The United States government secretly spent billions of dollars on a program code-named the Manhattan Project. Its highest national priority: developing an atomic bomb. The project was encouraged by Albert Einstein himself and led by J Robert Oppenheimer. In a barren desert in New Mexico, on the morning of July 16, 1945, the bomb was tested. The flash of light could be seen 180 miles away.
There is no stronger bond of friendshipthan a mutual enemy.
-Frankfort Moore
At a time when America's best cryptographers were falling short, the Navajo Indians were able to fashion the most ingenious and successful code in military history. They drew upon their proud warrior tradition to brave the dense jungles of Guadalcanal and the exposed beachheads of Iwo Jima. Serving with distinction in every major engagement of the Pacific theater from 1942-1945, their unbreakable code played a pivotal role in saving countless lives and hastening the war's end.
The
motto of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was “go for broke.” It’s a
gambling term that means risking everything on one great effort to win
big. The soldiers of the 442nd needed to win big. They were Nisei -
American-born sons of Japanese immigrants. They fought two wars: the
Germans in Europe and the prejudice in America.
Throughout 1943 the leaders of the Allied Forces squabbled over when they would start a second front in France. Up to that point Soviet troops had done most of the fighting in Europe. At the historic meeting of the 'Big 3' in Tehran, Stalin had insisted that Britain and the United States carry more of the military burden by attacking Germany in the west.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower was promoted over 350 other more qualified generals to lead the operation. He called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end on June 6, the Allies gained a foot- hold in Europe. The D-Day cost was high -more than 9,000 Allied Soldiers were killed or wounded -- but more than 100,000 Soldiers began the march across Europe to defeat Hitler.
While many groups of Americans faced hardships during WWII, none had it harder than Japanese Americans.
After the attacks on Pearl Harbor Americans were understandably fearful of further attacks and spies. In early 1942, by Presidential executive order 9066, Japanese-Americans living primarily on the west coast were taken to internment camps as a security measure following the massive Pearl Harbor raid that temporarily incapacitated the Pacific fleet. A national sense of outrage consumed Americans. Strangers on the streets looked at one another with a new awareness.
The US Government claimed internment camps were vital to American security and that every effort was made to provide for their Japanese guests.
Compare the Government claims to actual photos of the camps taken from Ansel Adams famous book Born Free and Equal.
Watch this video to see what life in the camps was really like.
In 1941, Miller was a 22-year-old mess attendant on the USS West Virginia. At the time, black sailors were consigned to roles in the messman branch — work that entailed swabbing decks, cooking and shining officers' shoes.
He had awoken at 6 a.m. and was collecting laundry when the Japanese attack began and an alarm sounded on the ship, according to the Navy. Miller headed to the antiaircraft battery magazine, but it had already been destroyed by torpedo damage. He proceeded to the deck, where he was assigned to carry his wounded comrades, including the ship's captain. Miller was strong: a former high school football player in Waco, Texas, he was the ship's heavyweight boxing champion.
"Miller went topside, carried wounded on his shoulders, made several trips up and down, wading through waist-deep water, oil-slicked decks, struggling uphill on slick decks," Navy Rear Adm. John Fuller said in 2016.
The young sailor then took over a .50-caliber anti-aircraft machine gun and fired it until the ammunition ran out. No matter that he'd never been trained on the weapon.
Like Pearl Harbor, the attacks on 9/11/01 forever changed us as a country. Not since December 7, 1941 had our nation suffered such a devastating defeat by a foreign power on our own soil. In the days after 9/11comparisons to Pearl Harbor were frequently made. Both attacks resulted in a spirit of American unity. A common enemy was identified. A national government galvanized American energies to combat and destroy the forces that attacked the homeland.
In “Interstellar,” humanity is endangered by a blight that is gradually eliminating the number of crops that are viable on Earth. The world economy and national governments have shrunk dramatically. Drones race through Midwestern skies, abandoned by the intelligence programs that set them aloft, and crash into fields where they are scavenged by entrepreneurial farmers like Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former pilot who still dreams of flying. Violent dust storms, straight out of documentary footage of Dust Bowl storms, rise like mountains in the skies, and the particles fill children’s lungs, killing them. If it is not made explicit that the disaster is man-made, the use of testimony from actual Dust Bowl survivors does.
“This really happened. It’s just a question of could it happen on a global scale, or in such a way that our existence on the planet would be imperiled?"
