Their travel expenses would be refunded at an interview at which they would
be required to provide proof of U.S. citizenship and pass a physical examination.
Anyone already engaged in defense work would not be eligible for hire.
In other ads, electrical engineers, engravers, estimators, grinder hands, and
washers were all in high demand. The ads specified white cooks, dishwashers, and
dry cleaners. The only ad that crossed the color line was for a “porter—colored”
who would command good pay if experienced.
192 First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941
It is an ancient adage that nothing happens until someone sells something. An
advertiser who appealed to salesmen earning less than $40 a week tempted them
with a proposition that would enable four men to make a lush $75 and up weekly.
The most unusual offering of the day was for a man and wife without children
to move into an unfurnished apartment on the premises of a children’s amuse-
ment park. The man would be required to care for eighteen ponies and assist in
the maintenance of the grounds, while the woman would be asked to work in the
park, during the summer months only. Long before there was a McDonald’s, there
was a steady demand for hamburger men, a category including grill men, counter
men, house men and sandwich men.
Life in These United States: Life Goes On
The excitements of a world at war could not suppress America’s devotion to the
world of sport. A picture in the Los Angeles Times featured baseball All-Star Hank Greenberg, the Detroit Tigers heavy hitter, who had recently been released from
the Army after serving his year as a draftee. The caption writer noted that the
$50,000-a-year outfielder and batting champion would be reduced to Army pay. 26
*
Nor did war stop the news of people and society. The Atlanta Constitution noted
the passing of a member of one of the most prominent of all Georgia families,
Judge John S. Candler. His brothers included Bishop Warren A. Candler of
the Southern Methodist Church and Asa G. Candler, founder of the Coca-Cola
Company. Obviously a rising star, at age twenty-one the judge had been elected
a member of the Board of Stewards of the Epworth Methodist Church in Edge-
wood, Georgia. At twenty-three he was appointed Solicitor-General of the Stone
Mountain Circuit, of which he was later elected judge. He then sat on the Geor-
gia Supreme Court. His interests had included not only religion but education;
he had served on the board of trustees of Emory University, LaGrange College,
Wesleyan College, and Young Harris College. His vigor was testified to by the
fact that he had buried two wives and was survived by a third. 27
There was news of a younger generation in Atlanta. “Staggering the Stag
Line” was no new sensation for Larue Mizell who, it was reported, had been
the center of attention ever since she was old enough to don an evening dress.
Her brunette beauty was said to stand out even among the dazzling ranks of the
1941–42 Debutante Club. Much appreciated were the fascinating personality
and the boundless energy of one who was born with the proverbial silver spoon.
However caught up in the social world, Larue attended the Atlanta School of
Interior Decoration. Readers were informed that she was a graduate of North
Fulton High School, a member of the Pi Pi Sorority, the Pirate Club and the Girls’
Circle of the Tulula Falls School. 28
*
There was always an audience for news from the world of the silver screen. A
picture of comedian Lou Costello with two bathing-suited beauties was standard
Wednesday, December 10, 1941 193
fare; the girls’ lavish display of legs was in that era known as cheesecake. 29 The irrepressible Mickey Rooney, star of the Andy Hardy series, was to wed Ava Gardner, daughter of Mrs. J. B. Gardner of Rockridge, North Carolina.
America at War: As We Go Marching On
It was only three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but in that brief period
there had been a complete sea change of opinion. The New York Times pictured
Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, noting that he had been among the
fiercest of the critics of the President’s foreign policy. He was now an all-out
advocate for total war. 30
In the most dramatic about-face of them all, columnist Westbrook Pegler, the
most acidic enemy of the New Deal, wrote, under the headline “Roosevelt Was
Right”:
No American has more angrily detested and suspected most of the internal
operations of the New Deal, but no American more admires now the tena-
cious bravery of President Roosevelt in his war policy than this author of
many criticisms of the Roosevelt Administration. 31
The President, he said, had already made up his mind that the country would
have to fight for its life against Germany and Japan. He had then set about pre-
paring the American people for war lest they be caught unarmed or spiritually
unprepared. The President, Pegler said, had fought almost alone and had been
widely denounced for his efforts. But the President had stood by his convictions
where a weaker man would have given way and hidden behind excuses. It was
that conviction that belied the charge that he was a war-monger who was selling
out America to the British. 32
Long lines of volunteer recruits kept pressing against the doors of the recruit-
ing stations in numbers never before seen. Yet however enthusiastic the volunteers,
there would be need for manpower far beyond the first wave of eager would-be
warriors. Congress acted promptly. The House and Senate Military Affairs Com-
mittees prepared legislation extending the period of service for all who were then
wearing the uniform through the duration of the war and six months thereafter.
