1930s-1940s Timeline

Chronological outlines of subjects relating to the Great Depression of the 1930s, the New Deal, and World War II. If you’ve read the previously assigned textbook chapters on these subjects, you will have a much easier time. If you haven’t read the Yawp chapters, this will probably be much harder. The actual homework for Week 10 is the section on 1940-1945, which includes a section titled “The Last Day of the War.”

Bolded items are not always more important than the rest, but represent major turns specific to New Deal history, or the creation of institutions of the post-World War II United States and the new world order that to a large extent are still with us today.

* Part I *
Great Depression & New Deal Era
1929-1940

1929

People begin to wonder: Are the good times still rolling?

October: Stock market crash in New York. Over the next three years, the stock market rallies repeatedly and plunges madly after every rally. Dow Jones index reaches 1/4 of pre-crash level in 1931 and 1/10 (!) by the summer of 1932.

1930-1932

Starting in the world’s largest and most advanced industrial economy, the Great Depression sets off financial crises, recessions and depressions around the world, possibly the most severe of all in Germany.

Unemployment statistics in the US and Germany show at times that as many as 25% of the persons included in the “labor force” statistic are without employment (or, in almost all cases, income).

The Dust Bowl reaches dramatic levels in 1931. Major dust-bowl activity continues through 1936, driving hundreds of thousands of Midwestern farm families into bankruptcy and away from their lands.

  • This is the time of Hoovervilles. Bankruptcies. “Forgotten men” wandering the land, looking for work. Protests against evictions. Rent strikes. A spiral of layoffs, reduced demand, more layoffs, more reduced demand, more bankruptcies, increasing runs on banks, hundreds then thousands of bank failures, ever-lower wages, more job losses, ever lower membership in labor organizations, greater poverty, more lost homes and evictions, more and more homeless people.

1931

Unable to handle global financial demand, Britain is forced to suspend convertibility to gold for the pound sterling, for the first time since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1500s. This a) demonstrates the severity of the crisis on a global scale, b) signals the coming end of British global hegemony in finance, trade, insurance, and imperialism (and the beginning of the end of the territorial British Empire), and c) is a necessary and rational response to the crisis (according to Levy and most historians and economists), as maintaining a gold standard was deflationary for prices and the economy as whole. The United States will follow with a suspension of the gold standard at the beginning of the New Deal in 1933.

Sticking to traditional or “classical” economic understanding, the United States and many other nation-states respond to the Great Depression with more protectionist policies against foreign trade, such as the steep U.S. tariff increase of 1930 (Smoot-Hawley Act). States pursue fiscal austerity at home and many at first react not by suspending the gold standard but by adopting it (until the U.S. suspends it).

1932

At first mostly unorganized, labor actions and strikes begin to increase, and will reach a major peak in 1934.

  • Examples: Spontaneous strikes against layoffs and wage cuts. Mobilizations of the unemployed, like those led by A.J. Muste (covered in Piven and Cloward, ch. 2). Many wildcat strikes, meaning they are without union approval or at non-union workplaces. Sympathy strikes of workers in other industries. Labor actions are usually met with repression and often violence from company security, municipal police, states and national guards, and in some cases, U.S. federal military forces.

Year of four elections in Germany raises possibility that the National Socialists will come to power democratically. In May, they become largest party in parliament (the Reichstag).

July – “Bonus Army” rally of veterans in Washington DC is broken up by the U.S. military, under command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

November – Promising to end Prohibition and to pursue a strong response to the Depression, progressive New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) wins the U.S. presidential election as the nominee of the Democratic Party in a landslide against Republican President Herbert Hoover.

In Germany, the National Socialist vote declines in a second parliamentary election of 1932, but they remain the largest party in the Reichstag and negotiations on allowing them to form a government begin.

Nov 1932 to 4 March 1933: Presidential Transition Period

Height of the financial crisis and bank runs in the United States. Attempted assassination of Roosevelt during a trip to Miami.

A peak of 4,000 bank failures in this four-month period finally forces a one-week “bank holiday,” starting immediately after FDR’s inauguration on 4 March.

31 January – Adolf Hitler is appointed German Chancellor and immediately dissolves Reichstag (parliament) and calls for new elections. On Feb 27, the week before the elections, the Reichstag (the parliament building) goes up in flames. Over the next 18 months, the National Socialist-German Workers Party (NS-DAP, a.k.a. Nazis) will effect a total seizure of power over all institutions of state and society, with Adolf Hitler as the chancellor of the government, president of the state, and Leader (Führer) of the people.

