Give Me Liberty! AN AMERICAN HISTORY FOURTH EDITION

Give Me Liberty! AN AMERICAN HISTORY FOURTH EDITION
Norton Lecture Slides by Eric Foner Give Me Liberty! AN AMERICAN HISTORY FOURTH EDITION

Chapter 22 Chapter 22 Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II, 1941–1945 The most popular works of art in World War II were paintings of the Four Freedoms by Norman Rockwell. In his State of the Union address before Congress in January 1941, President Roosevelt spoke of a future world order based on “essential human freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. During the war, Roosevelt emphasized these freedoms as the Allies’ war aims, and he compared them to the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta, and the Emancipation Proclamation. In his 1943 paintings, Rockwell portrayed ordinary Americans exercising these freedoms: a citizen speaking at a town meeting, members of different religious groups at prayer, a family enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner, and a mother and father standing over a sleeping child. Though Rockwell presented images of small-town American life, the United States changed dramatically in the war. Many postwar trends and social movements had wartime origins. As with World War I, but on a far greater scale, wartime mobilization expanded the size and reach of government and stimulated the economy. Industrial output skyrocketed and unemployment disappeared as war production finally ended the Depression. Demands for labor drew millions of women into the workforce and lured millions of migrants from rural America to industrial cities of the North and West, permanently changing the nation’s social geography. The war also gave the United States a new and lasting international role and reinforced the idea that America’s security required the global dominance of American values and power. Government military spending unleashed rapid economic development in the South and West, laying the basis for the modern Sunbelt. The war created a close alliance between big business and a militarized federal government—what President Dwight D. Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex.” And the war reshaped the boundaries of American nationality. The government recognized the contributions of America’s ethnic groups as loyal Americans. Black Americans’ second-class status attracted national attention. But toleration only went so far. The United States, at war with Japan, forced more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans, including citizens, into internment camps. The Four Freedoms thus produced a national unity that obscured divisions within America: divisions over whether free enterprise or the freedom of a global New Deal would dominate after the war, whether civil rights or white supremacy would define race relations, and whether women would return to traditional roles in the household or enter the labor market.

Lecture Preview Fighting World War II The Home Front
Visions of Postwar Freedom The American Dilemma The End of the War The subtopics for this lecture are listed on the screen above.

Poster of Four Freedoms
The immensely popular Office of War Information poster reproducing Norman Rockwell’s painting of The Four Freedoms Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Fighting World War II Focus Question:
What steps led to American participation in World War II? The purpose of the focus questions is to help students find larger themes and structures to bring the historical evidence, events, and examples together for a connected thematic purpose. As we go through each portion of this lecture, you may want to keep in mind how the information relates to this larger thematic question. Here are some suggestions: write the focus question in the left or right margin on your notes and as we go through, either mark areas of your notes for you to come back to later and think about the connection OR as you review your notes later (to fill in anything else you remember from the lecture or your thoughts during the lecture or additional information from the readings), write small phrases from the lecture and readings that connect that information to each focus question AND/OR are examples that work together to answer the focus question.

Fighting World War II: Pre-War actions
Good Neighbors The Road to War Facing economic crisis in the 1930s, international affairs garnered little public attention. But FDR innovated in foreign and domestic policy. In 1933, trying to encourage trade, he recognized the Soviet Union. Roosevelt also repudiated the right to intervene with military force in the internal affairs of Latin American nations, called the Good Neighbor policy. The United States withdrew troops from Haiti and Nicaragua and accepted Cuba’s repeal of the Platt Amendment, which had authorized U.S. intervention in that nation. But Roosevelt, like previous presidents, recognized undemocratic governments like that of Somoza in Nicaragua, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and Batista in Cuba. Yet, events in Asia and Europe quickly took center stage, as international order and the rule of law seemed to disintegrate. In 1931, seeking to expand its power in Asia, Japan invaded Manchuria, a northern province in China. In 1937, it pushed further, committing a massacre of 300,000 Chinese prisoners of war and civilians at Nanjing. In Europe, Hitler, after consolidating his rule within Germany, launched a campaign to dominate the continent. He violated the Versailles Treaty by pursuing a massive rearmament and, in 1936, by sending troops into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone between France and Germany. The failure of Britain, France, and the United States to oppose Hitler’s aggression convinced him that these democracies would not resist his aggressions. Benito Mussolini, the father of fascism in Italy, invaded and conquered Ethiopia. When General Francisco Franco in 1936 mounted a rebellion against the democratically elected government of Spain, Hitler and Mussolini sent men and arms to support him. In 1939, Franco won and established another fascist government in Europe. Hitler annexed Austria and Sudetenland, a German area of Czechoslovakia, and soon thereafter invaded and annexed all of that nation, too. Roosevelt became more and more alarmed by Hitler’s actions in Germany and Europe, but in 1937 called only for a quarantine of aggressors. Roosevelt had little choice but to follow the “appeasement” policy of France and Britain, who hoped that agreeing to Hitler’s demands could prevent war. In 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain returned from the Munich conference of 1938, which awarded the Sudetenland to Hitler, promising “peace in our time.”

