Test 3
3. Explain why the U.S. was headed back to an isolationist foreign policy.
1. The depression made foreign policy seem remote and unimportant to most Americans. As unemployment increased and the economic crisis intensified after 1929, many people grew apathetic about events abroad. 2. The danger of war abroad, when it did finally penetrate the American Consciousness, served only to strengthen the desire to escape involvement. They wanted to spare themselves the agony of another great war.
8. Identify the three major parts of the Social Security Legislation.
1.) Provided for old-age pensions financed equally by a tax on employers and workers, without government contributions. It also gave states federal matching funds to provide modest pensions for the destitute elderly. 2.) It set up a system of unemployment compensation on a federal-state basis, with employers paying a payroll tax and within each state setting benefit levels and administering the program locally. 3.) It provided direct federal grants to the states, on a matching basis, for welfare payments to the blind, handicapped, needy elderly, and dependent children.
3. Understand and explain the power of the KKK in the 1920's.
After 1920, fueled by post war fears and shrewd promotional techniques, the Klan mushroomed. They demonstrated hatred towards blacks, aliens, Jews, and Catholics. They attributed much of the tension and conflict in society to the pre-war flood of immigrants. They punished blacks who did not know their place, women who practiced the new morality, and aliens who refused to conform. Beating, flogging, burning with acid and murder were condoned. They also tried using more peaceful methods of coercion, formulating codes of behavior and seeking community wide support. The KKK gained control of the legislators in Texas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Indiana.
7. Explain the 1940 agreement between FDR and Winston Churchill.
America would "lends and lease" goods and weapons to countries fighting against aggressors. Arguing that aiding Britain would help America's own self-defense, President Roosevelt in 1941 asked congress for a $7 billion Lend-Lease plan. This would allow the president to sell, lend, lease, or transfer war materials to any country whose defense he declared as vital to that of the United States. Lend-Lease.
10. Identify the least impressive achievement of the New Deal.
Came in the economic realm. He failed to achieve recovery in the 1930's. The moderate nature of his programs led to slow and halting industrial recovery. The nation barely reached the 1929 level of production a decade later and millions were still unemployed.
1. Explain the causes of the Great Depression.
Consumer goods production grew faster than the effective demand causing a mild recession in 1927. The sale of durable goods declined and construction of houses and buildings fell slightly. The Federal Reserve Board lowered the discount rate, charging banks less for loans in attempt to stimulate the economy. Much of this additional credit went into the stock market. Individuals with excess cash began to invest heavily in the stock market. People bet their savings on speculative stocks. By 1929 it seemed that the whole nation was engaged in speculation. It appeared as though everything was going well, then October 24th 1929- known as black Thursday- the rise in stock prices faltered and investors began to sell. The great crash of the stock market spilled over into the larger economy. Banks and other financial institutions suffered heavy losses in the market and were forced to curtail lending, which in turn led to a cutback in production, which led to workers losing jobs/hours, all of which continued in a downward spiral. The US factories produced more goods than the American people could consume. Unstable economic conditions in Europe, the agricultural decline since 1919, corporate mismanagement, and excessive speculation also contributed, but the main cause was that people did not have enough money to buy the consumer products.
15. Name the two U.S. commanders of the Pacific.
Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz
2. Explain the significance of the Volstead act.
Effective January 16th, 1920. Implemented prohibition banned most commercial production and distribution of beverages containing more than one half of 1% of alcohol by volume. The exception was medicinal and religious uses of wines and spirits, and production for one's own private use was allowed.
6. Identify the problems faced by the National Recovery Administration.
FDR's first attempt to achieve economic advance through planning and cooperation among government, businesses, and labor. It quickly bogged down huge bureaucratic morass. The codes were too detailed to enforce easily. The rules favored big business at the expense of the smaller competitors.
17. Explain why the Allies established a second front in France.
From 1941, Stalin persistently asked Churchill, and then Roosevelt, to open a 'second front' in France. The Eastern front became the major theatre of war in Europe and the many millions of Soviet casualties dwarfed the few hundred thousand of the Western Allies; Churchill and Roosevelt said they needed more preparation time, leading to claims they stalled to save Western lives at the expense of Soviet lives.
11. Name the Allied commander who drove the Germans from Africa.
General George Patton
5. Describe Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon's tax policy.
He condemned the high wartime tax rates on businesses and wealthy individuals. He pressed for repealing an excess profits tax on corporations and slashing personal rates on the very rich. He reduced government spending to just over $3 Billion by 1925.
2. Explain how Hoover responded to the Depression in 1929-30.
He repeatedly asserted that better days were around the corner, he blamed the depression on foreign causes, especially on unstable European Banks. He rejected proposals for bold government action and relied on voluntary cooperation within business to halt the slide. He also believed in voluntary efforts to relieve the human suffering brought about by the depression. He called on private charities to help feed/clothe those who needed it. He rejected all requests for direct federal relief. He requested Congress cut taxes in an attempt to restore public confidence and adopt a few federal public works projects (like building the Hoover Dam). He proposed RFC to help banks. All of his efforts failed and people wanted him out of the White House.