1933

Emergency measures to deal with financial crisis and end the bank runs:

  • One-week bank holiday to start Roosevelt’s term (actually determined by Federal Reserve Bank on the Saturday before the inauguration).
  • End of gold convertibility for United States dollar for consumers, effectively a suspension of the gold standard (first time since establishment of gold standard in 1867).
  • Passage of Federal Deposit Insurance (FDIC) successfully ends bank runs by summer of 1933.
  • First in a series of Glass-Steagall banking acts puts limits and regulations on banking practices. Banks that take deposits (i.e., are covered by FDIC) and provide consumer loans (e.g. home mortgages) and small-business loans are not allowed to engage in speculative financial activity. Insurance companies are also barred from high-risk speculation.
  • Securities Act establishes Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate and police the financial sector and Wall Street firms. The first SEC director is Joseph Kennedy.
  • The congressional Pecora Commission investigates causes and financial malpractices that led to the crash.

March to June – “The Hundred Days.” First major wave of New Deal legislation, dubbed the “alphabet soup.” Examples:

  • Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) builds dams, brings electrification to large areas around Tennessee. (This is the biggest of many large dam and other infrastructure projects around the country.)
  • National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) creates NRA, National Recovery Administration, an agency that is supposed to coordinate employers, work-forces, wages and prices in an attempt at planning the economy. (This will be struck down by the Supreme Court repeatedly starting in 1935.)
  • Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) under Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace provides subsidies to farm owners and takes measures to regulate supply so as to raise prices for farmers (while relief will be provided to help people afford food). Programs providing loans to help with farm debt are also passed.
  • Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) opens voluntary camps for unemployed and homeless men where they receive food and wages in exchange for work on land and conservation and preservation projects. Majority of wages must be sent to the mens’ families or placed in savings accounts for use after the camp stay. (Eleanor Roosevelt will successfully lobby to open up a small camp for women.)
  • Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) provides relief and some jobs for the most desperate. (This is a small-scale version of the later WPA program, see 1935.)
  • Homeowners Loan Act (HOLA) provides financial rescue for selected owners who are behind on their mortgages.
  • Later, starting in 1934, the FHA (Federal Housing Authority) will engage in public housing construction and also insure mortgage lending for neighborhoods considered “low risk” (this excludes predominantly black neighborhoods and originates the official redlining of neighborhoods).

Eleanor Roosevelt speaks to the “Second Bonus Army.”

1933-1934

The success of the “Hundred Days” legislation and the promise of the New Deal reinforces worker solidarity and militancy — even as workers push for the New Deal to go further.

Height of wildcat workers’ movements in the United States.

In the spring of 1934, illegal occupations of workplaces by striking or unemployed workers and long general strikes (joined by other local workers, in solidarity with the strikers) are waged in

  • Minneapolis (starting with teamsters);
  • Toledo, Ohio (in solidarity with strikers at Autolite, a successful strike led by A. J. Muste);
  • at ports along the West Coast, centered on San Francisco (starting with longshoremen there);
  • and at textile factories throughout states in the South and Northeast, by mostly female workers.

The first three end in victories, and all of these actions are considered major crises by members of the ownership classes.

Exposure of the “Business Plot” — Smedley Butler goes public about attempt by Wall Street figures to recruit him as a potential fascist leader of the United States, then publishes War Is A Racket (1935).

  • The existence of the plot is given credibility in a Congressional investigation (Dickstein report). They agree mid-level Wall Street figures proposed the plot to Butler, but cannot confirm if and which high-level financiers they were representing.

November 1934 – FDR’s Democrats achieve stunning gains in mid-term elections, increasing majority in House of Representatives by 80 seats, unprecedented for an incumbent administration (until then or ever since).

Economist Simon Kuznets publishes his study of U.S. National Income, 1929-1932, inventing concept of Gross National Product (GNP, later known as Gross Domestic Product or GDP).

1935

Beginning in June — “The Second Hundred Days.”
Despite huge gains for the Democrats in the midterm elections to Congress in 1934, plans for a second wave of the New Deal legislative program are delayed for several months by political maneuvers. FDR finally forces Congress to remain in session during the summer of 1935, and to pass into law a new set of far more thoroughgoing New Deal measures, including:

  • Wagner Act. Federal government recognition of collective bargaining rights for labor. The establishment of a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), enshrining federal arbitration of labor disputes. For the first time ever under federal law, it is legal for unions to organize and negotiate with management; it is possible that government organs will rule in their favor during disputes; and the government may take measures to protect unions from anti-union practices and to enforce rulings in their favor.
  • Works Progress Administration (WPA). A massive set of new federal programs that place those needing work in government jobs, including in social services and culture. WPA will employ a peak of 10 million people before it is wrapped up in 1943 (when the war economy reaches beyond full employment).
  • Social Security Act establishes a federal pension system and also the first federal unemployment insurance program. The Social Security system is designed by Frances Perkins, secretary of labor throughout the Roosevelt presidency and the first female member of any U.S. cabinet. (She was a labor and progressive movement activist for many years and was also appointed to the labor secretary post in New York State under Governor Roosevelt.) Today Social Security remains as the largest U.S. federal program, and is the biggest and most obvious surviving legacy of all New Deal legislation.

