USA

USA

1. Introduction

The road by which the USA entered the Second World War was long and tortuous, and reluctantly taken. The nation had historically adhered to an isolationist foreign policy, departing briefly from that line in 1917–18, when it became a belligerent against Germany in the First World War. The experience was not a happy one. It cost some 50,000 American lives and failed to produce the equitable, durable peace that President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) had promised as the fruit of American participation. American diplomacy reverted thereafter with quickened dedication to its customary isolationism which did not release its grip on American foreign policy until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

Disillusionment with the results of US intervention in the First World War was vividly manifested in the rejection by the Senate of the Versailles settlement, including its provisions for American membership in the League of Nations. The Senate further evidenced the renewed isolationist tenor of American diplomacy when it ratified the several treaties issuing from the Washington Naval Armament Conference of 1922. Their most important provisions called for the USA to scrap nearly a million tons of warships, and to limit further naval construction, in order to comply with a mandated ratio of 5:5:3 in capital-ship tonnage among the UK, the USA, and Japan, respectively. In addition, Washington agreed not to fortify its Pacific possessions west of Pearl Harbor, including Guam and the Philippines.

In practice, the USA did not maintain even a ‘treaty strength’ fleet in the 1920s. Throughout that decade and much of the next, the US Navy had a complement of fewer than 100,000 men; the army in that same period averaged about 135,000 men. The Roosevelt administration authorized some new naval construction beginning in 1933, but the continuing constraints of isolationism and the economic crisis of the Great Depression kept the size of the American military to a minimum. As late as 1940, the army numbered 269,023 personnel; the navy 160,997; the marines 28,345.

Those numbers, and the political philosophy that underlay them, made for a weak diplomatic hand. Just how weak was revealed in 1931, when Japan seized control of Manchuria from China and established the puppet state of Manchukuo. The USA condemned the Japanese action, but was unprepared to give force to its disapproval by either economic or military means. Washington contented itself with enunciating the Stimson doctrine which withheld recognition from the Manchukuo regime while invoking the hoary principles of the ‘Open Door’, the policy of respecting Chinese Sovereignty and claiming equal commercial access to China by all nations, first enunciated by Secretary of State John Hay in 1899.

Such toothless moral posturing foreshadowed the agonizing attenuation of the American response to the outbreak of full-scale war between Japan and China in July 1937 (see China incident). Even when Japanese aircraft sank the US gunboat Panay in the river Yangtze on 12 December 1937, no warcry swept the USA. Indeed, the following month the House of Representatives narrowly defeated the Ludlow resolution, calling for a Constitutional amendment that would require a national referendum on a declaration of war. As the British prime minister, Chamberlain, accurately observed at the time: ‘It is always best and safest to count on nothing from the Americans but words.’

From 1934, isolationist sentiment was especially aroused by the hearings of the Senate Munitions Investigating Committee (the Nye Committee), where many witnesses alleged that American financiers and arms manufacturers had manipulated American entry into the First World War. Public outrage over these inflammatory accusations produced a disposition in Congress to erect statutory barriers against the possibility that the USA might again be lured into a mistaken internationalist adventure. Accordingly, the first of three Neutrality Acts was passed in 1935, which prohibited, among other restrictions, arms sales to belligerents.

Throughout this period in the mid-1930s, Roosevelt appeared personally inclined toward a more active international role for the USA, but his assessment of congressional and public opinion, his competing domestic priorities, and the absence of vigorous diplomatic initiatives by the other democratic states, all inhibited him from strenuously moving in an internationalist direction.

When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, Roosevelt induced Congress to repeal the arms embargo, but the Neutrality Act of 1939 still placed limitations on arms sales by including a ‘cash- and-carry’ provision. American opinion was strongly anti-German and anti-Japanese, but the expectation prevailed that France and the UK could contain Hitler in Europe, and that some modus vivendi might yet be worked out in Asia.

The fall of France in June 1940, leaving the UK and its empire the only Great Power facing Hitler, shattered those comfortable assumptions. A memorandum drafted that month by the army's War Plans Division predicted the UK's early defeat, called for the husbanding of all American military resources for hemispheric defence, and advocated a purely defensive posture in the Pacific.

Roosevelt, however, made the crucial decision to bet on the UK's survival. Throughout 1940, he undertook simultaneously to strengthen American military capacity, and to aid the UK by all means short of war itself. More than $10 billion was appropriated for a military build-up, including, on 20 July, an act authorizing the creation of a two-ocean navy. In September the nation's first peacetime conscription law was passed (see selective service system). The president created a National Defense Research Committee (later the Office of Scientific Research and Development) to bring scientific expertise to bear on the military effort. Remembering the damage that political partisanship had inflicted on Woodrow Wilson's diplomacy, Roosevelt in June named two internationalist-minded Republicans to his cabinet— Henry Stimson as secretary of war, and Frank Knox as secretary of navy. In November Roosevelt conveniently won re-election to an unprecedented third presidential term, while pledging that the USA would not go to war.

