This entry is a subentry of World War II (1939 – 45).
The early stages of American mobilization before its entry into World War II in December 1941 were halting and gave little indication of the prodigious efforts to come. A critical step was massively to expand the U.S. Army. After France fell in June 1940, this could no longer be delayed. But President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was soon to run for an unprecedented third term, did not wish to offend antiwar voters—often called isolationists—so, in the end both sponsors of the conscription program known as Selective Service were Republicans, Senator Edward R. Burke of Nebraska and Congressman James W. Wadsworth of New York. Among the other Republicans who provided essential support were two Wall Street lawyers with a longtime interest in the military, Grenville Clarke and Henry L. Stimson, the latter a distinguished statesman who soon became secretary of war.
On 2 August, Roosevelt finally endorsed Selective Service, and so did Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate for president. Burke‐Wadsworth's Selective Training and Service Act received majority votes of 58–31 in the Senate and 263–149 in the House, and was signed into law 16 September 1940. America's first peacetime draft provided for the registration of men aged twenty‐one to thirty‐five who might be called up for twelve months of training and service within the United States. The first call inducted 1.2 million men, while 800,000 reservists were mobilized as well. Owing to the high degree of public support, there was no wholesale refusal to register for the draft, unlike during World War I, although there was some conscientious objection by pacifists and others. The main difficulty was that a U.S. Army numbering only 270,000 officers and men could not more than triple in size during one year without having serious problems.
In the end, these problems were solved, however. Even the extension in 1941 of the term of enlistment from one year to two and a half provoked little more than angry protests from the men—although it was almost derailed in the House, which extended service by a margin of one vote. If late in coming, the draft—later stretched to include men aged eighteen to forty‐four and service for the duration—worked well. A total of more than 16 million men and women served in the military during the war, approximately 11 million in the army and Army Air Force, 4 million in the navy, 670,000 in the Marines, and 330,00 in women's military units. Most were draftees, although 5 million volunteered for service, primarily in the navy and Army Air Force. The army, stretched thin around the world, could have used even more people. But women were not drafted for noncombat assignments, as in Britain. The military also lost large numbers of men who were declared “4‐F,” that is, mentally or physically unfit for service. Others were given occupational deferments to keep them on critical jobs in defense plants.
Mobilizing the civilian economy proved to be more difficult than raising an army. Even after his reelection in 1940, President Roosevelt was reluctant to make demands on the public, and refused also to hand over the direction of mobilization to a single head, or “czar.” Thus, he created a series of agencies with limited mandates, commonly referred to as “monstrosities” at the time, while shortages of commodities and disputes over priorities made a farce of prewar mobilization.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. formal entry into the war, Roosevelt established the War Production Board. He also created an Office of Economic Stabilization under James Byrnes, an ex‐senator, which began to bring order out of chaos. A Controlled Materials Plan finally established an effective method of allocating critical commodities. The rubber shortage, caused by Japan's seizure of most of the world's rubber trees, was solved by building synthetic rubber plants and rationing gasoline. The rationing, which politicians feared people would reject, won popular acceptance after a distinguished panel led by the financier Bernard Baruch issued a report proving beyond doubt that there was no way to conserve rubber except by limiting automobile use. Consequently, in 1942 a national speed limit of 35 miles per hour was established, and most drivers were given a weekly limit of 3 gallons of gas.
War financing was an outstanding success, thanks in important part to the work of Beardsley Ruml, the treasurer of Macy's Department stores. He led a group of businessmen who argued that the income tax should be extended to all workers, instead of the affluent few, and that taxes should be collected “at the source,” in the form of payroll deductions. This effort resulted in the Revenue Act of 1942, which raised the number of taxpayers from 7 to 42 million. It cost the United States $318 billion to wage World War II, 45 percent of which came from current revenues—a much higher percentage than in any previous war. The balance was paid for by borrowing from banks, bond sales to financial institutions, and also to the general public—which bought $49 billion worth of Liberty bonds.
The manufacture of automobiles, home appliances, and many other products was suspended for the duration. Meanwhile, industrial wages rose by 22 percent and net farm income doubled. With more money chasing fewer goods, inflation would have soared had not the government imposed wage and price controls, which were resented but largely effective. So, too, was the elaborate system of rationing food, clothing, and other consumer goods, in which stamps or coupons worth various “points” were required in addition to cash to make a purchase. As availability and the number of points required for any given item changed constantly, shopping could be a nightmare. Still, despite some black marketeering, rationing did the job, aided by backyard “Victory Gardens,” which in 1943 produced 8 million tons of produce—more than half the nation's total.
The United States never fully mobilized, despite achieving full employment. There was no labor draft, for example, though Roosevelt suggested one in 1944—much later than he should have. Congress refused to act even then, so industry was forced to rely on incentives that varied greatly from firm to firm, resulting in local labor deficits. Often these were caused by housing shortages, which neither government nor private enterprise did much to ease. With so many men in uniform, industry was forced, against its will at first, to hire women, including married women with children. Yet it was rare for government at any level, or for industry itself, to provide the child‐care and support services that mothers required. Despite all obstacles, women flocked to defense plants. Their symbol, “Rosie the Riveter,” was based on fact. America could not have produced what it did without the millions of women who took the hardest jobs in shipyards, steel mills, aircraft plants, and every heavy industry except mining.
