soviet union home front ww2

Life, Labor, and Loyalty on the Soviet Home Front during World War II (Oxford University Press).” Wendy Z. Goldman is the Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of History at Carnegie-Mellon University, and has published numerous works on topics including labor, gender relations, and famine policy in the Soviet Union. Each country tried to suppress rumors, which typically were negative or defeatist. Peter the Great's expanding empire in many ways resembled that of another developing empire at the time--Prussia. Factories also served as mutual support centers, and had clinics and other services like cleaning crews and teams of women who would sew and repair clothes. Alecea Standlee, "Shifting Spheres: Gender, Labor and the Construction of National Identity in U.S. Japanese women obediently followed orders, and there were no serious disruptions such as rioting over food shortages. As in most occupied countries, crime, looting, corruption, and black markets were endemic. [43] The Allies as well as the combined American and Filipino soldiers invaded in 1944–45; the battle for Manila was contested street by street with large numbers of civilians killed. [52], Britain's total mobilisation during this period proved to be successful in winning the war, by maintaining strong support from public opinion. Working hours were vastly extended, as was the intensity of labour. They were: Wellingtons, Whitley Vs, Blenheims, Hurricanes and Spitfires. Hitler Turns East. After the stunningly quick defeat in June 1940, France was knocked out of the war; part of it, with its capital in Vichy, became an informal ally of the Germans. Bray, Bonita. The government even reformed its education system by rewriting ethics textbooks to be more nationalistic and militaristic. In the Bengal famine of 1943, three million people died.[85]. [81][82], During World War II, India was a colony of Britain known as British Raj. [citation needed]. The city environment made these efforts nearly negligible. In all 1.3 million children were moved—with their teachers but not their parents. ", Kenneth Hewitt, "'When The Great Planes Came And Made Ashes Of Our City...': Towards An Oral Geography Of The Disasters Of War. A significant minority of workers, mainly young, found themselves unable to cope with these conditions and fled from the factories, despite the threat of spending many years in the Gulag if they were caught. Soldiers, who had more food to spare, were eager to trade with civilians who had extra warm clothes to exchange. [87], The Japanese imprisoned the ruling British colonial elite and sought to win over the local merchant gentry by appointments to advisory councils and neighbourhood watch groups. He and Wendy Goldman are currently working on a history of life and labour on the Soviet home front during World War II. [121] The Japanese food rationing system was effective throughout the war, and there were no serious incidences of malnutrition. ", Geller, Jay Howard. The Soviet Union in World War II is the story of several wars. Jan 3, 2017 - Explore Theresa Steele's board "World War II: Russian Home Front", followed by 267 people on Pinterest. In January 1942, the Nazis published a 60-page booklet titled German Soldiers in the Soviet Union: Letters from the East.. Piercing the northern border, Guderian’s tanks raced 50 miles beyond the frontier on the first day of the invasion and were at … All the major political parties endorsed the principles, and they were largely put into effect when peace returned. Agriculture expanded, sending record supplies of meat, butter and wool to Britain. They formed neighborhood associations to inform on the opposition. Many Canadian men joined the war effort, so with them overseas and industries pushing to increase production, women took up positions to aid in the war effort. Sources often used include magazines published—by men—for female readers. They formed an auxiliary unit of the United States Army. It included the largest tank battle in military history. Stymied in his attempt to invade Britain in 1940, Hitler refocused … [50] Newspapers and the media were tightly censored. Joseph Stalin had his own group of Communist leaders for the new Poland and did not want the Home Army or its leaders (based in London) to control Warsaw. Agricultural production in the home islands held up well during the war until the bombing started. U.S.-Soviet Alliance, 1941–1945 Although relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had been strained in the years before World War II, the U.S.-Soviet alliance of 1941–1945 was marked by a great degree of cooperation and was essential to securing the defeat of Nazi Germany. [58], From very early in the war, it was thought that the major industrial cities of Britain, especially London, would come under Luftwaffe air attack; this did happen in The Blitz. When American forces arrived, they were fed as well. [124], The American aerial bombing of a total of 65 Japanese cities took from 400,000 to 600,000 civilian lives, with 100,000+ in Tokyo alone, over 200,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. China suffered the second highest number of casualties of the entire war. An Emergency Hospital Service was established at the beginning of the war, in the expectation that it would be required to deal with large numbers of casualties. It fell from an index of 110 in 1942 to 84 in 1944 and only 65 in 1945. A powerful Resistance movement sprang up, as the Germans fortified the coast against an Allied invasion and occupied the northern half of the country. [44] With a view of building up the economic base of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Japanese