Great World War II Projects You Can Build Yourself
Book Introduction
Have you ever thought about what life would be like if you had lived during World War II? This was a very dark period in world history, as people around the globe hoped and prayed that democracy would win out over fascists and dictators. It was a time when countries demanded total patriotism and cooperation from their citizens. It was a time of fear, determination, sacrifice, and longing. For some, particularly the Jews living in German-occupied Europe, and the Japanese living on the West Coast of the United States, the war years were particularly cruel. Their rights were swept aside, their properties taken, and their value as humans and citizens questioned. And yet, the war years also gave people opportunities to offer their best. Many risked their reputations, and their lives, to help others. One thing is certain: had you lived during World War II, you would have discovered an inner strength, and what skills you could offer America in the fight against Nazi ideals.
This book will help you to discover a bit about what life was like during World War II for soldiers in the field, and for their families back home. You’ll learn, for example, why Americans held scrap drives, why they were issued ration coupons, and how women proved they could fill a man’s job just fine. You’ll learn interesting facts about the people, places, and events of World War II, including what Hitler planned for the Jews, how the Allied militaries fooled the Germans, and how balloons protected cities from low-flying bombers. You’ll learn how technology gave the United States an edge, and the critical roles played by spies and code breakers. You’ll learn the name for the bomb shelters distributed to British citizens by the British government, and names of the two radio personalities who tried to discourage American troops. You’ll create projects that will give you an idea of what people did during the war to make do, have fun, and support the troops. For example, you can make your own Victory Garden, your own hospital flag, and your own top-secret message, cleverly hidden in a deck of ordinary playing cards. Most of the projects in this book can be made by kids with minimal adult supervision, and the supplies needed are either common household items or easily available at craft stores. So, take a step back into the 1940s and get ready to Build it Yourself.
World War II wasn't the only war that involved countries all over the world. In fact, it came only 20 years after the first World War, which was fought between 1914 and 1918. After World War I, which was nicknamed "The War to End All Wars," ended in 1918, governments all over Europe agreed that a world war as bloody as that one should never happen again. But only 21 years later, World War II was "officially" begun when Germany marched into Poland on September 1, 1939. How did the world go from a time of peace to war again so quickly?
It was because of one man: Adolph Hitler, the dictator of Germany. In 1933, Hitler was elected into power with the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, in the role of chancellor. Yet within a year Hitler managed to assume total power of the government, after having his opponents arrested and killed. Despite using violence, Hitler won the support of the German people by promising that they would become a strong and powerful nation. In fact, Hitler told the German people that they were a superior race and that, under his leadership, they would experience a thousand years of prosperity, with plenty of food and work. These promises rallied the German people, who felt a deep shame in losing World War I. Just getting through each day had become very hard for them, because of soaring inflation. What caused the inflation? Germany’s growing debt to France, England, Russia, and the United States. When these countries won the war, they required Germany to pay them huge sums of money. Eventually, the prices of food and other items jumped so high that most people could not afford to buy them. In fact, in 1923, the German mark jumped from 4.6 million marks to the U.S. dollar to 4.2 trillion marks to the dollar. German citizens became pessimistic and distrustful of their government—which helped Hitler to gain power.
The victors, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, did not allow Germany to rebuild a large military. But with his eye on world domination, Hitler decided to ignore the treaty. He ordered the rebuilding of the German air force, navy, and army. Within six years, Germany could boast the world’s second largest military force. By 1939, only the Soviet Union had a larger military. In comparison, the military of the United States ranked only eighteenth in the world. That’s because after winning the first World War, the United States had decided to maintain only its navy. Strengthening its military muscle would become the country’s most important goal, when the United States officially entered the war in 1941.
