World War II had a profound impact on the United States.
Although no battles occurred on the American mainland,
the war affected all phases of American life. It required
unprecedented efforts to coordinate strategy and tactics
with other members of the Grand Alliance and then to
plunge into battle against the Axis powers—Germany,
Italy, and Japan. At the same time, it demanded a monumental
production effort to provide the materials necessary
to fight. As the United States produced the weapons
of war and became, in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
phrase, the “arsenal of democracy,” the
country experienced a fundamental reorientation of economic
and social patterns at home that provided the template
for the postwar years.
In the economic arena, the war ended the Great Depression.
Military spending that began in 1940 to bolster the
defense effort gave the nation’s economy the boost
it needed, and millions of unemployed Americans returned
to work to make the weapons of war needed to protect
the United States. The renewed prosperity vindicated
the theory of English economist John Maynard Keynes,
who had earlier argued that sizable government spending
could end a depression if the private sector was unable
or unwilling to engage in such spending itself.
Mobilization required enormous organizational adjustments.
The nation worked closely with businessmen, for, as
Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson observed, “If
you are going to try to go to war, or to prepare for
war, in a capitalist country, you have got to let business
make money out of the process or business won’t
work.” Business leaders who had incurred the wrath
of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, when
they balked at fully supporting New Deal programs, now
found themselves invited to Washington, DC, to run the
agencies that coordinated production. Paid a dollar
a year for their services, they remained on company
payrolls, still cognizant of the interests of the corporations
they ran. A common pattern, which provided an incentive
to business to cooperate, was the cost-plus-a-fixed-fee
system, whereby the government guaranteed all development
and production costs and then paid a percentage profit
on the goods produced.
A huge network of wartime agencies developed to coordinate
war production. FDR was never fond of dismantling administrative
structures or firing people who worked for him, and
so he created one agency after another, with new ones
often in competition with old ones, to guide the war
effort. That pattern allowed him to play off assistants
against each other and to make the final choices himself.
There was a National Defense Advisory Commission, then
an Office of Production Management, then a War Production
Board, and eventually an Office of War Mobilization
to coordinate all parts of the war economy.
The system worked. By mid-1945, the United States had
produced 80,000 landing craft, 100,000 tanks and armored
cars, 300,000 airplanes, fifteen million guns, and forty-one
billion rounds of ammunition. It had also produced the
world’s first two atomic bombs. And while wartime
controls disappeared after the war was over, the experience
provided a framework for future administrative organization
of the economy.
As propaganda came of age, in a new Office of War Information,
Americans rose to the challenge of doing whatever was
necessary to support the war effort. They bought billions
of dollars worth of bonds to help defray the cost of
the war. They saved metals and fats to be recycled into
military materiel and collected rubber until the nation
successfully produced synthetic rubber, necessary because
shipping lanes to obtain natural rubber were blocked.
They planted “victory gardens” to provide
fruits and vegetables for personal use. “Use it
up, wear it out, make it do or do without” became
the slogan of the day.
Songs conveyed America’s sense of optimism. “Goodbye,
Momma, I’m off to Yokohama” was one example;
“Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”
was another. Americans seeking a song like “Over
There,” which had summed up their confidence in
World War I, never found one. Instead, the popular music
industry ground out a series of trite but colorful titles
including: “You’re a Sap, Mister Jap,”
“Let’s take a Rap at the Jap,” “The
Japs Don’t Have a Chinaman’s Chance,”
and “We’re Gonna Find a Feller Who Is Yeller
and Beat Him Red, White, and Blue.”
The war caused disruptions at home. Americans faced
shortages that required them to deal with the hassle
of rationing. They had to provide the necessary coupons—issued
by the Office of Price Administration —to be able
to purchase items in short supply like sugar, or meat,
or gasoline. Housing shortages plagued people moving
to war production centers. Even so, midway through the
conflict, seven out of ten Americans said they had not
had to make any “real sacrifices” as a result
of the war.
For groups discriminated against in the past, the war
was a vehicle for lasting social and economic gains.
For women and blacks in particular, the war was a stimulus
—and a model—for future change.
The war brought enormous changes in American women’s
lives. Women were, without question, second-class citizens
at the start of the struggle. Facing discrimination
in the job market, they found many positions simply
closed to them. In jobs they could find, they usually
earned less than men. But then the huge productive effort
that that began in 1940 gave women the chance to do
industrial work. As millions of men entered the military
services, both government and industry waged a concerted
campaign, with posters of “Rosie the Riveter,”
to get women to work in the factories and they did—in
huge numbers. The number of working women rose from
14,600,000 in 1941 to 19,370,000 in 1944. In the latter
year, thirty-seven percent of all adult women were in
the labor force. At the peak of the industrial effort,
women constituted thirty-six percent of the civilian
work force. At the same time, the demographic composition
of the female labor pool shifted. Traditionally, working
women had been single and young. Between 1940 and 1944,
married women made up over seventy-two percent of the
total number of female employees. By the end of the
war, half of all female workers were over thirty-five.
Women loved the work. Many agreed with a Baltimore advertisement
that told them that working in a war plant was “a
lot more exciting than polishing the family furniture.”
