American Artifacts of the Second World War

The United States of America began the Second World War long before the first bombs fell on that infamous December day. America joined the First World War in its dying year, and so dodged the majority of the carnage that most of Europe was forced to endure over those four years. At the war’s end, it was American President Woodrow Wilson who oversaw the mediation process to establish peace between the European powers. While the influence of America grew over the Interim Period, it would be the American Stock Market Crash that would set the stage for future conflict. Japan was hit especially hard by the crash, and saw its fledgling parliamentary government overtaken by hawkish militarists, who saw future conflict with America and Great Britian as inevitable. Combined with a total oil embargo as a result of continued hostilities during the Second Shino-Japanese War, and provocations such as the sinking of the USS Panay in Nanking Harbor in 1937, something had to break. On December 7th, 1941, the efforts of intensive planning, and the observation of the success the British Naval Air Corp experienced against the Italian Regio Marina at Taranto the year before, came to fruition on that sunny morning. The following day, Adolf Hitler delivered a declaration of war to an assembled Nazi Party Parliament in Berlin, the only time he ever did so against a foreign power. When the war began, America was still barely equipped to fight a war from 1918, and the odds seemed bleak on both fronts. By 1945, The United States of America saw a rate of production only matched by the Soviet Union, the largest Navy on Earth next to the Royal Navy, and more powerful than it had ever been up to that time. In this folder is a collection of American Artifacts and Medals from the Second World War. Some of these include a named US Navy Good Conduct Medal, a US Air Medal with its original Coffin Box, and a US Paratrooper’s Invasion Flag Patch.