Second World War, The

by Corrigan, Gordon

  Rationing was sporadic and initially varied by area (petrol was rationed on the East Coast but not in Texas), although it was eventually extended to the whole country. Shoes were rationed to two pairs a year, except for children, who grew out of them more rapidly; whisky was unobtainable for the whole of the war, but there was a long tradition of the distilling of moonshine in America so no one had to go teetotal; most popular brands of cigarettes were rationed but there were lots of previously unheard of makes that were not; rubber and sugar were rationed in varying quantities; jackets were made without lapels and trousers without turn-ups; most electrical goods were still freely available, and, if for any reason they were not, then smuggling across the Canadian border was rife.

  American public opinion, carefully massaged by Roosevelt before Pearl Harbor, was strongly in favour of the war after it, and Americans, with more money in their wage packets than ever before, rushed to buy War Bonds, save scrap iron and join Civil Defense units. Propaganda – not that the American administration would ever have called it that – concentrated on heroic tales of brave young pilots who sank a Japanese battleship or Marines on Pacific islands putting up signs saying: ‘Send More Japs’, most of which were apocryphal and many downright lies that often drew strong criticism from men actually serving at the front. In one example, an aircraft manufacturer published an advertisement boasting: ‘Who’s afraid of the big bad Focke Wulf?’ only to receive a letter signed by the commanding officer and every member of an army air force unit saying: ‘We are!’

  Although support for the troops at home and overseas was solid, it was sometimes misplaced. Special issues of Time magazine and the New Yorker without any advertisements were printed for the troops as they were cheaper to produce; the troops objected – they liked the ads. The Paymaster General, responsible for the nation’s mails, forbade the sending of Esquire magazine to military addresses on the ground that its (remarkably innocent by today’s standards) pin-ups were bad for the men’s health; new uniforms for the women’s services, which were designed by a leading fashion house and included the issue of bras and girdles, were popular with the girls (and no doubt the men) but vehemently opposed by the fundamentalist Christian right on the grounds that taking women away from the home was bad enough, but to encourage a lustful appearance was even worse.

  Congressional and presidential elections went ahead as normal; and this sometimes did skew the strategy of the war. There was and is strong suspicion that General Mark Clark’s rush to capture Rome in disregard of what he was supposed to be doing was connected with Roosevelt’s standing for re-election that year. Yet there was much liberal legislation passed: the GI Bill was a remarkable piece of reforming zeal which promised free education to every returning veteran, and an act was passed giving the vote to servicemen, who previously were not permitted to vote, and emphasizing the non-political nature of their calling. After the first war, Congress had refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and would not join the League of Nations; now, in a fundamental about-face, both Houses voted overwhelmingly to join the United Nations and to set up an international monetary fund and a world bank to regulate international finance, which resulted in the Bretton Woods Agreement, signed in July 1944.

  Since the turn of the century American public opinion had been wary of the Japanese and this was particularly so in California, where measures had been introduced to curb Japanese immigration and ownership of land. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent fighting in the Philippines brought fear and hatred of the Yellow Peril into the open. California had around 125,000 residents of Japanese ancestry – either Issei, born in Japan and first-generation immigrants, or Nisei, second-generation – most of them naturalized American citizens, and making up only about 1 per cent of the population of the state. Nevertheless, immediately after Pearl Harbor the California state government dismissed all Japanese from the civil service, revoked licences to practise law and medicine and forbade Japanese fishermen to put to sea. This was followed by unofficial discrimination: businesses refused to serve Japanese; insurance companies cancelled policies held by Japanese; banks refused to honour Japanese cheques; anti-Japanese posters and notices appeared; and newspapers published inflammatory editorials averring that the Japanese had been reconnoitring the American coastline and spying out its defences since before Pearl Harbor and that all residents of the Japanese race, regardless of their actual nationality, were just waiting for a chance to rise up and assist in an invasion of California.

  What had started in California began to spread, and the governors of Nevada, Idaho, Arkansas and Kansas all issued statements of varying severity designed to prevent Japanese settlement there. Finally, in February 1942, the Japanese problem became a national one when the federal government ordered the internment of all Japanese residents of California, Oregon and Washington (initial attempts to intern Hawaiian Japanese were dropped, presumably because they made up most of the population). Those to be interned were given forty-eight hours to settle their affairs and were then rounded up and taken to camps with only personal belongings that could be carried by hand. The camps were surrounded by barbed wire, searchlights and armed guards, accommodation was basic and cramped, and ablutions, dining facilities and laundry were communal. In January 1943, however, the US Army announced that it would accept for enlistment Nisei volunteers, and 17,000 internees did join. No doubt their motivation was partly to escape the boredom and lack of freedom of the camps, but there was also a feeling that only by fighting for America could they prove their loyalty to their adopted country. Eventually, in December 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that to intern American citizens against whom there was no evidence to indicate disloyalty was unconstitutional and internees began to be released. Many found that their property and businesses had been sequestered by whites who had no intention of giving them back and the legal arguments went on for many years after the war. At the time, the internment of Japanese Americans was generally seen as an unfortunate military necessity, but later it was, and still is, denounced by many as being different only in degree to what the Germans were doing to the Jews.

