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Initial rise of Hitler and the Nazis   The 20th century   World history   Khan Academy

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Watch this after doing starting research

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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Hitler/Rise-to-power

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/adolf-hitler-1

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Passenger flying became much more common in the 1950's and 1960's, it is known as the Golden Age of Flying.

Read more here:
https://www.skyscanner.com.au/news/airlines/the-golden-age-of-plane-travel-what-flying-was-like-in-the-1950s-and-1960s-compared-to-now

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History of flying between UK and Australia.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/uk-australia-flight-time-travel-100-years-change-london-perth-direct-a8268311.html

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The first flight https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-airplane-flies

https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online/fly/1903/

Timeline
https://kidskonnect.com/history/the-wright-brothers-first-flight/

History of the Airplane
https://www.britannica.com/technology/history-of-flight/Construction-of-the-sustaining-wings-the-problem-of-lift

Use of Aircraft in WWI by British
https://www.iwm.org.uk/learning/resources/what-impact-did-the-first-world-war-have-on-aircraft-and-aerial-warfare

How did they achieve flight?
https://interestingengineering.com/airplane-history-from-icarus-to-the-wright-brothers-and-beyond

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The German invasion of Poland in the fall of 1939 triggered WWII. Learn more about key dates and events, causes, and related Holocaust history.

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Watch this at home, its too long for school. Will be good for understanding Polish identity that was formed from the invasion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17NArJ6wQqo

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NARRATOR: 3:15 a.m., June 22, 1941 - The German Wehrmacht invade the Soviet Union. Operation, code name Barbarossa, is launched. At 1,600 kilometers, it is the longest front in history. More than three and a half million German and allied soldiers are in active combat, supported by artillery, air force, and tanks. The German propaganda declares the offensive as a pre-emptive strike, for which the Soviets are unprepared.

GERHARD GOERTZ: "They even came out in their night shirts and started shooting. They were taken by complete surprise."

NARRATOR: A Non-aggression Pact between the two dictatorships is officially in force. Only one year earlier, the Soviet Foreign Minister paid a goodwill visit to Berlin.

WEEKLY NEWSREEL: "In the new Reich Chancellery, Molotov was welcomed by the Führer for a long discussion."

NARRATOR: At the same time, secret preparations for Operation Barbarossa are in full swing. Soviet Russia is to be crushed in a swift campaign, according to the German plan of attack. In May 1941, Moscow displays its strength at a Military Parade. Stalin has long been warned of the planned German offensive. But he does not believe Hitler will dare to attack. Only a few weeks later, German fighter planes dominate Soviet air space. Despite clear warnings, the Red Army is not ready for action. The invaders are confident of victory. Along a broad front, the Wehrmacht occupies the Ukraine, White Russia, and the Baltic States. During the battles of those first months, the defenders suffer enormous losses. In 1941 alone, over three million Russian soldiers are captured by the Germans. The majority of them die in the POW camps as intended.

HERBERT BAIER: "Our superiors told us time and time again that the Russians were subhuman, uneducated, so the Russians were given short shrift. And we were also told that we'd be home by the end of December, in time for Christmas."

NARRATOR: Hitler and his generals conduct a war of destruction, in violation of international law. General Field Marshal Keitel prepares a batch of criminal directives. One of them, the so-called Commissar Order,directed Communist Party officials to be shot immediately upon capture for all the world to see.

WILLI HANISCH: "I was there and saw with my own eyes how the commissars were picked out and just shot right there on the street."

NARRATOR: The Wehrmacht also conducts man-hunting raids on the Jewish population.

WILLI HEIN: "They were dragged from their homes and led away and had to bring along their spades and dig their own graves. And then the military police just shot them."

NARRATOR: Destruction: the goal of Hitler's ideological war.

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How the Nazis Launched Operation Barbarossa Against the Soviet Union

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Nazi Germany invading the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, June 22, 1941.

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Investigating the Holocaust Part 5 War — Germany Invades Poland

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Watch this at home, will not work at school

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Watch this at home, will not work at school

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This won't be good for research notes, but will help you understand the war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uk_6vfqwTA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo2Rb9h788s

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View archival footage of German troops invading Poland and forcing Europe into war Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Transcript

[Music in]

NARRATOR: On September 1, 1939--the weather perfect for mechanized warfare--Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg. "Our strength is in our quickness and in our brutality," he screamed. "Be hard, be without mercy." Having guaranteed Polish boundaries, Britain and France were now forced into war. They would soon pay heavily for their past mistakes, their fears and their selfishness. President Benes of Czechoslovakia had said, "Freedom will never belong to those who will not die for it."

[Music out]

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View archival footage of German troops invading Poland and forcing Europe into war

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Music in] NARRATOR: On September 1, 1939--the weather perfect for mechanized warfare--Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg. "Our strength is in our quickness and in our brutality," he screamed. "Be hard, be without mercy." Having guaranteed Polish boundaries, Britain and France were now forced into war.

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NARRATOR: The 1st of September, 1939 - the Second World War begins with German air raids on Poland. Soon after, the German battleship Schleswig Holstein fires at Fort Westerplatte near Gdansk.

JOACHIM SCHOLZ: "At 4:45 a.m. our postbox was shaking, the windows were rattling, and I knew immediately this is the war. In front of the house, somebody shouted "The war-ship is shooting.'"

NARRATOR: The Nazi propaganda cameras make sure to capture the moment. Inside Gdansk, there is fighting between Germans and Poles. Many are killed.

ELZBIETA MARCINKOWSKA-SZUCA: "We were very sad. Many of our friends were killed. It's appalling that one man can do such a thing to another. It's inhuman, but the war transcends all boundaries."

NARRATOR: For Hitler, it is about more than annexing the areas separated from the German Reich after World War I. He wants to see Poland destroyed, and begins the war with a lie.

ADOLPH HITLER: "Tonight Poland has now attacked for the first time on our own territory - also with regular units."

NARRATOR: Two German army divisions of around 1.5 million men are set to roll over Poland. Britain and France have declared war on Germany, as envisaged in the alliance agreement with Poland. But there is no military assistance for the struggling nation. So the German army quickly penetrates the Polish defenses. Their superiority in tanks and aircraft is crushing. The Polish soldiers fight with desperate bravery.

ALBERT SEFRANEK: "In some cases, columns of Polish horse riders ran against machine gun positions. I even remember a cavalry charge that ran over our first line, but came up directly against tanks. Of course, it was all over."

NARRATOR: After two weeks of war, the Poles know it is a hopeless situation. But they continue to fight and declare Warsaw a fortress. The German Luftwaffe releases its bombs on this city of millions. On September 17, the Red Army invades. Shortly before the war, Hitler and the Soviet dictator Stalin had agreed to divide Poland between themselves. Behind the front, a different war begins. Thousands of Jews, Polish intelligentsia, and other supposed enemies are arrested, deported and executed. After four weeks of war, Warsaw capitulates. The 120,000 Polish defenders surrender the city to the German General von Blaskowitz.

STEFAN CISAK: "We were all broken-hearted, we asked 'What will happen to us? Families will be destroyed, we'll be taken away. We do not know if we will ever return to Poland.'"

NARRATOR: Neither the majority of German soldiers nor the defeated Poles can know what lies ahead.

SEFRANEK: "On the day of the ceasefire, our commander told us 'The war is over, we've won the war.' We did not suspect that the war had only really just begun in earnest."

NARRATOR: Not least the crimes of the occupation, to which millions of Poles, above all Jews, would fall victim.

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The German Army Invasion of Poland Marking the Beginning of World War II

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Overview of the German invasion of Poland (1939), which marked the beginning of World War II.

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Use the first part of this website to understand the build up to the invasion.

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The War During 1939
Two days after the invasion of Poland, Britain and France demanded that Germany withdraw its troops. When Germany refused Britain and France declared war on Germany.

The Poles were easily defeated by Germany's blitzkrieg, or "lightning war." The first day the German Luftwaffe (air force) destroyed Poland's airfields and bases. Within a week it had crippled the lines of communication. At the same time German Panzer (armored and mechanized) divisions encircled the Polish armies.

The Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on September 17. Poland was soon forced to surrender. Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland between them.

Some Polish government officials, soldiers, pilots, and naval units managed to escape the swift Nazi and Soviet advances. They fled to Britain, where they continued the fight against Germany with the Allies.

The "phony war" in the West; war at sea
On the Western Front there was little fighting. The French were confident that a series of fortifications known as the Maginot Line in northeast France could not be broken through. The Germans had similar fortifications on their Siegfried Line, paralleling the Maginot Line in western Germany. Britain thought its Navy could successfully blockade Germany and thus starve it out of the war. Because there was so little fighting, this period on the Western battlefields was referred to as the sitzkrieg, or "phony war."

The war at sea, however, was active. Germany launched a counterblockade against the British. German submarines (U-boats), mines, and bombs sank many Allied merchant and passenger ships.

In December 1939 a dramatic sea battle took place off the coast of South America. British cruisers damaged the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, which had been raiding Allied commerce in the South Atlantic. It was forced to take refuge in the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay. The captain of the Graf Spee sank the ship rather than risk its capture. There would be no great naval battles in the Atlantic.

The most sensational German naval achievement during this period was a raid on Scapa Flow. On October 14, 1939, a German U-boat made its way into this British naval base and torpedoed the battleship Royal Oak. By 1941 the Allies would lose more than 3.5 million tons of shipping to German submarine attacks.

Soviet-Finnish war
The Soviet Union invaded Finland on November 30. Finland had refused to give the Soviets military bases. The large Soviet army was expected to defeat tiny Finland quickly. The Finns, however, held off the Soviets for several months.

Finland's Mannerheim Line of fortifications was finally broken through early in 1940. On March 12 Finland signed a peace treaty that gave the Soviet Union important Finnish territory.

The War During 1940
Early in April Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. Denmark accepted the "protection" that Germany offered the two countries. Norway, however, declared war.

British troops landed in Norway, but they were unable to stop the German advance. In May the British forces were evacuated. On June 9 Norway fell. King Haakon VII escaped and set up a government in exile in London.

Invasion of the Low Countries
On May 10 German forces invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Luxembourg was occupied without resistance. Belgium and the Netherlands declared war.

Winston Churchill now replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister of Great Britain. The Allies sent troops into the Low Countries, but by May 14 the Dutch army had to give up the fight. The Netherlands was quickly brought under the rule of German occupation forces. Queen Wilhelmina fled to London, where she formed a government in exile.

Dunkirk evacuation; Italy enters war
On May 13 German armored forces, in a surprise move, broke through the lightly defended Ardennes Forest area north of the Maginot Line. Their columns drove through to the English Channel, cutting off British and French troops in northern France and Belgium.

King Leopold of Belgium surrendered his army on May 28. The Allies had no choice but to attempt an escape by sea. From May 29 to June 4 the Allies evacuated 360,000 soldiers from Dunkirk. Their equipment was left behind.

The battle of France began on June 5. The Germans attacked along a 100-mile (160-kilometer) front from near Laon to the English Channel. They smashed through the French forces and headed for Paris. The French army fell apart. At this point Italy declared war on Britain and France.

Fall of France
The French government moved to Tours on June 11 and later to Bordeaux. The Germans occupied Paris on June 14. The French cabinet, defeatist and deeply divided, asked for an armistice. Marshal Philippe Pétain, the 84-year-old hero of World War I, became premier.

The Franco-German armistice was signed on June 22 in the forest of Compiègne. It was signed in the same railway car in which France had dictated its terms to a beaten Germany 22 years before. The Franco-Italian armistice was signed on June 24. More than half of France was now occupied by German troops. This included France's entire Atlantic coast and its northern area from Geneva almost to Tours.

Vichy government and Free French
Marshal Pétain built a fascist state with headquarters at Vichy in the unoccupied part of France. The Vichy government worked with the Germans. This was called collaboration.

Some of the French fighting forces escaped to Britain. Called the Free French, they carried on the fight against Germany under the leadership of the French general Charles de Gaulle. Loyal Frenchmen called partisans, also known as the Resistance, secretly supported the Free French in France.

A number of French ships joined the British, and others were interned in British harbors. Ships that resisted were destroyed by the British fleet. The official French government then broke off diplomatic relations with Britain.

The battle of Britain
Hitler expected that the fall of France would cause Britain to surrender. In July he urged Britain to make peace with Germany. Churchill refused.

