How long was america involved in ww2

The United States would provide Great Britain with the supplies it needed to fight Germany, but would not insist upon being paid immediately.

When payment eventually did take place, the emphasis would not be on payment in dollars. The tensions and instability engendered by inter-allied war debts in the s and s had demonstrated that it was unreasonable to expect that virtually bankrupt European nations would be able to pay for every item they had purchased from the United States.

After many months of negotiation, the United States and Britain agreed, in Article VII of the Lend-Lease agreement they signed, that this consideration would primarily consist of joint action directed towards the creation of a liberalized international economic order in the postwar world.

The United Kingdom was not the only nation to strike such a deal with the United States. At a time when the majority of Americans opposed direct participation in the war, Lend-Lease represented a vital U. In particular, the resource-rich southeast Asian colonies of France and the Netherlands were suddenly open to control or occupation by outsiders. In late September this potential threat began to become a reality, when Japan sent troops into the northern French Indochina.

In the second half of the US became a vital base of support for Britain, and it grew greatly in importance as a factor in world affairs. The intention was to deter the Americans from entering the war, as they had in ; the signatories pledged mutual support if the US went to war against any one of them.

Roosevelt nevertheless moved cautiously; there would be a Presidential election in November , and as he was running for an unprecedented third term it could be an uphill fight. He pledged to keep the US out of direct involvement in the war.

Victory at the polls allowed the re-elected Roosevelt more freedom of action, but not a mandate to go to war. He did not want to fight Germany and Italy without wide backing. Instead he used his presidential powers to implement a decidedly one-sided neutrality.

Already in September he had provided 50 obsolete American destroyers to Britain. Secret staff talks were arranged in Washington early in between British and American military leaders. In July Marines were sent to Iceland, relieving a British garrison. In August Roosevelt and Churchill staged a spectacular summit aboard warships off Newfoundland; they issued the Atlantic charter, a joint declaration opposing acts of international aggression and openly condemning Hitler and Nazism.

The carnage and cost that comes with war no longer mattered, and neutrality, which was the preferred approach just two years earlier, ceased to be an option. Throughout the war, Pearl Harbor was frequently used in American propaganda. The nation had been attacked in its own territory, and someone had to pay.

Those who stood in the way were cast aside, and the United States prepared to exact its revenge. These promises unceremoniously devolved into fascism, allowing for the formation of one of the most brutal regimes in history: the Nazis. He cared solely about conquest and domination, and he was unconcerned about the cost.

His actions spoke of his view that human life and basic decency meant nothing. Clearly, the rise of such an evil across the pond was troubling to most Americans, and ignoring what was happening became a moral impossibility.

Then, in , France fell to the Nazis in a matter of weeks. The political collapse of such a powerful nation in such a short period of time shook the world and made everyone wake up to the severity of the threat posed by Hitler. As a result, public support for the war grew throughout and This idea that the United States was going to war in Europe to stop Hitler and fascism from spreading and threatening the American way of life was a powerful motivator and helped make the war a popular thing in the early s.

In addition, it pushed millions of Americans to volunteer for service. A deeply nationalist nation, United States society treated those who served as patriotic and honorable, and those who were fighting felt they were standing up to the evil spreading in Europe in defense of the democratic ideals that America embodied.

While World War II had its roots in the corrupt political ambitions of dictators, it was fought by regular people from all over the world.

In the United States alone, a little more than 16 million people served in the military, with 11 million serving in the army. These numbers are even more dramatic when we consider that the American military had less than , soldiers in The draft, also known as the Selective Service, helped swell the ranks, but volunteers, as previously mentioned, made up a large part of the American military and contributed significantly to their numbers.

The United States required such a massive military as it essentially had to fight two wars — one in Europe against Nazi Germany and to a lesser extent, Italy and another in the Pacific against Japan. Both enemies had enormous military and industrial capacity, so the US needed to match and exceed this force to even have a chance at winning.

And because the US was left free from bombings and other attempts to derail industrial production both Japan and Nazi Germany struggled in the later years of the war to keep their militaries supplied and replenished due to diminishing capacity at home , it was able to build a distinct advantage that ultimately allowed it to be successful.

However, as the US worked to match — in just a few short years — the production efforts Germany and Japan had spent the previous decade developing, there was little delay to the fighting. By , the US was in full engagements with first Japan, and then later Germany. Early in the war, draftees and volunteers were typically sent to the Pacific, but as the conflict went on and the Allied forces began planning an invasion of Germany, more and more soldiers were sent to Europe.

