April+Journals

Experiential Field Study, //The American Journey,// Chapters 18, 19, and 25, and //No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II,// April Journal Entries:

=**Charzetta Richardson, Hueytown Middle School**=

World War II is an intensively studied conflict in history. I have never looked at World War II in the manner that The Conquerors reveals it to me. Beschloss’ account of U. S. policy toward Germany during the war is amazing and breathe-taking. This book kept my attention as the drama continued to unfold. Unsure of where it was going to take me next, I patiently continued to read bits and pieces of the book. The Conquerors takes the reader into the world of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. I identified things that I would have never thought would have occurred in American government. As the allied soldiers fought the Nazis, Roosevelt and Truman fought privately with Churchill and Stalin on ways to ensure that Germany would not be a world threat again. The saga continues with Roosevelt’s withholding of what America really knew about Hitler’s war against the Jews and his slow reaction to saving the masses. Shocked by Roosevelt’s actions, Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau tried to take charge of the situation by developing a secret plan. This plan, known as the Morgenthau Plan, drew up the plan for the Allies to defeat Germany by destroying German mines and factories. Roosevelt endorsed most of Morgenthau’s plan, but behind closed doors, he had to pressure Winston Churchill to comply. Then with everything else that is going on in the world, FDR dies. The new President, who was said not to be prepared for the job, surprised everyone. He managed to get on the horse and ride without hesitation.

=**Clara N. Billups, Brighton Middle School**=

In "The Conquerors", Michael Beschloss introduced me as the reader to the inner circles of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman as they struggle with the challenges of ending the European phase of the greatest war in history. He shows that planning for the postwar war world began while the guns were still hot.

Bechloss demonstrates the intricate interplay of domestic and foreign personalities. The most prominent figure in the book to me is Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morganthau. Morganthau, although a non-practicing Jew, became the foremost inside spokesman for intervention to save Jews threatened with extermination as well as for his plan, modestly named the "Morganthau Plan", to reduce Germany to an agricultural nation, presumably unable to rise to threaten the world again. We read of the interests of Britain and Russia as personified in the personalities of Churchill and Stalin. The issue of partition of Germany into either a few states or to something resembling pre-1870 Germany is viewed from several angles. Other issues such as reparations and the zones of occupation are explored in detail.

=**Barbara Estates, Bagley Middle School**= World War II was a sure defeat for Hitler but there was more at stake. Roosevelt wanted to make sure there could not be another “Hitler” type personality to threaten the well being of the world. Beschloss told through expert and well researched eyes, the struggles personally, physically, professionally, socially and internationally that Roosevelt encountered trying to assure this end. This book was a first-rate read that should most definitely become part of the active library of teachers who share WWII. The research supported information of the turmoil hidden behind the somewhat calm façade is most remarkable. The informed classroom teacher should avail themselves of this information in order to have better insight as to why things did occur the way they did. It gives foundation to a lot of the events of the time. Sharing and reading excerpts of the book with the students could be a springboard of information for topics of debate and excellent classroom discussion. Some of the situations were shocking, sickening, and depressing. Nonetheless, that time machine we would like to utilize in order to “go back and do it right this next time,” still has a few kinks in it. Until this mystery machine gets fixed, right or wrong, we will have to take history as it has unfolded and learn from it. Some of it we certainly do not want repeated. Thankfully, though, through the hardened pursuant efforts of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman we will be less likely to have another Adolf Hitler type of threat.

=**Barry Johnson, Mt. Olive Elementary School**=

American Journey Chapter 26

While most Americans anxiously watched the course of the European war, tension mounted in Asia. Taking advantage of an opportunity to improve its strategic position, Japan boldly announced a "new order" in which it would exercise hegemony over the entire Pacific. Battling for its survival against Nazi Germany, Britain was unable to resist, withdrawing from Shanghai and temporarily closing the Burma Road. In the summer of 1940, Japan won permission from the weak Vichy government in France to use airfields in Indochina. By September the Japanese had joined the Rome-Berlin Axis. As a countermove, the United States imposed an embargo on export of scrap iron to Japan. It seemed that the Japanese might turn southward toward the oil, tin and rubber of British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. In July 1941 the Japanese occupied the remainder of Indochina; the United States, in response, froze Japanese assets. General Hideki Tojo became prime minister of Japan in October 1941. In mid-November, he sent a special envoy to the United States to meet with Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Among other things, Japan demanded that the U.S. release Japanese assets and stop U.S. naval expansion in the Pacific. Hull countered with a proposal for Japanese withdrawal from China and Indochina in exchange for the freeing of the frozen assets. The Japanese asked for two weeks to study the proposal, but on December 1 rejected it. On December 6, Franklin Roosevelt appealed directly to the Japanese emperor, Hirohito. On the morning of December 7, however, Japanese carrier-based planes attacked the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in a devastating, surprise attack. Nineteen ships, including five battleships, and about 150 U.S. planes were destroyed; more than 2,300 soldiers, sailors and civilians were killed. Only one fact favored the Americans that day: the U.S. aircraft carriers that would play such a critical role in the ensuing naval war in the Pacific were at sea and not anchored at Pearl Harbor. As the details of the Japanese raids upon Hawaii, Midway, Wake and Guam blared from American radios, incredulity turned to anger at what President Roosevelt called "a day that will live in infamy." On December 8, Congress declared a state of war with Japan; three days later Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The nation rapidly geared itself for mobilization of its people and its entire industrial capacity. On January 6, 1942, President Roosevelt announced staggering production goals: delivery in that year of 60,000 planes, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns and 18 million deadweight tons of merchant shipping. All the nation's activities -- farming, manufacturing, mining, trade, labor, investment, communications, even education and cultural undertakings -- were in some fashion brought under new and enlarged controls. The nation raised money in enormous sums and created great new industries for the mass production of ships, armored vehicles and planes. Major movements of population took place. Under a series of conscription acts, the United States brought the armed forces up to a total of 15,100,000. By the end of 1943, approximately 65 million men and women were in uniform or in war-related occupations. The attack on the United States disarmed the appeal of isolationists and permitted quick military mobilization. However, as a result of Pearl Harbor and the fear of Asian espionage, Americans also committed an act of intolerance: the internment of Japanese-Americans. In February 1942, nearly 120,000 Japanese-Americans residing in California were removed from their homes and interned behind barbed wire in 10 wretched temporary camps, later to be moved to "relocation centers" outside isolated Southwestern towns. Nearly 63 percent of these Japanese-Americans were Nisei -- American-born -- and, therefore, U.S. citizens. No evidence of espionage ever surfaced. In fact, Japanese-Americans from Hawaii and the continental United States fought with noble distinction and valor in two infantry units on the Italian front. Others served as interpreters and translators in the Pacific. In 1983 the U.S. government acknowledged the injustice of internment with limited payments to those Japanese-Americans of that era that were still living.