At the start of the war Hitler had threatened mass air attacks against England. His threat was finally carried out in August 1940. Almost daily hundreds of German planes swarmed across the English Channel from bases in occupied France to bomb England. At first the attacks targeted British ports, airfields, and radar stations. In early September, however, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to shift its attacks to London and other cities. These relentless bombing raids are known as the Blitz.

The German air attack was to be followed by an invasion of England. Hermann Göring, World War I air ace and commander of the German Luftwaffe, had told Hitler his planes could drive the Royal Air Force (RAF) out of the skies. The Luftwaffe failed. The greatly outnumbered RAF destroyed the German bombers at a crippling rate. The battle of Britain, as the RAF defense of the country was called, was one of the most important battles in the history of the world. Never after October 1940 did Hitler seriously consider invading Britain.

Japan threatens in Far East
Japan was an industrialized country, but it had few natural resources. The United States was its principal supplier of raw materials prior to 1939, but the Japanese had already begun to look elsewhere.

Japanese expansion began in 1931-32 with the seizure of Manchuria, in northeastern China. In the following years Japan seized more territory bordering on Manchuria. By 1937 the Japanese had secured most of northeastern China, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing. The atrocities committed against civilians by the Japanese in their seizure of Nanjing were some of the most terrible of the war. The Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Zedong put aside their civil war to oppose the Japanese, but to little avail.

Germany's conquest of the Netherlands and France left undefended the rich Netherlands Indies and French Indochina. In September Japan threatened to invade French Indochina. By this threat it got air bases there to use in its war against China. The Chinese were isolated by Japan's seizure of their ports, roads, and railroads.

On September 27 Japan signed the Tripartite, or Axis, Pact with Germany and Italy. The pact joined the three nations in an effort to create a new world order. Their alliance would become known as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, or the Axis powers. Under the agreement Germany and Italy would control Europe and Japan would control eastern Asia.

To check Japanese expansion the United States kept its fleet in the Pacific. It also placed economic restraints, or sanctions, on Japan, which depended on the United States for scrap iron, oil, cotton, and metals. In September 1940 the United States banned shipments of many of these materials to Japan. It also threatened to stop giving foreign credits, which Japan used to trade abroad.

Britain also helped to control Japan in the Far East because Britain held strategically located Singapore. This was the key to power in southeastern Asia. However, most of the British fleet was soon sent home to protect the British Isles.

How the United States helped the Allies
The fall of France left Britain and its empire fighting alone. On September 3 the United States transferred 50 old destroyers to Britain. In return the United States got 99-year leases on sites for air and naval bases in the British possessions of Newfoundland, Bermuda, British Guiana, and the British West Indies.

The United States also went to work speeding up its rearmament. A two-ocean navy was planned. An air force of 50,000 airplanes was started. In October the nation adopted peacetime compulsory military service for the first time in its history.

The war in the Mediterranean and Near East
In the winter of 1940-41 Germany and Italy started a campaign against British power in the Mediterranean region. The British position in the Mediterranean was based on control of the two bottleneck passages to the sea-Gilbraltar at the western end and the Suez Canal in the east.

The Axis campaign was launched against Suez. An Italian attack in North Africa was coupled with a German drive through southeastern Europe. The object was to drive the British from the eastern Mediterranean. The Italian offensive was a failure. By early 1941 almost all Mussolini's East African empire was in British hands.

Germany, however, had more success in the Balkans. It overran Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece. It was then able to come to Italy's aid. The British forces were driven out of Libya.

The War During 1941
United States Lend-Lease Act

Early in 1941 Britain announced that it soon would be unable to pay for the war materials it had been buying from the United States. The United States Congress gave the president authority to lend or lease arms and supplies to countries whose defense he thought important to the security of the United States. Under the Lend-Lease Act a steady stream of planes, tanks, guns, and other war goods rolled off American assembly lines to be sent to Britain and other Allied nations. The United States became known as the Arsenal of Democracy.

Getting these supplies across the Atlantic into the hands of British soldiers became a major problem. United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced he would take any measures necessary to ensure their delivery. On April 9 the United States took Greenland under its protection for the rest of the war. In July American troops replaced the British forces in Iceland.

On August 9, 1941, Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill on a battleship off the coast of Newfoundland. After five days of talks they issued the Atlantic Charter. Although the United States was not yet officially in the war, this document outlined the Allies' war aims and called for the "final destruction of Nazi tyranny." American and British military staffs had already agreed that in the event of a war against both Japan and Germany, the Allies would concentrate on the defeat of Germany first.

Germany invades the Soviet Union
Both Germany and the Soviet Union thought of their nonaggression pact of 1939 as temporary. It gave the Soviets time to build defenses against German attack. It gave Germany peace along its eastern frontiers during the war in the west. Throughout the spring of 1941, however, there were signs that the pact might be broken.

On June 22 Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Other nations quickly took sides in the ensuing conflict. Italy, Hungary, Finland, and Romania declared war on the Soviet Union. Britain pledged aid to the Soviet Union, and the United States promised war goods.

Japan moves toward war
The German attack on the Soviets had led the Japanese to believe that German victory was certain. They immediately tried to profit by it. In July 1941 the Vichy government in France gave Japan bases in southern French Indochina. Japan moved in and massed troops against Thailand (Siam).

Other aggressive moves by Japan brought strong protests from the United States and Britain. The Japanese declared that they wanted peace, but they continued their warlike acts. In late July the United States, Britain, and the refugee Dutch government in London placed embargoes on the shipment of oil to Japan.

General Tojo Hideki became premier of Japan in October. In November he sent a special envoy to seek peace with the United States. This was a trick to throw the United States off guard. Japan was playing for time in which to get its armed forces into position for attack, for the Japanese had already decided on war. Their lack of natural resources meant they had to win quickly or lose to the United States, whose potential power was overwhelming. Japanese leaders were also convinced that once the Americans were involved in the European war, they would be willing to negotiate a peace in the Pacific.

On November 26 American Secretary of State Cordell Hull announced that the United States would give full economic cooperation to Japan. In return, however, he asked that Japan withdraw from China and stop collaborating with the Axis. On December 6 President Roosevelt appealed directly to the Japanese emperor, Hirohito, to work for peace.

The attack on Pearl Harbor
Early the following afternoon the Japanese ambassador presented Japan's reply to the American proposal. It accused the United States of standing in the way of the "new order in East Asia." It ended by saying that further negotiations were useless. Even as he spoke Japanese forces were attacking Americans in Hawaii, in the Philippines, and elsewhere in the Pacific Ocean area.

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Sunday, December 7, 1941. The attack came without warning very early in the morning. It was made by Japanese submarines and carrier-launched aircraft. The United States Navy and Army forces were completely surprised.

More than 2,300 Americans were killed in the two-hour attack. Eight battleships were sunk or damaged. Many cruisers and destroyers were hit. Most of the United States planes were destroyed on the ground. Japanese losses were 129 men, several submarines, and 29 of the more than 350 airplanes that had made the attack.

Declaration of war
Two and a half hours after the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor the Japanese officially declared war on the United States and Britain. Britain declared war on December 8. The United States Congress declared that a state of war had existed since December 7.

On December 9 China issued a formal war declaration against Japan, Germany, and Italy. On December 11 Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and the United States Congress voted declarations in return. During the same week nine Latin American nations entered the war against the Axis powers-Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Panama.

Bolivia declared war against Japan. Most other Latin American nations either broke off diplomatic relations with the Axis countries or supported the United States. Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania declared war on the United States. Japan and the Soviet Union carefully avoided war with one another.

On January 1, 1942, the 26 nations then at war with the Axis powers joined in a declaration in which they pledged united efforts and no separate peace until victory was gained. Signed in Washington, D.C., this was called the Declaration by United Nations.

The War During 1942
At the beginning of 1942 the Allies were on the defensive in all the theaters of war. German submarine attacks continued to sink Allied ships and their cargo more quickly than the Allies could replace them. U-boat operations had spread from the area of the British Isles into the eastern Atlantic and then into the central and western Atlantic. This part of the war was called the battle of the Atlantic.

In the Pacific, Guam and Wake islands had fallen to the Japanese in December 1941. The Japanese had also taken Hong Kong from the British, and much of the American fleet lay in ruins at Pearl Harbor.

Japanese Expansion
The Japanese continued to take new territory in the first half of 1942. In the Philippines there were heroic defensive stands by Filipinos and Americans at Bataan and Corregidor. But the Philippines fell in May. Also by May Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, Burma (Myanmar), and parts of New Britain and New Guinea were in Japanese hands. Australia was seriously threatened. Darwin in northern Australia was heavily bombed.

Against all these advances American and British forces fought desperately. In Burma a small American volunteer group of fliers, the Flying Tigers, shot down hundreds of enemy planes. On April 18, 1942, a small group of carrier-launched Army aircraft bombed Tokyo. Although the attack accomplished little at the time, this was a preview of things to come for the Japanese.

In April the Pacific theater of operations was divided into the Southwest Pacific Area under United States General Douglas MacArthur and the Pacific Ocean Areas under United States Admiral Chester Nimitz. The Southwest Pacific Area included the Dutch East Indies (less Sumatra), the Philippines, Australia, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands. The Pacific Ocean Areas comprised virtually every area not under MacArthur.

The battle for Egypt
In the Mediterranean area the Axis forces had almost complete control of the sea. Supplies for the British forces in Egypt, the Near East, and India had to be shipped around Africa. In January 1942 the German general Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps started a new drive to seize the Suez Canal.

After losing Benghazi in January the British held the Axis forces in check until May. Then a powerful attack engulfed most of the British tank force and moved into Egypt. In July the British were finally able to stop the drive at El Alamein.

In August General Bernard L. Montgomery was named field commander of British forces in Egypt. On October 23 the British started a devastating attack from El Alamein. Rommel's tank force was routed. By November 6 the British had driven the Axis forces from Egypt. El Alamein is considered the turning point of the war in North Africa.

The War During 1943
By 1943 the Japanese were on the defensive everywhere in the Pacific. Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands finally fell to United States Marines and Army forces in February 1943. This ended six months of bloody jungle warfare. During the fight for Guadalcanal a large part of the Japanese fleet was destroyed.

In the spring and summer of 1943 General MacArthur and Admiral W.F. (Bull) Halsey worked closely together. Their aim was to drive the Japanese out of eastern New Guinea, the Solomons, and the Bismarck Archipelago. By early fall Allied efforts had cleared an outer ring of positions covering Australia. Meanwhile Americans and Canadians had also cleaned out Japanese forces in the Aleutians.

Success in the Mediterranean area
In February 1943 General Eisenhower was appointed commander in chief of the Allied armies in the North African theater of operations. His objective-to oust the Axis forces from North Africa-was accomplished by May.

The Allies invaded Sicily in July. On July 25 Benito Mussolini was forced to resign as premier of Italy. He was then arrested. King Victor Emmanuel appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio to succeed Mussolini. The British 8th Army invaded southern Italy on September 3. Premier Badoglio's government surrendered its armed forces unconditionally on September 8. This took Italy out of the war, but the Germans, under Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, continued to fight. The Allies were forced to battle their way up the Italian mainland throughout the fall and early winter of 1943. Mussolini was rescued by a daring German commando raid and put in charge of a puppet government in northern Italy.

Soviet counterattack in 1943
The Soviet counterattack against the Germans gained full power by January 1943. The Soviets forced the Axis armies from Stalingrad, Kharkiv, and Smolensk. The German defeat at Kursk (July 5-August 23) was the largest tank battle of the war. By the end of the year the Soviets had reached the Polish border of 1939.

The war at sea
The battle of the Atlantic was fiercely fought in 1943. The Germans kept as many as 240 submarines prowling the sea lanes in wolf packs. They sank about 700 merchant ships before the Allies developed several good defenses against undersea attacks. The Allies bombed German submarine bases without letup and convoyed ships with long-range bombers. There were also major advances in radar and sonar. Another critical factor in defeating the U-boats was the British ability to read top-secret German radio communications. The British had broken the German "Enigma" code used to control the U-boats and also to send important high command messages. The resulting intelligence, code named "Ultra," was also provided to American and British commanders in France and Italy. By the end of the year the Allies had almost ended the submarine menace in the Atlantic.

The war in the air
The Allies were producing enough airplanes by 1943 to carry the air war into the heart of Germany. The mass bombing of targets deep in enemy territory was called strategic bombing. The combined British-American bombing attacks began to take their toll on German industry.

In 1940 the Hurricane and Spitfire fighter aircraft of the RAF had proved equal to German fighters such as the Messerschmitt ME-109. The first American planes were not as effective, but the later Thunderbolt (P-47) and Mustang (P-51) were excellent.

