Mobilization of America during World War II
Winkler, Allan M. Home Front U.S.A.: America during World War II. Third edition. Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2012.
Dr. Allan M. Winkler is a professor emeritus of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After earning his bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard University and his master’s degree from Columbia University, Dr. Winkler earned his doctorate from Yale University, in 1974. Dr. Winkler has been teaching history at Miami University since 1986 and is also the author of The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945 (1978).
In Home Front U.S.A., Dr. Winkler illustrates the great mobilization of the American people after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Of course, the American people had been mobilized economically in support of Britain prior to the Japanese attack by sending supplies to the British and protecting the lines of commerce in the North Atlantic, but as posited by Dr. Winkler, the American entry into the now world war deeply changed the United States from agriculture to manufacturing to politics as well. Winkler argues that it is this mobilization which actually and finally pulled the United States out of the Depression. Dr. Winkler’s book provides a very broad perspective of World War II from the point of view of a multitude of social and economic groups.
In support, Dr. Winkler offers that, with the control of farm commodities and other financial regulation, agricultural and economic markets stabilized after the Depression. The federal government, in fact, went so far as to regulate the manufacture of clothing in order to increase supply for military purposes mandating the style and tailoring of men’s and women’s fashion in order to conserve silk, cotton, and wool for the war effort.
In addition, and as war mobilization steadily increased, Americans began moving from rural areas to cities and, generally, from south to north and from east to west. (p. 51). This mass migration led to stress on cities who had not recovered from the Depression and were ill-prepared from the influx of thousands of people looking for better employment in the factories of the cities. This mass migration resulted in inadequate urban housing and a lack of proper daycare but also led to extraordinarily low unemployment.
While the mobilization provided much needed economic activity which had seen a huge decline during the Depression, the mobilization also provided the American people with a national purpose and opportunities for meaning making in their lives. While the war raged in Europe prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, a significant isolationist sentiment occupied much of the political discourse in the United States. After the Japanese attack and spurred on by a vast American propaganda machine, a substantial majority of the American people were united around the idea that America was going to safe western freedoms from tyranny, and after the Depression when it was common for Americans to be confused about their nation, this unifying message was much needed among the American people. Victory plots, community gardens inspired by patriotism, were so popular that they produced one-third of the American vegetables in 1943. (pp. 38-39). From patriotic music to comic books, and Hollywood movies, this popular national patriotic sentiment was omnipresent. Despite the many hardships and as a result of this feeling of national community, “nearly seven out of ten Americans said they had not had to make any ‘real sacrifices’ as a result of the war.” (p. 55).
In this work, and contrary to more traditional works which focus on a larger national picture of politics, Dr. Winkler, while giving a nod to the politics of the situation, successfully tells the mobilization story of America during World War II from the perspective of a multitude of social and economic groups providing a pleasant tapestry of the mobilization.