  Meanwhile, the American Civil War had not been fought for the emancipation of the slaves, whatever propaganda value that slogan may have had amongst northern liberals at the time, and on the outbreak of war Negroes, as they were then referred to, were very much second-class citizens and discriminated against in employment, housing, medical care and education. In 1940 there were two black officers in the United States Army and none in the navy. The army was strictly segregated, with separate black regiments with white officers being only rarely used as other than static guards and labour battalions, while the navy only recruited blacks as kitchen hands and mess stewards. More blacks were commissioned as the war went on, but they were rarely placed in command of white troops, and there was a disproportionate number of judicial executions of black soldiers for offences such as rape, still a capital offence in US law and regarded as particularly horrifying if committed by a black on a white. Although there were exceptions – there was a USAAF fighter group composed entirely of black pilots, the so-called ‘Tuskegee Airmen’, which was a highly commended bomber escort force in Italy – Americans both in and out of uniform were reluctant to see their black citizens involved in combat. The state legislature of South Carolina announced that the war was being fought for White Supremacy, and black emancipation made little outward progress during the war. Labour shortages in some industries did help black employment chances, but it was not until near the end of the war that President Truman ordered the armed forces to move towards full integration. It would not be until after the Korean War that it would be achieved.

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  Perhaps surprisingly for a nation where war was regarded by many as a normal extension of the political process, Germany was reluctant to interfere with the traditional norms of society, and a marked lack of enthusiasm for war in 1939 reinforced the government’s determination to give the impression of busine
ss as usual. As the German strategy was one of short wars and swift victories, this made sense, but, even when it became apparent that a swift end to hostilities had eluded them, NSDAP ministers were reluctant to gear up for total war. A policy of bread and circuses was not confined to the Roman Empire and the NSDAP state made great efforts to encourage public entertainment, to the extent of conscripting actors, musicians, artists and entertainers of both sexes into the Actors War Service Office headed by Goebbels as Reich minister for culture, and keeping cinemas and theatres open. Much use was made of radio, not only for straightforward propaganda designed to keep public opinion behind the war, but in fostering a sense of togetherness by airing interviews with men at the front and by request programmes (one Prussian infantry regiment on the Eastern Front asked for the sound of the bells of Potsdam cathedral to be broadcast – they got it). Rationing was introduced at the start of the war but, as long as the pact with Russia held, there was no shortage of basic foodstuffs, and even after the onset of Barbarossa the British blockade was not as effective as it had been in the first war, not least because it had to cover a far greater area.Food was anyway imported into Germany from the occupied countries, and, once the Ukraine had been taken, its harvest of grain and sugar beet was used to supplement the rations of the armed forces on the Eastern Front. From 1944, however, with the advance of the Red Army and the loss of captured territories, much more severe rationing was introduced, the priority being the armed forces and then those involved in war production. For the rest of the civilian population, the basic ration comprised black rye bread, potatoes, vegetables and limited amounts of meat, usually pork. Those in rural areas fared better than their counterparts in the cities, and, while there was a black market in ration coupons, the introduction of the death sentence for its practitioners kept it under control. As the war went on, new clothes became almost impossible to obtain and new shoes could only be purchased if the old ones were handed in.

  There was great reluctance to employ German women in war work – the NSDAP ideal of a racially pure, classless, structured society with the married woman at home producing lots of children rather militated against it – and women whose husbands were away at the front received a family allowance, abated by any money they might earn from employment. Initially women between seventeen and twenty-five who were not married and not in education were encouraged to join the Reichsarbeitsdienst or ‘Reich Labour Service’ for employment as carers for the sick and the old and as home helps, but, as the war went on and casualties on the Eastern Front mounted, women gradually became more and more involved, and in mid-1944 all women between the ages of seventeen and fifty were liable for conscription for war work. By then, in fact, women operated (one hesitates to use the term ‘manned’) most of the anti-aircraft defence systems within the Reich, as indeed they did in the United Kingdom. Also within the armed services, women were increasingly employed as clerks, radar and radio operators, telephone operators and, of course, nurses. The employment of three female pre-war stunt pilots, one of them being Hanna Reitsch, as flyers by the Luftwaffe was unusual and not repeated, and it was done more for propaganda purposes than because there was any real intention to employ women as combatants.

  The dark side of the home war in Germany was the liquidation not just of Jews but of all those deemed useless or racially inferior stock, including the euthanasia of the severely disabled and the incurably mentally ill. The logic for the latter was the removal of the inferior or damaged genes from the breeding pool, but, as this could have been done under an existing German law (one still on the statute book) which required a certificate of medical fitness to marry, the aim could have been achieved without resort to judicial murder. How much the civilian population knew about all this is still debated, but given the number of people involved in the extermination industry, all of whom of course had friends and relatives, it is inconceivable that it was not widely known – the cleverness of the policymakers residing in their ability to convince the public that what they were doing was for the greater good of the nation.

