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Ww2 Failure

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The armed conflicts in which the United States has been involved since 1945 have not been “total wars.” World War II was a “total war” in that it involved most of the civilized world and mandated an all-out effort from the citizens of this country. Commodities were rationed, communities formed drives to gather important materials for the war effort. People enlisted to fight the common threat. Today’s “wars” are not “total” wars in that there is no community effort and the battles are fought by volunteers that represent a small part of the American demography; notably poor people seeking opportunities in the armed forces. WWII was the last Great War in which the entire country participated.

World War II: A “Total War” World War II (1939-1945) …show more content…

The League of Nations had no military muscle of its own, hence one of the reasons of its failure. Created at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I, the League’s Covenant was embedded in the text of the Versailles Treaty at the insistence of Woodrow Wilson. But when the U.S. Senate proposed reservations to the Covenant, to protect U.S. sovereignty and freedom of action, the president rejected them all. The Senate then rejected the treaty, and the United States never joined the League. When the United States refused to join, it took much of the sting out of the League’s dictates and left enforcement to war-weary Britain and France. The Depression was world-wide and it left nations working to accumulate land and power while clinging to whatever wealth they could garner for themselves. There were deemed to be more pressing problems to individual nations than world peace. (Greenfield History Site, …show more content…

Most everything was rationed during the war years. Families were issued government stamps that could be traded for their allotment of commodities from meat, sugar, fat, butter, vegetables and fruit to gas, tires, clothing and fuel oil. Communities organized scrap metal drives to provide raw materials for war munitions. Women worked in factories as welders, electricians and riveters for the War Department. Nationalism and paranoia caused the government to strip Japanese Americans of their rights and incarcerate them in camps. Radio offered the most immediate news from the battlefields and entertainment media served not only to offer respite from the stress of war, it served as a media for propaganda to demonize the country’s foes. Radio and movies were developing technology at the time and the government realized the power of these media to disseminate propaganda on a massive scale. The Academy Award for best documentary of 1942 belonged to Frank Capra for his U.S. military commissioned work “Why We Fight.” (Hastings, 2012; Gilbert

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