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The Battle of Midway
After the victory in Europe, America turned its heads to Japan after six months after Pearl Harbor. During the summer, American Naval victories by the aircraft carrier duel at the Battle of Midway crippled the Japanese's Pacific naval operations. -
Executive Order of 9066
President Roosevelt signed the Executive Order of 9066 which authorized the removal of any persons from designated "exclusion zones" which covered nearly a third of the country at the discretion of military commanders. -
The Detroit Riot
Racial Tensions began to start-up in 1943 in a sries of riots in cities including Mobile, Beaumont, and Harlem. The biggest riot that occurred was in Detriot which was the bloodiest race riot. It resulted in the death of twenty-five African Americans and nine White Americans. -
The G.I. Bill
William Atherton, the head of the American Legion, the G.I. Bill won support from progressives and conservatives alike. In 1944, the G.I. Bill was passed and was a multifaceted, multibillion-dollar entitlement program that rewarded honorably discharged veterans with numerous benefits. -
D-day
On June 6, allied forces (America, United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union) launched a combined naval, air and land assault on Nazi-occupied France. Codenamed Operation Neptune, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. -
America and Japanese War
American bombers dropped incendiary weapons that created massive firestorms and wreaked havoc on Japanese cities. Over sixty Japanese cities were fire-bombed. American fire bombs killed one hundred thousand civilians in Tokyo in March 1945. After eighty days of fighting and tens of thousands of casualties, the Americans captured the island of Okinawa. The mainland of Japan was open before them. It was a viable base from which to launch a full invasion of the Japanese homeland and end the war. -
The End of WWII
Germany finally surrenders after their counterattacks in the east failed to dislodge the Soviet advance, destroying any last chance Germany might have. This is when the European war had finally ended. -
NATO Organization
In summer 1949, American officials launch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which is a mutual defense pact where the United States and Canada were joined by England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. -
The Berlin Wall
Berlin had been divided into communist and capitalist zones. The Soviets lifted the blockades they put down on May 12, 1949. Germany was officially broken in half. On May 23, the western half of the country was formally renamed the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic (GDR). -
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America and USSR Atomic Bomb Tests
The United States detonated the first thermonuclear weapon, or hydrogen bomb on November 1, 1952. The blast measured over ten megatons and generated an inferno five miles wide with a mushroom cloud twenty-five miles high and a hundred miles across. The USSR successfully tested a hydrogen bomb in 1953, and soon thereafter Eisenhower announced a policy of “massive retaliation.”