World War II:
The Home Front
Objective: 1: We will identify and
explain the ways that new public and
private initiatives shaped war
preparation, production regimes, and
logistics of World War II.
Objective 2: We will also evaluate the
consequences of the contradictory
cultural and social reactions to
outbreak of war and its prosecution.
I. Reluctant Belligerent Goes to War
A. Mobilizing the Home Front
1. Fifteen Million serve
2. FDR inspired the nation
a. Cheerleader --Commander in
Chief.
1. Inefficiency, waste,
confusion
2. FDR style encouraged
squabbling.
B. Building a War Machine
1. Thunderous economic
expansion
a. GNP $91 Billion to
$166 Billion by 1945
b. Manufacturing
doubled
c. Agriculture up 22%
d. Unemployment
disappeared
e. Outpouring of
material
2. Converting to a war economy
a. War Resources Board
b. OPM controlled prices.
1. Controlled prices
2. Rationing
C. A War Economy
1. FDR failed to coordinate
2. But by 1943 all ran smoothly
a. Office of War Mobilization
under economic czar James
Byrnes
1. Prices soared in 1942
then stabilized
2. Byrnes organized
prices, rents, food
b. National War Labor Boardstabilize wage rate
1. Labor unions grew to
13 million
2. Fair pay for work.
c. Smith-Connelly War Labor Disputes Act
(1943)
1. Coal strike hurt war effort
2. Congress reacted with SmithConnelly
a. Strike illegal
b. FDR given power-take over
industry threatened by a strike
3. Wages and prices balance.
d. Paying for the War
1. Like WWI-Taxes and Bonds — 40% war paid in income tax--rest in
bonds
2. Income tax
a. Share the pain
b. Taxes kept moral high - check inflation.
3. Intense propaganda
4. Among the most economically-egalitarian eras EVER in US history
a. CEOs and shareholders assured profits from gov’t
b. Decent wages assured by gov’t
c. Wartime solidarity discouraged cheating, conspicuous
consumption, and tax evasion
D. Society at War
1. Population fluid
a. “Demographic cauldron churning and
shifting”
b. New bases-new factories
c. Housing in short supply
2. Marriage rates up - 3M increase 1930s, WWII - 6M
increase
3. High taxes & rationing kept living standard static.
4. Women go to war
a. Rosie the Riveter less pervasive than
portrayed
b. Logistics and movement required clerks
i. Watervliet Arsenal
ii. US troops never starved
4. Women go to war
a. Need for workers
1. Objections to women from unions
a. 14 to 19 million employed
b. Income up 50%
2. Less pay than male counterparts.
a. Family wage
b. Domestic laborers to industrial
c. Non-working women
1. Housing shortage
2. Followed husbands
3. Sexuality double standard
4. Hard on children.
5. Involvement of women in the
military
a. 160k - WACs and WAVES
E. War and minorities
1. Nazis, and later, Cold War- racism is foreign policy
2. African Americans demand fair treatment during the war
a. Segregation continued--but labor shortage gave
them jobs
b. A. Randolph organized Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE)
c. Anger at Jim Crow and threatened march on DC.
d. FDR established Fair Employment Practices
Committee
3. Blacks still segregated in military
a. In combat, armored and fighter pilots
4. More jobs in factories - migration
a. Race riots started by white civilians and police
b. Blacks fight back in South and Harlem, 1940s
5. African Americans in the Rural and Urban South
a. White Southern Democrats on national level
i. Exclude African-Americans from Social Security, wage
guarantees,
b. During 1930s, Black Tenant Farmers to Racist White Southerners
– SFTU
i. Mechanization, boll weevil, and continuing race card
prevent success
c. Lynching has reduced from 1880-1920 Highs
i. Still occurs
ii. Scottsboro Boys
d. NAACP and African American Left
i. SNYC – 1930s
ii. Women of SNYC work with NAACP
iii. Recy Taylor - Attack racist rape practices
iv. Rosa Parks and Joann Robinson will start boycotts
6. Latinos
1. Inspired by Article 7a., NIRA, strike in 1930s in CA
2. Southwest and CA, Work with Filipinos and Japanese
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Police violence –
New Deal intervention
Excluded from Social Security
Inspires CA conservative Anti-New Dealers
Sleepy Lagoon – Chicano Sacco and Vanzettis
3. Civil Rights still concern
a. School segregation follows residential segregation, including
b. School Segregation Tucson and Phoenix
c. “Those people” incapable of abstract thought
d. Mendez v. Westminister, 1946, Southern CA
e. Enlistment high, higher than rates among white Anglos
– GI Forum – Soldiers fight discrimination
- Will lead to East LA Boycott et al.
4. Wartime Youth culture
a. LA and Southwest, Filipinos, Blacks, and Latinos in zoot
suits
b. LA – White sailors and Marines attacks
c. Garraty Zoot suiters- “Gangs in suits”
5. Chicanos and Puerto Ricans move North, too .
a. Travel to Chicago, Pilsen looking for work.
b. Puerto Ricans moving to NYC, looking for work
C. Bracero program will start
7. Native Americans
a. Like Wilson, FDR worried about loyalty
1. Reverse 1934 Indian Reorganization Act
2. Abandon tribes
b. Indians were encouraged to assimilate
1. Join the service
2. Work in defense plants.
c. Plans developed for relocation of impoverished
Native Americans to cities
1. Plans will really begin in 1950s
2. Quicker pace of life alienating, lack of support
3. Indian bars sprout up
4. Community centers will replicate some aspects of
Indian schools
a. Urban and college-educated Native
Americans will prove core of “Red Power”,
AIM, and Alcatraz occupiers
8. Germans, Italians, and Japanese-Americans
a. Unlike 1917, no anti-Germany
b. Discrimination only against Japanese-Americans
1. Long-standing fear (1906)
a. Continuation of anti-Asian racism from 19th century
2. Fear on West coast
3. Hatred stirred by Hollywood propaganda
4. Feb 1942, EO 9066, Forced into camps
5. Two or three responses
a. Going along to prove loyalty
i. Highly-decorated soldiers, higher proportion than US pop.
ii. JACL – Model minority
b. Rioting and resistance
i. Fairly frequent
ii. By some, refusal to sign loyalty pledges, enlist
c. Supreme Court
a. Korematsu vs. United States (1944) relocation upheld
b. Ex parte Endo (1944)-forbade internment but war almost over
c. Get reparations, for US gov’t action.
9. Asian America
a. Philippines will be promised independence
i. End of Filipino citizenship?
ii. 100k serve as soldiers, scouts, guerrillas, sailors ,and cooks
B. Chinese Americans, still mostly excluded
i. Americans begin to sympathize with Chinese struggle
ii. 1943, Chinese can naturalize
iii. 1952, Some highly-skilled Chinese can immigrate, model minority template set
10. Homosexuals
a. Highly-visible gay and transgender community in New York .
b. Prohibition end allows crackdown on working-class homosexual culture
c. World War II, ambivalence about men having sex, “boys will be boys,” homosexuality as threat
d. Soldiers and sailor training and deployment = Mobility of gay cultures
e. With Cold War, homosexuality connected to Communism
i. Lavender menace = Red menace
F. Politics during the war
1. Thomas E. Dewey v. FDR--who is best for country in peace
2. Health of FDR
a. Drop Wallace
b. Trip through New York.