These two theaters were very different from one another and tested the United States and its citizens in different ways.

Victories were costly, and they came slowly. But a commitment to fighting and an unprecedented military mobilization put the US in a good position for success. On Jan. From then until early August, German U-boats dominated the waters off the East Coast, sinking fuel tankers and cargo ships with impunity and often within sight of shore. However, the United States would not begin fighting the German forces until November , with the launch of Operation Torch.

But with Hitler trying to invade the Soviet Union, both sides knew that working together would help each other separately, as it would split the German war machine in two and make it easier to overcome. There was much debate as to where the second front should be, but commanders of the Allied forces eventually agreed on North Africa, which was secured by the end of This put Allied forces on mainland Europe for the first time since France had fallen to Germany back in and essentially marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.

It would take two more years and millions more human lives for Hitler and his cronies to accept this truth, giving up in their quest to terrorize the free world into submitting to their heinous, hate-filled, and genocidal regime. The next major American-led offensive was the invasion of France, also known as Operation Overlord.

This is because the fall of France had made the US realize the seriousness of the situation in Europe and dramatically increase the appetite for war. As a result, when formal declarations first came in December , the goal was always to invade and regain France before crashing into the German mainland and starving the Nazis of their source of power.

This made D-Day the much-anticipated beginning of what many believed would be the final phase of the war. After securing a costly victory at Normandy, the Allied forces were finally on mainland Europe, and throughout the summer of , Americans — working with large contingents of British and Canadian soldiers — fought their way through France, into Belgium and the Netherlands. Stopping Hitler, though, allowed Allied forces to move further east into Germany, and when the Soviets entered Berlin in , Hitler committed suicide and the German forces issued their formal, unconditional surrender on May 7th of that year.

While most American soldiers would soon return home, many remained in Germany as an occupying force while peace terms were negotiated, and many more remained in the Pacific hoping to soon bring the other war — the one still being waged against Japan — to a similar conclusion. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, thrust the United States into war with Japan, but most people at the time believed victory would be had quickly and without too heavy a cost.

This turned out to be a gross miscalculation of both the capabilities of the Japanese military and its zealous commitment to fight. Victory, as it happened, would only come after the blood of millions had been spilled into the royal blue waters of the South Pacific.

This first became clear in the months following Pearl Harbor. Japan managed to follow up their surprise attack on the American naval base in Hawaii with several other victories throughout the Pacific, specifically at Guam and the Philippines — both American territories at the time.

The fight over the Philippines was an embarrassing defeat for the US — some , Filipinos died or were captured, and around 23, Americans were killed — and demonstrated that defeating the Japanese was going to be more challenging and costly than anyone had predicted.

By the mids, the percentage of women in the American work force had expanded from 25 percent to 36 percent. Just over two months after Pearl Harbor, U. President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law Executive Order , which resulted in the removal from their communities and the subsequent imprisonment of all Americans of Japanese descent who resided on the West Coast.

Executive Order was the offshoot of a combination of wartime panic and the belief on the part of some that anyone of Japanese ancestry, even those who were born in the U. Despite the internment of their family members, young Japanese-American men fought bravely in Italy, France and Germany between and as members of the U. By the end of the war, the th had become the most decorated combat unit of its size in Army history.

In January , Kenesaw Mountain Landis , the national commissioner of baseball, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in which he asked if professional baseball should shut down for the duration of the war. During the war, 95 percent of all professional baseball players who donned major league uniforms during the season were directly involved in the conflict.

Feller, in fact, enlisted in the U. Navy one day after Pearl Harbor. Because baseball was depleted of so many able bodies, athletes who otherwise likely never would have made the big leagues won spots on rosters.

One of the more notable was Pete Gray , a one-armed outfielder who appeared in 77 games for the St. Louis Browns in Not all those who served in the military were superstars. Over minor leaguers also were killed. Other players overcame debilitating wartime injuries. One was Bert Shepard , a minor league pitcher turned air force fighter pilot.

The following year, he pitched three innings for the Washington Senators in a major league game. Throughout World War II, American moviegoers were treated to a steady stream of war-related programming. The movie-going experience included a newsreel, which lasted approximately 10 minutes and was loaded with images and accounts of recent battles, followed by an animated cartoon.