World War II at Home and Abroad I. Shadows of War

eg. the Blues Clubs around Richmond which featured the artists such as Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Ray Charles, and James Brown became imprinted with the black working-class musical talents as compared with the “cocktail piano” style of uptown white clubs in San Francisco.

4. Latino problems with increased migration in Los Angeles which swelled to 400, 000

—clash of cultures between white service men in June 1943 who stormed Latino neighborhoods and attacked “Zoot suiters” who the rioters thought were delinquents.
V. War’s Climax

A. Ground War in Europe

1. Operation Torch–Eisenhower in Africa

2. Kasserine Pass in the Mountains of Tunisia–finally Axis troops surrendered in May of 1943.

—First test of Eisenhower as a leader of a multi national army

–Operational command was given to Omar Bradley and George Patton

3. Central Medit. Patton/Montgomery invade Sicily in July and August of 1943

—proved to be difficult because of Italian terrain. even by wars end the Allies only occupied two thirds of Italy.

4. Eastern Front Soviets against the Germans in July 1943 which Soviets were able to defend with 3000 tanks marking the last German offensive until Dec. 1944.

5. Normandy and D-Day June 6, 1944 western allies landed on Normandy beach.

—six divisions with hundreds of attack transports carrying four thousand landing craft

—at the end of the day the Allies only had a toehold in France

—Within two weeks and 500,000 men and 100,000 vehicles were landed

—Operation Overlord finally met with success in July and August

—US Troops finally broke through German lines and closed in on them in Falaise. The Germans lost a quarter of a million troops.

6. Liberation of Paris August 25, 1944.

7. End of 1944 Red Army had entered the Balkans and reached central Poland.

—with the end in sight the Soviets had 20 mil casualties and sustained the most suffering of Nazi tyranny.

8. Battle of the Bulge–Hitler’s last stand in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium in Dec. 16, 1944. Germans drove a 50mil bulge into the US lines. German’s literally ran out of gas beyond the town of Bastogne.

—Nazi collapse in April 25, 1945 when the Red Army and the US army met on the Elbe River.

–April 30, Hitler commits suicide in his bunker under Berlin which surrendered May 2 and Nazi state formally surrendered May 8.
B. Battles end in the Pacific

1. Island hopping of Mac Arthur

2. Battle of Leyte Gulf the US retook the Philipines and destroyed the offensive of the Japanese fleet.

3. Invasion of Japan

—embargo 1943-44

—air attack began early in 1944

—bombing destroyed 42% of Japanese industrial capacity

–captured Iwo Jima and Okinawa in spring of 1945

4. Yalta—Feb 4-11, 1945.

—western power divide up Europe and Asia

—Two months afer Yalta FDR Dies on April 12, 1944

—Potsdam July 1945

---Truman has his first chance at international diplomacy as the Allies debated the fate of Germany

—July 26 Potsdam Declaration spelled out the opportunity for Japan to surrender.

—the declaration failed to guarantee that the Emperor would be tried as a war criminal. Japans cautious response led America to read it as a rejection.

—Truman’s Sect. of State urged him to use the Bomb which had been tested just weeks earlier.

----many believed that to not use the bomb would mean more loss of American’s lives

—to use the bomb would ensure that the capture of Japan would not involve the Soviets and the US could occupy Japan alone. It also would intimidate the Soviets

—to not use the bomb was never a serious alternative.

—August 6/9 Abombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan ceased activities on August 14 and surrendered on Sept. 2

VI. Was it a Good War?

How was American culture shaped? By government, media, ordinary people of various racial and cultural groups? What were the “unanticipated consequences that had a profound affect on American culture and racial relations? Mobilization required unity and thus a drive for conformity and continuity in behavior and beliefs. What were the conflicts that this effort created?

Accomplishments of the War:

Gary Gerstle in American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century. Points to the areas in which American national identity were shaped and transformed by the War:

A. Never before such unity----Pearl Harbor squashed all opposition

1. Unlike other wars desertions were nil

–1% vs. 12 and 20% in WWI and Vietnam respectively

2. Resistance was slight

—women like Jane Addams in WWI were silent

—Protestant ministers and radicals were equally silent

—Blacks failed to follow Marcus Garvey’s belief that they should not fight til they be given full citizenship rights.