The ‘short of war’ strategy appeared to be Roosevelt's sincere hope. He intended to leave the actual fighting to the UK, while making the USA, as he said in a radio address of 29 December, ‘the great arsenal of democracy’ but not a belligerent. Already, on 3 September 1940, he had concluded with the UK the destroyers-for-bases agreement and on 11 March 1941 he signed the Lend-Lease Act. From 9 to 12 August 1941 Roosevelt and Churchill met at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, and drew up the Atlantic Charter. In November 1941 Congress revised the neutrality laws to allow the arming of merchant ships, and to permit sending them into war zones. American naval vessels had by that time begun escorting British convoys carrying Lend-lease goods across the Atlantic, which led to an undeclared naval war between Germany and the USA as part of the battle of the Atlantic. German submarines torpedoed the escort destroyer Kearny on 17 October 1941, and sank the Reuben James on 1 November 1941. Yet neither Hitler nor Roosevelt used these incidents to create a casus belli. The former was preoccupied with his invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on 22 June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA), the latter was restrained by his ‘short of war’ electoral promises and by continuing signs of isolationist strength in Congress. The House of Representatives, for example, still powerfully influenced by isolationist lobbies such as America First, passed an extension of the Selective Service Act on 18 August 1941 by the margin of just a single vote. Additionally, Roosevelt appreciated the woeful unpreparedness of American military forces, and he had scant need of engagement in the war in Europe while events in Asia remained so volatile.

In the ABC-1 Plan talks of January– March 1941, American and British military planners had agreed that in the event of American belligerency with both Germany and Japan, the defeat of Germany would be the first priority. But it was at Pearl Harbor in the Pacific that war eventually came to the USA, and it was on the Pacific war that much popular American feeling would focus. Among American strategists the precise interpretation of the ‘Germany first’ doctrine would remain controversial throughout the conflict.

The story of the road to Pearl Harbor is a story in which both protagonists, Japan and the USA, writhed for years on the horns of their respective dilemmas. To continue its war against China, Japan depended upon purchasing critical materials in the USA, particularly scrap metals and petroleum products. Yet the Americans made no secret of their disapproval of the Japanese role in China. The Japanese government was chronically worried about the dependability of its American supplies of metal and oil, and constantly sought alternative sources. Under the circumstances, the Japanese looked naturally to the special opportunity presented by the German subjugation of France and the Netherlands in the spring of 1940. The collapse of the French and Dutch governments left their colonies in French Indo-China and the Netherlands East Indies, rich in oil and strategic metals, tantalizingly vulnerable to Japanese penetration.

Debate divided both the Japanese and American governments over the question of Japanese pressure on French Indo-China and the East Indies, and the proper response to that pressure. In some ways the controversies within the two governments were mirror images of one another. For the Japanese, the issue was what degree of aggression could be pursued in the South Pacific without precipitating conflict with the USA. For the Americans, the question was what degree of resistance could be posed to Japanese aggression without driving Tokyo to a declaration of war.

On both sides of the Pacific, statesmen delicately adjusted these fateful balances throughout 1940 and 1941. In Tokyo, army leaders pressed for more aggressive moves towards the south. Some civilian members of the government, and some navy leaders, urged restraint. In Washington, Stimson and secretary of the treasury, Henry Morgenthau, advocated embargoing the shipment of strategic materials to Japan. But secretary of state Hull, usually backed by the navy, rather consistently opposed a strict embargo as too provocative. His influence remained paramount at least until the summer of 1941, dampening the tempo of American diplomacy directed against Japan, and delaying the moment of the final showdown.

In the summer of 1940, Washington announced its intention to limit shipments of scrap metals and oil to Japan; it imposed a formal embargo on iron and steel scrap on 26 September 1940. The following day Tokyo announced its adherence to the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. In November 1940 Japan wrung a limited oil-supply agreement from the government of the Netherlands East Indies. Japanese troops occupied French Indo-China on 24 July 1941. On 26 July 1941 Roosevelt froze all Japanese assets in the USA, in effect embargoing all shipments to Japan including, most crucially, oil. Though Roosevelt apparently intended to release some oil shipments in return for promises of Japanese good behaviour—thus pursuing even at this late hour the hope of reaching some kind of modus vivendi—the public announcement of the American action gave the impression of an iron-clad embargo, and Roosevelt concluded that it would be a sign of weakness to amend it.

The die was now all but cast. On 6 September 1941 a Japanese Imperial Conference stipulated that if an agreement with the USA was not in prospect by early October, Japan should move towards war. Prime Minister Konoe sought a secret meeting with Roosevelt to hammer out an accord. From Tokyo, Ambassador Joseph Grew advocated the meeting as the last chance to avoid war. But the US government, privy to Japanese intentions thanks to MAGIC intercepts, saw no hope for significant Japanese concessions—especially over China—and spurned the offer. Konoe's government fell on 16 October 1941, and the following day General Tōjō became prime minister. An Imperial Conference of 5 November 1941 directed that war plans go forward, to be confirmed on 25 November if a last effort to secure American agreement to Japanese terms for a settlement failed.

But China, especially, remained the sticking-point. Washington simply would not give any official approval to the Japanese invasion of China. Hull made this point repeatedly to Ambassador Nomura Kichisaburo during their final, fruitless round of talks in Washington from 20 November to 7 December 1941.

