American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  180 [Public pressure for shift to Pacific first]: Steele, pp. 81-92; Manchester, pp. 307-12; Burns, Soldier, pp. 210-11.

  [Debate over European strategy]: see Jackson, chs. 3-4; Steele, chs. 4-8; John Grigg, 1943: The Victory That Never Was (Hill and Wang, 1980), part 1 passim; Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (Princeton University Press, 1957), chs. 5-10; Joseph L. Strange, “The British Rejection of Operation SLEDGEHAMMER, An Alternative Motive,” Military Affairs, vol. 46, no. 1 (February 1982), pp. 6-14; Pogue, chs. 12, 14-15; Beitzell, chs. 2-3. For a Soviet view of the strategic background, see Genrikh Trofimenko, The U.S. Military Doctrine (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1986), pp. 1-56.

  [Eisenhower on cross-Channel attack]: quoted in Steele, p. 79.

  181 [North Africa]: Arthur Layton Funk, The Politics of TORCH: The Allied Landings and the Algiers Putsch (University Press of Kansas, 1974); William L. Linger, Our Vichy Gamble (Knopf, 1947); Stephen E. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander: The War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Doubleday, 1970), book 1, chs. 7-10; Burns, Soldier, ch. 9; Shirer, Rise and Fall, pp. 919-25; Pogue, ch. 18,

  [“Walk with the Devil”]: quoted in Burns, Soldier, p. 297.

  [“The freedom of your lives”]: ibid., p. 292.

  [“I salute again”]: November 7, 1942, in Public Papers, vol. 11, pp. 451-52, quoted at p. 451.

  The Production of War

  182 [“Proper application of overwhelming force”]: Churchill, Grand Alliance, p. 607.

  [Soldiers as production workers]: Burns, Soldier, p. 470; William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 (Little, Brown, 1974), pp. 267-68, 280-83; Bill Mauldin, Up Front (Henry Holt, 1944), pp. 143-44 and passim.

  [Press on soldiers]: Burns, Soldier, p. 470; John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (Harcourt, 1976), pp. 53-64.

  [Slow conversion to war production]: see Richard Polenberg, War and Society: The United States, 1941-1945 (Lippincott, 1972), pp. 10-11; see generally David Brinkley, Washington Goes to War (Knopf, 1988), esp. chs. 3-5.

  [FDR’s production goals for 1942]: address on the State of the Union, January 6, 1942, in Public Papers, vol. 11, p. 37.

  [Sample conversions]: Manchester, Glory and Dream, p. 293; John R. Graf, A Survey of the American Economy, 1940-1946 (North River Press, 1946), p. 33.

  183 [American military output]: A. Russell Buchanan, The United States and World War II (Harper, 1964), vol. 1, p. 140; Manchester, Glory and Dream, p. 296; Alan S. Milward, War, Economy and Society, 1939-1945 (University of California Press, 1977), pp. 69 (Table 15), 70.

  [Technology as pacing production]: Milward, pp. 188-91; Graf, p. 41; Allan Nevins and Frank K. Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth, 1933-1962 (Scribner, 1962), p. 191.

  [Wartime shipping tonnage]: Donald M. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy: The Story of American War Production (Harcourt, 1946), p. 243.

  [Rate of ship production]: Manchester, Glory and Dream, p. 295.

  [Hull 440]: Bernard Taper, “Life with Kaiser,” Nation, vol. 155, no. 24 (December 12, 1942), pp. 644-46; Russell Bookhout, “We Build Ships,” Atlantic, vol. 171, no. 4 (April 1943), pp. 37-42; Richard R. Lingemann, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?: The American Home Front, 1941-1945 (Putnam, 1970), pp. 130-31; A. A. Hochling, Home Front, U.S.A. (Crowell, 1966), pp. 51-52; Augusta Clawson, “Shipyard Diary of a Woman Welder,” Radical America, vol. 9, nos. 4-5 (July-August 1975), pp. 134-38.

  184 [“But where is the ship?”]: quoted in Bookhout, p. 38.