3. Hitler’s brutal aggressiveness shocked American intellectuals

–had to make readjustment of their faith in progress

—technology/economic advances should end “crude forms of race hatred and religious prejudice.”

—Hitler showed that tech. prowess and economic abundance could be harnessed for evil rather than moral purposes.

—Liberal intellectuals were forced to examine US racism in the light of Hitler

—Reinhold Niebuhr, the German American Protestant theologian:

—“excoriated his fellow liberals in 1942 for thinking that the distribution of property was a more fundamental cause of social division and conflict that were racial and ethnic differences.” (192)

B. Casting the war against Hitler as a great crusade against racism

1. Calling on Americans to dismantle racism would help Americans realize their deeply cherished ideals.

2. “American way of life was the antithesis of Hitler’s racial nationalism

C. African American’s political consciousness raised

1. Energized by Japan’s defeat of Western colonialists–AA became involved in anti-colonial movement

2. War became more than a war against Axis powers but against racialized systems.

3. NAACP grew from 50,000 to 400,000

D. The FDR 4 Freedoms–from want/fear and of religion and speech–identity formation

1. White/Black endorsed

2. Became the core of American identity

3. Celebration of society’s diversity / tolerance unlike TR who wanted all immigrants to commit to rapid and wholesale assimilation.

E. Benefits to Government

1. more than half of all Americans were directly touched by the war–crossed all barriers

2. War Bonds demonstrated the extent to which Americans participated 85mil one for every adult resulting in revenues of $185bil.

3. propelled economy gains across the board

—unemployment in 1940 was 14% vanished

—Wages went up because of tight labor market

—15mil workers moved up the occupational ladder

—Despite not improving as much as whites–blacks/women gained more access and higher wages than five years before the war.

—benefit packages became much more common

–didn’t mean there weren’t inequities, injustices or inconvenience

—housing and transportation were overwhelmed with shortages

—The Government entered America’s private economy and made Keynesian monetary policy –that government’s use of its fiscal and monetary powers to stimulate the economy—a popular widely held belief.

—Government intervened to protect corporations, workers right to organize and bargain collectively.

—higher progressive taxes made a slight redistribution of wealth from the rich to the broad middle.

—sustained the welfare state that had been established in 1930 and expanded in some areas like the GI Bill.

VIII. What about Public Opinion molded into a national vision of unity?
A. Use of Censorship:
George Roeder: “Censoring Disorder: American Visual Imagery of WWII.”
1. The Office of War Information was equally busy making requests to Hollywood to remove images and subject matter that was perceived adverse to the war effort as they were trying to get Hollywood to contribute the wartime propaganda.

2. Photos did not provide the visual evidence of confusion, disruption or disorder.

–the first photos of American bodies did not appear until Sept. 1943

3. Photos were to reflect no confusion but a clear distinctions between friend and foe.

eg. created the reality that American bombs did not kill civilians or allied civilians in occupied countries who unintended victims of American military vehicles.

eg. released photos showing American soldiers whom German troops killed after their surrender during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944—but they suppressed photos of Gis taking enemy body parts as trophies–another common occurrence in the Pacific.

The creation of a feeling of unified sacrifice.

4. Wartime imagery urged blacks and whites to work harmoniously–photos that disrupted those social understandings were censored

eg. Photos of all blacks mixing socially with white women were censored

–Black troops protested this policy and led to Gen. Eisenhower’s call for a slight modification

—For part of the war the army refused to release pictures of wounded members of the black 92^nd Division or burial of black soldiers from that unit because of the tendency of the “black press to unduly emphasize its achievements.” This order explains why within censored file materials there are pictures of horribly wounded whites and only slightly wounded blacks.
5. Photos that represented the disorder of war to American life were eliminated

eg. photos of war dead showing dismemberment, twisted or frozen limbs in unnatural positions were censored.