Yet ironically, on the same date of 5 November that Tōjō's government slipped its war machine into gear, American army and navy planners advised that, ‘considering world strategy’, further Japanese aggression in China ‘would not justify intervention by the United States against Japan’ ( H. Feis [below], p. 302). No matter. The Americans had stood on principle—the principles of the Open Door and the Stimson doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other nations. The Japanese acted from what they regarded as economic and political necessity, but most of the world regarded it as naked aggression. Aiming to secure their access to the raw materials of French Indo-China and the Netherlands East Indies, they had first to eliminate the threat to their eastern flank posed by the US Pacific Fleet. On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked the US base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the following day, with a sole dissenting vote, Congress declared war on Japan.

David M. Kennedy

2. Domestic life, war effort, and economy

The fall of France had finally galvanized Washington into action. The political stalemate was broken; there was near unanimity that the USA must rearm immediately. By the end of the summer Congress had approved $78 billion for future war spending (the total GNP was only $101 billion). In late summer the National Guard (state-based reserves totalling 300,000 men) was called up and, with the introduction of the Selective Service Act, the first peacetime draft began, with a target of two million men in one year. These early moves were a harbinger of a national commitment that would expand even more dramatically in the next five years. Mobilization was managed by the war and navy departments, and by new emergency agencies that were abolished when peace returned. They were headed by conservative Republican lawyers, financiers, and businessmen, as were the war and navy departments. In the latter, however, the generals and admirals minimized the influence of civilians.

Roosevelt, despite his experience in running naval affairs in the First World War, had considerable difficulty in managing the war effort. Congress was not the problem—generally, it gave all the authority and money requested—the problem was in the New Deal's style of divided responsibility. The army and the navy feuded incessantly, over grand strategy, manpower allocations, and munitions priorities (see also rivalries); inside the army, the air force carved out a large and semi-autonomous domain with its own priorities. Roosevelt's management style encouraged such divided responsibility, with feuding agencies having to return to him again and again to settle disputes. His goal of maximizing his personal control proved inefficient and confusing during the war, and more and more he had to yield authority on economic affairs. Compounding his problem was a mysterious failure of his skills in mobilizing public opinion: with few radio talks, public appearances, or dramatic statements, the president kept a low profile.

The economy in 1940 had been weakened by a decade of depression. Unemployment at nearly 15% was the highest among major nations, profits were low, and the factories were rusting because little investment had been made. Furthermore, businessmen were hostile towards Roosevelt's administration, and were doubly suspicious of the powerful new labour unions, which were themselves divided into two feuding camps: the larger, older, more conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the leftist Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Guaranteed large increases in membership, the unions suppressed wildcat strikes that threatened to interrupt war production, but also tried to keep overtime pay and other perks. On a positive note, the people were sick of internal dissension and depression and, when the call to arms sounded, proved ready to work harmoniously for the goal of a better life after the war. The economic challenge was to provide 12 million thoroughly trained soldiers and sailors, plus a huge supply of aircraft, warships, transports, electronic gear, and other matériel for American and Allied armies, plus oil and food for everybody, plus money to pay for it all (see Table 1 for US economic indictors 1939–46).

Under the Lend-Lease programme, the USA provided a quarter of the munitions for the UK, and perhaps a tenth of what the USSR used. Two-thirds of all supplies shipped abroad consisted of oil. The USA pumped nearly two-thirds of the world's oil from its rich Texas and California fields, and at only $1.15 a barrel it was cheap. At first, moving it safely was another matter, because of the German submarines off the coast (see convoys). The nation's tanker capacity reached 11.4 million tons by 1945, compared to 2.5 million tons in 1941, much of which was sunk. Civilian demand for petrol was cut 28% by rationing, and all the increased production (up 29% in 1945 over 1941) went into the war effort. In 1942 Japan captured 90% of the world's rubber supplies, but, despite early confusion, by late 1943 a highly successful synthetic rubber industry had met the increased war demands.

On US farms the recent memories of surpluses, low prices, and hardship vanished, though many young people, blacks, and marginal farmers left, shrinking the rural farm share of the population from 23% to 20%. However, Congress made sure that prices stayed high, and exempted most young farm workers from the draft. As a result, crop production increased by 15%, beef production by 37%, and pork production by 63%. A tenth of the food was exported through Lend-Lease, chiefly to the UK (43%) and the USSR (28%). Though this abundance strained the transportation and storage system, Americans ate more and better food during the war than ever before, and tightly enforced rationing ensured they were more equal in their diets. In 1938 protein, calorie, calcium, and iron consumption among the poorest one-third of the population was 74% of that consumed by the richest third. By 1942 this had increased to 89%, and to 93% by 1948. Even so, people who until the war had not been able to afford mince, now complained that even their high wages could not buy them steak.

The USA never adopted a comprehensive manpower programme. The draft reached most young men by 1944, and physical standards remained high. Draft boards were reluctant to take fathers or men under 19; if drafted they were rarely sent to combat formations. The government decided, after much debate, not to draft women or force them to enter the labour force (see Graph 1 for labour force structure 1938–47). No coercion was used to move men into war jobs, either, but the lure of very high pay proved quite sufficient. Employment in durable goods manufacturing leaped from 4.7 million in May 1940, to a peak of 10.7 million in December 1943—an astonishing gain of 6 million jobs in 3½ years. At the end of the war there were still 10.1 million workers, but overnight the munitions factories dismissed 85 to 95% of their employees and durable goods employment dropped to 6.5 million in December 1945.

