WW2 America research
Era: 1939-1945
I have chosen this era because it is very well documented and actually quite recent, while the era is not that long in total; only 6 years. It is still a very eventful and interesting period in time with the main event being World War 2, which defined this era and dominated much of the culture.
Research sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II
http://world-war-2.info/
A war involving many of the world’s largest and most powerful countries that lasted from 1939 to 1945, as the war started two factions formed consisting of different military powers these factions were the Allies and the Axis.
World War 2 was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The world went into a state of ‘total war’, and the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, involving both military and civilian lives, this is shown by the mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust; during which approximately 11 million people were killed, and the strategic bombing of industrial and population centres; during which approximately one million people were killed.
The war was on such a large scale that it eventually led to the use of two nuclear weapons in combat, these bombs were dropped by America onto two Japanese cites (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) to end the war in Asia. The war resulted in an estimated 50 million to 85 million fatalities. This made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history.
Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded. It is suggested that around 75 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians. Many of the civilian deaths were because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombing, disease, and starvation.
The Soviet Union lost around 20 million people during the war, these included around 8.7 million military and 11.5 million civilian deaths. A quarter of the people in the Soviet Union were wounded or killed.
Germany sustained 4.3 million military losses, and around 2,251,500 million civilian losses.
Of the total deaths in World War II, approximately 85 percent; mostly Soviet and Chinese, were on the Allied side and 15 percent on the Axis side. Many of these deaths were caused by war crimes committed by German and Japanese forces in occupied territories.
America did not join the war straight away, they stayed neutral until 1941 when japan bombed pearl harbour, this meant that they had an overview on what was happening in the war before they started fighting which had allowed them to prepare defensively, however when they did join the war effort on the Allies side, they turned much of the defensive technology and preparation to an aggressive nature.
Morale was on a low on the western front due to the German blitzkrieg tactics which were cutting through allied troops. So when America declared war on the Axis forces it was a boost to the morale of many other nations as help was on the way, it was also a boost to the American populations’ morale because some people felt that they should be helping in the war effort and others wanted revenge for pearl harbour. This meant that as America went to war there was celebration as well as sadness which would have influenced the culture at the time massively.
The art which evolved in this era was very stylised, this is because propaganda was being produced and it needed to catch peoples eye, so they designed the art style to be something that would not have been seen before on a wide scale. However some people took to different methods of putting their views on the war across and graffiti became a much more evolved method of art around cities but not like modern graffiti, it was used to display anger at the war and the government and was often not amazing art but was meant to stand out and be noticeable.