When Hitler promised good things to German citizens, there was one group of people he purposely excluded: Jews. Hitler professed to hate Jews. At the least, he found them a convenient group to blame for Germany’s problems. Equally desperate for a scapegoat, the German people were willing to believe that Hitler was right. To spread his message of hate, Hitler quickly taught German children to despise Jews. He required German boys to join the Hitler Youth and girls to join the League of German Girls. In these youth clubs, children learned to view Jews as their enemy. Soon, Jewish children were forced to leave public schools, and Jews were forbidden from entering non-Jewish businesses, restaurants, and movie theaters. The Nazis even used yellow paint to mark Jewish store windows with the Star of David, a Jewish symbol. In 1935, Hitler passed the Nuremberg Laws, which declared that Jews no longer had rights enjoyed by German citizens. In 1938, Nazi soldiers burned more than two hundred Jewish synagogues and destroyed many Jewish-owned stores. This night of terror is called Kristallnacht (night of broken glass).
That same year, Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich suggested that the Jews in German-occupied Poland be forced to wear a white arm badge. In September, 1941, the Nazis issued yellow Star of David patches with the word “Jude” to all Jews over the age of six living in Germany and German-occupied areas. The Jews had to sew the patches onto the left side of their chest, usually on their coat lapel. If they were caught on the street without the patch or their identification papers, they were fined or beaten. The badges enabled Hitler to easily create an “us versus them” mindset among the German people. Suddenly, the German people could clearly see that Jews were indeed “everywhere,” just as Hitler had warned. Yet Hitler wasn’t satisfied with terrorizing and humiliating the Jews. He wanted them removed completely.
This led the Nazis to hold a special conference in 1942 to figure out a “final solution” for the millions of Jews living in German-occupied Europe. They decided that all Jews must die. Some Jews were shot in their towns. But throughout the war, most Jews were sent to labor and concentration camps, in overcrowded railroad cars. If they were still alive when they arrived at the camps, some of the Jews were forced into medical experiments. Others were made to work long hours and live in horrible conditions. They received very little food; most died within a month or two. But most Jews who stepped off the trains were killed immediately in special gas chambers.
One of the reasons Hitler wanted to get rid of the Jews was to have more land for his German citizens. Hitler felt it was his right to take the land of neighboring countries to make room or “Lebensraum” for his superior race. He began his conquest of Europe by invading Austria in 1938. He then invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1939. And then his troops marched into Denmark, Norway, and France, despite Britain declaring war on Germany. Hitler then surprised Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin by invading the Soviet Union in 1941, breaking the non-aggression pact he signed with Stalin just two years earlier. When he did so, the world learned that Hitler could not be trusted to keep his word—and that he had to be stopped. Though President Franklin D. Roosevelt still hoped the United States wouldn’t have to enter the war, he began to help Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill in his fight against Hitler. Roosevelt began sending money and equipment to Britain through his Lend-Lease Act of 1941.
Most Americans recognized that the United States would inevitably enter the war, but they were unprepared for the tragic event that forced Roosevelt’s hand. On the morning of December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese dive-bombers launched a devastating surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor, a U.S. naval base in Hawaii. Radar, a new technology, had alerted the U.S. military that bombers were approaching, but the planes were mistakenly assumed to be American bombers. Within minutes, Japanese bombs rained down on sailors and civilians. In little more than an hour, the Japanese planes destroyed nineteen U.S. navy ships and killed almost three thousand Americans. Fortunately for the U.S. military, the U.S. aircraft carrier fleet was not destroyed, as it was out to sea on a practice drill.
Immediately, Roosevelt formally declared war. The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union joined forces, becoming known as the Allied powers. They concentrated on winning the war against Germany, Italy, and Japan, who partnered together as the Axis powers.