11. Explain the accomplishment of the New Deal.
Helped set up the foundation for the welfare system. The main goal of the New Deal was to end unemployment, which it failed at.
6. Explain the causes of Hoover's landslide election of 1928.
Hoover was a Protestant, and a dry and old-stick American, who stood for efficiency, and individualism. His competitor was a Catholic, a wet and a descendent of immigrants, who was closely associated with big-city politics. Religion seemed to be a deciding factor in this election.
13. Explain the significance of the Manhattan Project.
In early 1942, Franklin Roosevelt, alarmed by reports that German Scientists were working on an atomic bomb, authorized a crash program to build the bomb first. The Manhattan Project, named for the Corps of Engineers district originally in charge, spent $2 billion and produced the weapons that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. This lead to the end of the war against Japan.
5. Discuss the goals of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933.
It allocated acreage among individual farmers, encouraging them to take land out of production by paying them subsidies. It was meant to help with the problem of overproduction. The government would act as a clearing house for producers of major crops, arranging for them to set production limits for wheat, cotton, corn, and other leading crops.
9. Explain the significance of FDR's "court-packing scheme".
It was meant to replace all members of the Court over 70. It was perfectly legal and it outraged conservatives and liberals. Pretty much everyone, except the republicans fought this. Some of the more controversial New Deal measures, such as the Wagner Act and Social Security were approved by congress. Roosevelt's fight with congress weakened the presidents relations with congress, opening deep rifts with the members of his own party. Many senators and representatives now felt free to oppose any further New Deal reforms.
7. Explain the significant of the Works Progress Administration.
It was the final commitment to the idea of work relief and was established to spend nearly $5 billion authorized by congress for emergency relief. It put the unemployed on the federal payroll so they could earn enough to meet their basic needs and to help stimulate the stagnant economy. It also tried to preserve the skills of American artists, actors, and writers. It helped ease the burden of the unemployed.
8. Explain why relations between U.S. and Japan worsened in the 1930's.
Japan was determined to expand onto the Asian mainland. They had taken Korea by 1905 and during WW! Had extended their control over the industrial region of Northeast China. The American open door policy remained the primary obstacle to complete Japanese Dominion over China. In 1921 Japan, England, France, and the US signed Washington treaties. This compromise lasted less than a decade. 1931 Japan violated the Nine Powers Treaty and the Kellogg-Briand Pacts by overrunning Manchuria in a brutal act of aggression. 1932 US vowed to not recognize the legality of the Japanese seizure of Manchuria. By 1936 Japan repudiated the Washington Treaties.
6. Identify the results of Hitler's "blitzkrieg" of 1940.
Literally- Lightning war. The German army cut deep into Allied lines, dividing the British and French forces. Within 3 weeks the British were driven off the continent, in another 3 weeks France fell to Hitler's victorious armies. Roosevelt responded by invoking a policy of all-out aid to the allies, short of war. FDR then announced the transfer of 50 old destroyers to England in exchange for rights to build air and naval bases on 8 British possessions in the Western Hemisphere.
9. State the significance of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
On December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked the US naval forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, sinking several ships and killing more than 2400 American Sailors. The event marked America's entrance into WWII. The whole country supported America joining the war to seek revenge for Pearl Harbor and to defeat the axis threat to American Security.
5. Describe FDR's reaction to the outbreak of war in 1939.
Roosevelt reacted to the outbreaks of war by proclaiming American Neutrality, later he asked congress to replace the arms embargo with cash-and-carry regulations- passed November 1939.
4. Describe the basis of FDR's political strength.
Roosevelt's dominant trait was his ability to persuade and convince other people. He possessed a marvelous voice, a winning smile, and a buoyant confidence he could easily transmit to others. Some believed he was too vain and superficial as a young man, but his bout with polio gave him both an understanding of human suffering and a broad political appeal as a man who had faced heavy odds and overcame them. He understood the give-and-take of politics, knew how to use flattery to win over doubters, and was especially effective in exploiting the media; he dealt with the appearance of issues, and displayed flexibility toward political principals that often dismayed even his warmest admirers.
1. Explain the United States position at the Montevideo conference in 1933.
Secretary of state Cordell Hull signed a conditional pledge of non-intervention at the Pan-American conference in Montevideo, Uruguay. A year later, the US renounced the right to intervene in Cuban affairs it had asserted in the Platt Amendment and loosened its grip on Panama. Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor Policy" went along with this.
4. Identify the result of the Nye Committee's findings.
Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota headed a special senate committee that spent two years investigating American munitions dealers. They revealed the enormous profits that firms such as Du Pont reaped from WWI, but Nye went further, charging that bankers and munitions makers were responsible for American intervention in 1917. This culminated in neutrality legislation. In 1935 Senator Nye and another Senate Colleague introduced measures to ban arms sales and loans to belligerents and to prevent Americans from traveling on belligerent ships. August 1935, Congress passed the first of 3 neutrality acts. The 1935 law banned the sale of arms to nations at war and warned American citizens to not sail on belligerent ships. In 1936 a second act added a ban on loans, and in 1937 a third act made these prohibitions permanent and required, on a two year trial basis, that all trade other than munitions be conducted on a cash-and-carry basis.