During your tour of the country, you learned about ordinary Americans who experienced the Great Depression. Like Lorena Hickok, you will now report your discoveries. Use the information in your scrapbook to write a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt describing the hardships people endured during the Depression.
Your letter must have the following:
An appropriate date, salutation, and closing.
A brief introduction summarizing the states you visited and the types of people you met.
A description of your visit to at least two states. For each state, include:
information on the hardships people faced during the Depression and the ways in which they endured those hardships.
a quotation and one or more facts from the reading.
any relevant Vocabulary Terms.
At least four of these words: betrayal, change, depressed, desperation, destitute, dreadful, encourage, honorable, hope, ideals, plague, pride, self-respect, shame, stress, suffer, worth.
A conclusion summarizing your thoughts about how ordinary Americans endured the hardships they faced during this time period.
John Green teaches you about the New Deal, which was president Franklin D. Roosevelt's plan to pull the united States out of the Great Depression of the 1930's. Did it work? Maybe. John will teach you about some of the most effective and some of the best known programs of the New Deal. They weren't always the same thing. John will tell you who supported the New Deal, and who opposed it. He'll also get into how the New Deal changed the relationship between the government and citizens, and will even reveal just how the Depression ended. (hint: it was war spending)
Critics of FDR's programs called them an 'Alphabet Soup' of confusing acronyms. Conservatives felt FDR's government had no business regulating crop prices or digging ditches. Radicals on the other hand felt that the President's New Deal hadn't gone far enough in redistributing the wealth.
What role should the government have in our lives? Should the Government provide schools and roads? Military? Welfare? Health care? Paid work leave? Retirement?
The Great Depression in the United States began on October 29, 1929, a day known forever after as “Black Tuesday,” when the American stock market–which had been roaring steadily upward for almost a decade–crashed, plunging the country into its most severe economic downturn yet. Speculators lost their shirts; banks failed; the nation’s money supply diminished; and companies went bankrupt and began to fire their workers in droves. Meanwhile, President Herbert Hoover urged patience and self-reliance: He thought the crisis was just “a passing incident in our national lives” that it wasn’t the federal government’s job to try and resolve. By 1932, one of the bleakest years of the Great Depression, at least one-quarter of the American workforce was unemployed.
1) Why was it called 'Black Tuesday?'
2) What is 'Black Friday?'
3) In economics what does 'being in the black' mean?
4) How is this name misleading?
5) Who took the blame for the market crash? Why? Was it fair?
6) What measures were taken by the Government in the aftermath of the Crash?'
In the 1920's the economy shifted from wartime to peace and began an era of consumerism. Prices dropped and what people couldn't afford they began buying on credit.
Advertisers, now reaching millions of consumers on a daily or weekly basis, hired movie stars
and sports figures to persuade Americans to buy all types of products, from washing machines to chewing gum. Business had become America's secular religion, thanks to
advertising.Bruce Barton's 1925 book comparing religion and business, The Man Nobody Knows,
declared Jesus Christ's parables as "the most powerful advertisements
of all time.... He would be a national advertiser today."
Barton's philosophy was that good advertising appealed to consumers and created desire for a product. According to Barton, " The American conception of advertising is to arouse desires and stimulate wants, to make people dissatisfied with the old and out-of-date." Barton told his employees that their ads should have a theme, an interesting headline, and a purpose to direct consumers to act in a particular way (usually to buy a product). His ads often used catch slogans.
In 1919 Bruce Barton co-founded his own advertising firm whose clients included General Electric, General Motors, and US Steel. His advertising firm was also one of the first agencies to use radio, rather than newspapers and magazines, for advertising. Barton grew to be one of the most successful advertising executives of the 1920s.
Gangland violence in Chicago captured headlines and attention across the nation the afternoon of Thursday, Feb. 14, 1929, and fueled rumors in Butler County. The crime later was called "the most spectacular of the decade in Chicago." There were more than 500 gangland murders in the Windy City in the 1920s.
The 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre took the lives of seven men by machine-gun and shotgun fire at about 10:30 a.m. in a garage at 2122 North Clark Street in Chicago. The mass shooting climaxed a struggle for control of Chicago's North Side. It pitted the powerful gang of Al Capone against the faltering group led by George (Bugs) Moran. Capone ordered his lieutenants to annihilate the entire Moran gang -- and they almost did it. Moran and two other gang members approached the garage, but fled when they believed police were raiding the building.
