The Home FrontWorld War 2

The Four Freedoms

Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms

• The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

• The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

• The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

• The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

War Economics

• 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

Wartime Economy• The wartime economy

brought full employment – achieved what New

Deal programs had been unable to do.

• In 1940--8 million Americans unemployed – 1941 unemployment

was almost unheard of• There were actually labor

shortages in some industries

Rosie the Riveter• 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

Sacrifice• The federal

government encouraged Americans to conserve and recycle materials– metal, paper, and rubber

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

Sacrifice

• War Bonds– provided a vital

revenue for the war effort.

• federal government used public stunts to sell bonds to U.S. public– like celebrity

auctions

Sacrifice• The necessities of war influenced fashion • Spring of 1942, the War Production Board

became the nation's premier clothing consultant– dictated styles for civilian apparel– trying to conserve cloth and metal for the war

• Menswear rid itself of vests, jacket elbow patches, cuffs on pants

• Women's clothing also relied on fewer materials– skirts became shorter and narrower.

Food Sacrifice• Federal Government asks for

cutbacks on food– coffee, sugar, meat

• 1st time people had money to spend on goods after GD– lack of goods to buy though

• After war factories went back to consumer goods– people bought in large

quantities again

Good from War ?

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

• Labor unions became more powerful– 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.

The End of the New Deal

• 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 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.

Rise in Federal Deficit • 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

Increase in the Power of the Federal Government and Presidency

• From 1940 to 1945, civilian employees working for federal government rose from 1 million to nearly 4 million

• Washington's expenditures grew from $9 billion to $98.4 billion.

• WWII accelerated the growth of executive power.

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

• Supreme Court refused to hear cases that challenged this increase in executive authority

"Military-Industrial Complex."

• The phenomenon of the "military-industrial complex" had its roots in World War II.

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

• During the war, the average daily expense on military contracts was $250 million– inflated American industrial capacity.

• Small companies disappeared – two-thirds of government contracts went to the

hundred largest corporations

Executive Order 8802• A. Philip Randolph

– president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

– strong backing from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

– called for 150,000 blacks to march on Washington

• protest discrimination in defense industries.

• Roosevelt issued an executive order – prohibited discrimination in

defense industries– created the Fair Employment

Practices Commission (FEPC).

African Americans and The Home Front

• FDR knew the African American vote had helped him win– ordered the U.S.

military to recruit and send African Americans into combat.

African Americans in the Military• The army air force created the 99th Pursuit Squadron

– African American unit.

• The African American pilots became known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

• The Marines excluded blacks• Navy used them as servants• Army created separate black regiments commanded mostly by

white officers. • The Red Cross segregated blood plasma

Mexican Americans and WWII• 400,000 served in the

armed forces • jobs in industry provided an

escape– left the desperate poverty of

migratory farm labor • the Bracero (work hands)

Program in 1942– Recruitment of Mexicans to

work ag fields of U.S. – by 1945 several hundred

thousand workers had immigrated to the Southwest.

• "zoot suits“– Popular dress among

Mexican American youth– Anti-Mexican youth riots in LA

called Zoot Suit Riots

Japanese-Americansbacklash of Pearl Harbor

• On the West Coast– authorities ordered the Japanese to leave

• No distinction between aliens and citizens

• Forced to sell property– accepted whatever was offered

• Most Japanese Americans suffered severe financial losses.