Fear struck the hearts of many Americans. Would the Japanese next try to bomb California? Some citizens worried that the Japanese Americans living on the West Coast might be spies—or had helped Japan to launch the attack on Pearl Harbor. To calm their fears, President Roosevelt allowed the army to force the Japanese residents, many of whom had lived in the United States for twenty or thirty years, into guarded internment camps. These were not horrible work or death camps like the Nazi concentration camps, but they were still a difficult place to live. Most Japanese Americans were not allowed to leave the camps until the end of the war. When the government decided to finally close the camps, many Japanese Americans looked forward to returning to their homes. But many of those who did so found that their homes and businesses had been vandalized, and that local residents did not welcome their return. It took many years for the Japanese Americans to rebuild the lives they had been forced to leave behind.
Like Germany did years earlier, the United States rushed to rebuild its military. The government required manufacturers to cease making their peace-time products and to produce planes, boats, jeeps, and other war supplies. Men left their jobs to enter the military, opening the door for millions of women to enter the work force. Children, too, joined the war effort, helping to collect goods for scrap drives. Across America, citizens were asked to sacrifice and do without so that U.S. troops would have all they needed to win the war. Americans did so willingly, even when food, clothing, and gasoline became severely rationed.
For a while, the outcome of the war seemed to favor Hitler. To weaken the German military, the Allies realized they would have to force Hitler to fight on two fronts. Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill decided to invade Normandy, France, in a surprise attack. If they failed to secure the beaches, they knew Hitler would have no obstacle in his goal of conquering Europe. On June 6, 1944, under the control of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces, the Allies landed on five Normandy beaches (codenamed Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword, and Gold), in the largest seaborne assault in history. This secret attack was called Operation Overlord. The Allied invasion was huge: 5,000 ships, 11,000 planes, and 15,000 troops arrived on the first wave. They brought with them new weapons the Germans didn’t know they had, including flamethrowing tanks, “flail” tanks that flushed out mine bombs that the Germans had planted under the sand, amphibious trucks that drove men and supplies up the beach, and gas masks, in case the Germans met them with poisonous gas.
Until they landed, the Germans incorrectly thought the Allies were going to cross the English Channel into the French city of Calais. So they put most of their military power there. What fooled the Germans into guarding Calais more heavily than Normandy? First, the Allies used fake airfields and inflatable rubber tanks and barges near Calais to make it look like they were gearing up for an attack. Second, the Allies parachuted hundreds of homing pigeons into Calais, asking anyone who found the birds to return them to England with information about German troops. And third, the Allies parachuted hundreds of fake paratroopers near Calais, which further confused the Germans.
Operation Overlord was a bloody battle, with many U.S. soldiers killed by German machine guns as they came onto the beach. Yet the Allies managed to secure the beaches and move inland. Hitler retaliated a week later by blitzing London with a weapon the Allies had never seen: unmanned buzz bombs. Thousands of the bombs terrified the British for months, killing 50,000 civilians and destroying more than a million homes. Yet within eleven months, Allied troops were able to completely stop the Nazi assault. On April 30, 1945, realizing that thousand of Soviet Union soldiers and tanks had surrounded Berlin, Hitler killed himself in his Berlin bunker. His dreams for Germany officially came to an end when General Eisenhower declared Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day) on May 8, 1945.
Unfortunately, World War II was not yet finished. The Japanese were still fighting in the Pacific. And they kept fighting until President Harry S. Truman, who became president when Roosevelt died, authorized the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan in August, 1945. The Japanese surrendered on August 14, 1945, which is now known as Victory over Japan day (V-J Day). More than 2 million Americans celebrated the Axis defeat, as 5,000 tons of paper and confetti rained down on them from office windows in New York City’s Time Square.
Some say that a single individual can’t make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, Hitler proved that one man, fueled by hate and lust for power, can make the world a miserable place for millions of others. Millions of soldiers and civilians from around the world died in World War II. In the U.S. alone, 15 million men served in the military, as did 200,000 women. More than 400,000 Americans were killed, more than 600,000 were wounded, and more than 100,000 were taken as prisoners of war or declared missing.
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This article is available for reprint. Contact Sheri by e-mail: Sheri@Rehwoldt.com,
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