What Are The Opportunities And Challenges Of World War II?

World War II occurred from 1939 to 1945. This war was fought between the Axis Powers (Germany, Japan and Italy) and the Allies (Soviet Union, United States, Great Britain and France). The war began when Germany invaded Poland on September 9th, 1939. The United States entered the war in 1941 when Japan surprise attacked Pearl Harbor, an American navy base in Oahu, Hawaii. Europe surrendered on May 8th, 1945, while the Allies were still at war with Japan. Japan shortly surrendered on August 14, 1945, after America dropped the atomic bomb on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war brought many challenges, but along with these challenges came hope and success. The opportunities and benefits of World War II were more notable than the
One of these challenges included America’s international relations with the Soviet Union. Both the United States and the Soviet Union fought on the allied powers together for their mutual opposition to Hitler’s Germany. Nevertheless, when Germany finally surrendered these two countries,once at peace, turned against one another. This hate towards each other was mainly driven by our stance on communism. The Soviet Union was pro-communism and they were ruled by a cruel dictator. While the United States opposed it, due to previous outbreaks of fear and panic about communism, also known as the “Red Scare”. This face-off of non-military fighting was later known as the Cold War, “...This crucial result of World War II destroyed the Grand Alliance [of the United States and the Soviet Union] and gave birth to the Cold War.” (Document 4) This led to the superpower competition between American and the USSR. Rather than having a military combat war, these two countries fought in a different and unique way. They participated in the nuclear arms race, where each side competed for the highest amount of nuclear weapons, the space race, where they were in competition for who could get into space, and athletic competitions, like the Olympics where they compared medal count. Although we faced many challenges like so, this also benefited our economy even more. The United States now had NASA, a space program,
Several men lost their lives fighting for our country, we spent billions of dollars, and became competitive with the Soviet Union after WWII, but along with these costs and challenges, benefits and opportunities came into view. A large sum of money went to the women building the arsenal of democracy, people who unfortunately died were fighting for our country which went on to win the war, and our foreign tensions with the Soviet Union left our economy booming. World War II brought the United States out of a decade of depression and debt, improving lives for individuals throughout America. Women were now able to pay taxes and buy war bonds to support the United States. Which led to the women’s rights acts during the 1960s-1970s, allowing females to have more of a say. This dramatically impacts our society today, which proves that the benefits and opportunities were more