Moran had been lured to the massacre site by the prospect of buying bonded whisky. At stake was the security of Capone's illicit liquor business, estimated at more than $60 million a year by federal authorities. The killings solidified the 30-year-old Capone's control over the Chicago whisky trade and other criminal activities.
The Chicago crime still dominated conversations four days later when three strange men checked into the Anthony Wayne Hotel at High Street and Monument Avenue in Hamilton. They aroused suspicion by arriving in an expensive car with Illinois license plates and asking for the hotel's highest priced room. Who were these mystery men and why did they come to Hamiltion, Ohio?
The 'noble experiment' as it was called in the 1920s was intended to reduce alcohol abuse, strengthen families and make America a better place.
But it didn't stop people from drinking, it just criminalized them, and it brought violence and corruption to our streets.
On March 23, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed
into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison
Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic
beverages.
On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment for good.
The first Academy Awards in 1929 were a far cry from the suspense, glamour and endless press coverage surrounding the Oscars today: The first award recipients’ names were printed on the back page of the academy’s newsletter. A few days later, Variety published the information--on page seven.
Spearheaded by movie mogul Louis B. Mayer, the Academy was organized in May 1927 as a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and improvement of the film industry. The first awards went to movies produced in 1927 and 1928. Though the announcements were made in February 1929, the actual awards weren’t given out until May 16, 1929, in a ceremony and banquet held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Some 270 people attended the dinner, many paying $5 each for a ticket.
The first Academy Award winners also received gold statuettes but the awards weren’t nicknamed “Oscars” until 1931, when a secretary at the Academy noted the statue’s resemblance to her Uncle Oscar, and a journalist printed her remark. The Academy’s first president, the silent film actor Douglas Fairbanks, handed out the statuettes to the winners, who included Janet Gaynor for Best Actress (for three different films: Seventh Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise) and the German-born Emil Jannings (The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh) for Best Actor. Frank Borzage and Lewis Milestone both won Best Director awards, for Seventh Heaven and Two Arabian Knights, respectively. Best Picture honors went to "Wings," the World War I drama directed by William Wellman. Special recognition was given to actor/ director Charlie Chaplin and the movie "The Jazz Singer" which was excluded for being a 'talkie.'
Three contestants claim to be the same person. Four celebrities question the contestants,then vote for the one they think is the real person. This simple game has endured as aTV classic for over 45 years. Today's assignment pays tribute to the show that asked theburning question...
"Will the real ________ please stand up?"
With your group you are each to choose a fact for the historical figure assigned you. Use yourBiography Handout as a resource. All of your facts should be made false except one. After presenting your facts in front of the class they will try to guess which is true.The more realistic/ believable your facts the better chance you have of fooling your classmates and winning the game.
The twenties were the first decade to emphasize youth culture over the older generations, and the flapper sub-culture had a tremendous influence on main stream America. Many new words and phrases were coined by these liberated women and are still used today!
Find the words in the puzzle and then write a sentence using each word correctly. If Mr. Kelly hears you using these words in the hall you may get extra credit.
1) What conclusions can we draw about the 'Roaring '20s' from this list?
2) What can we learn about a Generation from their slang?
3) What will historians think about you 100 years from now based on your slang?
True or False: You are more likely to die from the flu than you were in the trenches of WWI.
In the spring of 1918, as the nation mobilized for war, Private Albert Gitchell reported to an army hospital in Kansas. He was diagnosed with the flu, a disease doctors knew little about. Before the year was out, America would be ravaged by a flu epidemic that killed 675,000 — more than in all the wars of this century combined — before disappearing as mysteriously as it began.
The 1918 pandemic had profound impacts on life in the United States. Thousands of children were orphaned. So dire was the situation that many cities including Boston, Richmond, St. Louis and others mandated quarantines and social-distancing measures. In San Francisco and Seattle, laws were passed forcing people to wear masks covering their mouths and noses while in public. The public health commissioner in Chicago told police to arrest anyone seen sneezing without covering their face in public.
Imagine you are creating a new club. What kind of club would it be? Would it be an athletic club or team? Would it be intellectual? What would the purpose or goal of your club be? How would you recruit new members? What are the membership requirements or rules?
Following WWI President Wilson sought to create a 'League of Nations,' or club, where countries could gather peacefully and resolve their quarrels. At the Treaty of Versailles in France he outlined his '14 points' promoting openness, encouraging independence, and supporting freedom. At it's heart was his idea of 'peace without victory;' a peace inspired by noble ideals, not greed and vengeance.