With the enormous demand for construction workers to erect camps, hospitals, shipyards, and munitions plants, unemployment vanished in 1940–2. The previously dirt poor rural South became the favourite site for most military camps, and for many shipyards and munitions works. Millions of families moved from rural areas and small towns to work in overcrowded production centres like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Mobile, and Baltimore, but the shortage of skilled workers threatened to delay full production. During the Depression the government, on ideological grounds, had refused to fight unemployment through job training programmes or wage subsidies. It now reversed its policy and paid for massive training programmes through its ‘cost-plus’ contracts with private industry. (The contracts paid all legitimate costs, plus a small percentage profit.) Semi-skilled workers and high school drop-outs suddenly found themselves well-paid skilled specialists, or even foremen. More had to be done, so industry systematically ‘diluted’ or redesigned jobs so that less skilled workers could handle them. In peacetime dilution had been fiercely opposed by the unions; now they co-operated, for they obtained new rules that made most of the new workers join unions. Dilution allowed the hiring of millions of women, blacks, youth, and older people who had previously been in low-paid jobs, or unemployed.

To increase productivity further, factories stayed open for a second or even a third shift, and workers added long hours of overtime (with a 50% wage premium paid beyond the basic 40 hours). The average working week in manufacturing durable goods jumped from 38 hours in 1939 to 47 hours in 1943, and efficiency experts looked for ways to increase production. A favourite solution was to use assembly-line techniques and prefabrication, so as to minimize the amount of skilled labour needed and allow many people to work on a project simultaneously. The productivity gains were striking: it took only a third as many worker-hours to build a ship in 1945 as in 1942. Despite the disruptions caused by the draft, and by the confusion of producing new products under pressure, the overall productivity of the economy, per worker-hour, rose by 21% between 1940 and 1945. Railway workers were 63% more productive in 1943 than in 1940.

USA, 2, Table 1: Basic economic indicators, 1939–46

Year	1939	1940	1941	1942	1943	1944	1945	1946
Source: Contributors.
real GNP-1940 ($)	92	100	116	131	149	159	156	138
inflation	98	100	108	121	129	133	136	152
% of GNP to war	1.0	2.2	10.9	30.7	41.4	41.5	35.3
consumer prices	99	100	105	118	126	130	133	143
real weekly $ mfg	95	100	112	124	136	141	132	122
real hourly wage mfg	97	100	105	110	115	119	116	115
total employment	95	100	113	124	131	129	125	129
non-war employment	96	100	108	111	109	108	109	121
war employment	87	100	135	184	237	234	199	165
% of women in labour force	28.0	27.9	28.5	31.0	35.8	36.5	35.9	31.1
civilian women at work		100	109	127	152	157	155	136
civilian men at work		100	105	109	102	99	96	110
% unemployed	17.2	14.6	9.9	4.7	1.9	1.2	1.9	3.9
working week, av. hours		43.8	44.2	45.2	47.3	46.2	44.3	42.4
structure of civilian labour force
% youth under 20		7.5	9.1	11.1	12.0	11.4	10.5	8.4
% adult men		70.0	68.9	64.5	59.7	58.8	59.2	66.2
% adult women		22.5	22.0	24.4	28.4	29.8	30.3	25.4
earnings, full-time men	95	100	109	121	139	146	141	125
earnings, full-time women	98	100	105	110	126	136	133	134
women's pay as %men	57.4	55.6	53.5	50.8	50.4	51.8	52.7	59.5
durable mfg output	78	100	145	201	259	254	197	138
non-durable mfg output	95	100	123	137	153	149	144	143
railway freight ton-miles	89	100	127	171	195	198	182	159
railway passenger miles	95	100	123	226	369	402	386	272
war construction	27	100	528	1,540	805	377	263	55
non-war construction	99	100	111	69	48	39	54	153
corporate taxes	48	100	280	481	624	585	424	345
corporate after-tax profit	87	100	137	160	175	168	151	235
exports to the UK	50	100	162	250	446	519	217	85
income share of top 5%	26.8	25.4	23.0	19.0	16.7	15.8	16.7	17.7
personal spending	95	100	108	106	110	117	126	141
personal taxes	93	100	121	196	542	560	603	504
personal savings	69	100	276	618	696	757	585	280
births	96	100	106	117	121	115	112	133
marriages	88	100	106	111	99	91	101	144

In 1940 the nation's steel mills operated at 82% capacity, producing 67 million tons; by 1944 they were working at full stretch pouring 89 million tons of steel, about half the world total. The numbers employed did not change—all the gains came from enhanced productivity. As tens of thousands of factories tooled up for their production runs, the machine tool industry was overwhelmed. Orders in 1942 were five times higher than in 1940, but very long working weeks helped the industry manufacture $4.7 billion of tools between 1940 and 1945, or 20 times more than in the previous decade. Engineers redesigned the tools to be more durable, more versatile, and simpler to operate; the skills the operators lacked had to be designed into the machines and jigs themselves. The total stock of machine tools in all American factories soared from one million in 1940 to 1.7 million in 1945. With many in operation for three shifts a day, the sinews of economic mobilization were ready, and in five years the USA produced $181 billions worth of munitions, of which aircraft made up 24%; ships, 22%; food, clothing, and medicine, 20%; tanks and trucks, 12%; ammunition, 10%; guns and fire control equipment, 6%; and radio and radar, 6% (see Table 2 for munitions output 1940–5). Employment in war industry as a whole peaked at 8.8 million in late 1944, 29% of them women and 8% black.