Draft of Four Freedoms Speech
A draft of FDR’s Four Freedoms speech of 1941 Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Poster of Soldiers in 1778 and 1943
Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company One of the patriotic war posters issued by the Office of War Information

Poster This Hand Guides the Reich
Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Fighting World War II: War before u.s. involvement
Isolationism War in Europe The threat posed by Germany and Japan seemed distant to most Americans, and Hitler, in fact, had many admirers in America, from those who praised his anticommunism to businessmen who profited from business with the Nazis, such as Henry Ford. Trade also continued with Japan, including shipments of American trucks, aircraft, and oil, which amounted to 80 percent of Japan’s oil supply. Many Americans now believed American involvement in World War I had been a mistake and benefited only international bankers and arms producers. Pacifism attracted supporters across America, from small towns to college campuses. Americans of German and Italian descent also sympathized with fascist governments in their homelands, and Irish-Americans remained staunchly anti-British. Isolationism dominated Congress, which in 1935 started enacting a series of Neutrality Acts banning travel on belligerent ships and arms shipment to warring nations. These were intended to prevent the United States from becoming embroiled in these conflicts by demanding freedom of the seas, just as it had in World War I. Even though the Spanish Civil War saw a democratic republic fighting a fascist dictator, the United States and other governments imposed an arms embargo on both sides, effectively allowing Germany and Italy to help Franco overwhelm Spanish government forces. At Munich in 1938, Britain and France capitulated to Hitler’s aggression. In 1939, the Soviet Union proposed an international agreement to oppose further German demands for territory, but Britain and France, distrusting Stalin and seeing Germany as a fortress that would check communist power in Europe, declined. Stalin soon signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler, his former enemy. Hitler immediately invaded Poland. Britain and France, allied with Poland, now declared war on Germany. Within a year, the Nazi blitzkrieg (lightning war) overran Poland and much of Scandinavia, Belgium, and the Netherlands. By June 1940, German troops occupied Paris. Hitler now dominated Europe and North Africa, and in September 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan formally created a military alliance known as the Axis. For one year, Britain, led by a resolute prime minister, Winston Churchill, alone resisted Germany, heroically defending its skies from German planes and bombers in the Battle of Britain. The Germans’ bombs devastated London and other cities, but the German air campaign was eventually repulsed.

Cartoon of Uncle Sam and Europe
In a 1940 cartoon, war clouds engulf Europe. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Photo of Newsreel Theater
A newsreel theater in New York’s Times Square announces Hitler’s blitzkrieg. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Fighting World War II: U.s. Entrance in War
Toward Intervention Pearl Harbor Though Roosevelt considered Hitler a direct threat to the United States, most Americans simply wanted to avoid war. After fierce debate, Congress in 1940 approved plans for military rearmament and agreed to sell arms to Britain on a “cash and carry” basis—Britain would pay in cash for arms and transport them in British ships. But Roosevelt, mindful of the presidential election, went no further. Opponents of American intervention mobilized, and included such prominent individuals as Henry Ford, Father Coughlin, and Charles A. Lindbergh. In that 1940 election, Roosevelt broke precedent by running for a third presidential term. He faced Republican candidate Wendell Wilkie, a Wall Street businessman, lawyer, and amateur politician. Little differentiated the two, as both supported the first peacetime draft law, passed in September 1940, and New Deal social legislation. FDR won the election by a decisive margin. In 1941, the United States became closer to the nations fighting Germany and Japan, and Roosevelt declared America would be a “great arsenal of democracy.” With Britain close to bankruptcy, Roosevelt had Congress pass the Lend-Lease Act allowing military aid to countries who promised to repay it after the war. On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes launched a surprise attack from aircraft carriers, bombing the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The assault killed more than 2,000 American soldiers and destroyed much of the base and the U.S. Pacific Fleet—except for crucial U.S. aircraft carriers, which helped win critical subsequent victories. Roosevelt, calling December 7 a “date which will live in infamy,” asked Congress to declare war on Japan, which it did nearly unanimously. The next day Germany, in turn, declared war on America and the United States had finally entered the largest war in history.

Disney Program Cover Walt Disney’s program cover for the October 1941
“Fight for Freedom” rally in Madison Square Garden Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Photo of Damaged Battleships
The battleships West Virginia and Tennessee in flames Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Fighting World War II: battles
The War in the Pacific The War in Europe Although in retrospect it seems that America’s robust industrial capacity assured its victory over the Axis, success was not sudden. The United States initially experienced a series of military disasters and watched Japan take more territory in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, including Guam, the Philippines (capturing tens of thousands of U.S. troops, thousands of whom died on the way to and within prisoner camps), and other Pacific islands. But the tide of the war changed in the late spring of 1942, with American naval victories at Coral Sea and Midway Island. These successes allowed the United States to begin a step-by-step “island-hopping” campaign to reclaim vital and strategic territories in the Pacific. In November 1942, British and American forces invaded North Africa and, by May 1943, forced the surrender of German forces there. By this time, the Allies had also gained an advantage in the fight in the Atlantic Ocean against German submarines. While Roosevelt wanted to liberate Europe, most American troops stayed in the Pacific. In July 1943, American and British forces invaded Sicily and began the liberation of Italy, whose government, led by Mussolini, was overthrown by popular revolt. Fighting continued against German forces there throughout 1944. America’s fight in Europe began on June 6, 1944—D-Day. On this date, nearly 200,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower invaded Normandy in northern France. More than a million troops soon followed them, in the largest sea-land operation in history. The Germans resisted but retreated, and by August, Paris had been liberated. The most significant clashes, however, took place on the eastern front, where millions of Germans and Soviet troops faced each other in very costly battles, and particularly at Stalingrad, where a German siege ended in a German surrender to the Soviets, a decisive defeat for Hitler. Other Russian victories marked the end of Hitler’s advance and the beginning of the end of the Nazi empire in eastern Europe. A full 10 million of Germany’s nearly 14 million casualties were inflicted on the eastern front, and millions of Poles and Russians, many of them civilians, perished.

