An Overview of the War's Impact on American Society

The New Deal and World War II brought about a political, psychological, and economic shift to the right in the United States.

Three questions troubled Americans during the war years and immediately afterward: Big government The economy Communism at home and abroad

Though World War Two was not fought on U.S. soil, the entire country pitched in to help the war effort.

Housewives grew Liberty Gardens and went to work in place of the drafted men.

The United States government established many wartime organizations to monitor supplies and food as well control propaganda.

Families were encouraged to help fathers and brothers by not buying tin or rationing sugar or buying war bonds.

Everyone on the home front was expected to do his or her part in the war as well.

The American military was not prepared for an all out war.

It only had 300,000 men.

The U.S. calls on American men to enlist.

The American people respond.

In fact the Government is overwhelmed by the number that decide to join.

0

2,000,000

4,000,000

6,000,000

8,000,000

10,000,000

12,000,000

14,000,000

16,000,000

Pre-Attack After

U.S. Military

Due to the expenditure on the war, Roosevelt wanted to pay for as much as possible through taxes.

Although Congress refused to grant him a progressive tax, in 1942, the Revenue Act raised the top income-tax rate from 60% to 90% and added middle class and lower income groups to the tax bracket as well.

The Americans were asked by the government to ration everything.

The government also sold war bonds (borrowed money from its own people to help with the war).

They needed money to help the Allies as well as themselves. The U.S. was also not a very rich country and desperately needed money.

The goal was to help Allies while the U.S. prepared.

Rationed Items: sugar, coffee, shoes, meats, and cereals.

Farms were producing as much food as possible.

Much of the food went to British and Russian soldiers and citizens as a result of starvation.

Established in 1942, the War Labor Board was instituted to mediate disputes between management and labor, and sought to prevent strikes and out of control wage increases.

The War Labor Board acted as the mediator to prevent massive strikes and wage increases that occurred with the demand for workers.

In order to finance the war and give people a sense of involvement in the war effort, bond drives were held.

The treasury department sold about $40 billion "E" bonds to investors, and nearly twice the amount in higher denomination.

The bonds raised half the money for WWII.

In 1942, FDR announced a plan for massive war production.

In order to get the necessary amount of raw materials, FDR established the War Production Board.

It allocated scarce materials, limited or stopped the production of civil goods, and distributed contracts among competing manufacturers.

American Industry had to go from peace time production to war time production (which takes a lot of time).

GM, Ford, and Chrysler went from creating cars to tanks.

Boeing from regular airplanes to bombers and fighter jets.

Gun makers like Colt, from hunting rifles to machine guns, flamethrowers, war rifles.

The federal government encouraged Americans to conserve and recycle materials such as metal, paper, and rubber, which factories could then use for wartime production.

Lots of everyday household trash had value: kitchen fats, old metal shovels, even empty metal lipstick tubes.

By 1944, nearly 18 million workers were laboring in war industries (3x the # in 1941)

More than 6 million were women and nearly 2 million were minority.

Women served in significant numbers during World War II, both as civilian support personnel and in the uniformed services in the Woman’s Army Corps (WAC) and Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service in the Navy (WAVES).

Women pilots ferried planes from station to station, freeing men for combat pilot positions.

Women moved into the civilian workforce, including heavy industry, replacing those men who had entered the military.

Women joined the workforce. Before the war, only about 3 million worked in the U.S.

Most were housewives and raised families.

Desperate for workers to produce weapons, women replaced the men that went to war.

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

Before After

Women

As a result, more and

more women entered the workforce.

Women took up jobs in industry that had once been reserved for men, and "Rosie the Riveter" became a popular American icon.

By 1945, women made up 36% of the nation's total workforce.

The wartime economy brought about full employment and, in doing so, achieved what New Deal programs had been unable to do.

In 1940, there were  8 million Americans unemployed.

By 1941, however, unemployment was almost unheard of.

There were actually labor shortages in some industries.

Despite discrimination at home, minority populations contributed to the war effort:

1,000,000 African Americans

300,000 Mexican-Americans

33,000 Japanese Americans

25,000 Native Americans

13,000 Chinese Americans

Many civil rights groups used the need of the government for the cooperation of all its citizens in the war effort to push a new militancy in redressing discrimination.

Blacks moved into service in all areas of the military, although most in segregated units until 1948..

A large migration of blacks from the South to Northern industrial areas made civil rights a national rather than regional concern and broadened the political effects of black votes.

Conservatives –attacked the New Deal, but American involvement in World War II helped assuage many of the nation's social ills

America now enjoyed full employment and a higher overall standard of living.

Labor unions became more powerful and their membership grew from 10 million before the war to 15 million after the war.

Farm incomes reached new heights, while the number of tenant farmers fell. Former farm workers took jobs in urban factories.

Wartime investment seemed to validate Keynesian economics.

Unemployment fell to only 1.2% by 1944 and wages rose 35%

Farmers benefited as production doubled and their income tripled

The war provided a lift to the U.S. economy

Jobs were abundant and despite rationing and shortages, people had money to spend.

By the end of the war, America was the world’s dominant economic and military power.

Instituted in 1942, this agency was in charge of stabilizing prices and rents and preventing speculation, profiteering, hoarding and price administration.

The OPA froze wages and prices and initiated a rationing program for items such as gas, oil, butter, meat, sugar, coffee and shoes.

FDR established the War Refugee Board in 1943 to help rescue and assist the many people who were condemned to death camps.