eg. images that revealed the mayhem of war were banned out of respect for the families with loved ones in combat zones as well as horrific pictures would deter the recruitment efforts. All pictures of GI suicides were withheld which would undermine the notion of having everything under control.

eg. Life like other media sought to reassure Americans of the war effort

—George Strock’s photo of three soldiers lying dead on Buna Beach in New Guinea contained an editorial that was meant to guide its viewers equating the imagined role of these young men running into battle the same way they’d run “carrying the football down the field.”
As Roeder argues: “These presentations supported by censorship of photos showing American corpses pilled up on top of each other or being tossed into trucks, placed each American death in a context consistent of a well ordered life and world.”
Some official censorship policies such as those slighting the contributions of AA were wrong. But what types of censorship are appropriate and even humane out of respect for the family and the soldier? What can be learned from being exposed to a more personalized view of the enemy or a more realistic view of war? Has years of films with graphic portrayals of wartime violence and atrocities helped us to view the use of force differently? Would we respond differently or more cautiously?

Mark Leff argues: "The Politics of Sacrifice on the American Home Front in World War II.":

A. The "mystique" of unconditional sacrifice, forged in the war itself and celebrated in collective memory, has not fated well as an interpretive guide to wartime politics and mobilization."

1.Sacrifice often involved limitations rather than the "horrific deprivations and destruction suffered by the citizens of other belligerents."

2. Leff asks: "What were the boundaries of sacrifice in a global war that disrupting customary patterns of limited government?" Sacrifice, Leff argues, was negotiated abroad a wide range of "public and private choices."

B. Two Case Studies of political obligation

eg. One FDR's executive order capping all wartime salaries. This demonstrates the "open-ended possibility for renegotiating symbolic values" ---powerful enough to neutralize the "American Dream." It was quickly repealed by Congress suggesting the "limits of revaluation of wartime values." (1298)
FDR sought by imposing a "supertax" on individual incomes over $25,000, (or the equivalent of $200,000 today) the sacrifice for the war effort was supposed to be distributed across the board. However, it was obvious that not that many individuals would have been affected by this tax, nor would it have contributed that greatly to the inflation. So why bother...it was largely symbolic

eg. Second case study: the wartime Advertising Council and its successful merchandising of sacrifice through campaigns of propaganda and advertizing support. Private donation carried the brunt of wartime propaganda.

The Creation of the War Advertising Council came at momentous time in Advertising history. The increased war effort was creating a climate in which advertzing as an industry was in the doldrums. Concerns that advertising costs may not be considered part of the war effort, advertisers looked for ways to keep going. Pearl Harbor changed all that as advertisers created the WAC later known as the Ad Council and chose to work with government agencies such as the Office of War information on various public information campaigns. By wars end it had supervised one hundred campaigns to push war bonds, blood drives, labor recruitment, food conservation, and other mobilization efforts. "Combing the company name with public service messages provided momentum to secure future sales and influence." As with other sectors of American life "patriotism and public relations, sacrifice and self interest intertwined."
"With advertiser's show of sacrifice, the feared government barriers to the growth of the advertising industry crumbled." Advertisers received commendations from FDR himself . In May of 1942, the Treasury Department reliant on the WAC on private donations that promoted war bond campaigns allowed advertising to be considered a legitimate business expense deduction. This meant that the government was support 80% of some company’s advertising bill.
The rise in business prestige as the war began can be contributed to the WAC as well as "broader economic and political trends." (1313) "The dramatic theme of the American production miracle calls forth the deepest and sincerest praise the people can bestow." Its not surprising that after the war there was renewed faith in the enterprise system and acclaim for the men how made it happen.
Public relations, Leff argues, was at the heart of how Government became the underwriter of business expansion while at the same time labor declined in public minds and were identified with strikes and in the role of "subverters of wartime production."
John Blum argues that government "failed to forge a clear sense of the public purposes for which Americans were fighting and sacrificing, which left a vacuum that would be filled by private desires and conservative trends."

Leff argues that in Britain advertisers did not control the "politics of sacrifice" but rather Churchill felt compelled to make concessions to Labor which as a party was clearly on the rise and necessary for his governing coalition. While American's fought for the American way of life, British spoke of the "People's War" which would offer an expansion of social programs, security, and equity."