Map of World War II in the Pacific
Map 22.1 World War II in the Pacific, 1941–1945 Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Map of World War II in Europe
Map 22.2 World War II in Europe, 1942–1945 Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Photo of Surrendering U.S. Troops
Some of the 13,000 American troops forced to surrender to the Japanese on Corregidor Island, Philippines, May 1942 Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Photo of Landing Boats and Supplies
Members of the U.S. Marine Corps, Navy, and Coast Guard taking part in an amphibious assault Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Sketch of Soldiers and Ruined Tank
Ben Hurwitz, a soldier from New York City who fought in North Africa and Italy during WWII Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Photo of German Prisoners of War
German Prisoners of War, June 1944 Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Photo of Concentration Camp Prisoners
Prisoners at a German concentration camp liberated by Allied troops in 1945 Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

The Home Front Focus Question:
How did the United States mobilize economic resources and promote popular support for the war effort? The purpose of the focus questions is to help students find larger themes and structures to bring the historical evidence, events, and examples together for a connected thematic purpose. As we go through each portion of this lecture, you may want to keep in mind how the information relates to this larger thematic question. Here are some suggestions: write the focus question in the left or right margin on your notes and as we go through, either mark areas of your notes for you to come back to later and think about the connection OR as you review your notes later (to fill in anything else you remember from the lecture or your thoughts during the lecture or additional information from the readings), write small phrases from the lecture and readings that connect that information to each focus question AND/OR are examples that work together to answer the focus question.

The Home Front: Government and Economics
Mobilizing for War Within the United States, the war transformed the role of the federal government. Roosevelt established new wartime agencies such as the War Production Board, War Manpower Commission, and Office of Price Administration to control labor distribution, shipping, manufacturing quotas, and fix wages, prices, and rents. The number of federal workers rose from 1 million to 4 million, and unemployment, at a rate of 14 percent in 1940, virtually disappeared by The government built housing for war workers and forced civilian companies to produce material for the war effort. Auto plants now made trucks, tanks, and jeeps for the army. The gross national product more than doubled to $214 billion during the war, and federal wartime spending equaled twice the amount spent in all previous 150 years. The government sold millions in war bonds, hiked taxes, and starting taking income tax from Americans’ paychecks. By 1945, the number of Americans paying taxes increased.

Photo of Chalkboard Job Listings
A list of jobs available in Detroit in July 1941 Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

The Home Front: Business and Labor
Business and the War Labor in Wartime Ties between corporations and the federal government grew much closer during World War II. With business executives taking key positions in federal agencies supervising war industries, Roosevelt gave incentives to increase production. Most federal spending went to the largest companies, which sped up a long-term trend toward economic concentration, and by the war’s end, the 200 biggest industrial firms represented nearly half of all corporate assets in the nation. Wartime production was gargantuan in scale and shocking in its intensity, not only making military equipment by the millions, but also leading to inventions such as radar, jet engines, and early computers. The war helped restore the reputation of big business that the Depression had tarnished. Federal funds restored old manufacturing areas and fostered new ones—on the West Coast in places like southern California, home to steel and aircraft production, and in the South, where out-migration and military-related factories and shipyards shifted employment from agriculture to industry. This raised the South’s incomes but did not end its deep poverty, sparse urbanization, or undeveloped economy, which still depended on agriculture, extractive industries (mining, lumber, oil), or manufacturing linked to agriculture, such as cotton textiles. Organized labor saw the war as a struggle for freedom that would expand economic and political democracy at home and secure its influence in politics and industry. During the war, unions were part of a three-sided arrangement with government and business that allowed union membership to rise to unprecedented numbers. To win industrial peace and stabilize war production, the federal government forced resistant employers to recognize unions. In turn, union leaders promised not to strike and recognized employers’ right to “managerial prerogatives” and “fair profits.” By the war’s end, unions were entrenched in many economic sectors and nearly 15 million workers—a third of the non-farm labor workforce—were union members, the highest proportion in U.S. history. But labor was a less powerful partner in the war than business or government. The New Deal’s decline continued during the war, and Congress became thoroughly dominated by a conservative alliance between Republicans and southern Democrats, who retained Social Security but ended programs allegedly controlled by leftists, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA). Many workers protested the demanding wartime conditions and the freeze on wages, imposed by the government even while corporate profits soared.

Map of U.S. Military and Naval Facilities
Map 22.3 Wartime Army and Navy Bases and Airfields Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Table of Labor Union Membership
Table 22.1 Labor Union Membership Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Photo of Tank Assembly Line
M-5 tanks on the assembly line at a Detroit Cadillac plant Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

The Home Front: Four Freedoms
Fighting for the Four Freedoms Freedom from Want World War II came to be remembered as the Good War, in which the nation united behind noble aims. But all wars need the mobilization of public opinion, and freedom was a prominent theme in efforts to “sell” the war. Roosevelt believed the Four Freedoms represented essential American values that could be universalized across the globe. Freedom from fear meant a desire not only for peace, but for long-term security in a chaotic world. The importance of freedom of speech and religion seemed self-evident, but their prominence emphasized the new significance of First Amendment protections of free expression. During the war, the Supreme Court’s judges, contrasting American constitutional liberty with Nazi tyranny, upheld the rights of religious minorities to refuse to salute the American flag in public schools, in contrast to the coercive patriotism of World War I. Freedom from want seemed the most ambiguous of the Four Freedoms. Though FDR first used it to refer to eliminating barriers to trade, he soon linked this freedom to guaranteeing a standard of living for American workers and farmers by preventing a return of the Depression. FDR argued this would bring “real freedom for the common man.”

