734 Chapter 27 War and Peace, 1941–1945
Potsdam on the cruiser Augusta. Then he added, “Of
course he thinks I’m one too.”
On both sides suspicions were mounting, posi-
tions hardening. Yet all the advantages seemed to be
with the United States. Was this not, as Henry Luce,
the publisher of Timehad declared, “the American
century,” an era when American power and American
ideals would shape the course of events the world
over? Besides its army, navy, and air force and its
immense industrial potential, alone among the nations
the United States possessed the atomic bomb. When
Stalin’s actions made it clear that he intended to con-
trol Eastern Europe and to exert influence elsewhere
in the world, most Americans first reacted somewhat
in the manner of a mastiff being worried by a yapping
terrier: Their resentment was tempered by amaze-
ment. It took time for them to realize that the war had
caused a fundamental change in international politics.
The United States might be the strongest country in
the world, but the western European nations, victor
and vanquished alike, were reduced to their own and
America’s surprise to the status of second-class pow-
ers. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, had gained
more influence than it had held under the czars and
regained the territory it had lost as a result of World
War I and the communist revolution.
The Big Three Conference at Yaltaat
http://www.myhistorylab.comWatchtheVideo1941 Roosevelt prohibits discrimination in defense
plants (Fair Employment Practices Committee)
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
Roosevelt and Churchill draft Atlantic Charter
1942 Executive Order 9066 sends Japanese Americans
to relocation camps
Japanese take Philippines
Carrier-based planes dominate Battle of Coral Sea
U.S. airpower takes control of central Pacific at
Battle of Midway
U.S. troops invade North Africa
1943 Oppenheimer directs Manhattan Project to make
atom bomb
Race riots rage in Detroit and Los AngelesAllies invade Italy
Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin meet at Tehran, Iran
1944 Allies invade Normandy, France (D-Day)
Battle of the Bulge exhausts German reserves
1945 Big Three meet at Yalta Conference
Fifty nations draft UN Charter at San Francisco
Roosevelt dies; Truman becomes president
Germany surrenders (V-E Day)
United States tests atom bomb at Alamogordo,
New Mexico
Truman, Churchill, Stalin meet at Potsdam
United States drops atom bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan
Japan surrenders (V-J Day)Milestones
Chapter Review
Key Terms
Allies In the context of United States history, a
term that refers to the nations that opposed the
Axis Powers, chiefly Nazi Germany, Italy, and
Japan, during World War II. The Allies included
Britain, France (except during the Nazi occupa-
tion, 1940–1944), the Soviet Union (1941–1945),
the United States (1941–1945), and China, 722
D-Day June 6, 1944, the day Allied troops
crossed the English Channel, landed on the coast
of Normandy, and opened a second front in
Western Europe during World War II. The “D”
stands for “disembarkation”—to leave a ship and
go ashore, 724
internment camps Detainment centers, mostly
located in western states, that held approximately
110,000 Japanese aliens and American citizens of
Japanese origin during World War II, 720
Potsdam Conference A wartime conference (April
1945) held in occupied Germany where Allied
leaders divided Germany and Berlin into four
occupation zones, agreed to try Nazi leaders as
war criminals, and planned the exacting of repara-
tions from Germany, 733
United Nations (UN) An international organiza-
tion, founded in 1945, that sought to promote
discussion and negotiation and thereby avoid war;
it was joined by nearly all nations, 732
Yalta Conference A wartime conference
(February 1945) held in the Russian Crimea, where
theAllies—Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill
(Britain), and Josef Stalin (Soviet Union)—agreed
to final plans for the defeat and joint occupation of
Germany; it also provided for free elections in
Poland, but such elections were never held, 733