VII. Other scholars see it as a “Race War”—war measures were shaped by existing attitudes towards

racial and ethnic minorities.
A. War in the Pacific

1. John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War

2. Jap/Am in savage struggle which TR would have approved to determine which race would triumph.

3. Pacific war more vicious than European

4. Ration of killed to wounded soared well beyond that of European war.

5. More brutality in killing the enemy.

6. Failure on both sides to recognize the humanity in each other.

B Interpretations of Pacific War

1. Gerald Linderman–blamed Japanese and earlier patterns of torture etc. forced Americans to act in kind. Linderman ignores the US racial stereotyping of Japanese and non whites

2. Samuel Eliot Morison linked WWII savage fighting to American past experience of fight with Native Americans.

C. Race was the way the military was organized

1. Segregated armed forces

—trained, served, and socialized segregated

2. Even to medical treatment of segregating blood supply

3. massive mixing of white American men from every region, class and ethnicity—for the first time geographical region did not serve the basis of unit organizations. Melded the European Americans into one.

D. Racialized military was supported by Hollywood images

1. Films of exploits of multi-cultural platoons with the exclusion of anyone of color

2. eg. Bataan, The Fighting Seabees, Objective Burma, Guadalcanal Diary

3. the mythic platoon

—religious diversity ie. Jew/ Protestant/Catholic

—Peace loving civilians at heart

—talk about baseball/sweethearts/sing popular songs

—innocent boys not warriors

—inexperienced except for the battle hardened sergeant or professionally trained lieutenant (he is usually Protestant sometimes Irish Catholic but never Jew or Italian)

—thus the “jungle battle” against the “Japs” transforms civilians into warriors and a single fighting force.

–willingness to give up individuality for the sake of the group

—savage combat is justified by avenging a buddy’s death

—survivors possess a bond that nor force can break and this will carry the nation to victory.

E. Hollywood Radicals and commitment to racial equality

1. Below the movie moguls who were Republican many in Hollywood were left leaning liberals or had ties to Communist Party and Popular Front institutions

2. sought to eradicated prejudice against not only Jews/Catholics but blacks and other racial minorities as well.

3. Were supported by the Office of War Information–which had conflicting aims

—wanted blacks to be included but race relations could not be depicted in negative light.

eg. Sahara was a movie that John Howard Lawson fashioned a platoon out of stragglers from every nation’s armies who had been isolated in the North African desert during Allied offensive against Germans. The North African location made it plausible that a black Sudanese corporal Tamdu (played by Rex Ingram), in this multinational platoon, along with several Americans, a British doctor, and a Frenchman. The plot traces this groups effort to escape German forces and reach British lines before Germans or thirst kills them. In the climax, Tamdul catches a German prisoner who has escaped from the platoon and is dashing to enemy lines. Against the backdrop of the white desert, Tamdul kills the blond Aryan with his bare, black hands. German fire cuts him down making him a martyr. His death enables the platoon to live, sealing the unity of this pan-racial and pan-national fighting force. (207-208) Tamdul is every bit an equal to the white Europeans and Americans and is responsible for saving the troops as much as its Sergeant Joe Gunn (played by Humphrey Bogart)

eg. Action in the North Atlantic revealed the different standards applied by OWI

–it was alright to have a multinational platoon in which American’s could root for Tamdul without calling to question racial segregation in the military.

—in this case OWI did not want to portray blacks as subservient or challenge that subservience To question racial status quo would possibly destroy “American unity and resolve.”

—Multiethnic crew and a black pantryman who questions why he should fight for the Allies-implying that racial subordination colored AA patriotism. The Screenwriter again John Howard Larsen wanted to challenge white audiences and crew members to reevaluate their views of blacks and treat them as equals. The episode makes possible later in the film one in which a white sailor gives up his life for the black man. Lawson clearly wanted his movie audience to think about the positive benefits from such “interracial brotherhood.” (209)

What about the bomb? Merciless triumph or tragedy? John Dower, “Triumph and Tragic Narratives of the War in Asia.”
A. The Enola Gay controversy

1. The Fiftieth Anniv. of the dropping of the Bomb was to be commemorated in a Smithsonian exhibition

2. The exhibit would have a succession of rooms that introduced the process of the bomb form beginning with the Manhattan Project, training and preparation for the bomg and the human consequences of the bombs on the two targeted cities and the nuclear legacy as well as a summarization of the historical controversy in scholarship and public discourse that ensued.