Recruitment Poster for Boy Scouts
In this recruitment poster for the Boy Scouts, a svelte Miss Liberty prominently displays the Bill of Rights. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Photo of Patriotic Fan Patriotic Fan

The Home Front: public opinion
The Office of War Information The Fifth Freedom The Office of War Information (OWI), established in 1942 to foster public support for the war, shows how political divisions created by the New Deal shaped efforts to promote the Four Freedoms. Liberal staff at the OWI tried to portray the war as a “people’s fight for freedom” against fascism and tyranny, giving it an ideological meaning while trying to avoid nationalist hysteria. Images of America standing for liberty in a world overrun by tyranny and slavery recalled the American Revolution and emancipation during the Civil War, but critics charged that FDR was promoting freedoms as realized in New Deal social programs, not just American values. Congress cut most of its funding. With the OWI’s demise, mobilizing public opinion fell to private advertising firms that urged Americans to buy war bonds and take other patriotic actions. These advertising firms, which sold manufactured goods for big business, worked with the National Association of Manufacturers and other companies to suggest that Roosevelt had missed a fifth freedom—“free enterprise.” Their message about the benefits of capitalism was reinforced by a new explosion of mass consumer goods that became available during the war, despite rationing. Advocates of free enterprise told Americans to expect postwar abundance if government controls over the economy were removed.

Poster “Fight for Freedom”
This patriotic war poster issued by the Office of War Information links the words of Abraham Lincoln to the struggle against Nazi tyranny. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Poster of “Rise of Asia”

Advertisement by Liberty Motors and Engineering Corporation
Advertisement by the Liberty Motors and Engineering Corporation in Fortune depicting Uncle Sam offering the Fifth Freedom, “free enterprise” Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

The Home Front: Women Women at War Women at Work
War mobilization sparked an unprecedented growth in women’s employment to fill industrial jobs left by men. Government and private ads celebrated the independent women worker with images like Rosie the Riveter, the female industrial laborer painted by Norman Rockwell as a muscle-bound and self-reliant woman. With 15 million men in the military, women in 1944 were one-third of the civilian workforce, and 350,000 women served in auxiliary military units. Women filled industrial, professional, and government jobs previously barred to them, such as aircraft manufacturing and shipbuilding, and they forced some unions like the United Auto Workers to confront issues like equal pay for equal work, maternity leave, and child care. Many women who had a “taste of freedom” working men’s jobs for male wages hoped to remain in the workforce after the war. Yet, government, employers, and unions saw women’s work as only a temporary wartime necessity. Though ads told women working in factories that they were “fighting for freedom,” their language promoted victory, not women’s rights or independence. After the war, most women war workers, especially those in high-paying industrial positions, lost their jobs to men. Indeed, war ads informed Americans that their work would help secure the “American way of life” after the war—traditional families, with the women at home and men at work, enjoying household appliances and consumer goods.

Photo of Female Lathe Operator
A female lathe operator in a Texas plant that produced transport planes Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Print from America in the War Exhibition
This print, part of the America in the War exhibition, depicts a stylized image of women workers. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Visions of Postwar Freedom
Focus Question: What visions of America’s postwar role began to emerge during the war? The purpose of the focus questions is to help students find larger themes and structures to bring the historical evidence, events, and examples together for a connected thematic purpose. As we go through each portion of this lecture, you may want to keep in mind how the information relates to this larger thematic question. Here are some suggestions: write the focus question in the left or right margin on your notes and as we go through, either mark areas of your notes for you to come back to later and think about the connection OR as you review your notes later (to fill in anything else you remember from the lecture or your thoughts during the lecture or additional information from the readings), write small phrases from the lecture and readings that connect that information to each focus question AND/OR are examples that work together to answer the focus question.

Visions of Postwar Freedom: Luce, Wallace, and NPRB
Toward an American Century “The Way of Life of Free Men” Dreams of postwar prosperity united New Dealers and conservatives, business and labor, and they were promoted by two of the most famous roadmaps for the postwar world. The American Century, published by magazine magnate Henry Luce in 1941 to mobilize Americans for an imminent war, asked Americans to prepare “to become the dominant power in the world,” and distribute to “all peoples” their “magnificent industrial products” and “great American ideals,” particularly their “love of freedom.” Luce believed that American power and values would secure unprecedented prosperity and abundance, all created by “free economic enterprise.” The idea that America had a mission to spread democracy and freedom had its origins in the American Revolution, but this idea traditionally saw America as an example to be emulated, not an active agent imposing an American system on others. To some left critics, Luce’s appeal seemed a call for American empire. Henry Wallace, a liberal New Dealer, former secretary of agriculture for FDR, and FDR’s vice president beginning in 1940, responded with “The Price of Free World Victory,” an address in May Wallace anticipated that Allied victory would establish a “century of the common man” and that the “march of freedom” would continue after the conflict. Wallace argued the globe would be governed by international cooperation, not any single power, and governments would “humanize” capitalism and redistribute economic resources to end hunger, illiteracy, and poverty. Luce and Wallace defined freedom differently. Luce envisioned a world of free enterprise, while Wallace sought a global New Deal. But they also both believed America should intervene in the world by spreading abundance and posing as a model to other nations, and they ignored other nations’ visions of the postwar world. While Congress dismantled parts of the New Deal, liberal Democrats and their left-wing allies planned for a postwar economy that would enable all Americans to enjoy freedom from want. In 1942 and 1943, the National Resources Planning Board (NPRB) outlined a peacetime economy based on full employment, a larger welfare state, and an American standard of living. Emphasizing economic security and full employment, the NPRB called for a “new bill of rights” that would include all Americans in Social Security and guarantee education, health care, adequate housing, and employment. Liberal New Dealers, labor, farmer and civil rights groups, and churches welcomed the NPRB’s plan, whose promise of full employment and fair income distribution seemed to one liberal magazine to represent “the way of life of free men.” The reports showed that liberals were moving away from trying to reform capitalism to attaining full employment, social welfare, and mass consumption without much direct government intervention in the economy. They were influenced by John Maynard Keynes, who argued government spending best fostered economic growth. Although war production had ended the Depression in a kind of military Keynesianism, the NPRB proposed a continuation of Keynesianism in the postwar period. An increasingly conservative Congress opposed the NPRB plan and cut the agency’s funding.