For bombers the British used Lancasters and Halifaxes, which could carry one-ton and two-ton "blockbusters." Early in the war the British made daylight bombing raids, but they suffered crippling losses. They then turned to night raids.

The American 8th Air Force preferred daylight bombing raids because targets could be hit more effectively. Americans flew in large numbers and in tight formations. The planes they used were the Flying Fortress (B-17) and the Liberator (B-24).

At first the Americans suffered serious losses just as the British had. When the Mustang fighter plane was brought into the theater, however, they were able to ward off attacks by the German fighters. The Mustang, widely regarded as the best fighter of the war, could carry more fuel than other fighters and escort the bombers on their deepest raids.

The War During 1944
In February 1944 Admiral Nimitz's forces advanced more than 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from Hawaii to seize Kwajalein atoll and Enewetak in the Marshall Islands. The next advance was some 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) to the Marianas. By mid-August Saipan, Tinian, and Guam had fallen to the Allies. New, long-range Superfortress planes (B-29s) were used to bomb Japan. Plans were made to seize the Philippines as a base for the invasion of Japan.

In October General MacArthur's forces invaded the Philippines at the island of Leyte. After savage fighting by land, sea, and air forces the conquest of Leyte was complete about Christmas Day 1944.

In China, Chiang Kai-shek's forces continued to be on the defensive. A Japanese attack toward Changsha, begun on May 27, won control not only of a stretch of the Beijing-Hankou railroad but also of several of the airfields from which the Americans had been bombing the Japanese.

The Normandy invasion
Early on the morning of June 6 an invasion fleet of some 7,000 ships landed American, British, and Canadian divisions on Normandy beaches. Airborne divisions dropped behind the German lines. In the air Allies had complete command. This invasion was decisive and the outcome of the war in Europe depended upon its success.

In the first week the Allies established beachheads between Cherbourg and the city of Caen along a 60-mile- (97-kilometer-) wide strip. Within a week they drove about 20 miles (32 kilometers) inland. Casualties for the landing were about 15,000 out of some 150,000 engaged. The Germans never managed to mount a serious counterattack.

The British captured Caen on July 9. The Americans broke out of their beachhead positions on July 25. Armored columns headed inland, and Paris fell to the Allies on August 25. Victory seemed to be at hand, but soon the Allies outran their supply lines and German resistance increased.

The final German defense efforts
The Germans began to use new weapons against England: flying robotic bombs, called V-1s, launched from bases in France, and ballistic missiles, called V-2s, launched from the Netherlands. The V-bombs injured and killed many English civilians and caused great damage but had no effect on the outcome of the war ( see guided missiles). East of the Rhine the Germans battled grimly to keep the Allies from entering Germany. In September, however, Allied troops crossed the German border east of Aachen.

As the cold, wet season advanced the Allied drive slowed down. Aided by the bad weather, the Germans launched a surprise counterattack on December 16. The main attack came south of Aachen in the Ardennes. The battle of the Bulge, as this attack was called, ended in final German defeat in this region. The year ended with the Allied forces in the west and east ready to throw their weight into the drive that would crush Nazi power.

The War During 1945
After driving the Germans from the Ardennes bulge the Allied armies advanced into Germany. By the end of March 1945 the Americans and British had advanced halfway across Germany.

The Germans also collapsed on other fronts. Budapest fell to the Soviets in February and Vienna in April. In Italy Mussolini was caught and shot by partisans on April 28. The next day the Germans in Italy surrendered unconditionally.

Hitler commits suicide; Germans surrender
Despite the utter hopelessness of the German cause Hitler remained defiant in his underground Berlin bunker. The Soviets attacked Berlin on April 21. To escape capture by the Soviets Hitler committed suicide the night of April 30.

On May 4 British General Bernard Montgomery received the surrender of the Germans in Denmark, the Netherlands, and northwestern Germany. General Alfred Jodl signed a surrender at Reims on May 7. On May 8 Churchill, Stalin, and Harry S. Truman, the new U.S. president, announced that General Wilhelm Keitel had surrendered unconditionally the day before. Now all attention turned to the Far East.

Defeat of Japan
In December 1944 British General William Slim's 14th Army launched a campaign to drive the Japanese from Burma. By May 1945 they had succeeded, recapturing Rangoon (Yangon). Chinese forces also went on the attack, and by April the entire Burma Road, from Mandalay to China, was open.

Early in 1945 General MacArthur's forces in the Pacific landed an invasion force at Lingayen Gulf in Luzon, in the Philippines. Effective resistance in Manila ended in late February. It took many months, however, for the Americans to clear out the last pockets of fanatical Japanese resistance in the Philippines.

Meanwhile Admiral Nimitz's forces seized Iwo Jima and Okinawa. At Iwo Jima Marine casualties were the heaviest suffered in any island invasion, more than 20,000. During the Okinawa campaign the Navy was attacked by kamikaze (suicide) planes. The pilots of these planes deliberately flew them into American ships.

On July 26 Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany. They demanded that Japan immediately surrender or face utter destruction. Japan fought on. On August 8 the Soviet Union attacked the Japanese in Manchuria.

At this point American scientists made a significant contribution to the war effort. During the war they had developed and successfully tested an atomic bomb. President Truman decided to use the bomb to avoid the millions of casualties expected if the Allies had to invade Japan. On August 6 a B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, a major munitions center, destroying about three fifths of the city. When the Japanese still refused to surrender, a more powerful atomic bomb was dropped on the port city of Nagasaki, leaving it in ruins. As many as 120,000 people died in these two attacks.

After the bombing of Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito ordered the surrender of Japan. The Japanese accepted Allied terms on August 15. On September 2, 1945 (this date was September 1 in the United States), Japan formally surrendered aboard the battleship Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. General MacArthur accepted the surrender as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.

General MacArthur immediately established military occupation of the empire. American troops went ashore to liberate war prisoners and to make certain that the Japanese complied with the terms of surrender. All Japanese military forces were disarmed and sent home. The emperor and other government officials had to obey General MacArthur's orders. Many of Japan's war leaders were arrested and held for trial. Hirohito was not among them; his leadership was considered essential to a peaceful occupation.

Europe and North Africa
Battle of Poland; early stalemate
On September 1, 1939, the German Luftwaffe crossed the Polish frontier. Poland's air force was destroyed on the ground. On the same day swift-moving German Panzer divisions smashed into Poland from three directions. The Polish army was the fifth largest in Europe. It was not equipped, however, to meet the up-to-date mechanized units of the Nazis. The Germans crushed organized opposition in 16 days. The Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east on September 17. Warsaw surrendered on September 27. From September 1, 1939, until May 10, 1940, there was no major action along the Western Front. French troops did not want to attack the strong German Siegfried Line. The Germans did not want to make an assault on the so-called "impregnable" French Maginot Line. Meanwhile the Russo-Finnish war (November 30, 1939-March 12, 1940) gave the Soviet Union important parts of Finnish territory.

Conquest of Norway; battle of Flanders
On April 9, 1940, the Nazis occupied Denmark without opposition. On the same day they attacked Norway. Landing airborne infantry, parachute troops, and amphibious forces at many points, the Germans gained a solid foothold the first day of the attack. A group of Norwegian traitors led by Maj. Vidkun Quisling assisted the invaders. British troops landed on April 15 to aid the Norwegian forces, but the swift German advance forced them to flee central Norway May 1-3 and evacuate Narvik on June 9. This ended Allied resistance in Norway.

The Germans started an offensive against France on May 10, 1940. To protect their right flank the Germans roared into the Netherlands and Belgium. The same day German forces, led by Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division, struck at the weak extension of the Maginot Line in the Ardennes Forest. Both attacks met quick success. Dutch resistance was crushed in four days, while to the south Nazi armored spearheads drove 220 miles (350 kilometers) to reach the French coast at Abbeville on May 21. The maneuver trapped the entire left wing of the Allied armies in a small pocket on the English Channel. Under heavy fire from German aircraft and artillery a hastily assembled fleet evacuated more than 360,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk to England between May 29 and June 4, 1940, leaving all their heavy equipment and artillery on the beach.

Battle of France; battle of Britain
The defeat in the battle of Flanders left the French helpless to halt the next German blow. On June 5, 1940, the Germans attacked along a 100-mile (160-kilometer) front. One armored spearhead raced south along the French coast closing the Channel ports to possible British aid. In the center the Germans knifed through the Somme and Aisne river lines and smashed toward Paris from east and west. Another column turned to the left after breaking through at Sedan and took the Maginot Line from the flank and rear. Paris fell to the Germans on June 14, and the French asked for surrender terms on June 17. Meanwhile Italy declared war on France on June 10 but engaged in no major action.

Late in 1940 Germany lost its first battle of the war when Britain fought off a savage air campaign. On August 8, 1940, Hitler launched the air assault on England to soften the British Isles for invasion and gain the necessary air superiority. Huge formations of German bombers crossed the English Channel almost daily to blast seaports, industrial cities, and airfields.

Despite this steady rain of bombs the British stood firm. Possessing the most advanced radar system in the world, the RAF had early warning of the raids and was able to mount devastating counterattacks. By mid-September the RAF had demonstrated that the Luftwaffe could not dominate the skies over Britain. British fighters were shooting down German bombers faster than German industry could produce them. The Battle of Britain was thus won, and Hitler indefinitely postponed the invasion of England. The British had lost more than 900 fighters but had shot down about 1,700 German aircraft.

During the following winter the Luftwaffe maintained a bombing offensive, carrying out night-bombing attacks on Britain's industrial cities. The Blitz, as these raids came to be called, spread terror and destruction, especially in London, but had little military value. By February 1941 the offensive had declined, but in March and April there was a revival, and nearly 10,000 sorties were flown, with heavy attacks made on London. Thereafter German air operations over England withered.

German drive through the Balkans; battle of the Atlantic
On April 6, 1941, the Nazi war machine drove into Yugoslavia and Greece to complete Hitler's plans for the conquest of the Balkans and the domination of the Mediterranean. Yugoslavia was overrun by April 17. Greece surrendered on April 30. Of the 74,000 British troops in Greece only about 44,000 escaped. Many of these fled to Crete, which was a refueling stop and support base for the fighting in Greece. These troops were captured or killed when German airborne troops took that island between May 20 and June 1, 1941. Although the German campaign in the Balkans was successful, it delayed an invasion of the Soviet Union for several crucial months.

Early in the war Germany blockaded Europe by attacking Allied ships with land-based planes and submarines. The Allies struck back by convoying ships with destroyers and planes from escort carriers. They were helped immeasurably by the fact that the British had broken the top-secret German code "Enigma," used to direct submarine operations, and by improvements in radar and sonar. These defenses brought the submarine and air attacks under control by 1942. The Germans also tried to use surface raiders to interfere with Allied shipping, but this threat ended with the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941.

Battles of El Alamein and Stalingrad
Italian forces and Rommel's Afrika Korps entered Egypt in a drive for the Suez Canal in June 1942. The British 8th Army held fast at El Alamein, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southwest of Alexandria. On October 23 British infantry cut through the Axis lines in a bayonet charge that opened the way for an armored breakthrough. The attack forced the Axis back 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) across the desert.

The Germans attacked Stalingrad (now Volgograd) on August 24, 1942. The Soviets resisted street by street and house by house. Control of Stalingrad became a personal goal for both Stalin and Hitler. The powerful German 6th Army under General Friedrich von Paulus spent itself in a futile effort to dislodge the Soviet forces. The Soviets, led by Marshal Georgi Zhukov, counterattacked on November 19, and by February 2, 1943, they had killed or captured 330,000 Germans and other Axis soldiers in one of the costliest battles of the war.

The Pacific and Far East
Times and dates for the Pacific theater of war are given as of the time zone where the action took place.

The attack on Pearl Harbor
In a surprise attack the Japanese struck at the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The Japanese had used a similar surprise attack to start the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. The Japanese force was made up of some 350 planes from six carriers. Several submarines also joined in the two-hour attack. The attack, planned by Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, commander of the Japanese navy, sank the battleships Arizona and Oklahoma and severely damaged six other battleships. Some 190 Army and Navy airplanes were destroyed on the ground. Japanese losses were 129 men, several submarines, and 29 planes. More than 2,300 Americans were killed. Fortunately for the Americans, none of their aircraft carriers was present, because carriers would change the way war was fought at sea.

