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Unlike the countries in Europe, the U.S. was not scarred by the Great War (W. W. 1) and the returning soldiers were welcomed back as heroes. This had indeed been a world war with fighting on three continents. Though Europe and the Middle East had been a battleground for thousands of years, nothing had prepared the people of these lands for the tremendous devastation and carnage of this war. From Arabia and Africa to Scandinavia, both sides paid dearly in blood. At war's end, the map of Europe was redrawn to suit the victors, but many of the new boundaries would last less than a generation. The Treaty of Versailles was harsh to Germany and Austria who were expected to accept full blame for the war. Horrified Herbert Hoover predicted that the harsh terms would "ultimately bring destruction." W. W. II was just over the horizon.
NBC began the broadcasting age and across the U.S. people brought radios into their homes to listen to news of the world, comedy and music. The Information Age's ancestors were born! Who would have dreamed that this generation would go on to develop and use a thing called the Internet .. that they would use email to keep in frequent contact with their family and friends?
Newspapers carried stories of Communism in Europe, particularly in postwar Germany, where the normal German order was breaking down. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and creation of the Communist International led to the Red Scare of 1919-1923 in the U.S. Then things got really scarey; 1929 - the Great Depression and poverty throughout the U.S. Before long, the depression spread to Europe.
If this wasn't enough (flu epidemic during a terrible war followed by depression), the Mississippi Valley suffered from terrible floods, the western midwest states suffered from drought, winds, and loss of top soil. The area became known as the Dust Bowl. About ten years encompassed all of these disasters.
Musicals like My Fair Lady, Big Bands like Glen Miller & Tommy Dorsey, The New Deal and the Social Secuity Act of 1935 - as arts, entertainment, communications, industry, science, and medicine developed and expanded, so, too, did the European and Far East appitite for territorial expansion and military power.
Germany's Nazis, Italy's Fascists, and the Soviet Union's Communists were threatening. Japanese militarists had invaded China in 1934 and threatened the entire Far East from Korea to Singapore and Indonesia. Also in 1934 Hitler became Chancellor of all Germany. During the 1930s, he annexed Austria and demanded more, Sudetenland and part of Czechoslovakia. Italy wanted even more colonies in Africa.
How did all of the Busch families in the U.S. fare? Conservative, frugal,
orderly living, the blessing of having chosen professions well, and no
income tax may have kept them from the most severe suffering of lost jobs,
lost farms, lost lives. Shortages of some goods and supplies would
have been difficult; but, raising their own food on their own land provided
well when compared to the city dwellers without jobs. From the end of W.
W. I in 1918 until the U. S. entered W. W. II, nearly all of the second
U. S. Busch generation had married and had children.
May, 1940, Roosevelt, during his campaign against challenger Wendell Wilkie, said, "These are ominous days, days whose swift and shocking developments force every neutral nation to look to its defenses in the light of new factors ... No old defense is so strong that it requires no further strengthening and no attack is so unlikely or impossible that it may be ignored." Since America's armed forces were in a sad state of unpreparedness for modern warfare, Roosevelt shrewdly moved to create the National Defense Advisory Commission. The new Commission was literally charged with converting the American economy from a peacetime to a wartime footing without actually being at war. Also in 1940, Congress passed the Selective Service Act with only one vote to spare.
June, 1940, the Italians joined Germany in their war on England and
France.
July, 1940, Japan invaded French Indochina.
June, 1941, Germany invaded Russia.
December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, in the greatest
naval disaster in history. December 8th, the U. S. and Japan were at war
with one another.
December 11, 1941, Hitler declared war on the U. S.
It took the U.S. nearly a year to gear up for wartime production and the first landing of American troops was in French Morrocco in North Africa in November 1942. A year later the Allied troops invaded Italy and drove German and Italian forces northward in some of the war's bloodiest battles. American bombers were produced almost on an assembly line basis, first the B-17 (Flying Fortress), the B-24 Liberator, and later the B-29. Germany surrendered unconditionally in the summer of 1945 and Japan was nuked into surrender that August. After the war Germany lay in ashes, from its major cities being bombed.
Politically, economically, militarily, and culturally, W. W. II was
a transforming event in the history of the U. S. It served as the crucible
that reshaped the thinking of all those who lived through it and continues
to affect those born after it. Out of this war - computers, rockets, jet
aircraft, television, the United Nations, Super Power status for the U.
S., The Cold War, the spread of Communism/the collapse of many Communist
countries.
Before the war, Will, the
fifth child, died at age 75 on December 6, 1940.
Hermann's second wife, Emma, died at age 68 July
16, 1941.
During the war seventh child Hannah
died at age 72 on November 1, 1942.
A year later, third child Garrett
died at age 82.
October 4, 1945, Hermann,
the second child, died at age 85; he lived the longest number of years
of his immediate family.
Five months later, Dick,
the fourth child, died at age 82.
George, the sixth child,
died June 20, 1949, at age 81.
Dick's wife Emma lived to age 96 in 1968.
Hannah's husband, Wilhelm, in Germany, lived
to age 83 in 1954.
Third Generation Children