They would be available for service outside the Western Hemisphere, overturning
all previous limitations. The Committees proposed neither to lower the draft age
of twenty-one to eighteen nor to expand it from twenty-four to forty-five years.
It was, nevertheless, widely expected that the draft ages would be extended at an
early date. 33 America was girding up its loins. Millions of men, though not yet marching, were being propelled to unknown destinies and fates of which they had
no inkling.
Notes
1.
Los Angeles Times , December 10, 1941, 1
2.
New York Times , December 10, 1941, 1
194 First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941
3.
Oregonian , December 10, 1941, 2
4.
Houston Chronicle , December 10, 1941, 1
5.
New York Times , December 10, 1941, 7
6.
New York Times , December 10, 1941, 7
7.
New York Times , December 10, 1941, 7
8.
Atlanta Constitution , December 10, 1941, 10
9.
New York Times , December 10, 1941, 20
10. Washington Post , December 10, 1941, 1
11. New York Times , December 10, 1941, 14
12. New York Times , December 10, 1941, 14
13. Washington Post , December 10, 1941, 1
14. Atlanta Constitution , December 10, 1941, 1
15. Los Angeles Times , December 10, 1941, 21
16. Washin
gton Post , December 10, 1941, 1
17. New York Times , December 10, 1941, 2
18. New York Times , December 10, 1941, 9
19. Oregonian , December 10, 1941, 1
20. Los Angeles Times , December 10, 1941, 1
21. Atlanta Constitution , December 10, 1941, 12
22. Chicago Tribune , December 10, 1941, 1
23. New York Times , December 10, 1941, 24
24. Houston Chronicle , December 10, 1941, 11
25. Houston Chronicle , December 10, 1941, 11
26. Los Angeles Times , December 10, 1941, 23
27. Atlanta Constitution , December 10, 1941, 10
28. Atlanta Constitution , December 10, 1941, 18
29. Los Angeles Times , December 10, 1941, 17
30. New York Times , December 10, 1941, 8
31. Washington Post , December 10, 1941, 17
32. Washington Post , December 10, 1941, 17
33. New York Times , December 10, 1941, 1
18
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1941
FIGURE 18.1 See color plate section.
Poster by MacLean. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, W3.46/1:G31.
196 First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941
An Expanded War: Hitler Speaks
Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering spoke the truth in introducing Hitler before
the Reichstag in Berlin on December 11. The war, he said, had now become in
the truest sense of the word a world war. Turning to Hitler he pleaded: “Fuehrer,
speak to us.”
When Hitler spoke, it was in terms of injured innocence of which he was a past
master. He was, he said, loyally fulfilling his obligations under the Tripartite Pact in
view of America’s attack on Japan. He told the cheering Reichstag:
I thank all of you. You have heard with eagerness that at last one state, a
first-class power, has risen against this violation of the rules of decency.
Not only Germany but all the decent people in Europe are deeply satis-
fied with the Japanese challenge against the American power. 1
This was all, he said, part and parcel of British attempts to encircle Germany:
only a blind man could have failed to see Russian preparations for its attack on
Germany. He reverted to one of his favorite images—the Greeks defending civili-
zation against the onslaught of the Persian hordes.
Not only had Russia attacked Germany. With all of its resources the United
States had been engaged in an attack on Germany. Had Hitler been misreading
the Chicago Tribune ?
To achieve his goals, Hitler boasted, he was the head of the strongest mili-
tary force in the world, of the strongest air force and of the most gallant navy.
To December 1, the Reichswehr had captured more than 1,800,000 prisoners,
destroyed or captured 21,391 guns, 22,541 aircraft and 21,291 tanks. It was winter
alone that had stayed the achievement of the final victory but in the coming sum-
mer “nothing will be able to stop the German advance.”
He laid out his grievances against the United States. Germany had never possessed
a North American colony; it had never adopted an antagonistic attitude toward the
United States, but its sons had given their blood fighting for liberty in the United
States. Germany had never waged war against the United States. Instead America
had entered the First World War in 1917 for reasons since proven to be spurious.
The Fuehrer catalogued events and actions he claimed as hostile to the Third
Reich: the President’s “quarantine the aggressors” speech of October 5, 1937; the
freezing (oddly enough) of French assets; the sale of fifty destroyers to England, the
landing of American troops in Iceland; and America’s Atlantic operations against
the German U-boat fleet. All this, he claimed, was due either to hatred or a desire
to take over the British Empire.
