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FDR's efforts to end the Great Depression were nothing short of heroic, but America's real savior was World War II. Although Roosevelt recognized the Soviet government and extended the Good Neighbor policy in Latin America in the 1930s, he and most Americans were preoccupied with the depression and thus reluctant to become involved when Hitler and Mussolini began their aggressions in Europe and North Africa and the Japanese theirs in Asia. Roosevelt chose to oppose Hitler by proposing the lend-lease plan to Great Britain and then to the Soviets, and to counter the Japanese in the Pacific by economic means. Pearl Harbor ended that; the United States entered the war fighting a holding action in the Pacific while concentrating on defeating Hitler. After a difficult 1942 on both fronts, the tide turned for the Allies in Europe; Germany finally capitulated in May 1945. The postwar conferences among Allied leaders created the United Nations and divided the continent to set the stage for the Cold War. In the Pacific the U.S. stopped the Japanese advance at the Coral Sea in 1942, and undertook a slow and difficult island-hopping campaign toward the home islands. To prevent the massive American casualties that would no doubt result from an invasion of Japan, President Truman elected to use atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, forcing a Japanese surrender. At home, World War II jump-started the economy, provided new opportunities for women and blacks, and brought out extreme prejudice against Japanese Americans.
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