The Second World War, c. 1938–1945

This is Unit Twelve, part two, on Double V, the war at home for minorities, and the war in Europe. Part one closed with Executive Order eighty-eight oh two, real and limited, and pointed to Double V. Carry that campaign's demand through this part: two victories at once, one abroad and one at home. Watch the war against fascism in Europe beside the treatment of Black, Native, Latino and Japanese Americans at home. And here the course opens the legal arc of the civil rights struggle, a decade and more before the anchor does. By the end you will be able to explain Double V, and why the course begins the legal arc before Brown. To describe the wartime experience of Native American, Latino and Mexican Americans. To explain internment, and why the record does not support the disloyalty reading. To explain the Europe First strategy and the course of the war in Europe. And to state the Holocaust's numbers with care.

Three entries: a newspaper's campaign, a new organisation's sit-ins, and where this course begins the legal arc.

Double V.

USH2 1674 Double V

In nineteen forty-two the Pittsburgh Courier, then the largest African American newspaper, began the Double V campaign, demanding two victories at once: over Nazism and fascism abroad and over racial inequality at home, as the Yawp puts it. Unit eleven showed the New Deal's exclusions. Double V turned the war's own language against them.

CORE.

USH2 1675 CORE

James Farmer founded the Congress of Racial Equality in nineteen forty-two, using sit-ins to desegregate public places in Washington and elsewhere, protesters sitting peacefully where they were refused service, their contribution, the anchor says, to the war effort. The Yawp credits CORE with pioneering nonviolent direct action. It returns in unit fourteen's freedom rides.

Where the legal arc begins.

USH2 1676 Where the Legal Arc Begins

The anchor begins its account of the civil rights movement with Brown v. Board of Education in nineteen fifty-four; this course begins the legal arc here, because the anchor's own record shows the work under way before and during the war. In nineteen forty Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP formally organised its Legal Defense and Education Fund. That year he won Chambers v. Florida, ruling that confessions extracted by violence and torture could not be used in court, and in nineteen forty-three he argued for Black parents protesting school segregation in Hillburn, New York. The course teaches two arcs: the legal arc opens here, aimed at Plessy's separate-but-equal rule, and the mass arc of boycotts and marches opens in unit thirteen.

Two entries on a second migration north, and the violence that met it.

A second migration.

USH2 1677 The Second Great Migration

Between nineteen forty and nineteen fifty some one and a half million Black southerners left the Jim Crow South for the North, the Yawp records, the largest number of any decade since the Great Migration of unit four began, and in its words an indirect protest against racism and violence.

The riots of nineteen forty-three.

USH2 1678 The Riots of 1943

In nineteen forty-three riots broke out in Mobile, Beaumont, Harlem and Detroit, as White residents met new Black neighbours and co-workers with sometimes deadly violence; in Detroit, the bloodiest, twenty-five Black and nine white Americans died, the Yawp records. Unit eight's Red Summer followed the first migration; these riots followed the second.

Four entries on Native American and Latino service, Mexican labour recruited, and violence in Los Angeles.

The code talkers.

USH2 1679 Code Talkers

Native American Marines served as code talkers in the Pacific, using their languages at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu and Iwo Jima, speakers from fourteen tribes, the Yawp notes, though the Navajo are the best known. The anchor counts forty-four thousand Native Americans in service; the Yawp gives over twenty thousand.

Latinos in uniform.

USH2 1680 Latinos in Uniform

Over half a million Latinos served in the Second World War, among them three hundred fifty thousand Mexican Americans and fifty thousand Puerto Ricans, the Yawp records, not formally segregated in the military yet often denied the full benefits of citizenship outside it. Veterans, the Yawp adds, later used that service to claim full citizenship.

The bracero programme.

USH2 1681 The Bracero Program

On August fourth, nineteen forty-two, the United States and Mexico began the bracero programme, bringing Mexican workers to American farms to meet wartime labour needs, five million contracts across twenty-four states, the Yawp counts, with work on railroads as well. Unit ten showed Mexicans pushed out to cut relief rolls; a decade later they were recruited.

Violence in Los Angeles.

USH2 1682 The Zoot Suit Riots

In Los Angeles in the summer of nineteen forty-three, Anglo soldiers and sailors attacked young Mexican Americans, the Yawp records, in the Zoot Suit Riots, named for suits whose generous cut broke wartime limits on cloth, the anchor notes. Critics branded them un-American and called Mexican American men unwilling to serve, the anchor says, though hundreds of thousands did.

Two entries on the order of February nineteen forty-two, and the internment that followed.

The order of February nineteen forty-two.

USH2 1683 Executive Order Ninety Sixty-Six

On February nineteenth, nineteen forty-two, Roosevelt signed Executive Order ninety sixty-six, authorising military commanders to exclude civilians from military areas, exclusion zones that ultimately covered the whole West Coast, the Yawp records. The order named no ethnic group, the National Archives notes, yet it fell on Japanese Americans, immigrants and citizens alike.