Malaya and Singapore
The Japanese 25th army, under General Yamashita Tomoyuki, invaded Malaya on December 8, 1941, and overran the peninsula in an eight-week campaign. Their experience in jungle fighting and ability to make amphibious landings behind the British forces were key to their success. When the British battleship Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser Repulse tried to intercept Japanese troop convoys, Japanese aircraft sank them. This ended British naval efforts in the area.

On February 2, 1942, the Japanese attacked the British naval base on Singapore. The island was prepared to resist assault from the sea but not from the skies or the jungles in the rear. Singapore surrendered on February 15, exposing the East Indies and the Indian Ocean to the Japanese advance.

Siege of Bataan
Japanese forces under General Homma Masaharu landed on northern and southern Luzon in the Philippines during December 10-24, 1941. To avoid encirclement General MacArthur abandoned Manila and withdrew his troops to the rugged peninsula of Bataan on January 2, 1942. Here about 25,000 American and Filipino regulars and several thousand reservists held out until April 9. Then more than 35,000 exhausted defenders surrendered the peninsula. Later up to 10,000 of these prisoners died on an infamous "death march" to prison camps. United States General Jonathan M. Wainwright and others escaped to Corregidor and continued their delaying action there, but on May 6 the Japanese overran the island and captured an additional 15,000 Americans and Filipinos. In March President Roosevelt had ordered MacArthur to Australia to take over defenses there.

Battle of the Coral Sea
On May 4-8, 1942, an American naval task force battled a Japanese invasion fleet in the Coral Sea, northeast of Australia. Surface ships did not exchange a shot. Action was confined to long-range attacks by carrier planes. American planes were based on the Lexington and the Yorktown. The Japanese withdrew on May 8. This was the first Japanese setback of the war. American losses included the Lexington, one destroyer, one tanker, 74 planes, and 543 men.

The decisive battle of Midway
On June 3-6, 1942, two American naval task forces and land-based planes from Midway Island intercepted 160 Japanese ships west of Midway. In a pitched air-sea battle the Japanese were repulsed, losing four carriers, two heavy cruisers, three destroyers, and 330 planes. This decisive defeat stopped the Japanese eastward advance in the Pacific. It is considered the turning point of the war in that theater. American losses included the carrier Yorktown, one destroyer, 150 planes, and 307 men.

Solomon Islands campaign; battle of Papua
On August 7, 1942, the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal and seized Henderson Field. An additional Marine division and two Army divisions later reinforced them. After six months of bloody jungle warfare the Americans wiped out the last Japanese units on February 8, 1943. New Georgia was taken on August 6, 1943, by U.S. Army forces. Bougainville was invaded on November 1, 1943, by the Marines, later reinforced by three Army infantry divisions.

In a series of five naval engagements between August and November, the U.S. Navy protected the Solomon Islands from invasion. A large portion of the Japanese fleet was destroyed but at a heavy cost in American ships. In the battle of Savo Island (August 8-9), a Japanese night attack was repulsed, but the United States lost three cruisers. In the battle of the Eastern Solomons (August 23-25), American carrier planes forced the Japanese fleet to withdraw. The battle of Cape Esperance (October 11-12) was an American night attack that again drove off the Japanese. In the battle of Santa Cruz Island (October 26), American and Japanese carriers exchanged blows; two Japanese carriers were sunk and about 100 planes shot down at a cost of the U.S. carrier Hornet and 74 planes. In the battle of Guadalcanal (November 13-15), Japanese attacks were repulsed with heavy losses on both sides, including two American cruisers; another American cruiser was sunk two weeks later off Lunga Point.

The Japanese attack in New Guinea had carried to within 30 miles (48 kilometers) of the Allied base of Port Moresby by September 12, 1942. But American and Australian troops then drove the Japanese back over the Kokoda Trail through the Owen Stanley Mountains. Fighting in jungles and swamps, the Allies took Buna (December 14, 1942) and Sanananda (January 22, 1943) in Papua.

Battle of China
The Japanese attack on China, begun in 1937, was intensified late in 1944 in an effort to wipe out forward bases of the United States 14th Air Force. From September 8 to November 26, 1944, the Japanese overran seven large air bases.

Less than a month later enemy columns had split unoccupied China, opening up a Japanese-dominated route from Malaya north to Korea. In the spring of 1945 the Chinese began a counteroffensive that regained much of the territory lost the previous year. Important elements in this drive were 35 divisions that United States General Joseph Stilwell had helped to train and equip. Air support was provided by the 14th Air Force, based at Kunming, and the 10th Air Force, brought from India to Luichow.

Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa
U.S. Marines invaded Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945. It was conquered after desperate fighting on March 16. United States losses were 4,189 killed, 15,308 wounded, and 441 missing. Japanese losses were 22,000 killed and captured.

General Simon Buckner's 10th Army landed along the western coast of Okinawa on April 1, 1945. This Army-Marine force fought for 79 days, during which time they advanced only 14 miles (23 kilometers). Enemy resistance finally ended on June 21. Japanese losses were 109,629 killed and 7,871 captured. American casualties totaled 39,000, including 10,000 naval personnel of the supporting 5th Fleet. This fleet had been attacked by Japanese kamikaze planes. Twenty-six American ships were sunk and 168 were damaged.

Atomic bombs hit Japan
During July 1945, B-29 Superfortresses from the Marianas flew 1,200 sorties a week against the Japanese homeland. Other planes flew from recently captured Okinawa and Iwo Jima to join in the aerial assault. Meanwhile the 3rd Fleet sailed boldly into Japanese coastal waters and hammered targets with its guns and planes. The American intent was to make the Japanese believe that a general invasion was imminent.

The assault never happened. Fanatical Japanese resistance on Luzon, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa convinced American military planners that an invasion of the Japanese homeland would result in hundreds of thousands of Allied and Japanese casualties. To avoid these enormous losses, another, more devastating, means was found to end the war. On August 6 a B-29 named Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, at the southern end of Honshu. The explosion vaporized everything in the immediate vicinity, completely burned about 4.4 square miles (11.4 square kilometers) of the city, and killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people. About 70,000 more were wounded. With an American victory seemingly assured, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan two days later.

The Japanese still would not surrender. On August 9 a second atomic bomb was dropped, this time on Nagasaki. It killed about 40,000 people and injured a similar number. The next day Hirohito, the Japanese emperor, ordered his government to ask for peace. Japan agreed to the terms of surrender on August 15 (the 14th in the United States), which is remembered as V-J (Victory over Japan) Day. The formal surrender was signed on September 2.

The Costs of the War
No one will ever know for certain the war cost in the number of people killed, disabled, and wounded. Many nations could not accurately count their losses.

Estimates of the total number of deaths range from about 35 million to 60 million. The military forces of the Allies and the Axis reported a total of about 14.5 million killed. The civilian population suffered even more than the military through air bombings, starvation, and epidemics. Campaigns of genocide in Europe and Asia were responsible for millions of deaths ( see Holocaust). Estimated civilian deaths amounted to at least 20 million. The countries with the greatest number of civilian losses were the Soviet Union, 7 million; Poland, 5.7 million; China, 2.2 million; Yugoslavia, 1.2 million; Germany, 780,000; and Japan, 672,000. More than 12 million people were left homeless. For millions, suffering and hardship continued long after the war.

Total military costs were more than 1 trillion dollars. Property damage was estimated at almost as much (800 billion dollars). The war at sea cost 4,770 merchant vessels, with a gross tonnage of more than 21 million. This amounted to 27 percent of all the ships in existence at the start of the war.

The American war effort during World War II

In addition, war spending did not stop when the fighting ended. Care of the disabled, pensions, and other expenses continued. In the United States money spent for United Nations relief, occupation of foreign countries, and veterans' benefits raised the total cost by another 30 billion dollars.

Losses in Normal Production
The total number of people who served in the armed forces during the war was estimated at about 92 million. Figures for some of the nations are the Soviet Union, 22 million; Germany, 17 million; the United States, 14 million; and Britain, 12 million.

In 1943, the war year of peak employment in the United States, an additional 12,601,000 people worked in the basic war industries. In many other countries most of the workers had war jobs. The world lost years of peacetime production from all these people.

This expense to industry did not stop with the end of the war. Millions of people were not only taken from normal production, but they could not return to their usual work. Factories, railroads, and other business property had been destroyed. Millions of others had lost the money they needed or their business had been destroyed by the war.

Gains in Rebuilding, Science, Technology
There were, however, certain gains from the war. Much bomb damage had been done to slum areas of some cities. After the war these areas were rebuilt, giving people better places to live.

In many industries manufacturing methods had been improved. Automatic methods and machinery replaced costly handwork in countless operations. Machines were developed to squeeze and mold metal like putty. New alloys and plastics were developed.

Medicine and surgery made great advances. Penicillin might not have been produced for a generation in normal times. War insecticides such as DDT began a new age in controlling dangerous pests and disease carriers. The dangers posed by the use of pesticides would not be recognized for several years.

The development of jet and rocket propulsion offered prospects of air transportation at the speed of sound. The greatest advance of all was the releasing of atomic power, but peacetime benefits soon followed in the form of nuclear energy for power in industry. Nuclear power was adapted to new military uses in the construction of submarines and aircraft carriers.

The V-1 and V-2 guided missiles developed by the Germans during the war were an important step toward the modern space age. After the war V-2 equipment and German engineers were brought to the United States. The work of these German engineers along with that of American scientists resulted in the successful launching of American artificial Earth satellites.

The Tehran Conference and UNRRA
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek of China at Cairo, Egypt, in November 1943. From Cairo Roosevelt and Churchill went to Tehran in Iran to confer with Premier Stalin. They promised him a second front in France.

Representatives of 44 Allied nations met in Washington, D.C., and Atlantic City in November 1943. They set up the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). The UNRRA fund for rehabilitating the postwar world was estimated at about 2 billion dollars. The United States was to provide 1.35 billion dollars of the total.

Planning Finance and World Peace
A group of monetary experts representing 44 states or governments held a conference at Bretton Woods, N.H., during July 1944. They agreed on a system for setting up an international lending agency. Countries in need of funds to finance international trade could borrow an amount equal to their contribution. This was called a "stabilization fund." The plan also called for an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to lend money for rehabilitation projects in member nations. The United States was expected to contribute the largest amount of money to both the stabilization fund and the World Bank.

In August 1944 representatives of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and China met at Dumbarton Oaks estate in Washington, D.C. Preliminary plans were drawn up for assuring peace. These plans formed the basis for the organization of the United Nations the following year.

The Yalta Conference and the United Nations Charter
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met with Premier Stalin at Yalta in Crimea during February 4-11, 1945. They discussed plans for ending the war, occupying Germany, and dealing with the defeated or liberated countries of eastern Europe. They also laid the basis for provisions of the United Nations charter.

President Roosevelt died on April 12. Vice president Harry S. Truman succeeded to the presidency on the same day. He announced he would follow Roosevelt's wartime and postwar policies.

On April 25, 1945, delegates from 50 countries assembled in San Francisco to endorse a charter based on the Dumbarton Oaks proposals. The charter took effect on October 24, 1945, officially creating the United Nations.

Potsdam Meeting; Postwar Disagreement
In July and August 1945 President Truman, Premier Stalin, and Prime Minister Churchill met in Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin. They discussed peace settlements and drew up plans for reconstructing Europe.

In the midst of these discussions an election in Britain put the Labour party in power. That party's leader, Clement R. Attlee, succeeded Churchill as Britain's prime minister and replaced him at the Potsdam meeting.

After Japan's surrender the foreign secretaries of Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and France and American Secretary of State James F. Byrnes met in London in September 1945. After three weeks of disputes the meeting broke up without results.

During this time the Soviets demanded a share in the occupation of Japan. General MacArthur, however, was kept in sole command of Japan. The Soviet Union shared occupation of Korea with the United States.

Meanwhile, weaknesses in the prewar colonial empires began to surface-a trend that continued for many years. Revolts soon broke out in some of the regions released from Japanese control. In the Netherlands Indies Indonesian nationalists revolted and set up a republic in 1945. The Dutch failed to put down the revolt. By 1950 the Republic of Indonesia was formed. France had trouble reestablishing its authority in French Indochina against the resistance of Vietnamese nationalists. Britain was disturbed by rebellion in Burma, pressure for independence from India, and demands from Zionist Jews for entry into Palestine.

Postwar Relief; War Criminal Trials
By 1946 UNRRA had helped to return about 6 million people to their homes in western Europe. It had also distributed about 6 million tons of food. In 1947 UNRRA was discontinued. The problem of food relief was then handled by the individual nations.