What is Fight Club? What are the '8 Rules of Fight Club?' How was Wilson's club different? What did critics think of his ideas?
Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written in 1938 by American novelist Dalton Trumbo and published in September 1939. Joe, a young American soldier serving in World War I, awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell. He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and all of his face (including his eyes, ears, nose, teeth, and tongue), but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body. Joe eventually successfully communicates this with military officials after several months of banging his head on his pillow in Morse code. He wants to be placed in a glass coffin and toured around the country in order to demonstrate to others the true horrors of war. however, he realizes that the military will not grant his wish. As Joe drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend and reflects upon the myths and realities of war.
1) What was the human cost of the 'Great War?'
2). Which country suffered the most? The least? Use facts from the text to support your answer.
3) What is Dalton Trumbo's message? Was war worth it? Why/ not?
Use this link to complete your map to complete your map by labeling the countries, the Sedan Railroad, and the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery.
This propaganda leaflet was dropped by German airplanes behind American lines during World War I. Nearly 370,000 African Americans were drafted into the U.S. Army starting in the fall of 1917 (they were not allowed to join the Marines, and the Navy took African Americans only as cooks and kitchen help). Although more than half of the black troops were in combat units, they remained segregated from white troops. Subjected to racist harassment (including demeaning insults from white officers), black troops were continually reminded of their second-class citizenship. By stressing racist conditions in the United States, leaflets such as this attempted to destroy morale and encourage desertion among African-American troops.
1) To whom is the document addressed?
2) Who do you think wrote the document? Why?
3) What arguments are used to make those points? Do you find the arguments convincing? Why or why not?
'Trench Warfare' became synonymous with battle during WWI. Soldiers on the Western Front spent months living in the muddy, rat-infested, dreary channels dug deep into the ground. Above the trenches was only sky exposing armies to the weather and the constant barrage of artillery and poison gas shells, as well as machine gunners and snipers.
More than 2 million Americans served in Europe during World War I. Eager to promote democracy around the world, many entered the war with great enthusiasm. But their first taste of battle left them more realistic about the horrors of war.
After reading the excerpt from Max Brooks The Harlem Hellfighters answer these questions in your Interactive Student Notebook:
1) Why did so many men, especially African Americans, enlist to go 'Over There?'
2) Would you stay or would you go? Why?
3) Why is the large number of casualties during World War I typically not discussed?
4) Many of the 369th Regiment decided to stay in France after the war. Why might they have done this?
5) What comparisons can you make between the Harlem Hellfighters and the Buffalo Soldiers?
In January of 1917, British cryptographers deciphered a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German Minister to Mexico, von Eckhardt, offering United States territory to Mexico in return for joining the German cause. This message helped draw the United States into the war and thus changed the course of history. The telegram had such an impact on American opinion that, according to David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers, "No other single cryptanalysis has had such enormous consequences." It is his opinion that "never before or since has so much turned upon the solution of a secret message." In an effort to protect their intelligence from detection and to capitalize on growing anti-German sentiment in the United States, the British waited until February 24 to present the telegram to Woodrow Wilson. The American press published news of the telegram on March 1. On April 6, 1917, the United States Congress formally declared war on Germany and its allies.
The first 'wall' along our southern border with Mexico was started during WWI 100 years ago; not because we feared the Mexicans or radical Islam, but because we feared the Germans!
Battleship wasn't always a board game. The original version, reportedly created as a French World War I game, was played on square grids, and each player drew in where their battleships were located. It wasn't until 1931 when the Milton Bradley Company turned what was a simple two-player, paper-and-pen game into the popularized children's board game. The gist of the game -- both then and today --is to capture or sink the other person's battleships through a series of strategic moves.
Many variations have appeared over the years from the distinctive plastic ships and pegboards of the classic board game to numerous online versions. Our classroom version brings us full circle to World War I: the large 'aircraft carrier' has been replaced with the historic Lusitania and the submarines with German U-boats. Can you sink American neutrality?
1) Which boat do you think is the most valuable? The least? Why?
2) What strategies did you develop as you played the game?
3) Why did the Germans target a defenseless passenger ship like the Lusitania? How did the attack pull America closer to war?
On May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania, rival of the Titanic, was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sunk. Of the 1,959 people on board, 1,198 died, including 128 Americans. The sinking of the Lusitania enraged Americans (even though they had been warned) and hastened the United States' entrance into World War I.