It relocated many refugees in need, although it was late in inception.

Although it saved 200,000 Jews and 20,000 non-Jews, 1 million still died.

FDR established the War Manpower Commission in 1942 to help supervise the mobilization of males and females in the military, and the war industry, and also to study how profit can be gained through the production of weapons and supplies.

Roosevelt wanted public opinion to be positive during the war, and in 1941, he established the Office of Censorship.

It examined all written documents, including works of publishers and broadcasters, as well as all letters going overseas, in order to maintain the positive public opinion in America.

FDR and the Joint Chief of Staffs formed the Office of Strategic Services which served as an intelligence agency during WWII and was a predecessor of the CIA.

It began on June 13,1942 to conduct espionage, gather intelligence information required for planning, and to analyze the enemy.

Discontinued by Truman in 1945.

Formed in 1941 to contract out the development of new medicines and ordinances.

It spent $1 billion dollars to produce sonar, radar devices, rockets, tanks, advanced jets, and the development of DDT and other pesticides.

The scientific director of the Manhattan project, which the U.S. had undertaken to build the atomic bomb before Germany, and did was by relying on Nazi scientists.

Oppenheimer was later employed by Harry Truman to work on building a more destructive weapon known as the Hydrogen bomb.

Congress rolled back reform legislation during wartime.

Many factories instigated a longer working day to boost industrial output.

The federal government made anti-trust legislation a low priority.

In order to combat the labor shortage, federal inspectors ignored laws regulating the employment of children and women.

With very little public outcry, the number of high school dropouts increased significantly.

During the war, the teenage workforce grew from 1 million to 3 million.

About 1 million of these new workers had dropped out of high school.

Furthermore, few Americans challenged the internment of Japanese-Americans.

In February 1942, the United States government forced the relocation of all Japanese-Americans from the West Coast, a region that Roosevelt and other American political and military leaders considered vulnerable.

The government established ten internment camps in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming, which held a total of 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, many of whom were United States citizens.

After his reelection in 1944, Roosevelt canceled the evacuation order and the government closed the camps.

Conservative politicians had fought against these agencies for years, but now that FDR was focusing on winning a war instead of reforming society, they could slash funding for the CCC, WPA, and National Youth Administration (NYA).

Congress had always intended these programs to help those Americans who suffered job discrimination, even during favorable economic conditions, so their demise was especially hard on African-Americans, women, and the elderly.

As military costs escalated, so did the federal deficit.

At the same time, social expenditures plummeted.

Senate liberals, for example, introduced legislation to broaden the coverage of Social Security and another bill to provide comprehensive national health care.

Congress, however, often ignored such measures in favor of military investment.

With the elimination of many New Deal programs, poverty increased, even with rising wages, for many Americans.

One committee reported that 20 million Americans were on the border of subsistence and starvation.

25% of all employed Americans earned less than 64 cents an hour, while skilled workers often earned $7 or $8 an hour.

As the federal government continued to cut funding for social programs, many idealists in Roosevelt's "brain trust" became disillusioned and left their posts in droves.

Business executives with good managerial skills, but little interest in social reform, quickly filled this political vacuum in Roosevelt's administration.

The magazine Business Week reported cheerfully: "The war has placed a premium on business

talents rather than on 'brain-trusters' and theoreticians. Businessmen are moving up in the New Deal Administration and are replacing the New Dealers as they go."

From 1940 to 1945, the number of civilian employees working for the federal government rose from 1 million to nearly 4 million (see chart, next slide).

At the same time, Washington's expenditures grew from $9 billion to $98.4 billion.

The war also accelerated the growth of executive power.

At war's end, the President and his advisors, more than Congress, seemed to drive the nation's domestic and foreign agenda.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court refused to hear cases that challenged this increase in executive authority.

Civilian Employment

1940 1 million

Civilian Employment

1945 3.8 Million

Government Spending

1940 $9 billion

Government Spending

1945 $98+ billion

Although the phrase itself didn't come into use until years later, the phenomenon of the "military-industrial complex" had its roots in World War II.

A systematic relationship arose between big business and the military's expenditures on defense.

During the war, the average daily expenditure on military contracts was $250 million, which inflated American industrial capacity.

Small companies disappeared as two-thirds of government contracts went to the hundred largest corporations.

World War II also helped to solidify the strength of organized labor and to cement the intimate relationship between big business and big government so that all three groups exercised power to shore up the corporate state.

Although that nation's farm population declined 17% between 1940 and 1945, better weather, improved fertilizers, the adoption of modern farm machinery, and the consolidation of small farms into large agri-businesses actually increased agricultural production in the United State.

The federal government expanded its role in research and development in a wide variety of projects, from the manufacture of artificial rubber to the construction of the atomic bomb.

The nation also became more urbanized, as the six largest cities got two million new inhabitants and 15 million Americans moved from rural areas to the cities.

President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, less than a month before Germany's surrender.

In 1945, America was a transformed nation. World War II, in fact, changed America in three

significant ways: The war had helped the economy recover. Similar to the

situation after World War I, America emerged from the Second World War with a strong economy and relatively few casualties. The war, however, devastated other nations on both sides of the struggle. In the Soviet Union, for example, the number of casualties in Germany's siege of Leningrad exceeded the combined total of British and American wartime deaths.

The United States possessed the atomic bomb and was now the most powerful nation in the world.

American were ready for a rest, just as they had been after World War I.