Yet, even without going flat out, America stunned the world by arming and equipping not only its own armed forces but, to a considerable extent, those of its Allies as well. Before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had said that the United States would become the “arsenal of democracy,” and so it did. Some $50 billion in Lend‐Lease aid flowed to all corners of the world. Britain and its Commonwealth received about half of this; the Soviet Union $10 billion. At war's end, the Soviet Union possessed 655,000 motor vehicles, of which 400,000 were made by Americans; the United States also supplied the USSR with 2,000 locomotives, 11,000 freight cars, and 540,000 tons of rail. In addition, the Soviets received from their allies, chiefly the United States, over 20,000 combat aircraft and 11,500 tanks and self‐propelled guns.
Predictably, national elections were determined by military events. In the 1942 congressional elections, after a string of American defeats in the Pacific War, and before the successful invasion of North Africa, voters elected so many Republicans that, together with conservative Democrats, they gained effective control of Congress. Although it gave Roosevelt great discretion over military and diplomatic affairs, the conservative coalition in Congress did all it could to destroy the New Deal—ending many useful social agencies, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Youth Administration. In the 1944 presidential election, with the war going well, Republicans took a beating at the polls. FDR, and his new vice president, Harry S. Truman, defeated Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, winning 25 million votes to his 22 million. The New Deal, however, remained curtailed.
Although the mass media were filled with war news and exhortations of every kind, government did not establish a ministry of propaganda, despite considerable pressure to do so. Instead, when Roosevelt established the Office of War Information, he gave it a limited mandate, and did not react strongly in 1943 when Congress abolished all of its domestic functions except for the Bureau of Motion Pictures—which attempted, with little success, to make films more progressive. Hollywood did crank out an enormous number of war‐related movies, a few of which, such as Casablanca, live on still. For the most part they were ephemeral; many of the most successful films of the period, such as Going My Way and National Velvet, had nothing to do with the war.
There was no ministry of science either, yet weapons development was one of the great successes of the war. In 1941, FDR created an Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) to coordinate, rather than direct, advancements in weaponry. Headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush, the OSRD brought cooperation between military, industrial, and educational experts to a level never before seen in the United States. Under OSRD direction, radar was improved, the radio proximity fuse was developed, and many other innovations created for military use. And it was OSRD that persuaded Roosevelt to back what became the atomic bomb—which entailed not only building an entire industry from scratch, but persuading Congress to finance a secret effort, the Manhattan Project, without being told what it was paying for.
Popular entertainments of every kind flourished, partly because of the need for diversion, partly because there was little to buy at a time when workers were earning more money than ever. Ball parks, racetracks, and similar facilities prospered, as did the music industry. Perhaps more than films, the popularity of certain types of songs says much about the national mood in wartime. The biggest hits were not about the war itself, but spoke to the emotions that war inspired. The most popular song of 1944 was the touching “I'll Be Seeing You.” Another hit was “I'll Be Home for Christmas,” with its melancholy epilogue—“if only in my dreams.” The biggest seller of the war years was Irving Berlin's nostalgic “White Christmas.”
Although civil rights and liberties were not suspended entirely, as during World War I, they took the usual beating. A great miscarriage of justice occurred in 1942 when the entire Japanese and Japanese American population of the West Coast was transported to internment camps. Despite receiving a clean bill of health from the FBI following a roundup of suspected aliens, more than 100,000 of them would spend much of the war behind barbed wire in so‐called “relocation” camps, an action upheld by the Supreme Court in the Japanese American internment cases. Racism further disfigured the national effort when minorities sought work in the booming war industries. Attacks against Mexican Americans took place in Southern California, and against blacks in many places. The worst race riot broke out in Detroit on 20 June 1943, leaving 35 dead and 700 wounded—most of them African Americans.
Yet, despite all the difficulties and heartbreaks, and the ugly outbursts of racism, war made life seem more precious, which is probably why the suicide rate fell by a third. Similarly, the birth and marriage rates, which had reached new lows in the thirties, started their fateful rise—early signs of the baby boom that would transform the nation.
Although America suffered less than any other major warring nation, victory did not come without sacrifice. In addition to the 400,000 uniformed personnel who died, hundreds of thousands more were disabled. All who served lost, as most felt at the time, on average three years of their lives—as did their wives, sweethearts, and children. Americans did everything that was asked of them, and would have done more if more had been wanted, as polls repeatedly showed. At war's end they were right to feel proud: in saving their country from defeat, they also helped to save democracy, putting all free peoples in their debt.
[See also Demography and War; Economy and War; Ethnicity and War; Film; Gender and War; Internment of Enemy Aliens; Music, War and the Military in; Propaganda and Public Relations, Government; Public Financing and Budgeting for War; Public Opinion, War, and the Military; Race Relations and War; Science Technology, War, and the Military; Society and War; Women in the Military.]
Bibliography
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- H. G. Nichols, ed., Washington Dispatches 1941–1945: Weekly Political Reports from the British Embassy, 1981.
- Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II, 1982.
- Peter Irons, Justice at War, 1983.
- Harold G. Vatter, The U.S. Economy in World War II, 1985.
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- Doris Weatherford, American Women and World War II, 1990.
- William L. O'Neill, A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II, 1993
