1946 triumph and tragedy. Robert citino this session is entitled america democracys bastion. We have three fine scholars who will give presentations. For my immediate right, james t. Sparrow is an associate professor of history at the university of chicago, the author of the age of Big Government which received an Honorable Mention in 2012. He is currently working on a sequel to his book. Moving to his right, allida black is Research Professor of history and International Affairs at the George Washington university. The Founding Editor of the Eleanor Roosevelt papers project which highlights the former first ladys writings and pronouncements on human rights and democracy. She is a widely published author , including casting her own shadow, Eleanor Roosevelt. Extensivelyd reedited edition of tomorrow is now. Eleanor roosevelt own book. She has worked on human rights education in numerous countries especially in postconflict societies. I think the number i heard with 14 separate projects you have worked on. This is going to be an interesting presentation indeed. To her right, sarah cramsey, a newly minted phd at berkeley and stanford. And a professor of jewish studies at tulane university. She has been a fulbright fellow and a foreign scholar. She will be a Research Fellow at the institute are holocaust studies in the following year. She has received Research Funding from the mellon germanion and the historical institute. And i will be asking her for grant writing advice because she obviously has that nailed. Without further ado, let us begin with dr. James sparrow. Dr. Spero . [applause] dr. Sparrow thank you. We live in a time defined by an abiding mistrust of government. Recently, we have entered a moment in which even the most basic assumptions about the proper role of government, namely those pertaining to National Security and national interest, have become unsettled and bitterly contested. When it comes to the mission and mandate of our national government, the contrast between our moment and that at the end of the Second World War could not be more extreme. On vj day, the federal government was proportionately larger than at any other time in u. S. History. It consumed half of the gnp, employed over 5 of the civilian labor force, and issued war contracts that built entirely new sectors of the economy and shifted the Population Centers of the country into the suburbs of what we now call the sun belt. The growth of the government was more striking on the military side of the ledger. Over the course of the war, the armed forces mobilized 60 million men and women in a 16 nation that numbered 130 million in 1940. Through just one program, lend lease, the federal government sent approximately 50 billion in guns, tanks, and other aid to the allies. Compare that to the just 40 billion that was spent on all emergency welfare measures under the new deal in the previous decade, and it gives you a sense of what we mean when we talk about Big Government. The warfare state was much larger and more capacious than the welfare state. To pay for it all, congress instituted a mass income tax that reached 10 times as many taxpayers as the new deal had in the 1930s and increased its Borrowing Capacity even more dramatically making structural deficits permanent and in a fashion that keynesian new dealers would never have dreamt much less attempted. This chart is showing the proportion of taxpayers in American Society and how drastically that changed in the few years of the Second World War. Mass income taxation, a peacetime draft and a Standing Army to go with it not to mention entangling alliances. These were profound and lasting departures from the american traditional position. American political tradition. But during the war, there were no tax revolts, no Government Shutdown over the budget, no draft resistance. After the war, these foundational structures of Big Government remained in place of , funding internationalism rather than a retreat to isolationism. A popular memory of the Second World War chalks this up to the fact that it was a good war fought by a Society United to defend american independence and liberty in a world threatened by the global aggression of axis powers. While this view is not wrong, it takes too much for granted. Lend lease, the Selective Service act, the arsenal of democracy these policies were hardfought accomplishments of attained despite strenuous political headwinds that filled the sails of neutrality for half a decade prior to the war. Domestically, the Roosevelt Administration had been back on its heels since the core Packing Court packing fight and the rise of the conservative coalition in congress thereafter. How did the Roosevelt Administration manage to mobilize a nation that had become so wary of Big Government by 1941 . To simply say pearl harbor is to take too much for granted. While the will to a good and the flash while the will to avenge that surprise attack unquestionably galvanized american purpose, it did not determine how the u. S. Would wage the war that it entered. Think of the frustrations of the china lobby for example which was unhappy with the Roosevelt Administrations strategy focused on europe. Nor did it decide how or why ordinary americans would comply with the effort. In other words, legitimacy was the central challenge. It was a hard constraint on the mobilization for total war. Much as one might retrofit an automobile factory to produce bombers, roosevelt and his speechwriters retooled their ideological framework in the late 1930s and 1940s portraying the confrontation with fascism as an International Extension of principles as a new , deal for the world. The Atlantic Charter was part of that effort on the