  [Laborforce, workweek, wage increases]: Buchanan, vol. 1, p. 138; Joel Seidman, American Labor from Defense to Reconversion (University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 270.

  [Income redistribution]: Geoffrey Perrett, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973), p. 354.

  [Consumer spending]: Combined Production and Resources Board, The Impact of the War on Civilian Consumption in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945), p. 17 (Table 11).

  [Spending on nondurables]: ibid., pp. 3, 23-25; Lingemann, pp. 241-42, 281, 295, 319; Perrett, pp. 239, 381-82.

  185 [“Rest Faster Here”]: quoted in Lingemann, p. 241.

  [Migration in wartime]: Francis E. Merrill, Social Problems on the Homefront: A Study of War-time Influences (Harper, 1948), pp. 15, 61 (Table 4).

  [Migrant children]: Agnes E. Meyer, Journey through Chaos (Harcourt, 1943), pp. 152, 204-5, and passim; see also Merrill, ch. 3.

  [Migrant housing]: Blair Bolles, “The Great Defense Migration,” Harper’s, vol. 183 (October 1941), p. 463; see also Meyer, p. 100; William H. Jordy, “Fiasco at Willow Run,” Nation, vol. 156, no. 19 (May 8, 1943), pp. 655-58; Polenberg, pp. 140-42; Lingemann, pp. 82-84, 107-10.

  [Beaumont dump]: Meyer, pp. 174-75.

  [Nelson and the WPB]: Nelson; Eliot Janeway, The Struggle for Survival: A Chronicle of Economic Mobilization in World War II (Yale University Press, 1951), esp. ch. 11; Bruce Catton, The War Lords of Washington (Harcourt, 1948); Calvin L. Christman, “Donald Nelson and the Army: Personality as a Factor in Civil-Military Relations during World War II,” Military Affairs, vol. 27, no. 3 (October 1973), pp. 81-83.

  [“Final authority”]: see Perrett, p. 256. [“We must have down here”]: quoted in Catton, p. 117.

  [“Replacing New Dealers”]: quoted in Polenberg, pp. 90-91.

  [Dollar-a-year men]: ibid., p. 91.

  185-6 [Truman on dollar-a-year men]: quoted in Catton, pp. 119, 118, respectively; see also Donald H. Riddle, The Truman Committee: A Study in Congressional Responsibility (Rutgers University Press, 1964), pp. 41-43, 65-66, 71-73.

  186 [Industry incentives]: Lingemann, p. 111; Blum, p. 122.

  [“Of course it contributes to waste”]: quoted in Meyer, p. 5.

  [Corporate profits and assets]: Polenberg, p. 13; Perrett, p. 403.

  [“You have to let business make money”]: quoted in Blum, p. 122.

  [Small business in the war]: Jim F. Heath, “American War Mobilization and the Use of Small Manufacturers, 1939-1943,” Business History Review, vol. 46, no. 3 (August 1972), pp. 295-319; Polenberg, pp. 218-19; Lingemann, p. 65; Riddle, pp. 63-64; Blum, pp. 124-31.

  [Union membership]: Lingemann, p. 161; Craf, pp. 181-82.

  [NWLB]: Seidman, pp. 81-86, 272-74; Burns, Soldier, p. 192; Public Papers, vol. 11, pp. 42-48.

  [Maintenance of membership]: see Seidman, ch. 6.

  187 [Labor’s junior status in war]: see Paul A. C. Koistinen, “Mobilizing the World War II Economy: Labor and the Industrial-Military Alliance,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 42 (1973), pp. 443-78.

  [Reuther’s plan]: Jean Gould and Lorena Hickok, Walter Reuther: Labor’s Rugged Individualist (Dodd, Mead, 1972), pp. 188-95, William Knudsen on “socialism” quoted at p. 193; Irving Howe and B. J. Widick, The UAW and Walter Reuther (Random House, 1949), pp. 108-10; Janeway, pp. 220-25.

  [Murray on rank and file]: quoted in Koistinen, p. 468.