July – Supreme Court for the first time strikes down NIRA/NRA as an unconstitutional meddling in private business.

September – Louisiana Governor Huey Long is assassinated in Baton Rouge.

November – The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), a new umbrella organization for labor unions, is founded in Pittsburgh under the leadership of John Lewis, the chairman of the United Mine Workers (UMW). In the preceding years UMW was highly successful in growing the membership and winning several major actions. A number of unions depart from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and join the CIO.

  • Using general and open rather than “craft” models of recruitment and organization, over the next years the CIO will drive the most successful trade-union organizing campaigns and strikes for employer recognition of contracts in United States history. US membership in labor unions under contract with employers will rise from the single digits to reach a completely unprecedented high point of of 35-40% of the U.S. labor force organized by the 1950s. In 1954 the CIO will merge with the AFL.

December – Eleanor Roosevelt begins publishing her syndicated column “My Day,” which appears six days a week every week until 1961. At least once every year, her column calls on her husband to support an anti-lynching bill that has been stuck in Congress for many years. (The anti-lynching bill is passed in 2021.)

1936

Supreme Court continues to strike down and limit New Deal programs.

July – The Spanish Civil War begins as right-wing military officers revolt against the elected leftist government of Spain. Thousands of Americans volunteer for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight for the Spanish republic against the rebellion, which is backed by fascist Germany and Italy. (See the Fascism/Axis timeline.)

November – Decrying the “economic royalists” and saying he “welcomes their hatred,” FDR is re-elected in the biggest landslide in US presidential history (against Alf Landon, Kansas-R) with 64% of the popular vote, losing only in Vermont and Maine.

1937

Starting in December 1936, a 44-day strike and factory occupation by workers in Flint, Michigan and other locations forces General Motors, the largest industrial employer in the United States, to accept a collective contract with the United Auto Workers (UAW).

To avoid being shut down by their own workers, “Big Steel” (U.S. Steel) and many other major industrial and corporate employers soon follow GM’s cue and accept collectively-bargained trade union contracts.

Most of the biggest corporations join the emerging “Great Truces” between organized labor and employers, and between big capital and the New Deal administration.

  • Ford, the group of smaller steel companies known as “Little Steel,” and others will continue to resist the tide until 1941 and U.S. entry into World War II.

February 1937 – FDR introduces a plan to increase the number of Supreme Court justices to fifteen. (Under Article III of the U.S. Constitution of 1787, there is no limit on the number of justices that Congress may set; until the 1860s, it varied from as few as 6 to as many as 10 justices.)

May – A severe recession begins, accompanied by a temporary return to fiscal austerity by the government. Unemployment levels return nearly to early-1930s levels until the end of the recession in summer of 1938.

Memorial Day, May 30th 1937 – Police fire on hundreds of striking Republic Steel workers in Chicago, killing ten. (Republic is one of the companies in the “Little Steel” cartel.)

September 1937 – With its “Kwantung Army” having occupied Manchuria since 1931, Imperial Japan launches a massive invasion along the entire coast of China, north to south. Now, at the latest, the global conflict that will be called World War II has begun.

December 1937 – Capture of Nanking (Nanjing), the capital of the Republic of China; massacre of an estimated 300,000 civilians by Japanese troops.

1938

Height of “Court Packing” controversy – press attacks Roosevelt as a tyrant in the making.

November – Midterm elections; Democrats lose 81 seats in the House. Any further New Deal programs will depend entirely on the votes in Congress of the Dixiecrats (Southern Democrats) or of liberal Republicans.

1938-1939 – New Deal Stalls, turns to “Poverty Round”

With the Dixiecrats ascendant and blocking further extension of major New Deal programs, FDR turns to liberal Republicans for passage of legislation to address extreme poverty, including the first federal Minimum Wage law (25 cents/hour) and the means-tested Food Stamps program. The proposed massive Keynesian demand stimulation planned by adviser Harry Hopkins and Federal Reserve president Mariner Eccles is deep-sixed.

Establishment of “Fannie Mae,” the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), to run the secondary mortgage market (allowing banks to easily sell and buy mortgages among themselves). This is meant to create greater liquidity and stability on the market and thus encourage mortgage lending. (Fannie Mae has remained a key institution in organizing the mortgage market ever since the New Deal. It was converted into a private shareholder corporation in 1968 and was reorganized after bankruptcy in the 2008 financial crash.)

German Reich under NS-DAP forces a series of crises in Europe. The Reich remilitarizes fully; achieves “unification” with Austria in Feb. 1938; demands and is allowed to annex the German-majority lands in Czechoslovakia with the agreement of Britain and France in the Munich Accords of Sep. 1938; unleashes a nationwide pogrom against German Jews in Nov. 1938 and completely strips Jews of all remaining rights and properties; occupies the rest of Czechoslovakia in Feb. 1939; and threatens war with Poland.