In August 1945 the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and France wrote a charter for an Allied War Crimes Commission. The court established by the commission met at Nuremberg, Germany. It called before it 22 leading Nazis. In October 1946 the court sentenced most of the defendants. Ten of them were hanged. Seven were imprisoned, and three were acquitted. Others were sentenced later.

The British, Norwegians, and French also held separate war criminal trials. In Japan after V-J Day General MacArthur set up an Army commission to try war criminals. Hundreds were executed, and thousands more were put in prison.

British Power Declines; United States Problems
A significant postwar development was the decline of British power. Soon after the war Britain began to give up its empire. In 1947 it granted freedom to India, which split up into a Hindu state and a new Muslim nation named Pakistan. In the same year Britain turned over the Palestine problem to the United Nations. In 1948 the State of Israel was created.

For more than a year after the war the United States had problems that many foreign nations took for signs of weakness. Members of the armed forces demanded their release. By 1947 the Army was down from its war peak of more than 8 million soldiers to a peacetime strength of about 1 million. Congress passed the nation's second peacetime draft law in 1948.

There were also many shortages of consumer goods. Widespread labor troubles resulted in damaging strikes. Dissatisfaction with conditions brought a sweeping Republican victory in the 1946 Congressional elections.

The Marshall Plan
One of the causes of World War II was the collapse of the European economy. To avoid a repeat of this situation and to create a strong economy that would enable Europeans to resist Communist aggression, the United States decided to aid European recovery. Under the Marshall Plan, named after United States Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the United States provided more than 13 billion dollars to rebuild western Europe. The plan was a great success and laid the foundations for the European Economic Union (Common Market). The Soviets refused to allow the eastern European nations under their control to participate.

The Peace Treaties
Delegates from 21 member countries of the United Nations met in Paris on July 29, 1946, to draft treaties with Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Finland. Representatives of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and France signed the treaties in Paris on February 10, 1947. Each treaty provided that border fortifications were to be limited to those needed to keep internal security. Guarantees were given against racial discrimination and the rebirth of fascist governments. The Balkan treaties provided for free navigation of the Danube.

The problem of Germany
At Potsdam in 1945 Allied leaders set up a temporary administration for Germany. The country was divided into American, British, French, and Soviet occupation zones. The American, British, and French zones together made up the western two thirds of Germany, while the Soviet zone comprised the eastern third. Control of Berlin, in the Soviet zone, was divided between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. Later, in 1961, the city would be physically partitioned by a concrete and barbed-wire wall.

The victors were determined that Germany should not regain the industrial strength necessary for war. Wiping out all German industry, however, would have been disastrous. Western Europe depended on Germany for coal and heavy metal products. In return Germany normally bought huge quantities of foodstuffs from its neighbors.

The Allied powers also had to settle on a form of German government. The United States and Britain favored a federal type, with most matters entrusted to German states ( Länder) and a federal government to deal with national matters such as currency. The Soviet Union preferred a strong central government with political parties directly represented so that Communists could dominate. France wanted a very loose federation, with international control of the Ruhr.

Representatives of the four powers convened in Moscow in 1947 to discuss treaties for Germany and Austria. Because of the postwar weakness of Britain and France, the conference was chiefly a contest between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union demanded 10 billion dollars in reparations from Germany in 20 years. The United States rejected this proposal on the grounds that the money could be made available only if the United States supplied an equivalent sum to support the Germans. If the reparations were to be paid without such support, it would greatly hamper Germany's economic recovery. The conference ended with no agreement. Later meetings also failed. Then, in June 1948, the Soviet Union blockaded the roads and railways to Berlin in an attempt to force the United States, Britain, and France out of the city.

The Western powers responded by supplying western Berlin with food, fuel, and medicine from outside by air. This airlift kept life going in western Berlin for 11 months, until the Soviet Union lifted the blockade in May 1949. In that same month the Western powers organized their occupation zones into a new nation called the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly known as West Germany. The Soviet Union then established its zone as the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. When the Soviet Union continued to block a German peace treaty the United States in 1952 ratified a "peace contract" with West Germany. Germany would not be reunited as a nation until 1990.

The problems of Austria and Trieste
The postwar split between the Soviet Union and the West was also illustrated in Austria. After the war Austria was divided into four areas of occupation-American, British, French, and Soviet-with Vienna under the control of all four powers. In 1955, after repeated disagreements about terms, a peace treaty was signed in Vienna. Soviet and Allied occupation forces were withdrawn.

Another postwar trouble spot in Europe was Trieste. In 1945 the city and surrounding territory were divided into two zones-Zone A (including Trieste) was occupied by British and United States forces, Zone B by the Yugoslavs. The Italian peace treaty of 1947 established the Free Territory of Trieste under the jurisdiction of the United Nations. Conflicts between Yugoslavia and Italy over their claims to the territory continued, however. In an agreement signed by the two countries in 1954, Trieste and most of Zone A were given to Italy while Yugoslavia received Zone B and some added territory.

Meanwhile the increased threat of Communism in Europe led to the formation of new pacts among the free nations. In 1949 ten nations of western Europe joined with the United States and Canada in establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Three years later the European Defense Community was founded. This group received NATO support. ( See also Cold War.)

Postwar problems in Asia
In the East Asia Communist military aggression created a new balance of power before the World War II peace treaty with Japan could be signed. On the Asia mainland Chinese Communist forces routed the armies of Nationalist China (1946-49). Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist leader, proclaimed the People's Republic of China and allied it with the Soviet Union. This made China the strongest military power in the Far East. The defeated Nationalist forces, headed by Chiang Kai-shek, fled to the island of Taiwan.

The successful Communist revolution in China set the pattern for Communist revolts in other Asian countries. In what would become Malaysia and in the Philippines rebels waged campaigns of terrorism that lasted for a number of years. In Indochina Communist forces attacked French-supported Vietnam. They forced the French to partition Vietnam.

After World War II Korea was occupied in the north by the Soviet Union and in the south by the United States. When the Republic of Korea was established in the south, most of the United States forces withdrew. In 1950 Communist forces from North Korea and China invaded the new republic. Thus the increasing tensions in eastern Asia had finally exploded into warfare.

Peace treaty with Japan
Japan struggled to rebuild itself after its crushing defeat. During this time all efforts by the Allies to frame a peace treaty were blocked by the Soviet Union's disagreements with the United States. Finally, in 1951, the United States sponsored a treaty that was endorsed by Japan and 48 other nations. The Soviet Union refused to sign. The Chinese signatory-the Nationalist government-signed in 1952. The chief provisions of the peace treaty were as follows:

Territorial: The independence of Korea was to be recognized; all claims to Taiwan, the Pescadores, the southern part of Sakhalin, and the Pacific islands that were formerly under Japanese mandate were to be surrendered.

Reparations: Because of limited economic capacity Japan was made to pay victimized nations only in goods manufactured in Japan from raw materials supplied by those nations.

Direct cost of the two World Wars

Armaments: No limitations. Japan, however, agreed to abide by the antiaggression provisions contained in the charter of the United Nations. In addition, Article Nine of the new Japanese constitution prohibited all warfare except in defense. Negotiations between Japan and the Soviet Union continued until 1956, when a peace treaty was finally signed.

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At last enfranchised

Before the 1894 Bill there had been three unsuccessful attempts to gain equal voting rights for women in South Australia.

Many parliamentarians felt that women were not emotionally or intellectually capable of properly participating in politics. Others also felt that women were stepping outside their traditional roles and that giving them the vote would undermine a husband's position in the family.

However, following an election in early 1894, the Labour Party, which was sympathetic to the women's cause, formed government.

The Constitutional Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Bill was presented to the Legislative Council on 23 August 1894.

A conservative effort to derail the Bill by introducing a woman's right to stand for parliament as well as the right to vote did not stop the Bill narrowly passing. It was then sent to the Legislative Assembly where three months elapsed during which a slight amendment was made allowing women to postal vote as well.

After much debate, the Bill was finally passed 31 votes to 14 in front of a crowd of around 200 women. The Bill was officially made law in 1895 when signed by Queen Victoria. South Australian women then became the first in the world who could not only vote but also stand for parliament.

Equal enfranchisement therefore applied to all citizens of South Australia, including the Indigenous men and women of the colony.

The first South Australian election in which women could participate was held in 1896. The female presence was remarked upon by many newspapers, including the Adelaide Observer, which said:

Women were everywhere, and their presence ... no doubt had a refining influence. Never have we had a more decorous gathering together of the multitude than that which distinguished the first exercise of the female franchise on Saturday April 25 1896.

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Before the 1894 Bill there had been three unsuccessful attempts to gain equal voting rights for women in South Australia. Many parliamentarians felt that women were not emotionally or intellectually capable of properly participating in politics. Others also felt that women were stepping outside their traditional roles and that giving them the vote would undermine a husband's position in the family.

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Animals Arts and Literature Earth and Geography History Life Processes Living Things (Other) Philosophy and Religion Plants Science and Mathematics Society Sports and Recreation Technology

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Animals Arts and Literature Earth and Geography History Life Processes Living Things (Other) Philosophy and Religion Plants Science and Mathematics Society Sports and Recreation Technology

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In this clip from the 75th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor Electronic Field Trip, student reporter Eliana analyzes why the attack happened through a geographical analysis of tensions and takeovers in the Pacific.

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Clip- Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor? | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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In this clip from the 75th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor Electronic Field Trip, student reporter Eliana analyzes why the attack happened through a geographical analysis of tensions and takeovers in the Pacific.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cz9gtMTeI

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The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima   The Daily 360   The New York Times

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ALBERT EINSTEIN was part of the history of the bomb. Albert was a jew who had fled from his homeland which was being invaded by the Nazis. He was not a US Citizen.

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Connection: Watch to understand the impact

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Connection: Watch to understand the impact

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Visions of the moving image: what is, what was, and what will never be

The rush to create television was started by a rumor.

In 1880 Alexander Graham Bell, the famed inventor of the telephone, sealed documents related to his latest invention and gave them to the Smithsonian Institution. When word got out that his mystery invention was called the "Photophone," many people assumed that Bell had figured out how to mechanically send pictures from one point to another. Many had no doubt gotten the idea that such an invention was in the works after seeing illustrations of the the fictional "telephonoscope" in the December 9, 1878 issue of Punch magazine.

Word quickly spread and inventors rushed to guess at what futuristic technology would allow for sending pictures over a distance. People all over the world flooded the pages of magazines like Scientific American and English Mechanic, trying to guess in articles and letters to the editor just how Bell's "Photophone" worked.

In fact, some people were angry that Bell was hiding his invention, speculating what a tremendous innovation could do for humankind. The London publication Brief: The Week's News ran a short piece that didn't even mention Bell by name, instead calling him the "inventor of the telephone" and protesting that Bell wouldn't share his marvelous invention with the world.

Sticky TOC engaged! Do not remove this!

As it turns out, Bell's Photophone wasn't a way to "see by telegraph" as most speculated, but was actually a method of transmitting sound through a beam of light. Cool, no doubt; but no television.

We live in a time when it's hard to define what television is precisely. Is television defined by the device you're watching it on? Is television defined by the length of a certain piece of visual media? Am I using television if I chat with someone through a TV screen over the internet? The thing is, it's always been that way. The history of the future of television is particularly messy because no one at any given time has been happy with defining exactly what it is.

Another part of the confusion over television's history stems from the fact that there isn't a single Founding Father of Television. Of course, most groundbreaking technologies lack a sole inventor - as is evidenced by the geeks who like to point out all the ways in which Thomas Edison screwed over Nicola Tesla. Or the multitidue of names that contributed to what we now call the internet. Television though, had such a long, hard fight to determine first what it was technologically, that it delayed many in thinking about its full potential.

Before 1926

Before 1926

The gentleman of the future enjoys a burlesque show from the comfort of his own home

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries no one knew for certain just what television technology would do - but they knew it was coming. The telephone and radio were in their infancy and it seemed like only a matter of time before visual communication across great distances would be accomplished. A small minority thought that the still-unrealized technology might be used for broadcasting, but many thought that it would be used for point-to-point audio and visual communication between just two people.

Albert Robida's 1890 book Le Vingtieme Siecle imagined the gentleman of the future enjoying a burlesque show from the comfort of his own home.

In 1912, the French chocolate company Lombart produced a series of promotional cards packaged with their sweets that looked at the futuristic world of the year 2012. One of the cards in the series showed parents in France speaking to their son in an unnamed Asian country through a mechanical telephone-television device.

