axis powers definition us history

axis powers definition us history

The Axis Powers in US History: A Comprehensive Analysis

1. Introduction to the Axis Powers and their Role in US History

On December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan launched a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan, and three days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the US. The country had been officially dragged into World War II (WWII) and would fight in both the European and Pacific theaters, helping to defeat the “Axis” Powers – Japan, Germany, and Italy. This same Axis Powers coalition can be found as one of the five major themes established for US History courses, describing America’s turning from isolationism toward a new international leadership role as a superpower. Since most US History students are not taught these basic foreign policy facts in detail, it is the purpose of this article to describe the Axis Powers coalition’s rise to power and provide some detail concerning the history taught in school with a special focus on the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US home front, and the defeat of the Axis Powers.

2. The Rise of the Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, and Japan

After these two European crises, various League members began to realize that dictators would take advantage of their unwillingness to fight. The League put trade sanctions on Italy and withdrew its ambassadors. Mussolini had to withdraw from South Tyrol and Ethiopia as he did not want a war. However, the sanctions weren’t strict enough and the League was blamed for his invading Abyssinia. In 1939, the communist Soviet Union and the fascist Germany signed the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. In this treaty, Hitler and Stalin secretly agreed to divide Poland between them. On 1 September, Hitler attacked Poland, and World War II began.

Germany, Italy, and Japan were extremely aggressive in the 1930s and led to the outbreak of war in 1939. In 1938, Germany under Hitler attempted to take over Czechoslovakia. Although Hitler had taken the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia without a fight, everyone knew that his army was not strong enough to take a major nation like France without help from another major power. Fortunately, Great Britain, France, and Italy agreed to the Munich Pact, which permitted Germany to annex the Sudetenland section of Czechoslovakia.

World War II broke out in 1939. The war was fought in Europe, Africa, and Asia, mainly between Germany, Italy, and Japan, on one side, and Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States on the other side. The Axis powers were defeated, and world peace was again established with the surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945.

When World War I broke out, the United States chose to remain neutral. American leaders hoped that the nation could make trade treaties with all countries, regardless of their positions in the war. When the peace treaty was drawn up and signed, however, the United States did not ratify it. The country chose not to join the League of Nations, which was formed to keep freedom and peace in the world. This made some people angry.

3. The Impact of the Axis Powers on US Foreign Policy and Military Strategy

4. Propaganda and Perception: How the Axis Powers were Portrayed in the US Media

Prior to the emergence of Japan as an enemy, the American perception of the Japanese was rather benign. However, prejudice, misunderstanding, racial discrimination, and lack of sympathy towards Japanese Americans also affected Americans’ perceptions of and responses to the Japanese attacks. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, the “suddenness, the treachery, the heartlessness of the blow aroused…all the chauvinistic elements of America.” Along with the animosity toward an enemy who had conquered American territory and killed thousands of American service personnel, however, was a sense of betrayal by a people, whom until December 1941, had been the object of American goodwill. After the attack, animosity toward Japan was easily rekindled and reinforced by the general assumption of Japanese inferiority. Finally, much of the American public characterized the Japanese as primitive, and therefore inhuman, allegedly perverted, and genetically incapable of enjoying the hard-earned fruits of democracy and self-determination. In general, the Japanese enemy stereotype in American propaganda both before and during World War II was that the Japanese were an evil, monstrous, racist, militaristic, and reactionary people who could only be stopped by democracy. With the creation and acceptance of this outrageous depiction systematically inculcated by every facet of American life, resistance to accepting the killing and bombing of citizens increased. The image portrayed by the US media reinforced a generalization based strictly on race, one of the enduring effects from American wartime paranoia that is a stereotyped perception with a unique history and a slow dissipation.

The nature of the war necessitated demonization of the enemy to engender public support. Thus, the Axis Powers in general, and particularly Adolf Hitler and Emperor Hirohito, were cast by the US media in a very unfavorable light. A propaganda campaign in cinema, radio, print, and word-to-eye media painted an unrealistically distorted image of the enemy, created a “hate” for propaganda effect, to encourage national unity prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Rapidly the public view moved from xenophobia rejection to hatred. The wartime portrayal evoked stereotypes and a hatred that persisted two and a generation after. Today’s popular perception of enemy characteristics is largely a product of the media war stereotype.

5. The Legacy of the Axis Powers in US History and Contemporary Relations

In postwar Europe, due to Stalin’s refusal to pull out occupying Soviet forces from the Eastern European Nations that it had occupied, the Marshall Plan assistances were limited to the Western European Nations located inside the “Iron Curtain,” the eventual implementation of a “Containment Doctrine” hitherto enunciated by US President Harry S. Truman. Events in Greece and Turkey, which led to the Truman Doctrine and admission of both nations into the US postwar framework, were believed to be the cornerstones and outbreak of the Cold War. In the midst of fears of communist insurrections, the United States orchestrated the formation of Regional Security Pacts in accordance with the principles of the Athens Charter, which was signed on March 24, 1941, to protect and guarantee to Rome-Berlin Axis-Satellite Domains. It was under such regional security pacts that the Cold War-led political and military cooperation and collaboration between the US and its allies became an integral part of US foreign and domestic policy.

For their part, the Soviet Union had been largely excluded from many of the pre-war agreements that benefited the European continent and sought to have a more dominant role in post-war Europe, even in the areas hitherto renounced by the czarist or Soviet Russia. This competition for dominance in the postwar world led to the breakout of the Cold War, in which it was to be, in essence, a continuation of the post-war 1939-1941 Agitations. The United States’ power to provide the starving continent of Europe with provisions did not escape the Soviet Union. Many in power in the Soviet Union and Europe commenced to suspect that Marshall Plan assistances were designed to maintain the US capitalist system through destruction of economic classes amidst its beneficiaries and for the further containment and limitation of the development of the Soviet Union and Europe. Apostles of the DNP characterize Marshall Plan assistances as illegal, according to US policy documents and “the categories” of US law. Copyright © 2012 SciRes. 13 Creative Commons License Convertible Currencies Rests Upon a Choice (Bituminous Coal) That Many Advisers Could Profit You.

The most notable impact of the Axis Powers upon the US in the post-World War II era has been determined to be the initiation of the Cold War. The US and the Soviet Union were in many ways diametrically opposed but remained close allies for the duration of the war, with the Soviet Union and the US dealing the bulk of the damage to Germany and Japan. Granted, this was a war with interests for protection at home for the United States, its political and economic systems, and for its global leadership. Thus, when the German Reich (especially in the future Western zone of Allied occupation) and Japan were defeated, the US and the Soviet Union fought over the leadership of Asia and the place of the Soviet Union in the emerging postwar world. The US sought to rebuild Europe firstly by making Germany a bulwark against Soviet expansion in the postwar Western Sector and also by entering into a new-era partnership with Japan via the drafting of a new post-war constitution which was purported for protection of Mother Land Japan away from land-based aggression in the future.