Summer 1939 – Organized by Robert Moses, the master-planning czar of New York City and New York State, the World’s Fair opens in New York City at the new Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Among the many optimistic visions of the democratic and prosperous future presented at the fair, major corporations claim a return to consumer society is imminent. Families will live in single-family homes in the soon-to-be-built new suburbs of the United States, with highways and televisions for all. (The German and Soviet pavilions close at the beginning of the war in Europe in September. The other European national pavilions convert to lobbying visitors to support the war effort against Germany. Most of the visitors are there for the rides and amusements, however.)

May to September — A relatively small-scale war between Japan and USSR over Mongolia ends in a clear Soviet victory. (This defeat will be remembered by the Japanese military when they decide to attack the United States instead of the Soviets in 1941.)

August to September – Following the shocking declaration that Stalin and Hitler have agreed on a “Non-Aggression Pact,” Germany invades Poland, prompting declarations of war on the Third Reich by Britain and France. This initiates a full-scale Second World War in Europe. Engaging in “Lightning War” (Blitzkrieg), the German armed forces (known as the Wehrmacht) easily overwhelm all Polish defenses and occupy 2/3 of Polish territory.

October – In keeping with a secret annex to the Stalin-Hitler Pact, USSR occupies Eastern Poland (today Western Ukraine) as well as the three Baltic states.

December – Winter War between Finland and USSR.

1940

May-June — The German military, the Wehrmacht, defeats the French and British armies in France. (Most of the British escape across the English Channel.) Germany occupies the northern 2/3 of France, as well many other countries in Western Europe: Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark, and Norway. A French collaboration regime is established in southern France, with its capital at Vichy, headed by Marshall Petain, the former supreme commander of French forces at the end of World War I in 1918.

Just before the French surrender Italy enters the war, so as to occupy a relatively small part of France.

Britain is the last remaining major power at war with Third Reich. European exile governments move to London. The German bombing campaign of British cities and the air war between the Luftwaffe (German air force) and the Royal Air Force (RAF), known as the “Battle of Britain,” reaches a high point in September 1940.

September 1940 — In the United States, the Draft Act mandates registration of all men of military age. The first men are drafted to fill the U.S. military up to a level of 200,000 soldiers in uniform by late 1941. (Mass conscription will begin only after December 1941.)

Administration initiates the Lend-Lease Program of military assistance to Britain, by executive order, and moves to impose sanctions against Japan, reducing Japan’s supply of oil, rubber and steel from U.S. companies.

November – Roosevelt becomes the first president to be elected to a third consecutive term, easily defeating the New York businessman Wendell Willkie.

  • Michigan is won narrowly by the Republicans after John Lewis endorses Willkie in protest of what he sees as Roosevelt’s march to war, stating among his reasons that war will mean an end to the progress achieved by labor.

* Part II *
The Turn to War
1940-1941

1940-1941 – Guns and Butter

The FDR administration gradually and then rapidly pursues a military build-up, against objections of various political factions (collectively termed “isolationists”) and with support of liberals and the left. (Among others, communists continue to support the “Popular Front,” urging all leftists to support Democrats and the New Deal.)

United States begins reporting Gross National Product (GNP, the later GDP) on a quarterly basis as the master statistic showing national economic health.

1941

January — FDR delivers “Four Freedoms Speech” to Congress, in a plea to legislate Lend-Lease.

February — Publication of Henry Luce’s “The American Century” article in LIFE magazine.

United States moves toward full employment. After 12 years, the Great Depression appears to be ending.

Hollywood starts cranking out military-positive movies with support from U.S. armed forces.

22 June — The Third Reich and its Axis allies in Eastern Europe launch an enormous surprise invasion of the Soviet Union. This also initiates the most murderous phase of the National Socialist “extermination” policy (the Holocaust of Jews and other “unwanted” populations such as Romany and Sinti a.k.a. European “gypsies”). Estimates of Soviet military and civilian casualties on the Eastern Front over the next four years range from 23 million to 27 million people killed in hostilities, from direct war consequences such as disease and hunger, and from the German “extermination” policy. Estimates of deaths in the Holocaust range from 9 to 11 million captive civilians, about 6 million of them Jewish, the overwhelming majority of whom are taken in the occupied territories of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

August 1941 — United States, UK, and European exile governments in London issue the “London Declaration” of joint war aims, including a statement (reluctantly allowed by London) suggesting that victory in the war will bring an end to colonialism and enshrine the principle of national self-determination for all countries.

11 September – The largest office building in the world, the Pentagon, is opened as the new headquarters of the U.S. Department of War.

Following a Japanese invasion of French Indochina (Vietnam), a complete U.S. embargo of imperial Japan is enacted, cutting the empire’s war effort off from 90% of its oil supply and most of its rubber and steel, potentially crippling the Japanese war economy.

The Japanese high command considers different plans for response.