Hugo Gernsback is considered by many to be the father of modern science fiction, having started Amazing Stories (the world's first magazine devoted entirely to science fiction) in 1926. Gernsback was also a pioneer in the world of radio, opening the world's first radio store in 1909 in New York City. Gernsback published a number of different magazines in the 1920s and his fascination with radio spilled over into television as tinkerers and inventors were beginning to see some promise in the ability to wirelessly transmit moving pictures.

A mechanical promise for the future of broadcasting

One of the magazines that Gernsback published was called Science and Invention, and on the cover of the July, 1922 issue he published what is probably the first illustration of a color TV receiving broadcast signals. Three men stand watching a baseball game - television tubes, wires, and knobs all exposed on the side of an orange TV set - a mechanical promise for the future of broadcasting. Inside this issue was an article explaining the futuristic principles of television and how it might be used as a broadcast medium in the future. It's fascinating to see their vision of the television camera of the future, which they call a "telephot."

In this illustration we behold how future audiences will see a baseball game thousands of miles away. Here we see a common radio transmitter to which are connected several telephot transmitters. The operators of the telephot transmitters A, B, C and D "shoot" the interesting parts of the game, but they do not do this simultaneously. They merely point the telephot transmitter into focus while the radio operator at his instrument switches from one to the other in order to get those close-ups which he wishes. The distant audience then will see whatever close-ups are selected by the radio operator. It naturally would not do to have just one telephot transmitter for the reason that at time, the operator would be either too far, or otherwise too close to the scene. By having a multiplicity of telephots, this is avoided.

"Movies by radio! Why not?"

Vladimir Zworykin, working for Westinghouse, applied for patents in the early and mid-1920s for things such as a two-way television system.

The February 8, 1925 issue of the San Antonio Light (San Antonio, TX) featured some predictions from Hugo Gernsback for the year 1975.

Movies by radio! Why not? You will be able to have a moving picture produced in some central plant and projected in your home, on your yacht, or on your camping trip, the picture being sent by radio, and received and projected upon your screen. All this is perfectly possible.

1926-1945

1926-1945

As early as 1884 Paul Nipkow applied for a patent in Germany for the first electromechanical method for sending images, but it was John Logie Baird - a Scottish inventor - who would develop mechanical television into a practical reality, providing the first public demonstration of his television in 1926 for the Royal Institution and a newspaper reporter in London.

"The complete influence of television upon modern warfare bewilders the imagination."

Baird was truly a visionary, and in 1927 made a rather prescient prediction about the effect television would have on warfare. From the May 15, 1927 Sioux City Journal (Sioux City, IA):

"[Television] will have at least as great an influence on future warfare. Someone has said that 'If prospect of war can be made sufficiently horrible, nations will not fight,' and television with the infra-red ray shows the hidden enemy to the distant general. Airplanes need no longer wireless scanty reports; equipped with an electric eye, they can reproduce the entire field of action, the very shell-bursts; moving troops, each in tiny detail, will be stripped of concealment. The complete influence of television upon modern warfare bewilders the imagination."

Dr. Ernest F. W. Alexanderson, a consulting engineer at General Electric, was quite optimistic in 1927 about the future of television, predicting extraordinary advances, long before the most basic TV sets had really proved themselves: "We have already visualized that the radio broadcasting of motion pictures in full colors, sound and three-dimensional rendering may be possible."

Nikola Tesla had his own futuristic vision for what television could accomplish. The January 26, 1927 issue of the Nevada State Journal explained Tesla's hopes for the technology:

Application of radio principles will enable people by carrying a small instrument in their pockets to see distant events like the sorceress of the magic crystal fairy tales and legends, Nikola Tesla, electrical inventor, predicted today. Mr. Tesla, who on several occasion has tried to communicate with the planet Mars, made his predictions in an interview published in the current issue of Collier's Weekly.

"We shall be able to witness the inauguration of a president, the playing of a world's series baseball game, the havoc of an earthquake, or a battle just as though we were present," Mr. Tesla said.

Gernsback predicted in the June, 1927 issue of Science and Invention:

It may take two years and even five years before every telephone and every radio set is finally equipped with its television attachment, but you may rest assured that this generation will soon personally witness the appearance of this stage of the art.

"Science has the habit of doing the unforseen, and often throws our best and most logical predictions on the scrap heap."

Interestingly, Gernsback's 1927 article wasn't so much concerned with the as yet imperfect and impractical medium, but instead with the future of television - a medium that hadn't yet been clearly defined.

It is now possible to hear and see a person over a wire line, or over the radio. We have, therefore, made it possible to transport two senses, so to speak, to a distance, the two sense being sight and hearing.

In these days of wonder and achievement, we should ask ourselves the question, "What other of our senses is it possible to transport to a distance, and, from our present-day knowledge of science, is it possible to transport any of them at all?"

But Gernsback acknowledged that their thinking about television was incredibly limited. Just as radio had been envisioned as simply a point-to-point contact between people, but evolved with the advent of broadcasting, so too might television learn about how to reach the masses. A revolutionary idea for the time, but one that we take for granted today.

There was a time when we were talking first about radio telephony, when it was conceded by practically all of us who had a hand in the shaping of its destinies, that the logical thing would be talking by radio to our friends. Thus in the first book ever written on the subject "The Wireless Telephone," published by me in 1908, before there was a Radiotelephone, I could see only one use for the coming invention and that was a parallel to the wire telephone. I did not dream of broadcasting, nor did any one else.

The same may be said of television. Right now we are glibly talking about television attachments on our telephones, and radio sets. We may be all wrong, and the new art of television may turn into entirely different directions, undreamt of today. Science has the habit of doing the unforseen, and often throws our best and most logical predictions on the scrap heap.

The December, 1928 issue of Science and Invention imagined 3D television technology being used in theaters, allowing people to watch using stereoscopes - technology that dates back to 1838.

A television drama of the future has been visualized here. The illustration below shows a dual image thrown on a screen, with the spectators viewing the performance through stereoscopes.

This system of stereoscopic 3D television was attempted on a smaller scale by Baird two years earlier, but it had proven impractical given the fact that it could only be watched by one person at a time.

"Even if color-printing be perfected, what can the daily press offer in competition with such a lure, or what pale promise make?"

Silas Bent, an author and journalist, saw the emerging technological improvements in television as a threat to print media, calling it in 1929 a "disturbing development":

Fancy what this means. Sitting in your home you may witness distant events, observe the natural colors of the surroundings, and hear simultaneously the accompanying sounds. All the imperial pageantry and exotic color of a Sultan's nuptials, dancing-girls and warriors, wild horsemen and chanting priests, might have their being in our very presence, so that we could all but touch them. Even if color-printing be perfected, what can the daily press offer in competition with such a lure, or what pale promise make?"

As Lawrence R. Samuel noted in his 2009 book Future: A Recent History, "Bent argued that, in order to survive, the newspaper business would have to split into two segments, one devoted to delivering serious information to intellectuals, the other to 'the journalism of triviality and entertainment.'"

1929 also saw an illustration of the TV of the future in Judge magazine by illustrator Harry Grant Dart. A man bathing in the future is caught off guard by the woman who is calling him through the TV-telephone.

In the 1930s the Max Cigarette company issued a series of collectible cards with their smokes. Number 13 in the series of cards depicted the "television of the future."

Linked with other modern marvels, television will open new worlds to everybody. Men in a bathysphere at sea-bed may transmit to the home set or to the cinema scenes taking place at the bottom of the ocean. The reporter of the future will be the television operator who broadcasts news to the world while it is taking place.

"Men in a bathysphere at sea-bed may transmit to the home set or to the cinema scenes taking place at the bottom of the ocean."

In 1935 there were twenty-eight TV broadcasting stations licensed by the FCC. Of these stations were roughly six actively broadcasting images. The May, 1935 issue of Short Wave Craft magazine asked "How Soon Shall We Have Television?" The article explored the various reasons why television development was lagging. On the one hand, the FCC wouldn't issue licenses to TV broadcasting companies who wished to sell ads ostensibly because the picture quality was so poor as to be considered fraud. On the other hand, there needed to be investment in the endeavor if TV images were to improve. And if the US government wasn't going to invest money into the development of a public broadcasting station, as was happening in England, then American broadcast TV had a very tenuous future.

Interestingly, John Logie Baird believed that the use of television technology in movie theaters would be of even more importance than use in the home, again raising different possibilities for this futuristic technology in the mind of the tech-nerd public. The November, 1937 Short Wave and Television magazine:

The future of motion-picture television is none the less of paramount importance, and may prove of even greater importance than television for the home. The future cinema will be a Telecinema, the present screen being replaced by a television screen; films, plays and topical events being broadcast direct to the various cinemas and theatres from central studios. The movie theatre proprietor will have the option of different programs from different centers.

Later, with a rather prescient prediction of popular visual culture, Baird imagines that sound will simply complement the images of the television:

The radio set of the future will be a Televisor, every receiver having its television screen. It is customary to think of television as an adjunct to sound broadcasting, but I think that finally sound will be regarded rather as the complement to the picture, just as it is in the motion picture. We have come to associate sound with broadcasting, because unlike the cinematograph, (motion picture projector) sound came before vision. None the less, vision is, in my opinion, the more important. We may recall how for many years the silent movie entertained millions.

Though the first public demonstration of television happened over a decade earlier, the 1939 New York World's Fair is considered by most to be television's coming out party. David Sarnoff of RCA proudly showed off the technology at the Fair, using electronic technology which had surpassed Baird's mechanical TV technology in clarity and practicality.

But even then it hadn't yet been determined whether it would be a two-way transceiver or a broadcast medium. The 1939 World's Fair in New York far outshined its sister Fair in San Francisco that year. The San Francisco fair didn't feature the same kind of futuristic exhibits like GM's Futurama exhibit. However, that didn't stop it from looking at the "telephone-television" of tomorrow. The July 24, 1940 Ukiah Republican Press in Ukiah, CA featured a photograph of a man talking to a woman through a telephone-television, as it was promised people would surely do in the future.

Television looked like it was going to be a reality very soon, even if people were still a little fuzzy on the details. But then World War II got in the way. Naturally, focus on television was averted to the war effort and everyone would simply have to wait.

"HELICOPTER TRAVEL! A NEW STREAMLINED HOME! AND TELEVISION!"

The theme of advertising any consumer product during the second World War seemed to be patience. Companies were constantly telling people that, 'just you wait, once the war is over all of the wondrous advances of the future will arrive in short order.' It was also popular to simply position your product next to those promises of the future, and the Stroehmann Brothers Company did that in an advertisement from 1944. Helicopter travel! A new streamlined home! And television!

The September 26, 1944 Altoona Mirror (Altoona, PA):

Tomorrow... watch these dreams come TRUE!
But don't dream about the Bread of Tomorrow... IT'S HERE TODAY!

Television was going to be a reality very soon, even if people were still a little fuzzy on the details

1945-1970

1945-1970

After World War II, television could finally pick up where it had left off - it had lost a lot of steam when the war effort shifted the world's focus. Television would finally be realized as a broadcast medium, proving unmarketable, economically infeasible, and technically impractical as a transceiver device.

By the 1950s television was a standard appliance in many American homes and was seen as a growing threat to the movie industry. After all, what sick freak would want to go out if they could be entertained from the comfort of their own homes? This sparked a sort of arms race, as movies tried gimmicks like widescreen aspect ratios and 3D: "Hollywood's answer to television." Somewhat strangely - perhaps just to mess with the motion picture industry even further - the television industry insisted that it would soon be developing 3D entertainment for the home.

A 1953 Ohio newspaper proclaimed that, "Three dimensional television, described as television's answer to Hollywood's answer to television, makes its debut today at a press conference."

Even after the public had grown weary of 3D cinema and the craze had largely fizzled out by the mid-1950s, television still had its eye on pushing the televised world into 3D. The Daily Telegram (Columbus, Nebraska) included an article on March 20, 1958 which described one such process:

Unlike the 3-D movie process that blossomed briefly, "depthagraph" does not utilize polarization to fuse a double image. Viewers wearing special glasses see the depth dimension. Those without glasses continue to receive a clear, two-dimensional picture. In TV patois, the system is completely compatible.

"Depthagraph" was developed by ex-actor William Free who predicts future TV shows will be strictly 3-D.

At first kiddie shows and commercials will take advantage of my process," Free said. "Then, when there are 100 million pairs of glasses in the homes dramatic shows, Westerns and musicals will move into 3D."

