How was the US and the people affected by World War 2?

Answer 1

How the war affected the civilians.

1. The civilian men had to join up in all the branches military.
2. The women had to give up their men and go to work in the war factories.
3. The children had to miss their fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins.
4. The civilians had to cooperate with rationing programs, give up driving, grow gardens.
5. The women who could not work in factories or businesses or farms were put to work taking care of children for those who did work.
6. The civilians bought hundreds of billions of dollars worth of War Bonds.
7. 300,000 US women joined up in military forces to do nursing, military clerical jobs in the US and to fly planes (not in combat). In the UK the women who joined up also had to participate in the war front. They took care of barrage balloons, RADAR functions, shuttling military personnel, helping with the injured and the bombed out areas.
8. In England and Australia children had to be evacuated to safe locations so they would not be killed by the German and Japanese bombs.
9. People in the rural areas had to take in these children and care for them for a long time.
10. In England, the civilians who lived in the larger towns and cities had to put up with nightly bombing. They had to stay in bomb shelters all night. The home guard and local police force and firefighters had to deal with the fires, injured people and the hysterical, frightened people who had not made it to the bomb shelters.
11. Everyone in England had to put up dark drapes or curtains to block their lights and they were told to turn on very few lights. In the US the coastal towns and cities had to use the light blocking drapes too. The street lights were turned off and business could not light up their signs. Some people were killed or injured during the black outs because cars would run into them or the drivers would miss curves in the road (headlights off) and get into accidents.
12. Food shortages really hurt England because the Germans kept sinking the boats carrying the food and medicines and military supplies the Brits needed. Women had to suffer with the severe shortages and figure out how to feed their children and families and themselves. In the US they had a lot more food and did not suffer the way the Brits did.
13. The hardest thing for the civilians to deal with was receiving notices that their men were killed, injured or missing in action or worse taken as prisoners. Some families lost all their sons - five or more in some families. In many cities entire neighborhood blocks would lose their young men, husbands, fathers, brothers, nephews and cousins. In one town an entire class of men were killed, I think class of '39 or '40.
14. The war had long lasting effects on the civilians for an entire lifetime.

Answer 2

The simple answer is that the US was recognized as the biggest super-power and started it's dominance in the world. It was already the richest nation but isolated and therefore not influential. WWII changed the world's acceptance of the US. It also marked the begginning of the cold war with Russia.