4-6 December – German invasion of USSR, until then irresistible, suffers its first major defeat in battle and is turned back from Moscow by a Red Army counterattack, commanded by General Zhukov, who becomes the Soviet supreme military commander for the rest of the war. Leningrad remains under siege until 1944.

7 December – Beginning with an aerial strike on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii that sinks four battleships and kills thousands of soldiers and civilians, within 24 hours imperial Japanese forces launch invasions throughout the eastern Pacific and Southeast Asia and are able to seize (successfully, within the next few months) many possessions and colonies of the United States and the British, Dutch and French empires (the U.S. colonies and territories of the Philippines, Guam, and various Pacific islands; Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore from the British; Indonesia and Papua from the Dutch; later British Burma and French Indochina, i.e. Vietnam).

8 December – United States declares war on Japan. Roosevelt speaks to Congress the famous words that “yesterday… was a day that will live in infamy.” (This is the last official declaration of war on another country by Congress as specified under the US constitution, ever since.)

11 December – Hitler issues declaration of war on the United States.

RUSSIAN WINTER OF 1941-1942

December 1941-Summer 1945
THE ALLIES vs THE AXIS

From December 1941 until the spring and summer of 1945, the Soviet Union, United States, and Great Britain (“The Big Three”), along with the Republic of China and the Free French exile army under Charles de Gaulle, act as the five leading powers within the global anti-Axis coalition. The alliance totals more than 50 nations and is colloquially known as the Allies. It includes Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, all other colonies of the British and European empires, most Latin American nations, governments-in-exile of occupied countries in Europe and Asia, and various partisan movements fighting Axis occupations on the ground.

The Allies adopt the name of “The United Nations.” After the war the five leading Allied nations named above will become the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

For most of this time, five major fronts constitute the most active and deadly theaters of war:

  • 1. The European Eastern Front, where the German Wehrmacht first seizes vast territories in the Soviet Union, besieges Leningrad and Moscow, and initiates most of its extermination policy — until the Red Army and the Soviet war industry begin to overwhelm the Germans numerically and force them to retreat through Eastern Europe, all the way to Berlin.
  • 2. China, occupied by Japanese forces. They are fought by the nationalist Republic of China under Chiang Kai-Chek, which receives major support from U.S. and Britain; and by the Communist guerilla forces under Mao Zedong, who receive some support from the U.S. and much more from the USSR. Chinese nationalists and communists adopt a temporary ceasefire in the long civil war with each other (1928-1949) for the purpose of fighting the Japanese.
  • 3. Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific region, from Indonesia to India, where the Japanese and a few allies fight against forces mustered by the British Empire (for the most part).
  • 4. The Mediterranean and North Africa, where British and American forces and their allies defeat Italian and German forces and force an Italian surrender by 1943.
  • 5. The Pacific, where the United States’ “island-hopping” war under the supreme command of General MacArthur destroys, in stages, the entirety of the imperial Japanese air forces and navy, moves ever closer to Japan proper, and finally, in late 1944 and early 1945, conducts a thorough campaign to bomb all major Japanese cities into dust and ashes.

    In addition:
  • 6. Partisan wars and resistance struggles against German occupations are waged behind German lines in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Greece, Poland, and elsewhere, and against Japanese occupations in Vietnam and elsewhere.
  • 7. National liberation movements against traditional colonial powers such as Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Japan become more active in demanding independence from their traditional colonizers while (mostly) fighting against the Axis in India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea, and elsewhere.
  • 8. Finally, starting in the summer of 1944, U.S. and British forces open a Western Front, invading and liberating France and fighting their way into Germany, where they meet with their Soviet fellow victors coming from the East in May 1945.

During this time, National Socialist Germany makes use of many millions of foreign forced laborers in German industries and farms, and constantly escalates its policy of “extermination” and genocide against Jews, Romany, political opponents, Communists, homosexuals, and other groups considered “unworthy.”

Among the Allies, in New York, Washington and London on the one side, and in Moscow on the other, various elites and not-so-elites advance proposals, debate, and plan the shape of a future postwar world.

The “Big Three” (FDR, Stalin and Churchill) meet repeatedly for war-planning conferences in 1943-1945.

The war also raises the hope (by the end a near-certainty) that it will be followed by the end of the European colonial-territorial empires and a global wave of decolonization and new nation-states. (Achieving territorial decolonization and independence will involve a number of further wars after 1945, however.)

The rest of this war timeline focuses mainly on US-related matters.

HOMEFRONT & TOTAL WAR

As with the other combatants, the entirety of United States society and economy is mobilized on a total-war, total-homefront, total-production basis. By the end of the war, manufacturing in the US will be outproducing all of the rest of the world combined, by far.

Up to 18 million American soldiers will be under arms, including 300,000 female auxiliaries in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). 2/3 of all U.S. forces will be devoted to winning the war in Europe.

At home, a similar number of civilians, mostly women, will be employed to replace the men serving in the military, working in every aspect of the war economy.

