," 16 April 1945
This video interview is with Grant Jiroo Hirabayashi, who was one of the famed commandos of Merrill's Marauders. This was a unit of soldiers who slogged their way through the Burmese jungles to overcome the Japanese occupiers, and consisted of a numbe...
This photograph shows an aerial view of Nagasaki, Japan, after American forces dropped an atomic bomb on the city. The city was bombed on August 9, 1945, and the Japanese surrendered on September 2, 1945.
/assets/primary-source-sets/files/history-education-pss-wwii-groves-transcription.pdf
The unconditional surrender of the German Third Reich was signed in the early morning hours of Monday, May 7, 1945, at Supreme Headquarters in Reims in northeastern France. After the signing of the Reims Accord, Soviet Chief of Staff Gen. Alexei Antonov e...
This letter was sent to President Harry Truman by some scientists involved in the Manhattan Project following the end of the war in Europe. In the letter, the scientists outline the responsibility and concerns regarding the United States having and using ...
This item is an unsigned, three-page typewritten letter to Dr. Luis Alvarez's son Walter, headed "August 6th, 10 minutes off the Jap coast at 26,000 feet." This part described the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Alvarez's work...
This newspaper article appeared in the Ames Daily Tribune, and it "unveiled" that Iowa played a pivotal role in the development of the atomic bomb.
On September 2, 1945, Japanese representatives signed the official "Instrument of Surrender," prepared by the U.S. War Department and approved by President Harry Truman. That morning, on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, the Japanese en...
In the video, Augustus Prince recalls his service in World War II 60 years after he served in the Navy. Prince clearly recalls his being accepted as a radar man aboard the USS Santee, knowing in retrospect what that acceptance meant to him, a young Afric...
Robert Holmberg was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and began working on the Manhattan Project at the Chicago Met Lab and at Ames Laboratory in Iowa. He was then drafted into the Special Engineer Detachment and sent to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He continued to work...
This database by the National Archives allows the viewer to search for World War II casualities of Iowans by county.
This Wordpress website by Iowa State University Special Collections and University Archives includes newspaper clippings, photographs and more that show the connection between ISU and the invention of the atomic bomb.
This is the main webpage for the PBS documentary "The War," which provides a vast overview of America on the Homefront and battlefront during World War II.
This website produced by the Atomic Heritage Foundation contains a number of oral histories from individuals who had some part in the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb.
This Iowa Pathways website "World War II" includes a number of primary and secondary resources and links featuring Iowans who experienced World War II.
Listed below are the Iowa Core Social Studies content anchor standards that are best reflected in this source set. The content standards applied to this set are elementary-age level and encompass the key disciplines that make up social studies for students 9th through 12th grade.
| No. | Standard Description |
| SS-Geo.9-12.17. | Analyze how environmental and cultural characteristics of various places and regions influence political and economic decisions. |
| SS-Geo.9-12.20. | Assess the impact of economic activities and political decisions on urban, suburban, and rural regions. |
| SS-US.9-12.22. | Evaluate the impact of inventions and technological innovations on the American society and culture. |
| SS-US.9-12.24. | Critique primary and secondary sources of information with attention to the source of the document, its context, accuracy, and usefulness such as the Reconstruction amendments, Emancipation Proclamation, Treaty of Fort Laramie, Chinese Exclusion Act, Roosevelt's Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, Wilson's Fourteen Points, New Deal Program Acts, Roosevelt's Declaration of War, Executive Order 9066, Truman Doctrine, Eisenhower's Farewell Speech, Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Test Ban Treaty of 1963, Brown vs. Board of Education decision, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and the Voting Act of 1965. |
| SS-US.9-12.26. | Determine multiple and complex causes and effects of historical events in American history including, but not limited to, the Civil War, World War I and II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. |
| SS-US.9-12.27. | Evaluate Iowans or groups of Iowans who have influenced U.S. History. |
| SS-WH.9-12.18. | Assess impact of conflict and diplomacy on international relations. |
| SS-WH.9-12.23. | Critique primary and secondary sources of information with attention to the source of the document, its context, accuracy, and usefulness of sources throughout world history. |
| SS-WH.9-12.25. | Determine multiple and complex causes and effects of historical events within world history. |
| SS-WH.9-12.26. | Assess Iowans or groups of Iowans who have influenced world history. |
