Posted: September 18th, 2017

Depression, New Deal and Global War

Section #5:

1. The road to rock bottom ostensibly began with the stock market crash on Black Thursday, October 24, 1929. Discuss the causes of the Great Depression and how the Hoover administration responded to the developing crisis. Then turn to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. Historians sometimes characterize FDR’s program as one of relief, recovery, and reform. Discuss the problems that FDR encountered when he took office and the evolution of the New Deal down through the end of his first term.

   The so-called Second New Deal began after FDR’s and the Democrat’s Congressional landslide in 1934. Discuss what factors lay behind the Second New Deal, what did it accomplish, and what did it fail to accomplish? In your final analysis, discuss how the New Deal in all its aspects altered American life.

2. World War II, the second phase of the Thirty-Years War, evolved in the 1930s and culminated in 1945 with perhaps 45 to 55 million people dead around the world, depending on how you count. Compare and contrast how the U.S. entered with this war and World War I. What were the similarities and what were the differences? Then look at American policy and strategy for fighting the war in conjunction with its allies. How were problems within the alliance resolved in such a way that the Allies finally won? What were the chief campaigns that finally brought victory? And how did the war alter life on the home front?
3. Write a review of Valerie J. Matsumoto’s title Farming the Home Place, a book that deals with two central issues – immigration and acculturation on the one hand, and the forced Japanese-American relocations of World War II, on the other. In a nation comprised entirely of immigrants or descendants of immigrants, what do we learn about the process of immigration, assimilation, and acculturation? And what do we learn about the impact of fear, panic and racism within the larger society, particularly in a time of war? In your analysis, to what degree do you think the events analyzed in this book reflect the larger American immigration experience?
4. Identify and explain the significance of five of the following ten items:
   a. The Dust Bowl
   b. The Jazz Singer
   c. Frances Perkins
   d. “The Hundred Days”
   e. Reconstruction Finance Corporation
   f. Code Talkers
   g. Rosie the Riveter
   h. Yalta Conference
   i. A. Philip Randolph
   j. The Manhattan Project