Germany was fighting, he assured his audience, not only for herself but for the
entire European continent. Enlarging upon his theme, Hitler thanked God for the
opportunity given to him and to the German nation, to his generation, to write a
page of honor in the long history of Germany:
I must thank Providence for putting me at the head of the German nation in
this war which will decide the fate not only of Germany but of Europe and
the entire world throughout the next five hundred to a thousand years. 2 , 3 , 4
Thursday, December 11, 1941 197
Hitler broached familiar themes. The two men responsible for the enmity
between the United States and Germany were Woodrow Wilson and Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. There was between Hitler and Roosevelt an unbridgeable
gulf. Roosevelt was the product of privilege with all the advantages of a wealthy
upbringing; Hitler had come from a small, very poor family and always had to
make his own way.
Hitler closed with a pro forma denunciation of the Jews as the cause of all evil. It was anticlimactic when he informed the Reichstag that the German Ambassador
to the United States would ask for his passport on the morrow, establishing a state
of war between the two countries. 5
As was expected, Italy’s declaration of war followed promptly in the wake of
Germany’s. From his balcony overlooking Rome’s Plaza Venezia, Mussolini told
the Italian people that it was a day of solemn decision, one that would usher in a
new course in the history of continents. The Tripartite Pact, he boasted, gathered
around its colors a force of 250 million determined men.
One man, one man only, a real tyrannical democrat, through a series of
infinite provocations, betraying with a supreme fraud the population of
his country, had wanted this war and had prepared for it day by day with
diabolical obstinacy.
It would be a privilege, he said, to fight in Italy’s cause:
Tomorrow, the Tripartite Pact will become an instrument of a just peace
between the peoples.
Italians! Once more arise and be worthy of this historical hour!
We shall win. 6
The diplomatic niceties proceeded in a frigid atmosphere. Secretary of State
Hull would not receive Dr. Hans Thomsen, the German Chargé d’Affaires, but
delegated the task instead to the Chief of the European Division, Ray Atherton.
He in turn told Dr. Thomsen what everyone knew: they were only formalizing
the reality of a European war that matched the Nazi regime against a free Ameri-
can civilization.
In Rome, Italian Foreign Minister Count Gian Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s
son-in-law, called for the American Chargé d’Affaires, George Wadsworth, and
informed him that Italy considered itself at war with the United States. 7
President Roosevelt responded quickly to the German and Italian declarations
of war. In his message to Congress, he said that what had been long known and
long expected had finally taken place. The forces endeavoring to enslave the entire
world, he said, now were moving toward this hemisphere:
Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization.
There was danger, he warned, in delay. He called for a rapid and united effort
by the peoples of all the world to ensure a victory of the forces of justice and
righteousness over the forces of savagery and barbarism. 8
198 First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941
Almost immediately, the Senate acted and this time the vote was unanimous.
In subsequent action, Congress removed any restrictions on the use of U.S. forces
anywhere in the world. The issue of an American expeditionary force was finally
determined. There would be one, or many, though they might bear different
names in different places at different times. 9
So it had come to pass. America was at war, a war on two oceans and the
seven seas, a war that would be waged on a hundred fronts, verifying Reichs-
marschall Goering’s assessment that it was truly a world war. America now faced
two extraordinarily powerful military machines, those of Germany and Japan,
aided by Italy and a motley crew of secondary powers. Yet the American people
had never arrived at the conscious decision that they must go to war against these
forces of evil as they were surely known and shown to be. In the long decade
starting in 1931, the American people had stood by as Japan ravaged China. They
were sympathetic, yes; but expressions of support were moral more than material.
America had waged economic warfare against Japan with its export prohibitions
and economic freezes. But the thought of an American-initiated assault on the
Japanese Empire would have evoked only horror in the American public.
Similarly, America had watched, albeit with dismay and disgust, the rise of
Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. It had stood aside at the time of the Anschluss,
and the Munich Agreement. It had remained a spectator as Germany crushed its
FIGURE 18.2 President Roosevelt signing Declaration of War against Japan.
Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62–15185.
Thursday, December 11, 1941 199
British and French enemies and offered the equivalent of tea and sympathy when
London was burning. A strong isolationist movement had argued that America
had no stake and no place in European conflicts; and the farthest the “interven-
tionists” would go could be fairly described as “all aid short of war.” The Ameri-
can position could be likened to that of a bystander who, urging another to take
on a fearsome bully, offers to hold his coat.
An Expanded War: Challenge and Response
In this newly expanded war there was good news from North Africa. Common-
wealth troops had definitively raised the siege of the Libyan port of Tobruk. The
Crucible of a Generation Page 31