Woodrow Wilson, born in the 'Confederate States of America,' remembered the devastation, the deprivation, and the degradation that comes from losing a war. He carried that with him.
On August 4th, he wrote to the leaders of the newly warring nations that he would “welcome an opportunity to act in the interest of European peace.”
Almost from the outset of the war, Woodrow Wilson was trying to find diplomatic solutions. He believed if all the heads of state could sit at a table and confer, they could probably have ended this war. There didn’t have to be a war here...
What changed his opinion leading him to quote: "We are glad tofight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples...the world must be made safe for Democracy!?"
The Panama Canal (Spanish: Canal de Panamá) is a 48-mile (77.1 km) ship canal in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean (via the Caribbean Sea) to the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a key conduit for international maritime trade; the 10 hour crossing shaving 2 weeks off a dangerous trip around the tip of South America. There are locks at each end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake (85 feet (26 m) above sea-level). The Gatun Lake was used to reduce the amount of work required for a sea-level connection. The current locks are 110 feet (33.5 m) wide.
What was the strategic importance militarily and economically of the Panama Canal?
The Chicago World's Fair produced a number of firsts besides Ferris’ 264-foot-tall wheel. Among the well-loved commercial products that made their debut at the Chicago World’s Fair were Cracker Jack, Cream of Wheat, Juicy Fruit gum, and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Technological products that would soon find their way into homes nationwide, such as the dishwasher and fluorescent light bulbs, had early prototype versions on display in Chicago as well. The U.S. government also got in on the act, issuing the country’s first postcards and commemorative stamps and two new commemorative coins: a quarter and half dollar. The half-dollar featured Christopher Columbus, in whose honor the fair had been staged, while the quarter depicted Queen Isabella of Spain, who had funded Columbus’ voyages—making it the first U.S. coin to honor a woman.
Perhaps the most famous first wasn't advertised in the fair literature: America's First Serial Killer! Unbeknownst to festival goers, there was a mass murderer in their midst. For several years before and during the exposition, Dr. Henry Howard Holmes was busily luring victims (including a number of fairgoers) to a three-story, block-long building called the “Castle,” where they were tortured, mutilated, and killed. Although H. H. Holmes’ heinous crimes weren’t discovered until after the fair ended, it’s believed that he was responsible for dozens of deaths in Chicago.
In his best-selling book The Devil in the White City Author Erik Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing.
Daniel Burnham (Architect) HH Holmes (Killer)
"Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this story is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow"
1) In what ways does the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 change America? What lasting
inventions and ideas did it introduce into American culture?
2) How did the 'White City' compare with Chicago, the 'Black City' or any other American City of the time?
3) How did Holmes' hotel contrast with the buildings of the World's Fair? Can architecture reflect goodness or evil, or are buildings neutral until used?
4) How was Holmes able to get away with so many murders without becoming a suspect? Were
you surprised by how easy it was for him to commit crimes without being caught?
5) What does the story reveal about the “conflict between good and evil"? What is the essential difference between men like Daniel Burnham and Henry H. Holmes? Are they alike in any way?
6) After the Fair ended, Ray Stannard Baker noted "What a human downfall after the
magnificence and prodigality of the World's Fair which has so recently closed its doors!
Heights of splendor, pride, exaltation in one month: depths of wretchedness, suffering,
hunger, cold, in the next" [p. 334]. What is the relationship between the opulence and
grandeur of the Fair and the poverty and degradation that surrounded it? In what ways does
the Fair bring into focus the extreme contrasts of the Gilded Age?
7) At the end of The Devil in the White City, Larson writes "The thing that entranced me about
Chicago in the Gilded Age was the city's willingness to take on the impossible in the name of
civic honor, a concept so removed from the modern psyche that two wise readers of early
drafts of this book wondered why Chicago was so avid to win the world's fair in the first
place" [p. 393]. What motives, in addition to "civic honor," drove Chicago to build the Fair? In
what ways might the desire to "out-Eiffel Eiffel" and to show New York that Chicago was
more than a meat-packing backwater be seen as American? In what ways were they problematic?
Welcome to the home page of Mr. Kelly's American History class, Talawanda High School, Oxford, Ohio, USA. Here you will find assignments, links to lessons, your grades, and online discussions. Please remember that this site is an online extension of our classroom and to treat each other with respect. Thanks and BE BRAVE!
