Prompt: World War II: The Good War?

After studying the wartime experiences of hundreds of Americans through oral history interviews, Historian Studs Terkel published a famous volume he titled The Good War. His argument was that most Americans remembered themselves as liberators of an oppressed world fighting a just war, making the world and their own lives better of for it.

Based on modules 12 and 13 (and bit of module 11), as well your readings in this course, do you agree with this perception of World War II? Your answer should consider three time periods: (1) The American experience that ended with the war (1931-1939), (2) the experience of the war and the home-front itself, and (3) the time period that followed World War II – postwar America (1945 to 1960). Make sure to consider the social, economic, and political developments Americans faced both at home as well as abroad.

For your answer, draw on all the materials in the modules, the textbook, the document provided for writing activity VI, and these additional documents (they are links, please double-click them.

1. “An Independent Destiny for America”: Charles A. Lindbergh on Isolationism

2. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga Recalls Caring for her Baby in the Manzanar Incarceration Camp:

3. “I Saw The Walking Dead”: A Black Sergeant Remembers Buchenwald, by Leon Bass/Pam Sporn.

4. Equal Pay for Equal Work: The War Labor Board on Gender Inequality

5. Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (1944)

6. “Our People Were Dedicated”: Organizing with the American G.I. Forum

7. “Achieving an Atmosphere of Mutual Trust and Confidence”: Henry A. Wallace Offers an Alternative to Cold War Containment

8. President Eisenhower warns of the Military-Industrial Complex in his Farewell Address to the nation, 1961.

The use of concrete evidence documented with reference to original sources (movies, cartoons), and scholarly writing (textbook and documents) is central to a successful completion of this assignment.

References to the textbook appear in the form of a page number in parentheses after the sentence, as in this example: (p.341-342)
Identify videos or lecture outlines in footnotes – as shown in the examples footnoted here:[1] [2]
Cite documents as shown in the example footnoted here, and please note that all the hyperlinked documents listed above have the proper citation formats listed at the bottom of the pages.[3]
Quotations should be clearly identifiable and poignant. Do not refer to any additional online resources such a Wikipedia.