Editing Total war (section)

=====United States=====
{{Main|United States home front during World War II}}
The United States underwent an unprecedented mobilisation of national resources for the Second World War, creating a [[military-industrial complex]]. Although the United States was not in existential danger, the national sense after Pearl Harbor was to use all the nation's resources to defeat Germany and Japan. Most non-essential activities were rationed, prohibited or restrained, and most of the fit unmarried young men were drafted. There was little urgency before 1940, when the collapse of France ended the [[Phoney War]] and revealed urgent needs. Nevertheless, President Franklin Roosevelt moved to first solidify public opinion before acting. In 1940 the first peacetime draft was instituted, along with [[Lend-Lease]] programs to aid the British, and covert aid was passed to the Chinese as well.<ref>James MacGregor Burns, ''Roosevelt: The soldier of freedom (1940–1945). Vol. 2'' (1970) pp. 3–63. [https://archive.org/details/rooseveltsoldier0000burn online]</ref>
American [[public opinion]] was still opposed to involvement in the problems of Europe and Asia, however. In 1941, the Soviet Union became the latest nation to be invaded, and the U.S. gave its aid as well. American ships began defending aid convoys to the Allied nations against submarine attacks, and a total trade embargo against the [[Empire of Japan]] was instituted to deny its military the raw materials its factories and military forces required to continue its offensive actions in China.

In late 1941, Japan's [[Imperial Japanese Army|Army]]-dominated government decided to seize by military force the strategic resources of South-East Asia and Indonesia since the Western powers would not give Japan these goods by trade. Planning for this action included [[surprise attack]]s on American and British forces in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, and the U.S. naval base and warships at [[Pearl Harbor]]. In response to these attacks, the UK and U.S. declared war the next day. [[Nazi Germany]] declared war on the U.S. a few days later, along with [[Kingdom of Italy#Fascist regime (1922–1943)|Fascist Italy]]; the U.S. found itself fully involved in a second [[world war]].

As the United States began to gear up for a major war, information and propaganda efforts were set in motion. Civilians (including children) were encouraged to take part in fat, grease, and scrap metal collection drives. Many factories making non-essential goods retooled for war production. Levels of industrial productivity previously unheard of were attained during the war; multi-thousand-ton convoy ships were routinely built in a month and a half, and tanks poured out of the former automobile factories. Within a few years of the U.S. entry into the Second World War, nearly every man without children fit for service, between 18 and 30, was conscripted into the military "for the duration" of the conflict, and unprecedented numbers of women took up jobs previously held by them. Strict systems of rationing of consumer staples were introduced to redirect productive capacity to war needs.<ref>John Phillips Resch, and D'Ann Campbell eds. ''Americans at War: Society, Culture, and the Homefront'' (vol 3, 2004).</ref>

Previously untouched sections of the nation mobilised for the war effort. Academics became technocrats; home-makers became bomb-makers (massive numbers of women worked in industry during the war); union leaders and businessmen became commanders in the massive armies of production. The great scientific communities of the United States were mobilised as never before, and mathematicians, doctors, engineers, and chemists turned their minds to the problems ahead of them.<ref>Arthur Herman, ''Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II'' (Random House, 2012).</ref>

By the war's end, a multitude of advances had been made in medicine, physics, engineering, and the other sciences. This included the efforts of the [[theoretical physics|theoretical physicists]] working at the [[Los Alamos National Laboratory]] on the [[Manhattan Project]], which led to the [[Trinity (nuclear test)|Trinity nuclear test]] and thus brought about the [[Atomic Age]].

In the war, the United States lost 407,316 military personnel, but had managed to avoid the extensive level of damage to civilian and industrial infrastructure that other participants suffered. The U.S. emerged as one of the two [[superpower]]s after the war.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The world since 1945: a history of international relations|last=McWilliams|first=Wayne|publisher=Lynne Rienner Publishers|year=1990}}</ref>