The bombs that fell on Pearl Harbor sent shock waves across the country. That isolationist sentiment vanished in an instant on Sunday, December 7, 1941. It was one thing to sell the tools of war (through the Lend-Lease Act of 1941) to Britain and the Soviet Union so that they could fend off the attacker, but sending American boys to fight was quite another. Let’s take a look back and see what our state contributed to the war effort-and vice versa.Įver since Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and then when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, many in the United States had been viewing the growing conflict with alarm but also a reluctance to see the country get dragged into another foreign war. While the state had no shipyards or tank or aviation production facilities, that didn’t mean Colorado’s contributions were insignificant. That the conflict ended in victory for the Allied nations-the United States, France, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and its commonwealth partners, and others-has much to do with Colorado’s role in it. Three-quarters of a century have passed since the most widespread and destructive war in history ended-a war that many historians have called the pivotal event of the twentieth century. Though many miles away from shipyards, aviation plants, and tank production facilities, Coloradans played an outsized role in the World War II conflict, and in bringing the troops back home.