  [Labor conditions]: Meyer, passim; Ed Jennings, “Wildcat! The Wartime Strike Wave in Auto,” Radical America, vol. 9, nos. 4-5 (July-August 1975), pp. 77-105. [“Little Steel” and inflation]: Seidman, ch. 7; Koistinen, p. 468.

  187 [Work stoppages]: Seidman, p. 135 (Table); Jennings, p. 89.

  [Lewis in early war years]: Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren VanTine, John L. Lewis (Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1977), ch. 17.

  [“When the mine workers’ children cry”]: quoted in ibid., p. 419.

  [Mine workers’ conflict]: ibid., ch. 18; Seidman, pp. 136-40; Burns, Soldier, pp. 335-37.

  188 [“Damn your coal black soul”]: quoted in Burns, Soldier, p. 337. [“Insurrection against the war”]: quoted in Seidman, p. 144.

  [FDR on resignation and suicide]: see Dubofsky and Van Tine, p. 424.

  [Women as percentage of war work force]: International Labour Office, The War and Women’s Employment: The Experience of the
United Kingdom and the United States (International Labour Office, 1946), pp. 172-74.

  [Sample women’s jobs]: ibid., p. 195; Lingemann, p. 152; Meyer, p. 46; Studs Terkel, “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War Two (Pantheon, 1984), p. 10. [Numbers of women employed, 1944]: ILO, p. 166; Susan M. Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (Twayne, 1982), pp. 77-78.

  [Women’s wages, 1944]: ILO, pp. 199-200, 207.

  [Women workers and unions]: ibid., pp. 237-47; Hartmann, pp. 64-69; Karen Anderson, Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II (Greenwood Press, 1981), pp. 55-60.

  [Rosie the Riveter]: see Paddy Quick, “Rosie the Riveter: Myths and Realities,” Radical America, vol. 9, nos. 4-5 (July-August 1975), pp. 115-31, esp. pp. 115-16; Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II (University of Massachusetts Press, 1984); Sherna B. Gluck, Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change (Twayne Publishers, 1987). [Defense contractors’ hiring policies]: see Lingemann, p. 162.

  [Blacks as percentage of war workers, 1944]: ibid.

  188-9 [Black-white wage differential]: ibid., pp. 164-65.

  189 [NAACP and CORE in the war]: Warren D. St. James, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: A Case Study in Pressure Groups (Exposition Press, 1958), pp. 52, 54 (Table 1); August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968 (Oxford University Press, 1973), ch. 1; Richard M. Dalfiurne, “The ‘Forgotten Years’ of the Negro Revolution,” in Bernard Sternsher, ed., The Negro in Depression and War: Prelude to Revolution, 1930-1945 (Quadrangle, 1969), pp. 298-316; Lee Finkle, “The Conservative Aims of Militant Rhetoric: Black Protest during World War II,” Journal of American History, vol. 60, no. 3 (December 1973), pp. 692-713; Blum, pp. 182-99.

  [Race riots, 1943]: Alfred M. Lee and Norman D. Humphrey, Race Riot (Detroit, 1943) (Octagon Books, 1968); Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States (Lippincott, 1949), chs. 12-13.

  [Employment of black women]: ILO, pp. 184-85; Karen T. Anderson, “Last Hired, First Fired: Black Women Workers during World War II,” Journal of American History, vol. 69, no. 1 (June 1982), pp. 82-97.

  [St. Louis electric company]: Anderson, “Last Hired,” p. 84.

  [Black women’s jobs]: Hartmann, p. 87; Anderson, Wartime Women, p. 39.

  [Japanese internment]: Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis, The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of Japanese-Americans during World War II (Macmillan, 1969); Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (Morrow, 1969), part 2 passim: Carey McWilliams, Prejudice: Japanese-Americans, Symbol of Racial Intolerance (Little, Brown, 1945); Charles Kikuchi, The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concentration Camp, John Modell, ed. (University of Illinois Press, 1973); Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family (University of Washington Press, 1982); Terkel, pp. 28-35; Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy (Morrow, 1976); Thomas James, Exile Within: The Schooling of Japanese-Americans, 1942-1945 (Harvard University Press, 1987).

