Welcome to tcu. Welcome to the annual Lance Corporal benjamin w schmitz symposium on war. Conflict and society. My name is kara dixon and im the Lance CorporalBenjamin W Schmidt. Professor here in the history department. Its my honor to welcome you here tonight. Whether you are in this building with us or joining us from home or your campus via cspans American History tv, the Lance CorporalBenjamin W Schmidt symposium on war. Conflict and society is an annual series which we consider the experiences and consequences of wars and conflicts in various times and places. It is named in memory of Benjamin Whetstone schmidt, a former tcu student and marine scout sniper who died in afghanistan in october 2011. Benjamin history. And it is our honor to have this opportunity to further love of history and to consider cost of war. In an annual symposium that we hold in his memory. We thank those who make this symposium possible most especially dr. David and theresa schmidt. And we thank the society for military, as well as tcus department history. The adrienne college of liberal and the comparative race ethnic studies. We also thank leslie makinson and stacy tyson, all of their work that makes this symposium tonight, we focus our study of wars experiences, consequences and costs on world two by most any measurable tally, the war brought more destruction than the world has ever seen. It touched all corners of the globe impacting the lives of the powerful, the powerless in equal measure. Here at tcu, the university altered, the academic calendar to facilitate speedy graduations, those who would go on to wartime service. And it welcomed Training Programs for Navy Officers and military chaplain is the school of nursing enrollment boomed after the government created the cadet nursing program, which funded education in exchange for wartime service. Like most americans, t. C. , students were sheltered from the wars direct impact, even as changed their lives in profound ways as they grappled with the wars meaning daily, though never more than they did when it claimed the lives of their family friends. Over 1000 students and faculty from tcu served in the war. 59 of them died while serving the war left its mark. Our campus and indeed across the nation in ways that were both tragic and profound for many veterans return home brought the beginning of a long struggle to secure the democratic principles for which they had fought. And tonight we will hear about the ways that World War Two simultaneously opened and closed, the ways that it ignited extinguished flames of hope for americans. And so it is my pleasure to introduce dr. Thomas guglielmo, who is professor of american studies and chair of the department of american studies at George Washington university, a scholar of, race and ethnic studies, immigration and 20th century u. S. Social, cultural and political history professor. Guglielmo teaches a variety of courses on civil rights, race, World War Two in the us state. He will speak tonight to us tonight about his most recent book divisions a new history racism and resistance in americas World War Two up two military, which was published 2021 by Oxford University press. The book won the society for histories distinguished book award was a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman prize for military history. Professor guglielmo, his first book, white on arrival race and power in chicago, 1892 1945, was also published by Oxford University press in 2003 and also several awards, including the organization of american historians, frederick jackson, turner award and the society of american historians, and alan nevins. Hes written widely in academic journals, including journal of American History, american journal of sociology and, as well for outlets including the washington post, the chicago reporter and the conversation. Were honored to have him with us this evening. So please join me in welcoming professor thomas guglielmo. Thank you so much, professor vic, for for that wonderful introduction. Thank you so much for the invitation to be here. I want to thank the department of history here, tcu, for having me. I want to thank leslie makinson for taking care of all the behind scenes logistics that have made my my first visit ever to tcu i really, really wasnt one i want to, of course the Schmidt Family for making this symposium possible and i want to thank you all for braving these storms to make it out here tonight to be with me. I really, really appreciate it. So tonight i want to talk about this book of mine that came out a year and a half ago called the visions and. Its a kind of a long book. Theres lot in it. But what i want to do over the next 45 minutes or so is kind of give what i see as the highlights of the book. What i see is its most salient arguments. Its sometimes hard to follow these kinds of presentations. So in order to make it a little bit easier, i, ive broken up my talk into three parts. So the first part is called divisions, the second part is called descent and the third part is called aftermaths. Part one divisions, americas world two military was a force of unalloyed good and not simply because it helped save the world from nazi ism and totalitarianism. It also managed to unify a frame a famously fractious american people. At least thats the good war story. Many americans long told themselves from the very earliest days of mobilization right up until the present day. So heres president Franklin Delano roosevelt in the fall of 1940, when he signs the first peacetime draft. The selective training and service act 1940. Heres his prediction about the impact of military service on the nation. Quote in military service, americans from all walks of life will learn to live side by side, to depend upon each other in military drills and maneuvers, and do appreciate each others dignity. As americans, citizens, universal service will bring not only greater preparedness for war, but a wider distribution of tolerance and understanding to