-
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan, anti-Japanese sentiments became pervasive in the U.S., and on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized removing Japanese-Americans living in “exclusion zones” from their homes and relocating them to internment camps at the discretion of military commanders. Executive Order 9066 affected over 110,000 Japanese, 70,000 of which were American citizens.
-
Operation Overlord, more commonly known as Dooms Day, began on June 6, 1944, and was the largest amphibious assault in history. It was a part of the American, British, and Canadian invasion of France to liberate it and eventually all of Western Europe from Nazi occupation. The Allied forces landed at Normandy, France, and engaged the enemy, pushing through France and liberating Paris two months later.
-
Agreed upon in August 1944, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt founded the United Nations, a global organization dedicated to maintaining worldwide peace. It would have a Security Council, a General Assembly, and an International Court of Justice. On June 26, 1945, fifty nations signed the UN charter.
-
The U.S. government launched the Manhattan Project, a program to develop an atomic weapon of mass destruction. Its scientists successfully exploded the world’s first nuclear device, Trinity, in New Mexico in July 1945. The U.S. government decided to use two other atomic bombs named Fat Man and Little Boy on the Japanese industrial cities of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. There were about 180,000 civilian casualties. The Japanese surrendered and WW2 was ended.
-
On Feb 22, 1946, George Kennan, the American substitute ambassador to the Soviet Union, sent from Moscow a "secret" 8,000-word telegram recommending a policy of containment in relation to the Soviet Union due to their dangerous Russian nationalism and plans to promote communism.
-
The Cold War was a political and ideological struggle between capitalist and communist superpowers after WW2. By 1947, the USSR had cut Europe in half with an Iron Curtain separating the communist and capitalist countries. A policy of containment was adopted towards the USSR that included aggressive, yet nonmilitary measures (the USSR's Berlin Blockade, the Allied Berlin Airlift, the formation of NATO, and the Soviet Warsaw Pact). The Cold War lasted until the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.
-
In 1950, Stalin's communist regime endorsed North Korean politician, Him Il Sung's, plan to take South Korea by force, and its capital, Seoul, was quickly captured. U.N. and American forces then joined the war on South Korea's behalf. No clear winner emerged, so when the USSR suggested a cease-fire to the UN, it was quickly accepted, resulting in the division of South Korea between a communist area and a capitalist section.
-
On February 9, 1950, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed to have a list of 205 names of communist party members who were shaping US policy. He had no such list, but his claim served to feed the "red scare" or fervor of anti-communist sentiment in the US. The fear and suspicion it represented became known as McCarthyism.