Cover of McCall’s Unlike the lathe operator on the previous page, the woman operating industrial machinery remains glamorous, with makeup in place and hair unruffled. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Poster of Family at Dinner Table
Despite the new independence enjoyed by millions of women, WWII propaganda posters emphasized the male-dominated family. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Visions of Postwar Freedom: Economics and employment
An Economic Bill of Rights The Road to Serfdom In 1944, FDR, who knew that most Americans wanted a guarantee of employment after the war, called for an “Economic Bill of Rights.” While the original Bill of Rights limited government power to secure liberty, this expanded government power to secure full employment, a minimum income, medical care, education, and decent housing for all Americans. FDR declared that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.” But his replacement of vice president Henry Wallace by Henry Truman of Missouri suggested that he did not want to confront Congress over social policy, and Congress never enacted the Economic Bill of Rights. In 1944, Congress did enact the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, or GI Bill, which extended to millions of returning veterans benefits such as unemployment, educational scholarships, low-cost mortgages, pensions, and job training. The GI Bill greatly shaped postwar America. It prevented postwar economic disruptions and sparked a boom in education and housing, which led to massive suburbanization. But Congress went no further. A proposed Full Employment Bill that would have been a “GI Bill” for non-veterans, guaranteeing employment and requiring the federal government to increase spending if the economy itself did not produce full employment, was watered down before it passed in 1946 and did not require full employment. The bill’s failure confirmed the political stalemate initiated in the 1938 elections and marked the return of respectability for the idea that economic planning endangered freedom. In 1944, Friedrich A. Hayek, an Austrian-born economist, published The Road to Serfdom, in which he argued that government planning threatened individual liberty and “leads to dictatorship.” When war production seemed to have restored capitalism and fascism showed the dangers of combining economic and political power, Hayek’s book gave a new justification to opponents of the activists state. Hayek claimed that no person or set of experts could ever know enough to intelligently direct a complex, modern economy, and that the free market’s scattered and partial knowledge more effectively ran economic life. While Hayek accepted some social policies such as minimum wage and maximum hour laws and a social safety net that guaranteed minimal citizen welfare and opposed traditional conservatism’s love of authority, he helped establish modern conservatism by equating fascism, socialism, and the New Deal, and associating economic planning with a loss of freedom.

Poster Our Friend Ben Shahn’s poster, Our Friend, for the Congress
of Industrial Organizations’ political action committee Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

The American Dilemma Focus Question:
How did American minorities face threats to their freedom at home and abroad during World War II? The purpose of the focus questions is to help students find larger themes and structures to bring the historical evidence, events, and examples together for a connected thematic purpose. As we go through each portion of this lecture, you may want to keep in mind how the information relates to this larger thematic question. Here are some suggestions: write the focus question in the left or right margin on your notes and as we go through, either mark areas of your notes for you to come back to later and think about the connection OR as you review your notes later (to fill in anything else you remember from the lecture or your thoughts during the lecture or additional information from the readings), write small phrases from the lecture and readings that connect that information to each focus question AND/OR are examples that work together to answer the focus question.

The American Dilemma: Ethnic pluralism
Patriotic Assimilation World War II changed Americans’ visions of themselves as a people. The fight against the Nazi empire and its theory of a master race discredited ethnic and racial inequalities. The cultural pluralism of ethnic and racial minorities in the 1920s and the Popular Front in the 1930s was now promoted by the government. It argued that the United States differed from its enemies in its commitment to the principle that Americans of all races, religions, and national origins could enjoy the Four Freedoms. Racism was the doctrine of the enemy, while Americanism meant tolerating diversity and equality. By the war’s end, the new immigrants had been accepted as loyal “ethnic” Americans, rather than members of “inferior races.” World War II brought the new immigrants and their children together with other Americans, drawing millions from urban ethnic neighborhoods and rural areas and mixing them in factories and the military. This “patriotic assimilation” was a stark contrast to the coercive Americanism of World War I, in which the Wilson administration made Anglo-Saxonism a cultural norm. Roosevelt embraced cultural pluralism as a basis of harmony in a diverse society, and the government promoted Americanism as equality, in opposition to Nazi intolerance. Public officials rewrote the past to define American identity as free of racial or ancestral considerations. Repulsed by Nazi ideas of inborn racial differences, biological and social scientists discarded the belief that race, culture, and intelligence were linked. Even Hollywood depicted soldiers as a motley force of men from diverse regional, ethnic, and religious backgrounds who placed national loyalty above other identities. Bigotry certainly remained part of American life; anti-Semitism still contributed to the government’s refusal to offer refuge to more than a handful of European Jews escaping the Nazis. But the war made millions of ethnic Americans feel fully American for the first time.

Cartoon of Statue of Liberty and Her Children
Arthur Poinier’s cartoon for the Detroit Free Press demonstrates white ethnic groups incorporated within the boundaries of American freedom. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

The American Dilemma: Mexican-Americans
The Bracero Program Mexican-American Rights The war had a less definite meaning for non-white groups. Before Pearl Harbor, racial barriers were still intact. Southern blacks were confined by segregation, and Asians could not emigrate to the United States or become naturalized citizens. Mexican-Americans had been deported during the Depression, and most American Indians still lived in deep poverty on reservations. But the war started changes that would impact the postwar period. Under the bracero program launched in 1942, tens of thousands of contract laborers migrated from Mexico to the United States to work as domestic and agricultural workers. The program, designed as a temporary war measure, lasted until 1964, and brought a total of 4.5 million Mexican workers into the country. The braceros were assured decent housing and wages, were not citizens, and could be deported at any time. The war also offered opportunities to second-generation Mexican-Americans to move and find work, and contributed to the making of a new “Chicano” culture that fused Mexican heritage and American experience. Yet, the “zoot-suit” riots of 1943, in which sailors and police attacked Mexican-American youths wearing flashy clothing in Los Angeles, showed the extent of wartime tolerance. But the contrast between discrimination and wartime rhetoric of freedom and pluralism inspired civil rights activism among Mexican-Americans, such as protests against employment discrimination. Roughly half a million Mexican-American men and women served in the military. Even Texas, which long discriminated against Mexicans, passed a “Caucasian Race-Equal Privileges” resolution recognizing Mexicans as white (but saying little of non-whites).