  [“When I first entered our room”]: Letters of Stanley Shimabukuro, Joseph Goodman Collection, box 1, folder 1, California Historical Society, San Francisco. 190 [“When can we go back to America?”]: quoted in Girdner and Loftis, p. 148.

  [Political leaders and commentators and relocation]: Morton Grodzins, Americans Betrayed: Politics and the Japanese Evacuation (University of Chicago Press, 1949), pp. 254-73, and passim: Girdner and Loftis; Weglyn, p. 72; Burns, Soldier, p. 216; Graham White and John Maze, Harold Ickes of the New Deal (Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 224-25; Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Atlantic Monthly/Little, Brown, 1980), pp. 394-95; Korematsu v. U.S., 323 U.S. 214 (1944); Francis Biddle, in Brief Authority (Doubleday, 1962), ch. 13; Ted Morgan, FDR (Simon and Schuster, 985), pp. 275-76.

  190 [“Politics is out”]: quoted in Burns, Soldier, p. 273.

  [“When a country is at war”]: press conference 803, February 6, 1942, in Public Papers, vol. 11, p. 80.

  [FDR’s involvements in 1942 campaign]: Robert E. Ficken, “Political Leadership in Wartime: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Election of 1942,” Mid-America, vol. 57, no. 1 (January 1975), pp. 20-37; Burns, Soldier, pp. 273-80; Farley, ch. 35.

  191 [“If this be treason”]: quoted in Burns, Soldier, p. 279.

  [Election results, 1942]: ibid., pp. 280-81; Polenberg, pp. 187-92.

  [Commentator on 1918 and 1942]: Burns, Soldier, p. 281.

  [Congressional makeup, 1943]: Polenberg, pp. 192-93.

  [Congressional action against New Deal agencies]: ibid., pp. 79-86; Blum, pp. 234-40.

  [Wagner-Murray-Dingell]: Polenberg, pp. 86-87.

  [Smith-Connally]: Seidman, pp. 188-91.

  [“Dr. New Deal” and “Dr. Win-the-War”]: quoted in Burns, Soldier, p. 423.

  [1942 tax legislation]: Randolph E. Paul, Taxation in the United States (Little, Brown, 1954), pp. 294-326.

  [1943 government spending, national debt, consumer savings]: Burns, Soldier, pp. 362-63, 433-34; Craf, p. 122 (Table 15); Paul, pp. 349-51.

  191-2 [Morgenthau’s 1943 tax proposal and Congress’s substitute]: Paul, pp. 353-70; Blum, p. 243.

  192 [“Vicious piece of legislation”]: quoted in Polenberg, p. 198.

  [“Tax relief bill”]: February 22, 1944, in Public Papers, vol. 13, pp. 80-83, quoted at pp. 80, 82; see also Paul, pp. 371-72.

  [“Calculated and deliberate assault”]: quoted in Burns, Soldier, pp. 435-36.

  [Barkley’s “resignation”]: ibid., pp. 435-37; Paul, pp. 373-75; Public Papers, vol. 13, pp. 85-86.

  [FDR on “Republican” Congress]: see Polenberg, p. 199.

  [Opinion polls on war’s purpose, 1942]: Cantril and Strunk, pp. 1077-78 (item 41), 1083 (items 5-6, 8); see also Richard W. Steele, “American Popular Opinion and the War Against Germany: The Issue of Negotiated Peace, 1942,” Journal of American History, vol. 65, no. 3 (December 1978), pp. 704-23.

  193 [Civilian participation in war effort]: see Perrett, ch. 19, p. 394; Lingemann, ch. 2, pp. 251-52; Manchester, Glory and Dream, p. 303; Burns, Soldier, pp. 158-59; Anna W. M. Wolf and Irma S. Black, “What Happened to Younger People,” in Jack Goodman, ed., While You Were Gone: A Report on Wartime Life in the United States (Simon and Schuster, 1946), p. 75.