12. Identify what happened when FDR attempted to purge conservatives.
Spring of 1938 Roosevelt set out to defeat a number of conservative Democratic congressmen, and senators; primarily in the south. Only one man he sought to defeat last in the primaries. The failure of this attempted purge further undermined Roosevelt's strained relations with congress. The political result was a strong republican upsurge in the elections of 1938.
10. List the groups affected by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer's raids.
Suspected anarchists; radical leaders- such as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman; communists; and aliens.
7. Name Several Literary Figures during the 1920's.
T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Edith Wharton, H.L. Mencken, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, Eugene O'Neil, Maxwell Anderson, Elmer Rice
10. Describe official war policy after Pearl Harbor.
The US and Britain achieved complete wartime partnership. Prewar military talks led to the formation of a Combined Chiefs of Staff headquartered in Washington, which directed Anglo-American military operations. The leaders decided that a German victory posed the greater danger and thus gave priority to the European theater in the conduct of war. In December 1941 Roosevelt and Churchill signed a Declaration of the United Nations, eventually subscribed to by twenty-six countries, that pledged them to fight together until the Axis powers were defeated. January 1943 Roosevelt and Churchill met in Morocco where they declared a policy of unconditional surrender, vowing that the Allies would fight until the Axis nations were completely defeated.
2. Explain why the U.S. recognized the Soviet Union in 1933.
The US government ignored the Soviet Union throughout the 1920's. American businesses, however, exported large quantities of heavy machinery to Russia as part of its rapid industrialization. When that trade began to slump after 1930, business leaders hoped to revive it by calling on Washington to extend diplomatic recognition in the Bolshevik regime that had come to power in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1973 FDR finally ended the long estrangement by signing an agreement opening up diplomatic relations between the two countries.
16. Explain the significance of the Battle of Midway.
The battle of midway was a turning point in the war against Japan. A powerful Japanese task force threatened to seize this remote American outpost more than a thousand miles west of Pearl Harbor; Japan's real objective was the destruction of what remained of the American Pacific fleet. Superior American airpower enabled Nimitz's forces to engage the enemy at long range. Japanese fighters shot down thirty-five of forty-one attacking torpedo bombers, but a second wave of dive-bombers scored hits on three Japanese carriers. The battle of Midway ended with the loss of four Japanese aircraft carriers compared to just one American carrier. It was the first defeat of the modern Japanese navy had ever suffered, and it left the US in control of the Central Pacific.
3. Explain the results of the 19130 congressional elections.
The democrats gained control of the House of Representatives.
1. Identify the importance of the 18th Amendment.
The eighteenth amendment prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. It was passed by congress December 1917; January 1919 it was officially ratified and prohibition became the law of the land. This lead to a decline in drinking, however it also make drinking fashionable among the middle and upper class. Prohibition bread a profound disrespect for the law.
12. Describe the impact WW2 had on the Home front.
The nation underwent sweeping social and economic changes at home. American industry worked to capacity to meet the need for war materials. Increased production in both industry and agriculture benefitted workers and farmers alike. The expansion of war related industries encouraged many people to move to where new jobs had sprung up. Women moved out of the home into the paid workforce; rural dwellers relocated to urban areas, and northerners and easterners sought new opportunities and new homes in the south and west. It also helped FDR get reelected in 1944.
4. Explain the significance and result of the Teapot Dome scandal had on Warren G. Harding's Presidency.
The secretary of the interior Albert Fall was convicted of accepting bribes in exchange for leasing government-owned oil lands in Teapot Dome Wyoming and Elk Hills California to private oil businessmen. The scandal came to light after Harding's death from a Heart attack in 1923. Fall eventually served a year in jail, and the reputation of the Harding administration never recovered.
9. Explain the significance of the Sacco and Vanzetti case.
Two Italian immigrants that were arrested in May 1920 for a payroll robbery and murder. They faced a jury who condemned them more for their ideas than for any evidence of criminal conduct and a judge who referred to them as "those anarchist bastards." Sacco was a show maker and Vanzetti a fish peddler; they died August 23, 1927 in the electric chair. Their fate symbolized the bigotry and intolerance that lasted through the 1920's and made that decade one of the least attractive in American history.
8. Name the Leading representatives of the Harlem Renaissance.
W.E.B. Du Bois*, James Weldon Johnson*, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes
14. Describe the agreements of the Yalta conference.
Yalta, a city in the Russian Crimea, hosted this wartime conference of the Allies in February 1945 in which the Allies agreed to final plans for the defeat of Germany and the terms of its occupation. The Soviets agreed to allow free elections in Poland, but the elections were never held. Stalin promised to enter the Pacific war three months after Germany surrendered. In return Roosevelt offered extensive concessions in Asia, including Russian Control over Manchuria. Yalta was a significant diplomatic victory for the Soviets- one that reflected Russia's major contributions to a victory in Europe