The American Dilemma: Asian-Americans
Indians during the War Asian-Americans in Wartime Japanese-American Internment The war also drew into the nation’s mainstream many American Indians, thousands of whom served in the army, left the reservations for war work (not all of whom returned), and took advantage of GI Bill benefits. In contrast, Asian-Americans’ experience was a paradox. More than 50,000 children of immigrants from China, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines fought in the army, mostly in all-Asian units. With China as an ally, Congress in 1943 ended exclusion and established a very small quota for Chinese immigration. But many Chinese moved out of ethnic ghettos to work alongside whites in war industry. Japanese-Americans had a very different experience. While many Americans viewed the war in Europe as an ideological conflict with Nazism, Americans and Japanese viewed the Pacific war as a racial war. Japan’s propaganda portrayed America as contaminated with ethnic and racial diversity, as opposed to the racially “pure” Japanese, while the attacks at Pearl Harbor stirred long-standing anti-Asian prejudice. Government propaganda depicted the Japanese as animalistic and subhuman, and blamed Japan’s aggression on racial or national characteristics. Most Japanese-Americans in the mainland United States worked on farms in California, and while one-third were first-generation immigrants, the majority were nisei—American-born citizens, many of whom spoke only English and had never been to Japan. Though the government mobilized German- and Italian-Americans in the war effort and arrested few of the non-naturalized among them, it viewed every person of Japanese ethnicity as a potential enemy. The military, facing an explosion of anti-Asian sentiment and fearing an invasion, persuaded Roosevelt to issue an order in early 1942 that expelled all persons of Japanese descent from the West Coast. 110,000 men, women, and children—two-thirds of whom were American citizens—were removed to internment camps far from home, where they were confined in an environment of military discipline and surveillance. Internment demonstrated how easily war erodes basic civil liberties. No court hearings, due process, or writs of habeas corpus challenged the internment, which was supported almost universally by the press, Congress, and public opinion. The Supreme Court upheld the policy, arguing that an order applying only to Japanese was not based on race. Yet, internees were asked to buy war bonds, sign loyalty oaths, and consent to being drafted into the army.

Map of Japanese-American Internment
Map 22.4 Japanese- Americans Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Photo of Fumiko Hayashida and Daughter

The American Dilemma: blacks
Blacks and the War Blacks and Military Service In contrast to the treatment of Japanese-Americans, wartime rhetoric of freedom helped spark significant changes in the status of blacks. While Roosevelt denounced theories of racial mastery, Nazi Germany cited American segregation to support its own policies. Yet, segregation and racial violence persisted. The war stimulated a massive migration of blacks from the rural South to cities in the North and West, but they faced intense hostility, especially in Detroit, where a 1943 fight led to a race riot that killed thirty-four people and led to a “hate strike” of white workers against black employment at a war production plant. Lynching continued unabated. Nevertheless, more than 1 million blacks served in the armed forces in segregated units, limited mostly to construction, transportation, and other noncombat duties. Many northern black draftees were sent to the South for military training, where they resented the discrimination they faced and the better treatment given to German prisoners of war. When southern black veterans sought the benefits of the GI Bill, they faced discrimination that sharply limited their access. While the GI Bill did not discriminate in its health, college tuition, job training, or other benefits, local administrators in the South curtailed, eliminated, or segregated these benefits to blacks’ disadvantage.

Poster of White and Negro Blood
During World War II, Red Cross blood banks separated blood from black and white Americans . Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company y

The American Dilemma: Civil Rights
Birth of the Civil Rights Movement The Double-V The modern civil rights movement was born during the war. Resentful of the nearly complete exclusion of African-Americans from jobs in the booming war industries, black labor leader A. Philip Randolph in July 1941 called for a March on Washington to demand defense jobs, an end to segregation, and an antilynching law. Randolph, who founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and fought the racism of unions and employers, criticized Roosevelt’s inaction by using FDR’s rhetoric, declaring racial discrimination “undemocratic, un-American, and pro-Hitler.” The march idea alarmed Washington officials, and to prevent it, Roosevelt issued an executive order that banned discrimination in defense jobs and created a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to track compliance. Armed only with investigative powers, the FEPC could not enforce the antidiscrimination order. But its creation signaled an important shift in public policy. The FEPC was the first agency since Reconstruction to fight for equal opportunity for blacks, and it helped obtain jobs for black workers in industrial factories and shipyards. By 1944, more than 1 million blacks worked in manufacturing. During the war, the NAACP’s membership rose from 50,000 to 500,000. The Congress of Racial Equality, founded in 1942 by an interracial group of pacifists, held sit-ins in northern cities to integrate restaurants and theaters. In early 1942, the Pittsburgh Courier used the phrase that embodied black attitudes during the war—the “double-V.” Victory over Germany and Japan, it argued, must be accompanied by victory over segregation in America. Black newspapers and black critics identified the gap between the Roosevelt administrations’ celebration of American ideals and the reality of race.