enjoy the blessings of peace by wars end, roosevelts predictions had come true. That is, if you believe what you see on the big screen and what you read in popular books during the war. Hollywood. Im sure some of you have seen these films, films and popular books that came out during the war, showcased a limitless supply of plural platoons. As one scholar put it quite consciously quote, quite consciously, these platoons were composed of one , one , a southern boy, and a sprinkling of Second Generation italians, irish and scandinavians, poles and of, quote, these stories about unity in uniform live on in his 1998 bestseller, the greatest generation, tom brokaw assured his readers that americas World War Two gis, quote, were fuzed by a Common Mission and a common ethos, which was so uniformly profound that more than a half century later, they still all quote each other, completed six years later, the World War Two memorial on the national mall, which is blocks from where i teach, according to its website, this memorial quotes as an important symbol of national unity, a timeless reminder of the moral strength and awesome power that can flow when a free people are at once united and bonded in a common and just cause. And so this is an office of war information poster from the warriors perfectly this this dominant theme of unity in uniform. My talk today in the book its based on tell a decidedly different story. They stress the book in this talk stress not national unities but racist divisions as a fundamental feature of americas World War Two military and of the world it helped to create in postwar america. Who served who fought . Who died, who gave, and who was forced to follow them . Who received the best ratings and jobs and pay and promotions . Who was Court Martialed . Who receive furlough and leaves . Who received honorable and dishonorable discharges . Who aided the Officers Club . Who at the posts best center, who drank at the nicest pub in cherbourg france or swam in the best pool in calcutta, india, shaping every imaginable aspect of military life. Colorlines spoke definitively in all these matters and more so if colorlines spoke definitively, what did they have to say . Most simply, the fundamental answer is whites supremacy. The us military was a sprawling structure of white domination. The the the the most argument in my book, at the risk of sounding let me explain precisely what i mean by this. The us military offered a grossly disproportionate share of power and. To those who could claim status as white in comparison to all other people, whites had a much easier time joining the military or a particular branch or service in the military, breaking into the officer ranks, rising within them, occupying all the highest positions of authority. They had a much easier time receiving skilled, wellpaid work and promotions. They had a much easier time enjoying adequate recreational facilities on bases all over the country and all over the world. They had a much easier time in combat and receiving the prestige that came with it. They had a much easier getting a fair shake in the militarys criminal justice system. They had a much easier time earning awards and decorations, and they had much easier time being discharged honorably on time and with access to gi bill benefits. I could go on, but the bottom line is this white people, countless unearned in americas war, two armed forces. But who were these white people . Exactly. And in relation to whom did they enjoy these advantages . And thats where things get a little more complicated, actually, because the military did not just have single color line that divided all. It had multiple crisscross color lines. These lines defined whites and everyone else various and sometimes contradict three ways. So im just in order to kind of make this abstract idea a little more concrete, im going to mention to all of these color lines now. But there were more but these were the most important ones. So the first one, the militarys most important racist division, was what one africanamerican soldier training at camp shelby, mississippi, in 1942 called, quote, fool lines that say black boys on this side and white on the other. So this black white color line in this black white color kind of formation, black people included anyone with any discernable trace of african ancestry. But the all important white category was a moving target at its most inclusive. And this is something that surprised whiteness, corralled everyone who was not black, creating what some scholars today call a black nonblack line. The power in this in these cases, the power of antiblack racism. Sometimes has transformed japaneseamerican and chineseamericans and americans and mexicanamericans and puerto ricans. They transform, groomed these folks into insiders of a sort. So, for example, one 1940, War Department memo regarding who could join white units, white military units held that, quote, trainees of all races other than will be assigned and the same as white trainees, end of quote. Right. So heres example of this kind of what im calling this white black line, but which in effect was a white everyone else line. And this was by far the most institutionalized, the most expansive, the most, you know, debilitating and destructive of the militarys many color lines. So that was the first one. The second important line is apparent. Maybe this quote that i just mentioned. Right . So take the note. Take note of the language some of those quote races, other than , end of quote. Were not exactly white but would be assigned to as if they were white. Here, then, is a sign that the military established other color lines besides the black white one. The most important of these were various versions of a white non white line. And i apologize. Were getting abstract but itll itll hopefully make a little more sense as i get into things the most important of these white non white lines were im sorry, the color line was less widespread, much, much less