The Sunday comic strip "Closer Than We Think" appeared in newspapers throughout the US and Canada from 1958 until 1963. Illustrated by Arthur Radebaugh, the strip would pull snippets from future-oriented news stories of the day and imagine what those technologies might look like in practice. Today, we can look back at "Closer Than We Think" as pretty much the definitive techno-utopian aesthetic that we so often associate with mid-century futurism.

Naturally, the strip looked at the future of television a number of times - picturing wall-to-wall TV, 3D-TV, wristwatch TV, headphone TV (TV images projected inside your head), and even the spot-on predictions which we might find rather mundane in 2012 given how accurate they were. The February 1, 1959 edition of the strip looked at the electronic home library of the future:

Some unusual inventions for home entertainment and education will be yours in the future, such as the "television recorder" that RCA's David Sarnoff described recently.

With this device, when a worthwhile program comes over the air while you are away from home, or even while you're watching it, you'll be able to preserve both the picture and sound on tape for replaying at any time. Westinghouse's Gwilym Price expects such tapes to reproduce shows in three dimensions and color on screens as shallow as a picture.

AT&T produced a film in 1962 titled Talking of Tomorrow. Directed by The Jetsons writer Chuck Couch, the film looks at the nuclear family of tomorrow and how they might live, work, and play. The TV of the future is gigantic and allows Father and Junior to watch a (rather racially offensive) baseball game from around the world.

The mid-1960s was a tipping point for color television. In late 1961 the ABC show Walt Disney Presents moved to NBC and became Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. At the beginning of 1965 there were an estimated 2,880,000 color TV sets in the US. This was an increase of 77 percent over the estimated 1,620,000 color sets at the beginning of 1964.

THE TV OF THE FUTURE IS GIGANTIC AND ALLOWS FATHER AND JUNIOR TO WATCH A (RATHER RACIALLY OFFENSIVE) BASEBALL GAME FROM AROUND THE WORLD

With color a mainstream reality, the future of television in the late-1960s began to focus on the staggering number of channels and technical improvements that would be at the average viewer's disposal. In the November 30, 1968 Saturday Evening Post, the FCC's Nicolas Jackson boldly declared in true techno-utopian fashion, "The future of television is no longer a question of what we can invent. It's a question of what we want."

"The future of television is no longer a question of what we can invent. It's a question of what we want."

In 1969 RCA marketed a limited-edition TV set that featured more brightness, more vivid color and a futuristic design. Called the Two Thousand, the TV actually had a similar design to the futuristic television illustrated in a 1964 children's book called Rockets to Explore the Unknown by Don E. Rogers and illustrated by George Bakacs.

"And what a picture you'll see on that screen. "

From the December 18, 1969 Albuquerque Journal advertisement for RCA's Two-Thousand TV set:

"In one giant step RCA harnessed the speed and accuracy of the computer to help unveil a new century in color television. It's a limited edition (2,000 sets) with unlimited advancement.

First and most obvious, is its 21st century design, its sculptured whiteness curves to a rosewood veneer top. The black translucent doors slide back and disappear into the set, revealing the 23-inch diagonal screen.

And what a picture you'll see on that screen.

It's the new RCA Hi-Lite 70 tube-computer designed and engineered for 100% more brightness than any previous big screen RCA color tube. The Hi-Lite 70 tube gives such a vivid, detailed picture, you can even watch it in a brightly-lit room.

The remote controls of color, tint and volume are computer-designed too. They operate electronically so there are no motors, no noise, and no moving parts to wear out or break down.

Inside The Two Thousand, though, is the biggest news.

RCA eliminated the conventional VHF tuner. In its place are new computer-like "memory" circuits - electronic circuits with memories like tiny computers.

When you press the remote control button, the circuits automatically remember which channels you have programmed. So there's no wandering through empty channels for the station you want. You simply go silently and instantly from one live station to the next.

Press the UHF lever and the signal seeking circuitry takes over. A silent motor sweeps up and down the UHF band, seeking an active channel. When it finds one it stops. There's never any need to fine-tune the pictures. It's done for you electronically.

The Two Thousand represents the pinnacle of achievement in Color TV engineering and performance. Open its doors and embark on a totally new viewing adventure."

1970-2000

1970-2000

The tough economy of the 1970s painted many aspects of futurism in a decidedly more pessimistic light. Even when it came to television, there was no certainty that the future would be better (or at least more technologically wonderful). From the February 3, 1974 Oakland Tribune:

All those dreams of endless fun and self-improvement through the magic of super-television depended in part of the reigning ideology of the time which was: everything is always going to keep getting bigger and better.

Suddenly the doctrine of eternal abundance as a basic American right is seen as not so certain any more. We are running out of things. And the inevitability of progress can't be taken quite so readily for granted.

It now seems possible that we won't keep getting richer. The energy to run those room-size television screens and 3-D telecasts may have to be used for something more mundane.... like heating the joint or getting the old man to work and back.

The supersize television screens postulated a complete changeover in television technology; in other words, the scrapping of every piece of television equipment now in use - every home set, every camera and videotape machine. For, to increase the size of the screen considerably, we would have to increase the numbers of lines of transmission. That means new machines.

But by the 1970s it wasn't all doom and gloom. Some saw the futuristic integration of television and computers. The 1979 book The Computer Age: A Twenty Year View looked at the home of the future and predicted pressure-sensitive controls that allowed one to interact with the TV.

Futurism is, more often than not, a reflection of the hopes and fears of the time in which it is created. The kinds of programming that Arthur C. Clarke imagined in his 1986 book, July 20, 2019 depict the hot button issues of the time: Latino immigration into the US, the complete collapse of government programs, and the role of Baby Boomers in the future. Clarke's fictional TV programs of the future are summarized below:

"Don't Mess with Me." Tonight marks ABC's first attempt at a new English-language situation comedy in prime time since the network went to all-Spanish programming a few years ago. A summer replacement, the series brings back one-time child star Gary Coleman (has he ever been away?) who plays the father of two adopted children. Beats reruns, anyway. (7:30 P.M.)

"So Who Wants to Work?" Jerry Rubin is the resident con man in a San Francisco retirement home where, ever since the collapse of Social Security, the old folks must rely on their wits to stay afloat. Rubin is particularly effective as the elderly baby-boomer wunderkind. In this episode, he convinces an oil company to use his pals in a TV commercial.

"You'll not go to a video store but instead order a movie on demand and then pay for it."

The June, 1987 issue of Omni magazine looked at the predictions of Siskel and Ebert for the future of film and the home video market. Roger Ebert pretty accurately envisions a world of high-definition sets and movies on demand:

We will have high-definition, wide-screen television sets and a push-button dialing system to order the movie you want at the time you want it. You'll not go to a video store but instead order a movie on demand and then pay for it. Videocassette tapes as we know them now will be obsolete both for showing prerecorded movies and for recording movies. People will record films on 8mm and will play them back using laser-disk/CD technology.

The rise of the personal computer in the 1980s meant that people now saw the possibilities for connecting their TVs to something much more futuristic. Essentially, the transformation of the 1990s was to be one of turning the television into a computer. The TV of the future would even allow you to interact with holograms, acting out plays in an immersive world, like in this illustration from the 1981 children's book Tomorrow's Home by Neil Ardley.

Look at this play of the future - a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar by famous actors in your very own living room! Even more amazing, you play the title role yourself. The play has just reached the point where Caesar is killed.

All this could come about with developments in holographic video - a system that uses laser beams to produce images that have depth just as in real life. Once perfected, it will produce a show that takes place not on a screen but in real space - even around you. You could walk in and out of the action, and view it from any direction - the ultimate in realism. In this case, the computer that operates the system has been instructed to omit the role of Julius Caesar so as to allow you to take part. Although the images look so real, you could walk through them, so you suffer no harm from your killers' knives.

The ebb and flow of futurism is a curious one

An internal Ameritech promotional video from the 1980s looked at the telecommunications services of tomorrow, including the fiber-optic delivered TV of the future:

A powerful microprocessor transforms a simple television into a sophisticated computer. Advanced television is challenging the United States to redefine broadcast TV standards and may require fiber-optic transmission. Advanced television could open a new service opportunity for Ameritech.

In true back to the future form, the video also says that the new high-speed fiber optic network being developed for television would allow for the videophones of the future. Irwin Dorros, the executive vice president of Bellcore talks in the video about the promise of "picturephone" (a word you pretty much never see used to refer to videophone technology after the 1960s):

With high-definition television the whole concept of two-way video communication can be revitalized. This, of course, is speculation but the potential is there. Because high definition television on a two-way tailored connection basis reopens... potentially reopens the limitations of picturephone and possibly would then be something in the market we really want.

And so we come full circle. The ebb and flow of futurism is a curious one. Technology isn't cyclical (as Dennis Duffy said of pagers on NBC's 30 Rock) but it would seem our technological predictions of the future may very well be repeating themselves. Forever. And ever.

The rush to create television was started by a rumor.
Image sources: Albert Robida's Le Vingtieme Siecle, 1890; Life Magazine, 1911; The History of the Future by Canto and Faliu, 1912; Science and Invention magazine, July 1922; Science and Invention magazine, October 1922; Science and Invention, December 1928; Judge magazine illustration by Harry Grant Dart, 1929; Admiral radio ad, 1943; Closer Than We Think, illustrated by Arthur Radebaugh, March 23, 1958; Rockets to Explore the Unknown by Don E. Rogers, illustrated by George Bakacs, 1964; RCA ad for the Two Thousand, Window to the Future by Steve Kosareff, 1969; The Computer Age: A Twenty-Year View, 1979; Tomorrow's Home by Neil Ardley, 1981
Matt Novak writes about history, futurism and technology for Smithsonian, BBC Future, The Daily, and Pacific Standard. He lives in Los Angeles. He can be found on Twitter here.

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Visions of the moving image: what is, what was, and what will never be The rush to create television was started by a rumor. In 1880 Alexander Graham Bell, the famed inventor of the telephone, sealed documents related to his latest invention and gave them to the Smithsonian Institution.

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Vaccine production in Australia

Dr Percival Bazeley of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL) was sent to work with Salk in 1952 and returned to Melbourne in 1955 to begin manufacturing the dead-virus vaccine. The first Salk vaccines were distributed across Australia in June 1956 and 25 million doses of the vaccine were produced by CSL under Dr Bazeley's directorship.

Many parents were enthusiastic about the vaccine but by no means all. By 1964, 83 per cent of New South Wales children were vaccinated, but only 72 per cent of children in Victoria.

These vaccination rates were not high enough. The eradication of a disease relies on 'herd immunity', which occurs when the vaccination of a significant portion of a population (or herd) provides protection for individuals who have not developed immunity. The lack of herd immunity contributed to another outbreak of polio in Australia in 1961 and 1962.

Sabin's oral vaccine was first used in Australia in 1966.

In October 2000 the World Health Organization declared the Western Pacific region, which includes Australia, to be polio-free.

There are an estimated 400,000 polio survivors in Australia, many of whom still live with the long-term effects of the disease.

Australian contribution to polio eradication

Lameness surveys during the 1970s revealed that polio was also prevalent in developing countries. As a result, routine immunisation was introduced worldwide as part of national immunisation programs, helping to control the disease in many developing countries.

However, by the mid-1980s wild polio was still endemic in about 125 countries. Queensland accountant Sir Clem Renouf, who was then World President of Rotary International, decided to launch an eradication program, similar to that which had eliminated smallpox. In 1985 he persuaded Rotary clubs around the world to raise money to make this happen.

Having raised $247 million, Rotary began work in South America. The World Health Organization, realising that Rotary was meeting with success, joined forces with Rotary and other non-government organisations and launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988.

Polio has now been eradicated in most countries, but as of 2017 remains endemic in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. High immunisation levels remains crucial even in countries where polio has already been eliminated.

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Dr Percival Bazeley of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL) was sent to work with Salk in 1952 and returned to Melbourne in 1955 to begin manufacturing the dead-virus vaccine. The first Salk vaccines were distributed across Australia in June 1956 and 25 million doses of the vaccine were produced by CSL under Dr Bazeley's directorship.

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The Korean War started on 25 June 1950 and ended on 27 July 1953, after the signing of an armistice agreeing that the country would remain divided.

At the end of the Second World War, Korea - which had formerly been occupied by the Japanese - was divided along the 38th parallel. This was an internal border between North and South Korea based on a circle of latitude.

North Korea, supported by the Soviet Union, invaded the south on the 25 June 1950, which was supported by the United States.

