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CHAPTER 11: THE NEW DEAL AND WORLD WAR IIOUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORYshalls, and the Marianas in a seriesof amphibious assaults.THE POLITICS OF WARAllied military efforts were accompaniedby a series of importantinternational meetings on the politicalobjectives of the war. In January1943 at Casablanca, Morocco, anAnglo-American conference decidedthat no peace would be concludedwith the Axis and its Balkansatellites except on the basis of “unconditionalsurrender.” This term,insisted upon by Roosevelt, soughtto assure the people of all the fightingnations that no separate peacenegotiations would be carried onwith representatives of Fascism andNazism and there would be no compromiseof the war’s idealistic objectives.Axis propagandists, of course,used it to assert that the Allies wereengaged in a war of extermination.At Cairo, in November 1943,Roosevelt and Churchill met withNationalist Chinese leader ChiangKai-shek to agree on terms for Japan,including the relinquishmentof gains from past aggression. AtTehran, shortly afterward, Roosevelt,Churchill, and Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin made basic agreementson the postwar occupation of Germanyand the establishment of anew international organization, theUnited Nations.In February 1945, the three Alliedleaders met again at Yalta (nowin Ukraine), with victory seeminglysecure. There, the Soviet Union secretlyagreed to enter the war againstJapan three months after the surrenderof Germany. In return, theUSSR would gain effective control ofManchuria and receive the JapaneseKurile Islands as well as the southernhalf of Sakhalin Island. The easternboundary of Poland was set roughlyat the Curzon line of 1919, thus givingthe USSR half its prewar territory.Discussion of reparations to becollected from Germany — paymentdemanded by Stalin and opposed byRoosevelt and Churchill — was inconclusive.Specific arrangementswere made concerning Allied occupationin Germany and the trial andpunishment of war criminals. Alsoat Yalta it was agreed that the greatpowers in the Security Council ofthe proposed United Nations shouldhave the right of veto in matters affectingtheir security.Two months after his returnfrom Yalta, Franklin Roosevelt diedof a cerebral hemorrhage while vacationingin Georgia. Few figuresin U.S. history have been so deeplymourned, and for a time the Americanpeople suffered from a numbingsense of irreparable loss. Vice PresidentHarry Truman, former senatorfrom Missouri, succeeded him.WAR, VICTORY, ANDTHE BOMBThe final battles in the Pacific wereamong the war’s bloodiest. In June1944, the Battle of the Philippine Seaeffectively destroyed Japanese navalair power, forcing the resignation ofJapanese Prime Minister Tojo. GeneralDouglas MacArthur — whohad reluctantly left the Philippinestwo years before to escape Japanesecapture — returned to the islands inOctober. The accompanying Battleof Leyte Gulf, the largest naval engagementever fought, was the finaldecisive defeat of the Japanese Navy.By February 1945, U.S. forces hadtaken Manila.Next, the United States set itssight on the strategic island of IwoJima in the Bonin Islands, abouthalfway between the Marianas andJapan. The Japanese, trained to diefighting for the Emperor, made suicidaluse of natural caves and rockyterrain. U.S. forces took the islandby mid-March, but not before losingthe lives of some 6,000 U.S.Marines. Nearly all the Japanese defendersperished. By now the UnitedStates was undertaking extensive airattacks on Japanese shipping andairfields and wave after wave of incendiarybombing attacks againstJapanese cities.At Okinawa (April 1-June 21,1945), the Americans met even fiercerresistance. With few of the defenderssurrendering, the U.S. Armyand Marines were forced to wage awar of annihilation. Waves of Kamikazesuicide planes pounded theoffshore Allied fleet, inflicting moredamage than at Leyte Gulf. Japanlost 90-100,000 troops and probablyas many Okinawan civilians.U.S. losses were more than 11,000killed and nearly 34,000 wounded.Most Americans saw the fighting asa preview of what they would face ina planned invasion of Japan.The heads of the U.S., British,and Soviet governments met at Potsdam,a suburb outside Berlin, fromJuly 17 to August 2, 1945, to discussoperations against Japan, the peacesettlement in Europe, and a policyfor the future of Germany. Perhapspresaging the coming end of the alliance,they had no trouble on vaguematters of principle or the practicalissues of military occupation, butreached no agreement on many tangibleissues, including reparations.The day before the Potsdam Conferencebegan, U.S. nuclear scientistsengaged in the secret ManhattanProject exploded an atomic bombnear Alamogordo, New Mexico. Thetest was the culmination of threeyears of intensive research in laboratoriesacross the United States. Itlay behind the Potsdam Declaration,issued on July 26 by the UnitedStates and Britain, promising thatJapan would neither be destroyednor enslaved if it surrendered. IfJapan continued the war, however,it would meet “prompt and utterdestruction.” President Truman,calculating that an atomic bombmight be used to gain Japan’s surrendermore quickly and with fewercasualties than an invasion of themainland, ordered that the bomb beused if the Japanese did not surrenderby August 3.A committee of U.S. military andpolitical officials and scientists hadconsidered the question of targetsfor the new weapon. Secretary of224225