widespread than the black white line. But at times it nonetheless narrowed the category of white to include, at its most exclude of only those of supposed european descent. This that groups like asianamericans, latino americans and native americans zigged and zagged throughout war between non whiteness and nominal whiteness, between an insider status and outsiders status, and some murky middle ground. Okay, so those are those are the color lines. Ive got aoue sdes here to just kind of dramatize of what im talking about here. So this is a mbeof,uote, police colored in columbus, georgia,n ril 1942. So again, when im calling a black white line a the was called a coloredhite line or a white line. And you see that kind of language reflected here. This is a typical all africanamerican unit. And keep in mind, all africanamerican is actually a kind of a misnomer bel of the Senior Officers in these units would have been white. I mentioned. Right. So theres notust of black white lines, but there are other lines. Th is in a Texas National guard unit of 140, 100, 141st infantry regiment. I guess camp bowie is not far from here in texas. This unit kind of started out segregated, but became more integrated over time. And t iortant thing is mexicanamericans, some very few mexicanamericans served in th unit of them served inhi outfits, socalled white outfits. This is an awful penal unit, all puerto rican unit. So of these nonblack minority groups, none move more frequently or more dramatically than. Why you might ask, because of their supposed unbreakable bonds with americas enemy in the pacific. In fact assumptions, racist assumptions about those bonds sometimes led to the exclusion of japaneseamericans. So, for example, the navy throughout the war refused to accept anybody of japanese descent into their ranks. That was the policy of the beginning of the war, and it remained so at the end of the war. The militarys various color line shifts shifted some over course of the war. So these werent static. These were not inevitable. There was change, especially in combat. So because most asian americans, native americans and latino americans were permitted to fight alongside white troops, they sometimes forged bonds with another that kind of transcended some of these color lines, many years after the war. One American Indian veteran recalled, quote, his first feeling of complete acceptance came while serving in the army during World War Two. So some of these unity messages actually did play out even some black troops occasionally expressed similar feelings, especially abroad, where they held friendliness of foreigners and often said that color lines dont exist in foxholes. This was a kind of a phrase that you could hear every now and then during the war, but to be clear, these feelings about the possibility of, black, white lines kind of dissolving overseas in combat. These feelings were incredibly rare. Why . Large part . Because the u. S. Military committed so few africanamericans to combat and even fewer to the integrated kind of combat. So they werent around foxholes enough to really see those color lines disappear. Who built military . Who built these color lines that im talking about . It was a group effort. Some ordinary white people both in and out of uniform, proved enthusiastic builders, but more powerful architects had the most say in the matter, especially on the ground. Commanders and leaders in the War Department and the navy department. With a few important exceptions, the white house, congress and, the courts, including the supreme court, supported these leaders implicitly or explicitly all along the way. So one exception to this rule was the 1940 selective training and service act. Right . This is the first peacetime draft that i opened my paper with. So this law that was passed in the fall of 1940 contained surprisingly a straightforward and sweet thing civil rights clause. And heres what it said in the selection and training of men under this act and in the interpretation and the execution of this act shall be no discrimination against any person on the basis of race and color. So straightforward, sweeping. But as it turned out, the military refused to follow follow letter of the law. And the white house and the courts never forced it to do so. So in a sense, these color lines that im going to talk about were both diametrically opposed to americas warriors, but they were also illegal at in, you know, in relation this fairly clear civil rights clause in the draft act. Another important question why why build these color lines youd you might think that in total war the us military had much more important things to worry about than slicing and dicing its soldiers especially when think it was in their interest to bring unity as much as possible among its troops, there was one primary paradoxical reason for these color lines military brass sorry in the in the minds of american leaders winning the war for four freedoms required on freedoms in the minds of Many American leaders during the war winning the war for four freedoms, they thought required on freedoms, military brass repeatedly, for example, said that the morale efficiency and discipline of u. S. Troops, by which they almost always meant u. S. Troops, the morale and discipline of u. S. Demanded jim crow. This was a point made over and over and over again. The implication was that without segregation and whites would be to consume armed by antiblack resentments and to invest their all in the war effort. Antiblack racism. This perspective was a war time imperative, a precondition for victory. This argument, of course, was a admission about the depths of the nations commitment to supremacy. It also painted a picture of the wartime military that contrasted sharply with popular notions of. But truthfully, the militarys jim crow had more to do with its leaders. Own deep investments in white domination and black subordination, both. They seemed to believe in their bones were natural, essential