They remained frustrated at unfair pay differentials,
but wanted to continue working after the war. Some recognized,
as one woman in Tacoma noted, “My husband wants
a wife, not a career woman,” and complied with
the propaganda campaign as the war drew to an end to
get them out of the factories so that returning servicemen
could take back their jobs. Some were able to continue
working, but most left their positions. Still, their
experience helped lay the groundwork for a women’s
movement in later years and the war was an important
step on the road to equal rights [for a lesson plan
on women's contributions during World War II, visit
our Teacher's
Desk page].
African Americans likewise benefited from the demands
of war. At the start of the struggle, their unemployment
rate was twice that of whites, and many of the jobs
they held were unskilled. They could not join the air
corps or the Marine Corps. In the Navy, they could enlist
only in the all-black messmen’s branch. In the
Army they were segregated from whites, and they were
bothered by constant slights. One black American soldier
recalled being turned away from a lunchroom in Salina,
Kansas, only to see German prisoners of war being served
at the same counter. “This was really happening,”
he said sadly. “It was no jive talk. The people
of Salina would serve these enemy soldiers and turn
away black American G.I.s.”
Blacks became increasingly assertive. The Pittsburgh
Courier, a widely circulated black newspaper, proclaimed
a “Double V” campaign – V for victory
in the struggle against the dictators abroad and V for
victory in the campaign for equality at home. Even before
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United
States into the war, A. Philip Randolph, head of the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, proposed a massive
March on Washington under the slogan: “WE LOYAL
NEGRO AMERICAN CITIZENS DEMAND THE RIGHT TO WORK AND
FIGHT FOR OUR COUNTRY.” He agreed to call off
the march only when FDR signed an executive order creating
a Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to investigate
complaints about discrimination and take appropriate
action. While the FEPC was never wholly effective, it
enjoyed a few notable successes when the pressure of
war production made employers willing to hire African
American workers. Meanwhile, black students at Howard
University in Washington, DC picketed segregated restaurants.
Some black airmen finally had the chance to fly, and
black soldiers served with distinction in increasing
numbers. These efforts foreshadowed the protest campaigns
of the subsequent civil rights movement.
Not all groups of outsiders fared well. Japanese Americans
were the worst civilian casualties of the war. Though
but a tiny minority on the West Coast, they were visible
and vulnerable, particularly after Pearl Harbor. Rumors
spread about possible sabotage. Time and Life
magazines told readers how to tell friendly Chinese
from enemy Japanese: “The Chinese expression is
likely to be more placid, kindly, open; the Japanese
more positive, dogmatic, arrogant.” Government
officials added their own observations. “A Jap’s
a Jap,” said General John DeWitt, head of the
Western Defense Command.” Faced with mounting
pressure, the army cited military necessity as the reason
to evacuate Japanese Americans, whether or not they
were citizens, from the West Coast. When it became clear
that other parts of the country did not want the evacuees,
a new War Relocation Authority ignored constitutional
qualms and forcibly moved Japanese Americans to ten
detention camps in seven Western states. Harsh conditions
undermined a sense of social cohesion. Eventually, some
Japanese Americans accepted the chance to fight in the
war. Others, who refused, faced further internment,
sometimes in even harsher conditions.
For the most part, Americans looked back fondly on World
War II. They had fought against totalitarian dictatorships
for democratic ideals and they had won. The world was
a better place for the sacrifices they had made, and
veterans and others took pride in a job well done. For
many Americans, this was, in the phrase journalist Studs
Terkel helped popularize in 1984 in the title of his
Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "the Good War."
Yet more recently, some observers have pointed out that
in the pursuit of victory, the United States on occasion
failed to live up to its own democratic principles.
They have debated, too, the degree to which World War
II was a watershed that changed the nation’s course.
The war clearly brought a return of prosperity after
the dismal depression of the 1930s. It promoted the
growth of big business and solidified military industrial
links. It brought about permanent demographic change.
For groups discriminated against in the past, the war
was a vehicle for lasting social and economic gains.
The war changed configurations of political power. Americans
now looked to the federal government to deal with problems
handled privately, or at a state or local level, before.
Meanwhile, the presidency grew even more powerful than
it had ever been before.
And yet, continuity with the past was also important,
and basic American values endured. As Americans looked
ahead, they did so through the lens of the past. They
remained attached to the status quo as they sought to
create a more attractive, stable, and secure future
based on the model that still influenced their lives.
They hungered for the prosperity they recalled from
the 1920s, so elusive in the 1930s, now once again possible
thanks to the spending for war. Their vision of the
future included no brave and bold new world, but a revived
and refurbished version of the world they had known
before. The war restored the self confidence they had
felt prior to the depression and convinced them that
what they wanted was within their grasp. The American
dream, its contours the same, remained alive and well.
Despite such continuities, the changes that occurred
between 1940 and 1945 stand out vividly. Even when seen
against a broader perspective, the transformation the
United States experienced was profound. In responding
to extraordinary challenges, the United States was undeniably
different at the end of the war than it had been at
the start.
War, by its very nature, has always been a catalyst
for change, and World War II followed that pattern.
In the United States, World War II made Americans more
willing to involve themselves—politically and
diplomatically—with the outside world. It also
expanded their hopes and expectations and forever altered
the patterns of their lives at home.
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