by Rick Fair on Nov 02, 2010

1. The Home Front
 Mobilizing the War
 World War II transformed the role of the
national government
 The government built housing for war
workers and forced civilian industries to
retool for war production

3. The Home Front
 Business and War
 FDR offered incentives to business to spur
production
○ Low interest loans
○ Tax concessions
○ Contracts with guaranteed profits
 Americans produced an astonishing amount
of wartime goods and utilized science and
technology

5. The Home Front
 Business and War
 The West Coast emerged as a focus of
military-industrial production
○ Nearly 2 million Americans moved to
California for jobs in defense-related
industries
 The South remained very poor despite the
influx of manufacturing

6. The Home Front
 Labor in Wartime
 Organized labor entered a three-sided
arrangement with government and business
that allowed union membership to soar to
unprecedented levels
 Unions became firmly established in many
sectors of the economy during World War II

7. The Four Freedoms
 To FDR, the Four
Freedoms
expressed deeply
held American
values worthy of
being spread
worldwide

9. The Four Freedoms
 Freedom of Speech
 Gold standard for the Constitution
(democracy)
 Freedom of Religion
 Gold standard for the critique of the
Holocaust
 Even though most Americans and
politicians at the time considered it a
farce and could not believe humans
would treat each other so poorly

10. Freedom of Speech

12. The Four Freedoms
 Freedom from Want
 The gold standard for economic policies for the rest
of the 20th century
 Elimination of barriers to international trade
○ Protecting the standard of living from falling after the war
 Freedom from Fear
 The gradual disarmament of the entire world
 Help prevent tyranny (Italy, Germany) from
happening again
 “human security” paradigm
 the gradual shift from the collective to the
individual, Rockwell’s painting shows this very well

13. Freedom from Want

14. Freedom from Fear

17. The Fifth Freedom
 The war witnessed a burst of messages
marketing advertisers’ definition of
freedom
 The emergence of free enterprise

21.  Audience
 Slogans
 Ideas
 Energy & Capital

31.  Gum
 Lingerie
 Grease
 Juke Boxes
 Toasters
 Blenders
 Cars
 Toothpaste
 Shoes
 Coffee
 Kettles
 Nylon hose
 Erasers
 Glass jars
 Tin cans
 Tea

33.  Right to work.
 Right to fair pay.
 Right to adequate food.
 Right to security.
 Right to live in a society of free enterprise.
 Right to come and go.
 Right to speak or be silent.
 Right to equality before the law.
 Right to rest.
 Right to an education.

34.  Right to work, if you are white.
 Right to fair pay, if you are male.
 Right to adequate food, if you register for and comply with food
rationing programs.
 Right to security, if you were not drafted.
 Right to live in a society of free enterprise, if one excludes the
government’s price and wage ceilings and orders that halted
production on all the common items one needs to live.
 Right to come and go, if the person does not need new
shoes, more gasoline, decent tires, a new car, or a new bicycle.
 Right to speak or be silent, as long as one speaks positively
about the war, and is silent about the legitimacy of rationing
claims.
 Right to equality before the law, if it is “Separate but Equal” before
the law.
 Right to rest, but only on Christmas Day.
 And a right to an education, if the cotton is not in bloom and ready
to be picked by child laborers.

35. Women at War
 Women in 1944 made up over 1/3 of the
civilian labor force
 New opportunities opened up for married
women and mothers
 Women’s work during the war was viewed
by men and the government as temporary
 The advertisers’ “world of tomorrow” rested
on a vision of family-centered prosperity

38. The American Dilemma
 Patriotic Assimilation
 World War II created a vast melting
pot, especially for European immigrants and
their children
○ Roosevelt promoted pluralism as the only
source of harmony in a diverse society
 Government and private agencies eagerly
promoted group equality as the definition of
Americanism and a counterpoint to Nazism

39. The American Dilemma
 Patriotic Assimilation
 By the war’s end, racism and nativism had
been stripped of its intellectual respectability
○ However, intolerance hardly disappeared from
American life

41. The American Dilemma
 Asian-Americans in Wartime
 Asian-Americans’ war experience was filled
with paradox
 Chinese exclusion was abolished
 Japanese were viewed by American as a
detested foe
 The American government viewed every
person of Japanese ethnicity as a potential
spy

43. The American Dilemma
 Japanese-American Internment
 The military persuaded FDR to issue
Executive Order 9066
 Internment revealed how easily war can
undermine basic freedoms
○ Hardly anyone spoke out against internment
○ The courts refused to intervene
 The government marketed war bonds to the
internees and drafted them into the army

45. Blacks and the War
 The wartime message of freedom ushered a
major transformation in the status of blacks
 The war spurred a movement of black
population from the rural South to the cities of
the North and West
 Detroit race riot
 During the war, over 1 million blacks served in
the armed forces
 Black soldiers sometimes had to give up their
seats on railroad cars to accommodate Nazi
prisoners of war

47. Birth of the Civil Rights
Movement
 The war years witnessed the birth of the
modern civil rights movement
 March on Washington
 Black labor leader A. Philip Randolph called
for the march in July 1941
 Executive Order 8802
 Prohibited government contractors from
engaging in employment discrimination
based on race, color, or national origin

48. Birth of the Civil Rights
Movement
 The Double V
 The double-V meant that victory over Germany and
Japan must be accompanied by victory over
segregation at home
 What the Negro Wants
 During the war, a broad political coalition on the left
called for an end to racial inequality in America
○ The status of blacks becomes an issue at the forefront
of enlightened liberalism
 CIO unions made significant efforts to organize black
workers and win access to skilled positions
 The South reacts by attempting to preserve
white supremacy

49. The End of the War
 The Atomic Bomb
 One of the most momentous decisions ever
confronted by an American president fell to
Harry Truman
 The bomb was a practical realization of the
theory of relativity
 The Manhattan Project developed an atomic
bomb

51. The End of the War
 The Dawn of the Atomic Age
 On 6 August 1945, an American bomber
dropped an atomic bomb that detonated over
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan
 Because of the enormous cost in civilian
lives, the use of the bomb remains controversial
○ Allied military forces reasoned the use of the
bomb saved roughly half a million Allied soldiers’
lives
 The dropping of the atomic bombs was the
logical culmination of the war World War II had
been fought
○ A total threat requires a total response