3. This proposal hit a wall of controversy from Congress and Veteran groups and a firestorm within the media

4. The final exhibit had been stripped of all commentary and the fuselage of the Enola Gay was on display in a minimalist exhibit.

B. “Heroric Narrative”

1. The US government view became orthodox

2. War in Asia was a “brute struggle against a fanatic, expansionist foe”

3. A righteous war/good war was ended by a “merciless” act of dropping the bomb and thereby saving enormous numbers of American life.

–“Thank God for the Atom Bomb” a memorable incantation by G.I’s how were on there way to what they thought would be the bloody invasion of Japan.

C. What does the heroic narrative leave out?

1. Possibility of other ends to the war

2. Possibility of humanizing the enemy...questioning the morality of what defines “all” combatants –children, women, civilians as legitimate target of total war?

3. The haste in the developments leading up to the bomb

eg. The Soviet entrance that came two days after the bomb–why wasn’t the impact of their entry been tested. American officials knew that the Japanese were terrified by the prospect of Russian involvement.

4. What are we to make of the second bomb?

–why dropped before Japan’s high command could assess Hiroshima and the Soviet entry? Many Japanese believe that Nagasaki was a war crime.

5. The heroic narrative obscures US military timetable as the end game played out.

—invasion was not imminent in Aug-Oct 1945 initial schedule was for Nov. and the attack on Tokyo would be in March of 1946.

6. 1946 issued a US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that Japan would have been forced to capitulate by the end of 1945 because of its material/psychological situtation

7. Conservative officials such as Acting Sect. Joseph Grew who had been former ambassador to Japan argued that Japan would surrender if the US would back down on unconditional surrender by the emperor.

—through code breaking in mid-June Americans learned that Japan had made overtures to the Russians about negotiating an end to the war.

8. By 1943 long before it became clear that the Germans did not have a bomb, before the Manhattan Project was sure of success, and before lethal Allied military advance on Japan–US planners identified Japan as the prime target for such a weapon.

–its been argued that the deployment of the bomb was driven by “irresistible technological and scientific imperatives.” (1129)

9. Card against Stalin

—declassified documents since the 1960s have shown that from the spring of 1945 US hoped the bomb would dissuade the USSR from pursuing ambitions in Eastern Europe. D. What is the perspective from the Japanese experience of the bomb

1. vicimization narrative

—the war began on August 6, 1945

—bombs become “symbolic stigmata of unique Japanese suffering.” (1130)

2. Japan’s failure to confront their WWII past

3. public denials of Japanese agression

4. Failure to apologize to Asian and Allied victims of Imperial wartime conduct.

–since 1970s in order to establish ties with China Japan media has exposed Japan’s war crimes in Asia but also wrestling with the complex idea that victims can be victimizers.

eg. Paintings by Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki – Ravens

–a stark painting depicting the piled up corpses of Koreans forcing the viewers to realize that there other victims of the bomb besides Japanese but also that Japanese had accepted colonization of Korea with out question and brutal conscription of Koreans as laborers and Korean women as prostitutes. Even after the nuclear devastation Japanese survivors continued to discriminate against Koreans.
E. The Narrative of the tragedy of war was missing.

1. The Smithsonian controversy exposed the ambiguity of the use of bombs

2. The Good War was brought to an end by a policy the US condemned along with all the Allies a few year previous–ie. that civilians were legitimate targets of aerial bombardment.

3. The Lunch box and personal effects in the “Ground Zero” portion of the Smithsonian exhibit would leave visitors with images of children being incinerated—those images would far outweigh the Enola Gay artifact and visitors who could still maintain a moral ambiguity about use of bombs would be in the minority.

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