The three-year war was exceptionally bloody and led to the deaths of 3 million people and tens of thousands of casualties. Listen to oral histories from those who fought in the Korean War and discover their unique stories of the conflict in: Voices of the Korean War.

Discover more about the history of the conflict below, often referred to as the 'Forgotten War'.

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At the end of the Second World War, Korea - which had formerly been occupied by the Japanese - was divided along the 38th Parallel. This was an internal border between North and South Korea based on a circle of latitude.

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It's a long video that will explain the whole Russian Space Program in the Golden Age of Space Exploration.

It will also show how it was important to Russia as a country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuEMuB_jf0k

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The Golden Age Of Russian Space Exploration

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Why Did Korea Split in to North and South

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Why Korea Split Into North and South Korea

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Korean Conflict explained (explainity® explainer video)

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Back in the early 20th century, automobiles or horseless carriages were expensive and out of reach for the common man. Cars were a luxury of the rich.

The first cars of the world were built in Germany by Karl Benz in 1885, and by 1893, Charles and Frank Duryea had created the first U.S.-based automotive. The problem was, for the most part, these machines were expensive prototypes and didn't solve the problem they were trying to - to provide better transportation to the world.

That is, until 1908, when Henry Ford came out with his first mass-produced car, the Model T.

Model T's development

Henry Ford worked a day job as the chief engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company. During his off time, he would work on his designs, particularly one for a revolutionary gasoline engine.

In December of 1893, Ford was able to successfully build his engine design and get it running for a short period of time, about 30 seconds. This wasn't enough to prove useful in a machine, but it gave Ford confirmation that he was moving in the right direction.

After three more years of development, Ford had created his first self-propelled vehicle called the Quadricycle.

Ford Quadricycle by DougW of at The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, MI. RemarkableCars.com Source: DougW/Wikimedia Commons

Ford continued development on his automotive machines until in Summer of 1903; he founded the Ford Motor Company.

Ford started churning out car models, starting with the original Model A in 1903 ( Ford would go on to create another Model A after the Model T).

Each successive design took on the next letter of the alphabet. While Ford skipped a few letters along the way by 1907, the company was producing the Model S. By this year, there were roughly 200,000 cars on the road. A sizeable number compared to decades ago but nowhere near full societal infiltration.

In January of 1907, Ford started development of the Model T, designed to be a car for the common man. At the core of this design was an engine that was easy and quick to assemble on a factory line.

Model T's debut

In October 1908, the first Model Ts were released with a four-cylinder engine. Ford had used an alloy of steel that gave the cylinder block impressive strength with low weight compared to earlier automotive counterparts.

Model T Engine. Photographed at the Geelong Museum of Motoring and Industry, North Geelong, Victoria, Australia. Source: OSX/Wikimedia Commons

Initially priced at $850, roughly 23 thousand dollars today, the Model T was still slightly too pricy for the average worker. As production ramped up, however, Ford was able to bring costs down over time.

By 1914, the cost of a Model T had dropped to $440, roughly $11,000 in today's US dollars. The price continued to drop until in 1925 Ford was able to offer their lowest price ever for a Model T - $260 - equivalent to $3700 today.

Engine's statistics and engineering

The Model T engine has 2.9 liters of displacement with a compression ratio of 4.5:1. This all means the engine comes in at roughly 20 horsepower, ten times less than a Toyota Camry.

Part of the genius of the Model T engine is that it doesn't have a lot of features, it's mind-numbingly simple. There's no oil pump or water pump or fuel pump.

Source: Liftarn/Wikimedia

The oil gets into the engine by splashing the crank through the oil pan in the bottom of the engine. This results in the three bearings, cam, and lifters being dredged with oil.

RELATED: A BRIEF HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF ELECTRIC CARS

Ford engineers realized in the design process that they could accomplish cooling of the engine through basic thermodynamic principles of water. Hot water rises, so they devised a cooling system that feeds cool water from the radiator into the bottom of the engine.

As the engine heats this water up, it is pushed up and out the top of the radiator through convection. This system worked, most of the time, and without any moving parts.

As for the process of getting fuel to the engine without a pump, the engineers behind the engine devised a gravity-fed tank under the seat of the passengers. This would feed gasoline through hoses with the help of gravity to a carburetor. The driver was able to adjust the carburetor settings from the driver's seat, and the choke was either at the front of the car operated by a crank or in the driver's cockpit if the Model T was outfitted with electric start.

A drawing of the Model T engine design. Source: Victor Wilfred Pagé/Wikimedia

For throttle, the driver would operate a lever by the steering wheel. While that may sound weird, remember, these were the first mass-produced cars. There wasn't a standard for placement of controls yet.

The ignition system of the engine also was designed so that little could go wrong. The driver could adjust when the spark plugs went off using a lever by the steering wheel. This meant that the driver could entirely control spark timing upon startup and ignition - something that isn't exactly taught in modern driver's ed.

The powerhouse of the Model T

All this simplicity also meant that the Model T engine could run on anything. Gasoline, kerosene, or grain alcohol was the preferred fuels. This ability to run multiple fuels was all part of the design, allowing drivers to choose what they had available to drive their car.

The Model T engine remained unchanged throughout nearly the entire run of the original model T, from 1908 to 1927. This first mass-produced engine helped place the automobile at the center of the American and global economy.

What came next

As the Model T reached its final production year in 1927, Ford had already begun developing their next model, the new Model A.

Released in late 1927, the Model A built upon the successes of the Model T and offered new trim levels and options for a wider array of buyers. The base model cost $385, and the car could be optioned up to $1400 for the luxury Town Car model. In today's money that ranges from 6000 USD to over $20,000.

Ford continued to grow its automobile business, growing into the automotive powerhouse that we know today.

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The Model T Engine was the 20 HP Powerhouse Behind the First Mass-Produced Car

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Back in the early 20th century, automobiles or horseless carriages were expensive and out of reach for the common man. Cars were a luxury of the rich. The first cars of the world were built in Germany by Karl Benz in 1885, and by 1893, Charles and Frank Duryea had created the first U.S.-based automotive.

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Forget the Model T-Ford's real innovation was the moving assembly line. It didn't just usher in the age of the car; it changed work forever.

He first fully implemented his innovation on December 1, 1913. Like a lot of his other industrial production insights, the assembly line was met with hatred and suspicion by many of his workers.

Before 1913, Ford and many other car makers put together entire cars at one station. A team of workers labored on each car, writes Tony Swan for Car and Driver. The innovation of the moving assembly line cut the number of workers required and reduced the time it took to assemble a car. It also gave the company more control over the pace. For the Ford Motor Company: amazing. For his workers: Eh, not everyone was impressed.

Although probably the most important example of his technological innovation, from one perspective the moving assembly belt was just one more way Ford could exert rigid control on his workers.

Assembly line work was, and still is, incredibly monotonous. The line was seen as an insult to skilled craftsmen and another example of the overwhelming patriarchal control a company could have over its workers in the age of mass production.

The horror that was felt about assembly-line style mass production is seen in films like Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times and Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis. One 1920s machine worker at a Ford plant told a journalist, "The machine I'm on goes at such a terrific speed that I can't help stepping on it in order to keep up with the machine. It's my boss."

In 1913 alone, Ford had to hire more than 52,000 workers for a workforce that at any one time numbered 14,000, writes Swan. In an attempt to to stem the tide of turnover, he upped the company's wage rate to an unheard-of $5 per eight-hour workday. The norm for that time was about $2.25 for a nine-hour workday, writes Tim Worstall for Forbes.

Sounds nice, right? Well, $2.66 of that money was contingent on a worker meeting "company standards for clean living," Swan writes. Ford's "Sociological Department" looked into every aspect of his workers' lives, attempting, in a way, to standardize them the way he standardized his production line. Still, the money meant people came from all over the country looking for work at Ford, and many new immigrants found work there (learning English at a Ford school.).

Although the Sociological Department eventually closed, Ford's basic approach to creating a deskilled blue-collar workforce helped create the reality of work in the 20th century.

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In 1913, Henry Ford Introduced the Assembly Line: His Workers Hated It

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It was seen as one more way the automaker could exert rigid control over his employees

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Mass production-manufacturing many identical goods at once-was a product of the Industrial Revolution. Henry Ford's Model-T automobile is a good example of early mass production. Each car turned out by Ford's factory was identical, right down to its color. If you wanted a car in any color except black, you were out of luck.

Examples of mass production include the following:

canned goods

over-the-counter drugs

household appliances

The emphasis in mass production is on keeping manufacturing costs low by producing uniform products using repetitive and standardized processes. As products became more complicated to produce, mass production also became more complex. Automobile manufacturers, for example, must now incorporate more sophisticated electronics into their car designs. As a result, the number of assembly stations in most automobile manufacturing plants has increased.

Peeps

Watch the following video on the process used to manufacture the amazing Peep. It will serve as a point of reference because it features many of the process components we will be discussing in this reading.

You can view the transcript for "Giving life to Peeps at the Just Born Factory" (opens in new window).

Advantages

Labor costs are usually lower.

Materials can be purchased in large quantities, so they are often cheaper.

Goods are produced in large number, lowering unit costs.

Disadvantages

Machinery is very expensive to buy, so production lines are very expensive to set up.

Workers are not very motivated, since their work is very repetitive.

Production lines are not very flexible and are difficult to change.

Production processes are at risk if any one part of the line breaks. The entire production process will have to stop, pending repair which causes expensive delays.

Maintenance costs are very high.

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Mass production-manufacturing many identical goods at once-was a product of the Industrial Revolution. Henry Ford's Model-T automobile is a good example of early mass production. Each car turned out by Ford's factory was identical, right down to its color. If you wanted a car in any color except black, you were out of luck.

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How the Automobile Impacted Society

The invention and mass production of the automobile had far-reaching impacts on daily life and the landscape. Cars have affected all aspects of society, such as family life, the layout of cities, the economy, and the environment. It is hard to find a movie, book, or TV show that does not have some type of automobile in it.

How the Mass-Produced Automobile Changed American Life

When first invented, automobiles were considered a luxury, but once they were mass-produced and more people could afford them, they began causing profound changes. The first mass-produced automobile became publicly available in the 1920s. Changes in the manufacturing process lowered the cost to the point where the average American could own a vehicle.

Ford's main goal with his assembly line was to make sure that production costs and, thus, the selling price, would be low enough to make the Model T available to a majority of the public. As Kenneth Hess writes, "Between 1900 and 1920, Americans went from owning 8,000 cars to owning 8,000,000." This change was due largely due to lower production costs.

Cars Made Suburbia Possible

The more widely used automobiles became, the more they began to affect the daily lives of Americans. The automobile played a major role in the spreading out of the city population into the suburbs; it made it possible to live further from the necessities of life. People in cars could reach a grocery store in minutes, even if it was miles away.

Automobiles helped change the role of women in society. When people lived in cities, women didn't need to own cars because they lived within walking distance of everything that they needed. But in the suburbs, women needed a comfortable and fast way of transportation. "The urban housewife of 1925 who could do well without a car was transformed into the suburban housewife of 1960 who required a car to do all her shopping or to pick up the kids after school" (Hess, p. 9).

Once women had cars, as a rule, they were no longer limited to the house or to domestic roles. They could escape their normal jobs at home and go into the "cultural scene" (Hess). They obtained more gender equality by competing with men for the same types of jobs outside the home.

As people began to spend more time on the road than in their own homes, business-minded individuals were able to experiment with innovations like the drive-through restaurant. Ray Kroc took advantage of the situation by buying a six-restaurant chain named McDonald's, and opened up the first modern-day fast-food McDonald's in Des Plaines, Ilinois, in 1954. Today, McDonald's restaurants can be found all over the world.

Cars Gave Rise to a New Kind of Theater

The automobile also brought entertainment to a new level in the middle of the 20th century with the drive-in movie theater. People would park their cars in front of the huge screen, and watch the movie in comfort. Drive-in theaters became a hot spot for teenagers, who would take their dates to the movies. Families could pack into the car with their snacks, and watch movies late into the night. While being interviewed about societal changes brought on by cars in his generation, one speaker said, "Drive-through theaters were one of the greatest places to be on a Friday night. They used to put little sound boxes on each car so that everyone could hear the movie. What better form of entertainment could there be for teenagers with newly acquired licenses? These theaters just added to the fun of owning your own car."

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The Automobile's Effects on American and World Society

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The invention of the automobile had more positive and negative effects on society than any other invention throughout transportation history. As the most widely accepted method of transportation, cars have changed the way people live all over the world.