The war economy is centrally managed by the U.S. federal government in close collaboration with the leading corporations, and with the participation of the trade unions.

  • With economic growth at all-time highs, the corporations embrace a far more all-encompassing system of planning and regulation than the New Deal efforts they had until this point resisted in courts and through attacks in the press.

May 1942 – Vice-President Henry Wallace first delivers “The Century of the Common Man,” a speech meant as a response to the vision articulated by Henry Luce in “The American Century” in February 1941, foreseeing a world of international collaboration, world peace, and joint measures toward development.

June – In a decisive sea battle near Midway (almost the last island at the northern end of the Hawaii chain), the Japanese navy loses four aircraft carriers, the U.S. only one.

August — Starting at research centers in the borough of Manhattan as well as Chicago and elsewhere, the Manhattan Project, a topmost-secret but vast U.S. crash program led by physicists and military men, begins work toward the development of an atomic bomb. These activities branch out to many locations (including nuclear reactors and refineries at Oak Ridge, TN and Hanford, WA) before being consolidated at Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1943 to assemble and test the bomb.

August 1942 – All-India Congress Party led by Mohandas Gandhi launches “Quit India” movement, pledging support for Britain in the war but only if the British Empire agrees to leave India after the war is over. Britain imprisons Congress leaders for the rest of the war.

August 1942–February 1943 – Battle of Stalingrad.
The biggest, bloodiest modern infantry-armor-aerial engagement in all history, the most important turning point in World War II, ends with the destruction of two Wehrmacht Army Groups by the Soviet Red Army, and the surrender of more than 1 million surviving German soldiers.

November 1942 – United States offensive under command of Dwight D. Eisenhower captures the North African countries of Morocco and Algeria (French colonies under Vichy rule). The film Casablanca premieres in New York.

1943

Spring – Authorities of the German-led occupations in eastern Europe begin to clear all Jewish ghettoes and deport the remaining residents to death camps.

July – The final major offensive of the German Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union fails in a super-large-scale tank battle around the town of Kursk.

July – After forcing all Axis forces to retreat from North Africa, US and British forces land on the island of Sicily. They soon occupy southern Italy, and move northwards toward Rome. On the way they encounter stiff resistance, mostly from German forces.

September – Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy since 1922, is deposed in a palace coup. Italy surrenders to the Allies and declares war on Germany. German forces occupy northern Italy, where they are fought by a Communist-led insurgency. Mussolini escapes and is made the head of a German puppet republic in the north.

November – The “Big Three” issue the Moscow Declaration: the Axis powers in Europe must surrender completely and unconditionally, and allow full occupation of their territories by Allied militaries. Leading architects of war crimes will be prosecuted by international tribunals after the war.

1944

6 June, “D-Day” for “Operation Overlord” — Landing of U.S., British and Canadian/Australian forces in northern France, in the largest amphibious invasion in history, commanded by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Opens up a Western Front against the German Reich.

22 June, “Operation Bagration” — In the Soviet Union, the Red Army under Marshall Zhukov launches history’s largest military offensive against the German forces at points all along the Eastern Front. About 3/4 of the German military is still committed to the defense against the USSR. They are forced into a steady retreat.

At great cost, the complete defeat of the German military on all fronts will follow over the next 10 months, which become the bloodiest period of the war for all sides.

June — FDR signs G.I. Bill into law, guaranteeing funds for college education, housing and home loans, and unemployment insurance to servicemen after the war. (Female military members are considered auxiliaries and excluded from the benefits.)

German Reich starts striking London with the first long-range missiles, the V1 and later V2. (After the war the chief scientist of the program, Werner von Braun, will be given U.S. citizenship and eventually work for NASA and the Apollo program.)

July — International conference at the Bretton Woods resort town in New Hampshire plans the future financial order of the world: establishment of U.S. dollar as the international currency of trade, convertible to gold at the central-bank level. This cements U.S. financial hegemony. The countries represented at Bretton Woods also adopt GNP as the key statistic measuring the economic health of all nations, and agree to the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank as independent institutions of the United Nations, with both to be located in Washington, DC.

July — In back-room maneuvers at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Vice-President Henry Wallace is removed from the presidential ticket for the 1944 election, over FDR’s objections and despite having the support of the majority of delegates. Wallace is replaced by Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, who is considered a New Deal loyalist on domestic policy and a committed anti-Communist on foreign policy.

August — International conference at the Dumbarton Oaks mansion in Washington, DC formulates proposal for the official founding of a postwar United Nations.

Paris is liberated by U.S., UK and Free French forces.

October — German forces withdraw from Yugoslavia and Greece, where communist-led anti-fascist insurgencies control most of the territories.

November – FDR is reelected for a fourth term on the promise of a second “Bill of Rights” specifying economic rights for U.S. citizens such as jobs, housing, and health care. The FDR-Truman ticket receives 53% of the popular vote, defeating the Republican candidate, New York governor Thomas Dewey (who will run again in 1948 and lose narrowly to Truman).

