the great patriotic war
The Soviets named this war the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet Unions severe military defeats affected the lives of civilians greatly. Leningrad (St. Petersburg), faced 900 days of siege. The people starved so badly that they became desperate for food, they even ate dogs, cats, and mice. More than 1.5 million people died during this siege. When Germany was breaking through the Soviet Union, workers had to take apart whole factories and machines and move them to the west. As workers build machines walls where set up around them to protect them and the machines as they worked. By 1943, 55% of income was invested in making war materials as oppose to the 15% in 1940; this affected the civilians of the Soviet union greatly. Because all of the money was spent on war, the Soviets faced a food and housing shortage.
the united states plays the war game
During World War II, no battles happened on US soil. Eventually, The US was the country that supplied the Allied powers with weapons and military equipment. This created a social problem in the United States. People moved to towns called boomtowns where the factories that produced weapons were stationed. They moved there looking for work, but they faced problems like the lack of schools and houses. Americans who were enrolled in the army also moved a lot. Furthermore, mostly wives and girlfriends of people in the army moved around the country to find jobs. African Americans also moved from the South to the North looking for jobs; this lead to riots and racial tension. Over one million African Americans joined the army and served in separate units as well. Japanese Americans also had many issues during World War II. Japanese Americans (some of which were born in the US) were moved to camps and forced to take oaths of loyalty.
learning from previous mistakes
Hitler realized that Germany lost World War I because the German people didn’t want war. During World War II he made sure this same mistake wouldn’t happen. Hitler didn’t stop the production of consumer goods in order to produce for the war. Instead, he launched the Blitzkrieg, which allowed Germany to take food and materials of other countries. However, when Germany was defeated by the Soviet Union and America entered the war, Hitler could no longer maintain this economic policy. From 1942 to 1943 Germany started producing three times the amount of weapons it used to produce. In 1944, social places were closed like Schools, theaters, and cafés.
control
Japanese society was highly controlled by the war and the government. The Japanese government created a planning board which allowed it to control prices, wages, labor, and resources. Citizens were also encouraged to sacrifice their own food, money, and sometimes lives for the nation. At the end of the war Japanese men were asked to sacrifice their lives by being pilots of suicide missions against the US. However, Japan was greatly against using women in war efforts. They believed that weakening the family structure would affect the nation .