domestic scene. Not all americans swallowed the new deal line whole but most of them did identify powerfully and intimately with roosevelt. As part of that process of identification, they began to adopt a rhetoric of rights and freedom and adapted it to their own lives. Propagandists soon learned that the most effective appeals were those that personalized government messages while downplaying the overly ideological statements. The most common strategy used to accomplish this was a rhetorical approach that the historian has turned termed the homefront analogy. This was a valuation of every conceivable aspect of civilian life. Most often by tracing the battlefront consequences of ordinary decisions at home. In this rhetorical universe defense workers were promoted to , soldiers of production. Home gardens became victory gardens. And young women going to socialize with soldiers were called victory girls. Roosevelt understood the need to personalize the war and he did so relentlessly in his fireside chats. On january 11, 1944, he promised million listeners an economic bill of rights that the g. I. s and the American People had earned as their due in a war caused not only by aggression but also by desperation. These rights included rights to employment, education, housing, health care. It was a comprehensive list. But what has been largely forgotten however was that this promise of economic rights was tied to fdrs insistence on a plan for National Service, compulsory and universal in which civilians contributions would be directly related to if not conflated with those of the g. I. Facing battle overseas. Roosevelts plans for National Service followed a personalistic logic. Im going to read to you from his fireside chat that was broadcast on national radio. I know that all civilian workers will be glad to say in many years to their grandchildren that i was in service in the great war. I was on duty in an airplane factory and i helped make hundreds of planes. The government told me that in doing that, i was performing my most useful work in the service of my country. David kennedys talk made clear that americans, especially civilians, experienced very little absolute sacrifice relative to other nations participating in world war ii. Those chart really set it all. Id itts really sa all. In the process of mobilizing millions of workers, consumers, taxpayers, the government had to convince the citizenry that it must embrace unprecedented sacrifice. The scene was not always as uplifting as fdrs language might suggest. You can imagine the guilt and sense of obligation that images and messages might have produced. It was the symbol of selfsacrifice. This symbol, the combat soldier, that provided the master key to wartime political culture. The g. I. Was a culture hero whose name stood for government issue. And a joking reference to the standardized nature of the military in which he served. He personified the new ideals of a changing social order. His ordinariness and common touch conveyed the democratic and the humane nature of the american war effort as opposed to the regimentation and hierarchy of the germans and the fanaticism of the japanese dive bombers. Everyone knew someone that served and this reinforced a direct personalization of the war effort. While the image of this new culture hero was fairly uniform and verged on being universal, the ways in which americans responded to it were not. If we focus on three kinds of citizens, fiscal citizens, taxpayers and bond workers, or war workers, and servicemen, we can see how divergent they wartime ideas obligation really were. These groups deserve special attention. Without them, the american war effort have ground to a halt. Researchers in the war government certainly recognized this. They found that intangible differences in morale could produce results that were all too concrete. For example, the average time to lay a keel in maine was 76 days. Where in a South Portland yard, they required days on average to 207 put out the same sort of vessel using the same kinds of workers. The difference in morale explained the difference. Similar findings explained why one person bought more war bonds than the next and explained how troop cohesion could be strengthened or undermined. I will spare you the details of the mountains of studies that these government researchers produced. A summary could have been used as a weapon of mass boredom. But the findings were quite significant. And i will touch on them in what follows. Bondholders and taxpayers posed a special challenge because most americans were unaccustomed to paying income tax or owing the owning the government debt, which had mostly been the preserve of the upper middle class or the wealthy which was subject to the class taxation in the 1930s but world war ii brought mass taxation. For all the talk about soaking the rich, the new deal fiscal regime was a feeble and repressive jerry built structure that was insufficient to finance total war. The Second World War regime extracted vastly greater revenues on an order of a n order of magnitude greater. Taxpayers had to learn how to file and pay on time. It was just as aggravating and difficult then as it is today , and it was not made much easier by the fact of the new withholding scheme because people still had to file forms. Before the war, the number of taxpayers could have fit into the borough of brooklyn, roughly 4 million. You can imagine the change. And a similar change happened in war finance in the ownership of debt with 85 million men, more than that, the government stopped counting. 