December – As German forces withdraw from Greece, British forces invade Athens to expel Greek communist fighters and reimpose the British-backed Greek monarchy. (This is the original battle of the Greek Civil War, in which the U.S. will be involved after 1947 as the first open battle of the Cold War with the USSR.)

In late 1944 and 1945, Japan and Germany are both almost completely open to massive strategic bombing by U.S. and UK air forces, which reduce dozens of German and Japanese cities to rubble and ashes and kill many hundreds of thousands of civilians.

1945

27 January — In Poland, the Red Army reaches and liberates Auschwitz, the largest complex of the “KZ” system of concentration camps, labor camps, and death camps run by the Nazi SS and German war contractors. The full extent of the extermination policy and genocide is revealed to a stunned world public. This is now commemorated annually as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

February – The “Big Three” conference of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Black Sea resort town of Yalta determines a set of conditions for the partition and occupation of Axis powers, the redrawing of European borders, and other post-victory plans such as the timing of Soviet entry into the war against Japan.

April – Battle of Berlin.

FDR dies and is succeeded by Truman.

Hitler kills himself. On May 2, the Soviet flag is raised over the shell of the Reichstag building in Berlin.

8/9 May — Victory in Europe (VE Day). Unconditional surrender of the German Reich ends World War II in Europe on all fronts.

Germany is divided into four zones of occupation, controlled by the Soviet Union (the later East Germany) and the western allies of the U.S., Britain, and France (the later West Germany).

As the Soviets redraw the map of eastern Europe, the German territories of East Prussia are ceded to Poland and twelve million ethnic Germans are expelled from there, Czechoslovakia, and other eastern European countries.

July — Truman, Stalin and Churchill meet for conference at the old imperial palace in Potsdam, near Berlin.

In Britain, the Labour Party wins a landslide election on the promise of instituting a National Health Service. The now-unpopular Churchill is forced to leave Potsdam, where he is replaced by the new Labour Prime Minister, Clement Atlee.

16 July — Trinity. First atomic bomb is successfully detonated in test at Alamogordo, New Mexico. After receiving the news, Truman intimates to Stalin that the US has a new superweapon. (Stalin knows all about it.)

6 August – The United States drops the second atomic bomb to be developed, and the first to be used in war, on the Japanese port city of Hiroshima. Called “Little Boy” the detonation of the Uranium-235 bomb flattens the city center, killing more than 60,000 people immediately and tens of thousands over the following year. The aftereffects of the bomb have resulted in an estimated 150,000-200,000 premature deaths overall since then.

7-8 August — The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and launches an overwhelming offensive against Japanese forces in Manchuria and Mongolia. The Red Army executes successful amphibious landings in Korea and on Sakhalin Island, just to the north of Japan proper.

9 August — In light of the Soviet declaration of war and the threat of a Soviet invasion of Japan proper, the Japanese Supreme Council (the military junta that led the Empire during the war) meet to deliberate the proposal for an unconditional surrender offered weeks earlier by the United States. As they adjourn, the U.S. air force drops the third atomic bomb ever made, and the second to be used in war (“Fat Man,” a Plutonium bomb) on the city of Nagasaki. This results in a death toll similar to the attack on Hiroshima.

14 August — Japan accepts terms for unconditional surrender to United States exclusively. (This is celebrated as the end of the war and “VJ Day” in the United States, but this was not yet the last day of World War II.)

On the same day, Washington suddenly demands that the Soviet Union accept terms under which the Japanese colony of Korea is to be partitioned, with military occupations for the next four years to be led by the Soviets in the north and by U.S. forces in the south. Moscow accepts the deal. The partition will lead to the establishment of separate Korean republics in 1949, the northern one (DPRK) allied with the Soviets and the southern one (ROK) with the United States. This sets the scene for the Korean War. (The Korean War was fought from June 1950 to the summer of 1953; it was ended by truce, not a peace treaty, and thus technically never ended and continues today.)

2 September – On the aircraft carrier USS Missouri, off the coast of Japan, Admiral MacArthur watches as the Japanese foreign minister signs terms of unconditional surrender.

Guns fall silent in China, Vietnam, and throughout Southeast Asia and the Asian Pacific countries.

In the northern Vietnamese city of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, leader of the communist resistance to Japanese occupation, declares the independence of the Peoples’ Republic of Viet Nam (PRVN). The declaration begins by quoting the preamble of the American declaration of independence. American observers are present and salute at the raising of U.S. and PRVN flags. At the same time in southern Vietnam, British forces accept the Japanese surrender and soon release and rearm Japanese soldiers to help fight the Communist independence movement. (The U.S. shifts to supporting a French recolonization of Indochina, eventually leading to the future American war in Vietnam.)

* * * END OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR * * *

October – At Nuremberg, judges and prosecutors of the four powers occupying Germany (USSR, US, UK, Britain) convene the International Military Tribunal (IMT) to hold a trial of the National Socialist and German military leadership for major war crimes.