  [Eighty-six-year-old Connecticut sentinel]: Interview with Ann Hoskins, in Roy Hoopes, Americans Remember the Home Front: An Oral Narrative (Hawthorn Books, 1977), pp. 281-82.

  [“Private and personal concerns”]: Polenberg, p. 137.

  [OWI]: Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945 (Yale University Press, 1978), chs. 1-2; Catton, pp. 186-95; Blum, pp. 21-45.

  [OWI and the military]: Winkler, pp. 44-51.

  [OWI split between “writers” and “advertisers”]: Blum, pp. 36-39; Polenberg, pp. 52-53.

  [“Encourage discussion”]: MacLeish, quoted in Blum, p. 33.

  [“All levels of intelligence”]: quoted in Polenberg, p. 53.

  [“Step right up”]: quoted in Blum, p. 39.

  [This Is War!]: quoted in Sherman H. Dyer, Radio in Wartime (Greenberg Publisher, 1942), p. 245.

  193-4 [Benny-Livingston routine]: quoted in Winkler, p. 61.

  194 [Hollywood goes to war]: Bernard F. Dick, The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film (University Press of Kentucky, 1985); Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, “What to Show the World: The Office of War Information and Hollywood, 1942-1945,” Journal of American History, vol. 64, no. 1 (June 1977), pp. 87-105; David Culbert, “ ‘Why We Fight’: Social Engineering for a Democratic Society at War,” in K. R. M. Short, Film & Radio Propaganda in World War II (University of Tennessee Press, 1983), pp. 173-91; Bosley Crowther, “The Movies,” in Goodman, pp. 511-32; Lingemann, pp. 168-210.

  194 [“Her spies never sleep”]: Peter Lorre, quoted in Lingemann, p. 195.

&n
bsp; [“He dies for freedom”]: Robert Taylor, quoted in ibid., p. 200.

  [“STUDIOS SHELVE WAR STORIES”]: ibid., p. 206.

  [Tin Pan Alley’s efforts]: ibid., pp. 210-23; Perrett, pp. 241-43.

  [War advertisements]: Raymond Rubicam, “Advertising,” in Goodman, pp. 433-34; Life, March 30, 1942, p. 90; Life, March 23, 1942, p. 111; Life, March 16, 1942, p. 60; see also Lingemann, pp. 291-97.

  [Coke as essential war product]: Blum, pp. 107-8.

  [“Who’s Afraid”]: Rubicam, p. 432.

  [The GI ideology]: Samuel Stouffer et al., The American Soldier: Adjustment During Army Life (Princeton University Press, 1949), vol. 1, chs. 5, 8, 9, and vol. 2, chs. 2, 3, and passim; Mauldin; Blum, pp. 64-70; Burns, Soldier, pp. 470-72; Mina Curtiss, ed., Letters Home (Little, Brown, 1944); Manchester, Glory and Dream, pp. 282-83; Ralph G. Martin, The GI War, 1941-1945 (Little, Brown, 1967), p. 55 and passim.

  [“Born housewife”]: quoted in Blum, p. 65.

  195 [“Wish to hell they were someplace else”]: Mauldin, p. 16.

  [“Blueberry pie”]: quoted in Blum, p. 66.

  [Soldiers’ talk of creature comforts]: ibid., p. 67.

  [Warphoto]: Arthur B. Tourtellot, ed., Life’s Picture History of World War II (Simon and Schuster, 1950), p. 207.

  [“ . . the slow, incessant waves”]: Sergeant Charles E. Butler, “Lullaby,” quoted in Martin, p. 240.

  The Rainbow Coalition Embattled

  [FDR’s trip to Casablanca]: Burns, Soldier, pp. 316-17.

  [Casablanca Conference]: Grigg, pp. 59-79; Dallek, pp. 368-72; Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, ch. 11; Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (Houghton Mifflin, 1950), pp. 674-95; Burns,Soldier, pp. 317-24; Raymond G. O’Connor, Diplomacy for Victory: FDR and Unconditional Surrender (Norton, 1971); Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory, 1941-1945 (Viking, 1973), ch. 2.