85 million men, women, and children who bought war bonds over the course of the war. To meet the challenge of guiding and motivating these tens of millions of new fiscal citizens, the treasury developed a strategy centered on personalizing obligation. Often, its most successful ads initiatives were the most literal minded and concrete. This kind of advertising and campaign was incredibly popular. Individual children and families could buy equipment for family members that they knew in the service, Small School Districts might pitch in together to raise money to purchase a jeep. Larger metro districts purchased aircraft carriers. The treasury was also quite savvy in enlisting the talents of media stars like kate smith, whose rendition of God Bless America made her both famous and beloved. Smith constantly brought a advanced a personal obligation to the g. I. In her public appearances. She conducted a radio marathon in september of 1943 that raised a recordbreaking 39 million. It does not sound like much to us now. But it certainly was then. One of her callers rang in with a moving pledge. Saying i would give all of my , money or my health or my own life to buy my boy back from the war but i am afraid i cannot do that now. I got a telegram from washington this morning and my boy is not coming back. From that point on, the new pledges surged in making it a recordbreaking event. It gives you a sense of how intensely that personal connection was felt by so many americans. That is what war bonds are to us , kate smith concluded. A chance to buy our boys back. 85 million americans agreed. As they paid their taxes and bought their bonds, they also learned to make a claim on the government to begin expecting that the claim would be returned by the federal government. That is my tax dollar was something that virtually everyone could say once the victory tax was implemented and mass taxation had been instituted. Industrial production like fiscal policy was missioncritical to the american war effort. As the taxpayers and bondholders, it was not guaranteed that workers could be persuaded to comply. In the half decade prior to the war, union levels had tripled from 3 million to 9 million. Because of a wave of militancy unleashed by measures such as the sitdown strike that had shut down General Motors plants in flint, michigan over the winter , of 1936 into 1937. Although Union Leaders had signed a no strike pledge after pearl harbor, rank and file discontent led to wildcat strikes that crested from 1943 until the end of the war and then again after the war in 1946. Worker morale could make or break the arsenal of democracy and the Roosevelt Administration knew that. It turned out that the war workers took their images of the soldiers of production there very seriously. This kind of poster captured quite vividly the worker sense that they were contributing to the war. Just like taxpayers and bondholders. They took this role very personally and conceptualized a more link to the fighting front and objective by it in the war material they produced every day. This powerful sense that they were fighting alongside the combat soldier not only linked the home front to the battlefront but also fostered a rising sense of entitlement to National Citizenship guaranteed by the federal government. Women and black workers pushed the government to honor its promises of fair employment. They did not get it for the most part during the war but a generation of civil rights and labor feminism emerged from the war anyway. White ethnic workers enjoyed more immediate gains as overtime pay, seniority rights were built into the war economy with lasting consequences for the postwar timeframe. Workingclass americans joined the affluent society in the 1940s viewing their upward mobility as a fitting reward. Finally, we turn to the g. I. s, the third group. Without millions of them, it would have been impossible to defend the continental United States much less win a war, two wars on opposite sides of the globe at the same time. In their case, the challenge of motivation had the highest stakes possible. The g. I. s were walking, talking proof that the last thing you want to be in the time of war is a living symbol of national sacrifice. As everyone in this room knows well, military service inculcated a deep sense of National Commitment that remained a defining aspect of the war generations outlook through the postwar period. As with the Industrial Works ers, taxpayers, and bondholders this was not to be , taken for granted going into the war. Efforts to instruct the soldiers on why we fight had mixed results but war propaganda did succeed in providing a clear image of the fascist enemy to be defeated. If g. I. s were of many minds of what they were fighting for, they were largely of one mind when it came to what they were fighting against. That was because beneath their varied political commitments ran deeper obligations to their buddies fighting next to them, to their families back at home, and that made the stakes of war quite personal. We can see this in the palpable hunger that servicemen expressed for any news of home. This is a photo of a navy bomber squad on new georgia island in the solomons in february of 1944. You can see the intensity with which these men reach out for their mail. When after more than three years of slogging through it all, these soldiers finally got to stop reading about home and they returned to it, newly minted veterans could claim a new set of benefits at the state and local level and at the private sector. This amounted to a new kind of National Citizenship. Although it was less universally applauded than the g. I. Bill of rights which i think this postwar advertisement captures a sense of citizenship and homecoming that the g. I. Bill represented. The Marshall Plan was less universally a