USA, 2, Table 2: US munitions output, 1940–5

	May 1940– Dec 1941	1942	1943	1944	Jan–July 1945	Total
a million metric tons  b thousand displacement tons
Source: Contributor.
Munition budget	$10,384	$30,168	$51,745	$57,594	$30,767	$180,658
aircraft	$2,152	$5,817	$12,514	$16,047	$7,716	$44,246
ships	$2,221	$6,957	$12,498	$13,429	$5,534	$40,639
guns	$429	$1,794	$3,180	$2,926	$1,373	$9,702
ammunition	$509	$2,743	$4,908	$5,768	$3,930	$17,858
vehicles	$1,508	$4,778	$5,926	$4,951	$2,942	$20,105
radar/radio	$250	$1,512	$3,043	$3,739	$2,119	$10,663
Munitions purchases
Aircraft, 000s	23	48	86	96	43	296
Aircraft weight, m kg	43	125	297	437	221	1,123
Aircraft bombsa	41	57	135	198	100	531
Warshipsb	270	847	2,562	3,223	1,341	8,243
Naval ammunitiona	32	558	658	1,191	1,039	3,478
Landing vessels, 000s	1	7	16	27	13	64
Depth charges, 000s	17	141	147	170	54	529
Torpedoes, 000s	2	5	16	24	7	54
Rifles/carbines, 000s	357	1,541	5,683	3,489	1,503	12,573
Ground artillery ammunitiona	52	615	726	1,313	1,145	3,851
Tanks	4,203	23,884	29,497	17,565	11,184	86,333

Roosevelt's promise in 1940 to build 50,000 aircraft was received with amazement. In the end, 300,000 were built, at a cost of $45 billion. The Army Air Forces took 185,000; the navy, 60,000; the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, 33,000; the USSR, 18,000; and China, 4,000. Measured by weight, the production totalled 2.9 billion pounds, of which 61% represented bombers and 22% fighters. Overnight, executives at Douglas, Consolidated Vultee, Boeing, North American, Lockheed, and smaller aircraft companies, transformed their small workshops into the world's largest and most complex factories. Riveters with just three or four weeks' training were employed extensively. Virtually all the warplanes had been designed before Pearl Harbor, though they were continually modified and upgraded. With car production suspended for the duration, the great automobile companies retooled radically. They converted their old assembly lines to make aircraft and tank gear, and the government built new plants for them, such as Ford's gigantic Willow Run bomber plant or the even larger Dodge engine plant in Chicago. The rifles, cannon, shells, and ammunition for the forces were made primarily in government arsenals. Located typically in small towns known to have a surplus of labour, they employed 486,000 workers in 1943, as against 22,000 in 1940. Shipyards launched 88,000 landing craft, 215 submarines, 147 aircraft carriers, and 952 other warships, aggregating 14 million tons. They also welded together 5,200 merchant ships totalling 39 million gross tons (see Liberty ships). The war geared up not only armies and industries but also science and technology. Chemists made possible the daily production of 80 million litres of 100-octane aviation fuel, which gave aircraft a distinct edge in speed, climb rate, and manoeuvrability. Physicists and electrical engineers perfected the proximity fuze—which made Japanese Zeros 50 times easier to hit—but the most astonishing scientific and engineering achievement of the war was the invention of the atomic bomb. In the long run, however, arguably the most important technical achievement of the war was America's first programmable electronic computer. Developed at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945 (some two years after Bletchley Park's COLOSSUS II), the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was designed to calculate artillery tables.

The change in gross national product from $101 billion in 1940 to $214 billion in 1944 can be hypothetically broken down into different factors. The departure of the soldiers (ç17%) was offset by increases due to inflation (26%), new workers (11%), elimination of unemployment (12%), population growth (4%), extended hours (4%), and increases in capital and worker productivity (60%). These factors did not just happen: they required the deliberate efforts of government, the services, executives, engineers, unions, workers, and the community as a whole to make them happen. The establishment of open-ended contracts on a cost-plus basis guaranteed that corporations would aggressively search out new workers and train them. The government would pay. The patriotic willingness—even eagerness—of people to switch from stable jobs to the better paying but dead-end munitions jobs was essential. Above all, the nation's engineers and managers were inspired to design, plan, and organize vast economic potential without regard to profit.