* Part III *
Selected Prehistory
1853-1928

1853 – Commodore Perry leads U.S. naval expedition to Japan. This sets off years of turmoil in Japanese society, ending with the Meiji Restoration (1868) that institutes modernization efforts.

1860 – U.S. Census finds population of 31.5 million in 33 states and 10 territories. About 80% of the population lived in rural areas, although categories of “rural” and “urban” were not yet compiled separately.

1865 – End of Civil War. Emancipation of 4 million enslaved people. Reconstruction efforts until 1877.

1860s-1890s – “Second industrial revolution.” United States becomes world’s leading industrial and agricultural producer.

1870s-1914 – Era of “Late Victorian” societies and the global imperialist competition among European powers, the U.S., and Japan.

European immigration to the United States reaches all-time highs. (Ellis Island opens: 1892)

1871 – Following a series of wars won by the Kingdom of Prussia, the German lands are united into a single empire under Kaiser Wilhelm, with a capital in Berlin. Germany becomes the new major power on the European continent. Unification of the Italian states into a single Kingdom of Italy is also completed.

1873  – Financial crash on Wall Street initiates “The Great Depression.” Years of labor upheaval follow.

1890 – Last “battle” of the “Indian Wars,” a massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Interior Department announces closing of the American internal frontier.

1890s – Height of the “Gilded Age.” Early period of Progressive campaigning (antitrust and electoral reforms).

1892 – Passage of Chinese Exclusion Act bans new immigration from China.

1893 – Columbian Exposition (World’s Fair) in Chicago, a coming-out party for the United States as the world’s leading economic power. Wall Street crashes; new “Great Depression.”

1896 – As the economy stabilizes, Republican McKinley defeats Democrat and Populist William Jennings Bryan for presidency.

1898 – U.S. goes to war against Spain and occupies its major colonies; annexes Kingdom of Hawaii.

1900-1920s – Common periodization of the “Progressive Era” and of U.S. “Banana Wars” in Latin America.

1901-1909 – Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (followed by William H. Taft until 1913).

1905 – T. Roosevelt brokers the peace after Japan’s shocking, rapid victory over Russian Empire in war.

1907 – Wall Street panic; deep but short recession until 1908; prompts calls for financial reform.

1908 – Introduction of Ford Model T, built on assembly line. (U.S. automotive revolution, 1908-1928.)

1911 – Triangle Shirtwaist fire in Greenwich Village; prompts passage of workplace reforms in New York.

1912  –  Woodrow Wilson becomes first Democrat originally from South to win presidency since Civil War.

1913 – Ratification of two constitutional amendments, to allow a federal income tax, and to mandate popular election of senators. Passage of the Federal Reserve Act establishes new U.S. central bank.

1914 – Great War begins in Europe; will power boom in American industry, leading to “Great Migration” northward from southern states of 1 million African Americans and 1 million white Southerners.

1915 – Birth of a Nation, 3-hour epic with KKK men as heroes, now seen as the first Hollywood blockbuster.

1916 – Wilson reelected on the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War.”

1917 – April: United States enters World War I. March and November: Russian revolutions.

1918 – Influenza epidemic, which may have begun at a U.S. infantry base in Kansas, leads to tens of millions of deaths worldwide; about 700,000 deaths from influenza in the United States.

11 November 1918 at 11:11 am: Armistice goes into effect on Western Front. The guns fall silent.

END OF THE GREAT WAR. BREAK-UP OF OTTOMAN, AUSTRIAN, RUSSIAN, AND GERMAN EMPIRES. YEARS OF CIVIL AND POST-IMPERIAL WARS FOLLOW.

1919 – Treaty of Versailles; establishes League of Nations. Many wars and upheavals in the territories of the fallen European empires. U.S. Senate fails to ratify Versailles Treaty.

1919-1921 — In the United States: Major economic crisis, strike wave, “Red Scare” and “Red Summer” of 1919; suppression of labor unrest, continuing arrests and deportations of radicals, lynchings of black people. May 1921: Tulsa race massacre.

1920 – U.S. Census finds resident population of 106 million, more than 1/2 living in areas defined as urban.

Amendments establish Prohibition and Women’s Suffrage.

Republican Harding runs for president promising “Return to Normalcy.” First commercial radio broadcasts announce the election results.

1921-1933 – Twelve years of Republican presidencies (Harding, Coolidge, Hoover).

1924 – Immigration Act imposes radical limits on entry to U.S. from most countries. End of the era of mass immigration.

1925 – Publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, set in the present and considered emblematic of the “Roaring Twenties.”

1928 – Hollywood releases the Jazz Singer, the first talkie, a movie with synchronized soundtrack. U.S. approaches 30 million cars (1908: about 50,000).

1929  –  People begin to wonder: are the Good Times still rolling?