Internment.

USH2 1684 Internment

Under the order about one hundred twenty thousand people of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes and held in camps, and sixty-six percent of them had been born in the United States, the anchor records, calling it the culmination of racist assumptions unleashed by Pearl Harbor. The Yawp adds that those detained lost their homes and their jobs. Two facts belong together. Two-thirds of those held were American citizens, and nearly thirty-three thousand Japanese Americans wore the nation's uniform, the anchor says; the Yawp gives thirty thousand. The four hundred forty-second Regimental Combat Team finished the war the most decorated unit in American military history. The record does not support the reading of internment as a response to proven disloyalty.

Four entries on why the United States fought Germany first, and on the war in North Africa, Italy and the Soviet Union.

Why America fought Germany first.

USH2 1685 Europe First

Although Japan attacked the United States, Roosevelt had long been concerned for Britain, and he saw Germany as the greater threat to freedom. So the United States adopted a Europe First strategy: most of its resources would go to defeating Germany, and then the nation would turn to Japan, while forces in the Pacific fought with what they could assemble to blunt the Japanese advance. The anchor says Roosevelt leaned toward this even before America entered the war. The course gives the anchor's answer as the anchor's reasoning. The Yawp adds a fact that bears on it: the Soviet Union broke Hitler's army, and roughly eighty percent of all German casualties came on the Eastern Front.

North Africa.

USH2 1686 North Africa

American forces landed in North Africa in nineteen forty-two, joining the British against the Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel, securing the southern Mediterranean and keeping Egypt and the Suez Canal in British hands. The anchor notes the campaign drew no German troops from the Soviet front, where Stalingrad and Leningrad still raged.

Casablanca, and Italy.

USH2 1687 Casablanca and Italy

At Casablanca in January nineteen forty-three Churchill persuaded Roosevelt to invade Sicily before France, and Roosevelt announced that the Allies would accept only unconditional surrender, a demand meant, the anchor says, to assure the Soviet Union that its allies would make no separate peace. In Italy, the Yawp says, Mussolini's government turned on him and made peace.

Stalingrad.

USH2 1688 Stalingrad

From August nineteen forty-two to February nineteen forty-three the Soviet army fought the Germans at Stalingrad, until the surrounded German Sixth Army surrendered, a battle many regard, the anchor says, as the war's turning point in Europe. Germany suffered eight hundred fifty thousand casualties there, the Yawp records, and twenty-five million Soviet soldiers and civilians died in the war.

Two entries on the second front: the landings in Normandy, and Germany's last offensive in the west.

The invasion of France.

USH2 1689 D-Day

At Tehran in November nineteen forty-three Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin fixed the plan for a cross-channel invasion. On June sixth, nineteen forty-four, Allied forces landed on the Normandy coast, opening the second front against Germany, wading ashore under fire into barbed wire and land mines. The Yawp calls D-Day the largest amphibious assault in history, and the anchor says well over a million troops followed. Digital History observes that about as many Americans died on D-Day as died on September eleventh, two thousand one. The Yawp records that Eisenhower was uncertain enough to write two speeches the night before, one for victory and one for failure. The landings held, and Paris was liberated about two months later.

Germany's last offensive.

USH2 1690 The Battle of the Bulge

In December nineteen forty-four Germany launched a last offensive in the west, the Battle of the Bulge, which raged until the end of January, with some ninety thousand Americans killed, wounded or missing, the anchor's count of total casualties. The offensive failed to drive the Allies back to the Channel, the Yawp says, but the delay cost them the winter.

One entry to close the part, and it asks for care with numbers.

The Holocaust.

USH2 1691 The Holocaust

The Holocaust, in the anchor's words Hitler's plan to kill the Jews of Europe, began as early as nineteen thirty-three with Dachau, first in a system of more than forty thousand camps for imprisonment, forced labour and extermination. The Yawp calls it the systematic murder of eleven million civilians, including six million Jews. The numbers must be stated with care. Six million of the dead were Jews, murdered because they were Jews; the figure of some eleven million counts other victims too, among them Roma, gay men and lesbians, and political prisoners. An account that gives only eleven million erases whom the Holocaust set out to destroy. The Yawp says knowledge of the full extent came slowly to Americans.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain Double V, victory abroad and at home, and why the legal arc begins with Marshall's Legal Defense Fund in nineteen forty rather than with Brown in nineteen fifty-four. You can describe the war for Native American and Latino Americans: code talkers, half a million Latino servicemen, braceros recruited a decade after repatriation, and the Zoot Suit Riots. You can explain internment: a hundred and twenty thousand held, two-thirds of them citizens, while a Japanese American regiment became the most decorated in the nation's history. You can explain Europe First and trace the war in Europe, from North Africa and Stalingrad to Normandy and the Bulge. And you can state the Holocaust's numbers with care: six million Jews murdered because they were Jews, among some eleven million dead.