Since nearly half the GNP had to be devoted to the war, the workers could not be allowed to spend more than half their wages. Price controls and rationing were imposed so that essential items would remain cheap. Consumer durables like automobiles, domestic appliances, and houses were no longer produced. The government spent $350 billion ($318 for direct war purposes), but only took in $147 billion in taxes. The deficit had to be borrowed. Six million volunteers whipped up patriotism and drained surplus money by selling $157 billions worth of war bonds. (Those assets would play a decisive role in maintaining prosperity after 1945.) The consequence was that the national debt of $259 billion in 1945 exceeded the GNP of $212 billion; since interest rates were kept artificially low, at about 1%, the burden was bearable. Taxes soared during the war. Previously only the wealthiest tenth paid income taxes; now 90% of all families paid, and at stiff rates. A typical worker with a wife and child earned $2,600 in 1944. Of that $253 went to federal income tax (23% after exemptions of 3 × $500), and $26 went to Social Security. Of the $2,600, 11% went to taxes, 33% to food, 33% to clothing and housing, 5% to transportation, 10% to medical costs (private medical insurance was just becoming popular), and 8% was saved or used to pay off old depression debts. Corporate taxes were raised to guarantee that profits would remain at about 1936–7 depression levels of 10% of net worth.

Americans were patriotic during the war, and more united than ever before. They therefore sacrificed some of their famed individualism in exchange for community purposes. The refrain ‘Don't You Know There's a War On!’ silenced grumblers and emboldened the community minded. While most families felt that material conditions had worsened, cold statistics showed they were distinctly better fed and better clothed than in the depression years. No matter, for Americans had recalibrated their sensibilities towards a new post-war standard of prosperity. Against that gauge the war years were uncomfortable yet optimistic. The deliberate national policy of keeping casualties to a minimum (and especially not subjecting fathers to combat) meant there were few orphans and widows to plunge a community into mourning. Indeed, for an average group of 1,000 soldiers, more fathers died a natural death on the Home Front than sons in combat. Americans were confident the soldiers would march home safe.

The demand for housing was exceptionally high in the major industrial centres, and shopping, transportation, and community services were almost overwhelmed. Fat pay checks assuaged much of the discomfort. The federal government, under the Lanham Act, provided modest support facilities for towns inundated by war industry. The act also provided for day-care centres for pre-school children. Surprisingly, they were highly controversial, as any number of social forces (mothers, factories, sundry local and federal agencies, social workers, educators, unions, clergymen) made the centres into political footballs that reflected distinctive socio-political ideologies. An apparent upsurge in juvenile delinquency heightened concerns about teenagers. There was no epidemic of delinquency; rather the youth who had been so repressed because of hard times were suddenly allowed to move about. Much of the mischief involved youth staying out beyond curfew; their older brothers were off to war, and excitement was in the air. The upsurge in high school enrolments from 1920 gave teenagers more intellectual skills and social resources. A new quasi-autonomous youth culture was beginning to flourish. Its taste in fashion, music, food, and egalitarian, consumer-oriented, informal lifestyle would soon become the norm.

Marriage, setting up a new household, and starting a family all required ingenuity and help, given the shortage of housing, furniture, and appliances. Servicemen's wives usually returned to their parents' home, a doubling up that would not be relieved until the post-war housing boom finally caught up with demand around 1948. Worse than the inconvenience and the waiting was the loneliness. Young couples discarded much of the tradition that had separated husbands and wives into different spheres. They sought egalitarian, companionable marriages. Divorce rates changed little: 27% of the wartime marriages eventually ended in divorce, compared to 26% for the late 1930s and 26% for the late 1940s. Couples were child-oriented and in 1940 they began a ‘baby boom’ that lasted until 1960. Between 1940 and 1942, the rate of first births jumped from 293 per 10,000 women to 375 (the rate of subsequent births went from 506 to 540). The increase in childbearing took place among all groups of young women, but was greatest among the best educated, who had the most resources and the most opportunities to understand and control their lives.

The nation puzzled over new roles for women, Most long-standing prohibitions against married women working were dropped. For the first time, large numbers of mothers entered the workforce. Nevertheless, social values still strongly preferred that husbands be the primary breadwinners and wives focus their attention on home duties, especially child-rearing. Women saw two kinds of jobs open up. In some munitions plants women replaced young men called up into the services, but much more often the women did not replace anyone, for over 90% of the munitions jobs were new. The image of ‘Rosie the Riveter’ doing traditionally male work was a propaganda device; the real ‘Rosies’ either did traditional woman's work, like assembling radios, or else they did a new sort of job that no one had done before, such as riveting an airplane or welding a ship. When women did replace men it was only after compromises with the unions. Fearing the old bogies of cheap/unskilled/female workers replacing their permanent male members, the unions insisted that women were temporary employees and should be paid the same as men, so that, when the men returned from war, the employers would dismiss the less efficient highly-paid women. In fact most of the new women workers did not enter munitions plants, but took office and factory jobs where they often did replace men. These jobs were non-union, and after the war the women held on to them. The workforce became distinctly more feminized, especially in the white collar sector. After the war 4.1 million women left the labour force: 50% told census takers they did so because of the demands of family; another 18% said their husbands insisted on being the sole breadwinner; 13% cited age or disability; 11% cited their return to education or to a rural home as the reason. A few left because of lack of suitable jobs (6%), or poor working conditions or lack of child care (2%). Wives were especially clear in their determination to leave their paid jobs. They had been doing double duty, and their home chores had increased because of poor services, overcrowded public transport, shortages, and increased childcare responsibilities.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), Oveta Culp Hobby of the Woman's Army Corps (WAC), Congresswoman/playwright/society leader Claire Boothe Luce, and Jackie Cochran (director of the WASP, the organization which ferried Air Force planes), along with numerous Hollywood celebrities, were the most prominent women of the day. In contrast to the depression years, which put a premium on nurturing female roles, the war years extolled masculinity. The ‘Rosie’ and WAC propaganda always featured women excelling in male roles, but it was really the change in the role of females that counted. Women invested in the future—in return for high morale, hard work, and general support for the nation's war goals, they demanded control over post-war society. They gained in power and importance inside the family, especially among better educated younger couples. The soaring birth rates and the idealization of the child-centred, egalitarian suburban home was their ultimate achievement. Government policy quickly ratified the new ideals. The EMIC (Emergency Maternal and Infant Care) programme provided free prenatal and obstetric care for servicemen's wives. The GI Bill provided very cheap home ownership, loans to start up businesses, and free college tuition for ex-servicemen. Unlike the New Deal, which targeted its aid to the poor, these programmes fitted the conservative ideal of reward for actual service to the nation.