Army envisioned using the islands as a source of agricultural products needed by its industry. [23], Distribution of food in Nazi occupied Poland as of December 1941[24], Additionally the Generalplan Ost of the Nazis, which envisioned the elimination of the Slavic population in the occupied territories and artificial famines-as proposed in the Hunger Plan, were to be used. Compulsory employment in munitions factories was possible for unmarried women, but social norms prevented married women from doing that sort of work, in sharp contrast to Russia, Britain, Germany and the United States. [92], Instead of expanding the economies of the occupied nations, the Nazis seized the portable machinery and rail cars, requisitioned most of their industrial output, took large quantities of food (15% of French output), and forced the victims to pay for their military occupation. [88], The overlords became more brutal and corrupt, and the Chinese gentry became disenchanted. [26], The uprising by Poles began on August 1, 1944, when the Polish underground, the "Home Army", aware that the Soviet Army had reached the eastern bank of the Vistula, sought to liberate Warsaw much as the French resistance had liberated Paris a few weeks earlier. In Eastern Europe, World War II was bloody and destructive to a degree far exceeding the experience of western Europe, or of the Mediterranean or Pacific theatres. Although the Germans did most of the fighting in Poland, the Soviet Union occupied the eastern part. [40] Sociologist Alecea Standlee (2010) argues that during the war the traditional gender division of labor changed somewhat, as the "home" or domestic female sphere expanded to include the "home front"; meanwhile the public sphere—the male domain—was redefined as the international stage of military action. "The Role of Military Administration in German-occupied Belgium, 1940–1944,", Sellin, Thorsten, ed. The Japanese invaded and quickly conquered the islands in early 1942. [71] Most had lived in British Columbia, but in 1945 they were released from detention and allowed to move anywhere in Canada except British Columbia, or they could go to Japan. Harrison, Mark (1988). When industrial production was available to the military, for example, 24 percent of Japan's finished steel in 1937 was allocated to the military, compared to 85 percent in 1945. During the Holocaust in Belgium, the Nazis hunted down the 70,000 Jews living in Belgium, most of them refugees, and killed 29,000 of them. [123] Despite government rationing of food, some families were forced to spend more than their monthly income could offer on black market food purchases. The official ration provided starvation-level diets of 1,300 or fewer calories a day (5400 kJ), supplemented by home gardens and, especially, black market purchases. Life on the home front during World War II was a significant part of the war effort for all participants and had a major impact on the outcome of the war. Japanese occupation of the Philippines was opposed by large-scale underground and guerrilla activity. More serious crimes such as murder and cannibalism also occurred, and special police squads were set up to combat these crimes, though by the end of the siege, roughly 1,500 had been arrested for cannibalism. Some people—including German soldiers who could take advantage of arbitrary exchange rates that favored Germany—benefited from the black market, where food was sold without coupons at very high prices. If malnutrition persisted for long enough, its effects were irreversible. [citation needed]. Australia entered the war in 1939 and sent its forces to fight the Germans in the Middle East (where they were successful) and Singapore (where they were captured by the Japanese in 1942). "Mobilizing Women for War: The History, Historiography, and Memory of German Women's War Service in the Two World Wars,", Willson, Perry. Meanwhile, the Muslim League supported the war effort and gained membership and favors with colonial rulers, as well as British support for its demands for a separate Muslim state (which became Pakistan in 1947). [10] After the war, France gave women the vote and additional legal and political rights, although nothing on the scale of the enfranchisement that followed World War I. Every acquisition of rationed goods required an appropriate "Marken", and if a person wished to eat a certain soup at a restaurant, the waiter would take out a pair of scissors and cut off the required items to make the soup and amounts listed on the menu. Prices soared and millions starved because they could not buy food. [131] The government controlled all the media, and supervised popular magazines so their content would strategically spread the government's goals and propaganda. The London‐based government‐in‐exile returned, but had to confront the resistance movements that demanded radical political change.[4]. An anti-British force of about 40,000 men (and a few women), the Indian National Army (INA) under Subhas Chandra Bose, formed in Southeast Asia. World War II: and The Home Front "But there is one front and one battle where everyone in the United States - every man, woman, and child - is in action That front is right here at home ,in our daily lives."- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1942 2. The government used propaganda heavily and planned in minute detail regarding the mobilization of manpower, identification of critical choke points, food supplies, logistics, air raid shelters, and the evacuation of children and civilians from targeted cities. The Charter stated the ideal goals of the war: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people; restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; free access to raw materials; reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, as well as the disarmament of aggressor nations. Another myth is that the Soviet Union’s role in the Second World War began on 22 June 1941, when the Wehrmacht attacked the USSR. [64], The BBC collected 47,000 wartime recollections and 15,000 images in 2003-6 and put them online. Religion, which was previously shunned, became a part of a Communist Party propaganda campaign to mobilize religious people. Food supplies were very tight before the heavy bombing began in fall 1944, then grew to a crisis. Vitamin D. Available from: British Library. [18][19][20][21], By mid 1941, the German minority in Poland received 2,613 calories (11,000 kJ) per day, while Poles received 699 and Jews in the ghetto 184. In the following three weeks, virtually all died as the Germans fought and systematically destroyed the buildings in the ghetto. 2005. Paul Addison . During the early morning of 22 June 1941, Hitler terminated the pact by launching Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of Soviet-held territories and the Soviet Union that began the war on the Eastern Front. China was divided into three zones, with the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek(Chiang or Jiang) the southwest and the Communists led by Mao Zedong (Mao) in control of much of the northwest. Upwards of two million women inside Germany were raped in 1945 in a tidal wave of looting, burning and vengeance. Two dozen were awarded the highly prestigious Iron Cross for heroism under fire. Under his leadership the Soviet Union had just won the war of the century, and that victory was closely identified with his role as the country’s supreme commander. Most Jews were rounded up by the Vichy police and handed over to the Germans, who sent them to death camps.[7][8]. Parsons, Gwen. 17 photographic prints ; 7 x 9 in. Most survival strategies during the siege, though, involved staying within the city and facing the problems through resourcefulness or luck: for instance by securing factory employment, because many factories became autonomous and possessed more of the requirements for survival during the winter, such as food and heat. Intense propaganda efforts by the government to promote savings and postpone consumer purchases were largely successful, especially on the part of housewives who generally control their family budget. Schoolchildren were also taught nationalistic songs such as the Umi Yukaba: "If I go away to the sea,I shall be a corpse washed up.If I go away to the mountain,I shall be a corpse in the grassBut if I die for the Emperor,It will not be a regret.". Only the ration allocated to Germans provided the full required calorie intake. Work became increasingly dangerous and unsafe – rates of sickness absence were double the levels of 1940. Their policies created severe shortages for the Belgian people, but shipped out far less than Germany had expected. [127] Forced prostitution for the benefit of Japanese soldiers created the "comfort women" program that proved highly embarrassing to Japan for decades after the war. Two pro-German movements, the Flemish National Union comprising Flemish (Dutch-speaking) separatists and the Walloon (French-speaking) Rexists led by Léon Degrelle (1906–94), supported the invaders and encouraged their young men to volunteer for the German army. Hitler was at first convinced that it would affect public support for the war if a strict rationing program was introduced. Direct buying from farmers in the countryside and barter against cigarettes became common. Food rationing also permitted the upgrading of the quality of the food available, and housewives approved—except for the absence of white bread and the government's imposition of an unpalatable wheat meal "national loaf". The government wanted to raise the birthrate, even with 8.2 million men in the armed forces, of whom three million were killed. Rationing in Germany was introduced in 1939 immediately upon the outbreak of hostilities. Additionally, Hitler sought to commandeer the Soviet Union’s natural resources, including natural oil and gas and vast agricultural areas of Ukraine that could serve as the Nazi “breadbasket.” With Operation Barbarossa, Germany divided its military resources between combat on the new Eastern Front and existing Western Front. Jackson, Ashley, Yasmin Khan, and Gajendra Singh, eds. John Barber and Mark Harrison’s The Soviet Home Front is a comprehensive account of the Soviet Union during World War II that is rich in detail but somewhat lacking in terms of an overarching theme or narrative. In each famine at least two million people died. There was only a small increase of 1.4 million women entering the labor force between 1940 and 1944. Vegetables and local fruit were not rationed; imported citrus fruits and bananas were unavailable. Bidlack, "Survival Strategies in Leningrad," p 97. Unemployment faded away. Harvesting, etc., on collective farms. The rationing system, which was originally based on a specific basket of goods for each consumer, was much improved by switching to a points system which allowed housewives to make choices based on their own priorities. For the military story see Military history of the United Kingdom during World War II. There was a burst of marriages in June and July 1941 between people about to be separated by the war, and in the next few years the marriage rate dropped off steeply, with the birth rate following shortly thereafter to only about half of what it would have been in peacetime. The Allies produced about three times as much in munitions as the Axis powers. 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