The American Dilemma: Race relations
What the Negro Wants During the war, a left-based but broad coalition called for an end to racial inequality in America. African-American and Jewish groups campaigned against discrimination in employment and housing. Despite resistance from many white workers, CIO unions, especially those influenced by leftists and communists, tried to organized black workers and win skilled positions for them. Although AFL unions continued to discriminate, CIO unions were far more racially integrated. This new militancy among blacks scared moderate white southerners, who now stood between blacks protesting segregation and southern politicians who defended white supremacy and the South's freedom to shape its own race relations. The war that sparked modern civil rights agitation also generated politics that anticipated the “massive resistance” to desegregation in the 1950s. But in the North and West, many liberals openly called for a transformation of race relations. Some changes occurred. The National War Labor Board banned racial wage differentials and the Supreme Court outlawed all-white primaries, which had enabled southern states to disenfranchise blacks. By the end of the war, the navy ended segregation and the army had established a few integrated units.

The American Dilemma: Racial justice
An American Dilemma Black Internationalism The new interest in the status of black Americans was evident in An American Dilemma, published in 1944 and written by Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal. While his book depicted an America deeply affected by racism in law, politics, economics, and social behavior, Myrdal also showed appreciation for what he termed “the American Creed”—a belief in equality, justice, equal opportunity, and freedom. He argued that the war exposed to Americans more than ever the distance between this creed and racial inequality. By urging the federal government to follow American principles by banning racial discrimination, Myrdal established the liberal position on race relations in postwar America. By 1945, racial justice was integrated in a liberal-left agenda that sought full employment, civil liberties, and a larger welfare state. Many liberals now demanded antilynching laws, an end to segregated schools and housing, and the expansion of Social Security programs to cover agricultural and domestic workers. The internationalism of black radicals in the early nineteenth century was revived in the early twentieth century, partly in reaction to a new global rule of white supremacy across national lines. Garveyism, and the meeting of five Pan-African Congresses between 1919 and 1945 that brought together black intellectuals from across the world to denounce colonialism in Africa, helped foster this new global consciousness. Black American leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson met future leaders of African independence movements, such as Kwame Nkrumah, in trips abroad. Together they identified the struggles of black Americans with black freedom struggles throughout the world. They argued that racism had started in the slave trade and slavery and persisted in colonialism. Freeing Africa from colonial rule, they thought, would foster freedom in America.

Photo of Paul Robeson and Crowd
Paul Robeson, the black actor, singer, and battler for civil rights, leading Oakland dockworkers Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

The End of the War Focus Question:
How did the end of the war begin to shape the postwar world? The purpose of the focus questions is to help students find larger themes and structures to bring the historical evidence, events, and examples together for a connected thematic purpose. As we go through each portion of this lecture, you may want to keep in mind how the information relates to this larger thematic question. Here are some suggestions: write the focus question in the left or right margin on your notes and as we go through, either mark areas of your notes for you to come back to later and think about the connection OR as you review your notes later (to fill in anything else you remember from the lecture or your thoughts during the lecture or additional information from the readings), write small phrases from the lecture and readings that connect that information to each focus question AND/OR are examples that work together to answer the focus question.

The End of the War: 1944–1945 “The Most Terrible Weapon”
In early 1945, Allied triumph seemed inevitable. Hitler momentarily pushed the Allies back in France with a surprise counterattack that created a huge bulge in Allied lines. Though the Battle of the Bulge was the largest single battle ever fought by the U.S. Army and inflicted 70,000 American casualties, the German assault failed, and by March, American troops had crossed into Germany. Hitler killed himself, Soviet troops took Berlin, and on May 8, V-E Day (Victory in Europe), the war against Germany ended. U.S. forces in the Pacific moved closer to Japan after retaking Guam and the Philippines in 1944 and a decisive naval victory at Leyte Gulf. In the 1944 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Thomas E. Dewey, Republican governor of New York, and won an unprecedented fourth term. But FDR died on April 12, 1945, before the Allies secured victory. His successor, Harry S. Truman, immediately faced an extraordinary decision—whether to use the atomic bomb against Japan. Truman, not knowing about the weapon project before becoming president, was told by the secretary of war that the United States had built “the most terrible weapon ever known in human history.” The bomb was the product of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which led scientists to use uranium, or man-made plutonium, to create an atomic reaction that could generate enormous power, which could be used for peaceful purposes or to generate a colossal explosion. Fleeing Germany for the United States, Einstein warned Roosevelt that the Nazis were trying to build an atomic weapon and urged Roosevelt to do the same. FDR launched the Manhattan Project, the top-secret program in which scientists during the war developed an atomic bomb, which was first tested in New Mexico in July 1945.

The End of the War: Atomic Bomb
The Dawn of the Atomic Age The Nature of the War On August 6, 1945, a U.S. plane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. It virtually destroyed the entire city and killed 70,000 immediately (140,000 more died from radiation by the end of 1945, and thousands more died in the next five years). Three days later, the United States dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki that killed 70,000. The same day, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria. Japan quickly surrendered. The catastrophic number of civilian casualties caused by the bombs have ever since made them controversial. Japanese forces fiercely resisted America’s advance in the Pacific, and Truman’s advisers warned him that an American invasion of Japan may cost the lives of 250,000 or more American troops. But the United States did not plan to invade until 1946, and there were signs that Japan was close to surrender. Japan indicated that it would surrender if Emperor Hirohito retained his throne, but this did not meet Allied demands for unconditional surrender (in the end, the Allies let him stay). Some scientists who developed the atomic bomb asked Truman to use it just to show its power to other nations. Truman never hesitated to employ it. The use of the atomic bomb represented a logical endpoint to the way in which World War II was fought, namely, at great cost to civilian life. Compared to World War I, in which 90 percent of deaths were military personnel, in World War II 20 million of the 50 million who died were civilians. The Nazi regime had systematically killed its enemies, including millions of Jews, and bombed London and other cities. The Allies in turn bombed German cities such as Dresden, where 100,000 civilians perished. In March 1945, nearly the same number died in the U.S. bombing of Tokyo. Although the war and government propaganda led many Americans to dehumanize the Japanese and few criticized Truman’s use of the bomb, public criticism aroused by images of civilian suffering mounted.