Egalitarianism was the rule in the war years, reinforced by rationing, shortages, price controls, and the universalism of the draft. Income differentials narrowed, and relief was once more concentrated on people outside the labour force. The share of total income received by the richest 5% fell from 27% in 1939 to 16% in 1944. The communal spirit dramatically softened the lines that divided ethnic and religious groups. anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism declined sharply (see also religion). Desperately poor Slavic and Italian ethnic groups rapidly improved their economic status, earning about 94% of average by 1950.

The question of the loyalty of enemy aliens, and those of Axis origins, was troublesome. When in 1942 the army proposed that citizens of Germany and Italy be relocated away from the West Coast, public opinion would not accept wholesale removal; only 10,000 were moved. Of the 20 million Americans of German descent, only a few thousand sympathized with the Nazis (see German–American Bund). Mussolini was a good deal more popular among Italians, but obviously posed a negligible military threat. Public and élite opinion was loud and nearly unanimous that Japanese-Americans were dangerous and, at the minimum, had to be removed from strategic localities. Until 1950 federal law prevented people born in Japan (Issei) from becoming citizens; their children (Nisei) born on US soil automatically acquired citizenship, but they were mostly minors and would share the fate of their parents. Both groups were considered Japanese citizens by Tokyo. Although most proclaimed their loyalty to the USA, the level of distrust was high. Those living along the West Coast were sent to inland relocation centres, but there was no way to relocate or incarcerate the Issei in Hawaii, so the entire island was put under martial law for the duration. By 1988 public opinion had totally changed round, and the government offered an apology and cash payment to those who had been relocated. Mexicans, considered during the depression low-wage competitors for jobs and welfare benefits that ought to go to natives, had been given one-way tickets back to their home villages. During the war the buses and trains ran in the other direction, as thousands of Mexicans and Caribbeans replaced native farm workers (see Bracero programme). Since a main reason for the war in the Pacific was the USA's protective attitude towards China and the Philippines, the country's 100,000 Chinese and Filipino residents were given new recognition and their legal rights expanded (though not to fully equal status).

The economic status of blacks improved sharply during the war, as millions moved from unemployment in the city or under-employment in the cotton South, to manual labour jobs vacated by whites. In 1939, blacks comprised 10% of the non-farm labour force, but only 8.3% of the men and 4.3% of the women held jobs outside farming and domestic service. The median annual wages were 33% of the white rate for men, 46% for women. By 1944 black men and women were up to 10.1% and 9.1% of male and female employees, and their wages were 46% of the white rate for men and 42% for women. Except for government-run munitions plants, blacks were the last hired and the first fired. Segregation was still ironclad in the South, and prevailed in practice in the North. Rioting in Detroit in 1943 killed 34 as the acute housing shortage pitted newly arrived black families against newly arrived whites from the Appalachians. Observers were convinced that far more inter-racial bloodletting was inevitable, but apart from a few limited incidents in Mobile, Alabama, and Beaumont, Texas, trouble was averted for the time being (see also African Americans at war).

The national mood during the war displayed little of the crusading fervour that characterized the First World War. There was a job to be done, then everyone could go home. Hatred of the Japanese was strong, but propaganda efforts to personalize the war against Hitler and Tōjō were not persuasive. The egalitarianism which gained a strong boost during the war had some negative effects in the military: US soldiers resented the artificial privileges that set officers apart from the enlisted men. Unions vastly increased their presence in the labour force and their power inside the Democratic Party. Bargaining with management became a matter of dollars and cents, not life and death. The antics of the labour leader John L. Lewis (1880–1967), however, created powerful resentment against labour ‘barons’ who supposedly ruled their domains in non-democratic fashion without regard to the national interest. Patriotism surged during the 1940s, as business and labour, farms and factories, men and women, white and black worked together for communal goals with a degree of harmony that presaged an era of consensus. Foreign policy battles faded as a recognition developed of the value of allies and the glowing promise of collective security through the United Nations (see San Francisco conference). The community spirit forged in countless scrap drives, air raid drills, Red Cross meetings, draft board hearings, and volunteer activities helped dissolve the class lines that had come into sharp relief a decade before. The practical value of education, the necessity of expertise, the limitless promise of technology, and the economic power of systematic organization all burned themselves deeply into the national mind, providing a fount of conventional wisdom that would last for two more decades. The enormous pride in having won a world war in decisive fashion, with their enemies prostrate and the Allies desperate for American help, led to an uncritical self-confidence. It would inspire politics, diplomacy, military policy, and even the media, academe, and the corporations until the crises of the 1960s. See also world trade and world economy.