  The extraordinary fact is that support for the war, and for Hitler, was strong even up to the end, and it was not all imposed by the fear of being sent off to a concentration camp. Germans believed, and even when they were trying to scratch out a living amidst a heap of rubble, the Russians were coming ever closer, and the young boys and old men of the Volksturm were all that stood between them and complete disintegration, they still believed; the tendency was to blame the officials or the advisers rather than Hitler himself, and, even if they had doubts,‘Victory or Siberia’ remained a powerful rallying cry. While the upper echelons of society had not been greatly changed by Hitler’s Germany – the generals, the men of business, the bureaucrats, the landowners, the upper middle classes stayed much as they were – considerable opportunities had been created lower down. A commission in the army was no longer the prerogative of the aristocracy or the grammar school boy: a young man of humbler origins could now make a career for himself as an officer, and, while he adhered to the professional standards of the old army, unlike it he was politicized and loyal to the regime and to Hitler personally. In this war, unlike the last, there were no mutinies, no individual surrenders of units and no mass desertions, and this applied to the civilian population as much as to the armed forces.

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  Italy had neither the industrial base nor the financial muscle to engage in modern war. The bulk of the population had no desire to fight anyone but, if they had to, then, despite resentment over Italy’s treatment after the first war, many would have preferred to have been on the side of the Allies. Had Mussolini been able to provide quick victories and obvious economic gains, then public opinion would no doubt have moved from coolness towards the war to wholehearted support for it. But fascist propaganda was unable to disguise a long series of Italian defeats and embarrassments, a pill made doubly difficult to swallow by the knowledge that only German intervention had prevented complete collapse in North Africa, Greece and Yugoslavia. Furthermore, while Italy’s African adventures and intervention in the Balkans could both be presented as necessary for the reconstitution of a Roman Empire, few Italians could see any point in sending soldiers to the Russian front, particularly when by February 1943 75,000 had been killed and over 50,000 had been evacuated back to Italy with severe wounds, disease or frostbite.89 The 11 December 1941 declaration of war on the USA, where large numbers of Italians had relatives, came as a severe shock while Italy’s zones of occupation in France and Greece provided no advantages and only administrative headaches.

  By European standards, Italy was a poor country even before the war. With a population roughly the same as that of Britain and France, in 1940 Italy’s gross national income was one quarter of that of Britain’s and one half of that of France. Such wealth that existed was unevenly spread, with poverty endemic in the south and in Sicily, while the higher standards of living in the industrial north did nothing to heal the traditional north–south divide. Corruption and profiteering were widespread, and while the government tried to stamp them out its efforts were dogged by incompetence, not assisted by Mussolini’s habit of removing officials deemed to have failed and replacing them with functionaries even less capable. In March 1943 a series of strikes by factory workers protesting against inflation and wage control was bought off by the printing of money, which only increased inflation and did nothing to improve the ability, or inability, of Italian industry to support the war effort, made worse by the high costs of imported raw materials which had to be paid for by scarce hard currency. Once the Allies landed in Sicily, bombing of the Italian mainland, previously relatively light, increased, and, while it never approached the severity of the campaign against Germany, nor did it create anything like the same destruction, to a population unused to direct assault it had a much greater effect on public morale than the actual damage warranted.

  Domestic opposition to fascism and to Italy’s participation in Germany’s war was limit
ed and mainly amongst the communists and the clergy, although Mussolini’s concordat with the Church stifled much of the latter, but it did increase once Italy left the war and, nominally at least, rejoined on the Allied side. There was in any case an inherent dislike of Germans, fanned by a suspicion that Germany had covetous eyes on those areas of the South Tyrol obtained from Austria after the first war, and Italians could never understand the German obsession with eradicating the Jews. Once fighting began on the Italian mainland, the lot of the population was slow to improve in the liberated areas, and a lot worse in those under German occupation, where the removal to Germany of large numbers of forced labourers (many of whom never returned) encouraged physical resistance, which, although exaggerated after the war for perfectly understandable reasons of Italian self-respect, did cause some problems for the occupiers, particularly in rural regions. The re-establishment of civil government as the fighting moved north was not helped by conflicting Allied views: the British wished to preserve the monarchy, while the Americans cared nothing for the king and wanted to devolve control to the liberal (and republican) political parties. There was also much Allied suspicion of the Vatican. The British, and even more so the Americans, were particularly incensed by Pope Pius XII’s welcoming of a Japanese embassy and his request that black soldiers not be included in the units garrisoning Rome.90 The Allies thought that he had condoned German expansion and had not taken a strong enough stance against the rounding up and killing of Jews. The Church’s view was and is that open and outright condemnation would only have made matters worse, and might have led to similar persecution of Roman Catholics, that the pope did achieve much amelioration behind the scenes and that the Vatican was instrumental in hiding many Jews and in providing false papers for others. That may well be so, but the argument has not gone away, and has resurfaced recently with the implementation of the first steps towards the elevation of Pius to sainthood. That this is being done under the aegis of a German pope has done nothing to improve public perceptions.