Photo of Elementary School after the Atomic Bomb
Remains of an Elementary School after Hiroshima Bombing Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

The End of the War: postwar planning
Planning the Postwar World Yalta and Bretton Woods During the conflict, meetings between Allied leaders outlined the architecture of international relations in the postwar period. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met in Iran in 1942 and at Yalta in the Soviet Union in 1945 to develop agreements. The last “Big Three” conference occurred at Potsdam, outside Berlin, in July 1945 and involved Stalin, Truman, and Churchill. There Allied leaders created a military administration for Germany and agreed to try Nazi officials for war crimes. None of the three great Allied powers entirely trusted each other, and each vied for geostrategic advantage. The Allies’ decision to delay the invasion of Europe cost many Russian lives on the eastern front and incited Soviet resentment, but their sacrifice persuaded Britain and the United States to allow the Soviet Union to dominate eastern Europe. At Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill barely protested Stalin’s plans to control areas of eastern Europe that had been part of the Russian empire before World War I. Stalin agreed to enter the war on Japan later in 1945, include noncommunists in the pro-Soviet Polish government, and allow free elections there. But Stalin intended to make eastern Europe communist, and soon the Allies disagreed over the region’s fate. Churchill also resisted U.S. pressure to move toward national independence for India and other British colonies, and he made separate, private deals with Stalin to split southern and eastern Europe into separate spheres of influence. Britain also fought American efforts to control the postwar global economy. Delegations from forty-five nations that met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1945 replaced the British pound with the U.S. dollar as the main currency for international exchange. During the Depression, FDR took the United States off the gold standard, but Bretton Woods again forged a link between the dollar and gold and set other national currencies at a fixed rate in relation to the U.S. dollar. The meeting also created two U.S.-dominated financial institutions. The World Bank would provide money to developing nations and help rebuild Europe, and the International Monetary Fund would prevent governments from devaluing their currencies for trade advantages. Bretton Woods created the structure of the postwar global capitalist economy that made goods and investment more free and recognized American dominance of world finance. American leaders asserted that free trade would encourage world economic growth, an assumption that continued to govern U.S. foreign policy.

Photo of Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill
The Big Three—Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill—at their first meeting in Tehran, Iran, 1943 Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

The End of the War: Aftermath of war
The United Nations Peace, But not Harmony In 1944, near Washington, D.C., the Allies also founded a successor organization to the League of Nations. The new United Nations (UN) would consist of a General Assembly of nations where each member nation had an equal voice and a Security Council tasked with maintaining world peace and security. The Security Council had six rotating members and five permanent ones—Britain, China, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States, each with the power to veto resolutions. In June 1945, fifty-one countries meeting in San Francisco adopted the UN Charter, which outlawed force or its threat as a means for settling international disputes, and the next month, Congress endorsed it. The war radically redistributed world power. The major military powers of Japan and German were defeated. Britain and France were weakened. While only America and the Soviet Union could still project their own power on the international stage, the United States essentially became the dominant nation in the world. But international harmony did not follow the peace. Soviet occupation of eastern Europe soon helped spark the Cold War, and the atomic bombs inspired much fear across the globe. Allied rhetoric of freedom was not always followed in postwar policy. In 1941, Winston Churchill and FDR issued the Atlantic Charter, which assured that Nazi Germany’s defeat would be followed by free trade, self-government for all nations, and a global New Deal. It specifically embraced freedom from want and freedom from fear, but left out the other two of the Four Freedoms in deference to British colonial rule in India, where Britons preferred not to grant freedom of speech and worship. The Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter were intended to solidify world opposition to the Axis powers. But it also laid the foundation of human rights and inspired colonized peoples to adopt the language and ideals of freedom and national self-determination and use them in their struggles against the victorious Allied countries—causing more conflict and war in the future.

Cartoon of Churchill and Atlantic Charter
This 1943 cartoon from the Chicago Defender questions whether non-white peoples will be accorded the right to choose their own government. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company

Review Fighting World War II The Home Front Visions of Postwar Freedom
Focus Question: What steps led to American participation in World War II? The Home Front Focus Question: How did the United States mobilize economic resources and promote popular support for the war effort? Visions of Postwar Freedom Focus Question: What visions of America's postwar role began to emerge during the war?

Review Continued The American Dilemma The End of the War
Focus Question: How did American minorities face threats to their freedom at home and abroad during World War II? The End of the War Focus Question: How did the end of the war begin to shape the postwar world?

MEDIA LINKS —— Chapter 22 ——
Title Media link Eric Foner on World War II, pt 1: African-Americans' experience Eric Foner on World War II, pt 2: internment of Japanese-Americans Eric Foner on World War II, pt 3: Roosevelt's and Wilson's wartime administrations Eric Foner on World War II, pt 4: treatment of Japanese-Americans Eric Foner on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Next Lecture PREVIEW: —— Chapter 23 —— The United States and the Cold War, 1945–1953
Origins of the Cold War The Cold War and the Idea of Freedom The Truman Presidency The Anticommunist Crusade

Independent and Employee-Owned
Norton Lecture Slides Independent and Employee-Owned by Eric Foner This concludes the Norton Lecture Slides Slide Set for Chapter 22 Give Me Liberty! AN AMERICAN HISTORY FOURTH EDITION

Give Me Liberty! AN AMERICAN HISTORY FOURTH EDITION

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