American Journey Chapter 27

The Cold War developed as differences about the shape of the postwar world created suspicion and distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first such conflict occurred over Poland. Moscow demanded a government subject to Soviet influence; Washington wanted a more independent, representative government following the Western model. The Yalta Conference of February 1945 had produced a wide-ranging agreement open to different interpretations. Among its provisions was the promise of "free and unfettered" elections in Poland. At his first meeting with Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov, Truman revealed his intention to stand firm on Polish self-determination, lecturing the Soviet diplomat about the need to carry out the Yalta accords. When Molotov protested, "I have never been talked to like that in my life," Truman retorted, "Carry out your agreements and you won't get talked to like that." Relations deteriorated from that point onward. During the closing months of World War II, Soviet military forces occupied all of Central and Eastern Europe. Moscow used its military power to support the efforts of the communist parties in Eastern Europe and crush the democratic parties. Communist parties beholden to Moscow quickly expanded their power and influence in all countries of the region, culminating in the coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia in 1948. Public statements defined the beginning of the Cold War. In 1946 Stalin declared that international peace was impossible "under the present capitalist development of the world economy." Winston Churchill, wartime prime minister of Great Britain, delivered a dramatic speech in Fulton, Missouri, with Truman sitting on the platform during the address. "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic," Churchill said, "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent." Britain and the United States, he declared, had to work together to counter the Soviet threat.

=**Jerme Kirk, Hillview Elementary School**=

Armed with information gleaned from newly opened archives, popular historian Michael Beschloss has penned a fascinating look at how Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived at, and Harry Truman instituted a plan for the reconstruction of postwar Germany. He shows how Roosevelt evolved from embracing the Morgenthau Plan, which called for the reduction of Germany to a pastoral country devoid of industry, to accepting British prime minister Winston Churchill's desire for a revived but divided Germany. He also provides fascinating insight into Roosevelt's style, depicting the ever-astute president playing members of his cabinet against one another as they presented various visions of a post-Hitler Germany. Beschloss recounts the conferences of the Big Three -- Roosevelt, Churchill, and Soviet premier Josef Stalin -- revealing how these leaders used the German question in their maneuvering for power in the postwar world. He also shows that after FDR's death, Truman assumed the presidency with little knowledge of the issue, because FDR had kept him at arm's length through the great deliberations. Nevertheless, Truman was able to successfully assert his authority at the Potsdam Conference because he was the only world leader whose nation possessed an atomic bomb. Beschloss has given us a work that illuminates this amazing period of history. He shows how FDR and Truman made it possible for Germany to raise from the ashes and become a peaceful and democratic country. Beschloss provides an engaging, if not revelatory, narrative of key events leading up to the conferences at Yalta (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) and Potsdam (Truman, Churchill, Stalin) and the Allies' decisions about how to prevent future aggression by post-WWII Germany. In his preface, Beschloss makes much of the fact that this study draws on newly released documents from the former Soviet Union, the FBI and private archives. But Beschloss has unearthed nothing to change accepted views of how FDR developed and then began to implement his vision for postwar Germany. The tales Beschloss gathers here are no different from those already told in such books as Eric Larrabee's //Commander-in-Chief//: //Franklin// //Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants and Their War// (1987) and Henry Morgenthau III's //Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History// (1991). With reference to the latter volume, one of Beschloss's major subplots traces Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr.'s efforts to interest FDR in a draconian, retributive plan (the "Morgenthau Plan") to destroy what little might remain of Germany's infrastructure after the war. Wisely, FDR demurred. Although breaking no new ground, this book by noted presidential historian Beschloss (who has published a trilogy on Lyndon Johnson's White House tapes) will fill the bill for those who need a readable account of how American officials and their Allied counterparts came to draw the map of postwar Europe.