D'Ann Campbell/ and Richard Jensen

3. Government

For the USA, as for other major participants, the Second World War imposed one overriding task on the national government—marshalling the resources of the nation for the maximum feasible production of military might. Accomplishing that task accentuated one of the dominant trends of the 20th century, centralization of authority in the executive. However, centralization proceeded less far in the USA than in other countries, including the UK. Until the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USA moved only slowly away from reliance on markets and prices to allocate resources. The administrative machinery of war eventually emerged, but in ‘a crazy-quilt pattern of new emergency agencies and old departments’, according to one expert on wartime mobilization. Roosevelt initially resisted the creation of centralized control over the US economy, in part because he did not wish to inflame isolationist sentiment with overt preparations for mobilization, but also because he disliked the idea of placing one individual or agency in charge of the war effort. Additionally, the constitutionally induced conflicts between the executive and legislative branches hampered centralization and coordination, as did the wartime backlash against the New Deal, disagreements about the government's post-war programme, and clashes among powerful private interest groups representing agriculture, business, and organized labour.

By the end of the 1930s, Roosevelt's New Deal had produced a partial recovery from the Great Depression but had also generated intense controversy. In the summer of 1939, opposition to the administration's legislative programme had become so strong in Congress that any significant extension of New Deal reforms had become unlikely. In any case, the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939 caused Roosevelt to reorder his priorities. Convinced that he could lead on only one front at a time, and blocked by Congressional opposition from continuing his domestic reforms, he moved national defence and foreign policy to the top of his agenda. As he would later explain, ‘Dr New Deal’ was giving way to ‘Dr Win-the-War.’ To bolster public and Congressional support, the president needed to broaden his political base. Facing vigorous isolationist opposition, he could not govern with support only from the New Deal wing of the Democratic Party. Accordingly, he considered forming a coalition cabinet, an idea he modified in June 1940 when he appointed Frank Knox and Henry Stimson, two leading Republican warhawks, to be secretaries of navy and war. He later named Jesse Jones (1874–1956), a conservative southern Democrat and the administration's chief spokesman for big business, to be secretary of commerce.

As the appointments of Knox, Stimson, and Jones signified, the president hoped to improve relations with groups that opposed the New Deal but supported his foreign and defence policies. He pursued rapprochement with the business community, which during the 1930s had become estranged from the administration. An expanded national defence programme would require the involvement and co-operation of business interests, and so in 1940 he appointed a National Defence Advisory Commission that included Edward R. Stettinius Jr. of US Steel and William S. Knudsen (1879–1948), a former General Motors executive. But this new group had no authority and no single individual in charge, for Roosevelt remained reluctant to create an agency to control economic mobilization and defence production.

As military appropriations and the federal deficit soared in the spring and summer of 1940, the Roosevelt administration prodded Congress to raise taxes. At first the president and the secretary of the treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., favoured a progressive tax programme that would confiscate excessive profits arising from defence expenditures. In the end, the president proved willing to accept revenue legislation that deviated from principles of progressive taxation. The First and Second Revenue Acts of 1940 granted substantial concessions to business. Roosevelt accepted those concessions because he was convinced that unless corporate management got what it wanted on taxes, businessmen would not sign defence contracts. Therefore he surrendered to pressure for higher profits in order to induce corporations to produce arms.

Appeasement of the business community disenchanted New Dealers, who feared that the president had completely abandoned reform. It was partly to allay such fears that Roosevelt in 1940 chose as his vice-presidential nominee the secretary of agriculture, Henry A. Wallace (1888–1965). In 1940 the Roosevelt–Wallace ticket faced a stiff challenge from the Republican Wendell L. Willkie, an attractive and articulate businessman who asserted that the New Deal had disabled the American economy and interfered with national defence. During the final weeks of the campaign, Willkie attacked Roosevelt's foreign policy as likely to lead the nation into war, but in November 1940 the president won re-election, although by a smaller margin than on the two previous occasions.

USA, 3, Table 3: Principal US Government war agencies, 1940–5

* see separate entries

Source: Contributor.

Board of Economic Warfare (later Office of Economic Warfare)

National Defense Advisory Commission

National Housing Agency

National War Labor Board

Office of Civilian Defense

Office of Defense Transportation

Office of Emergency Management

Office of Economic Stabilization

Office of Lend-Lease Administration

Office of Price Administration

Office of Production Management

Office of Scientific Research and Development

Office of Strategic Services

Office of War Information

Office of War Mobilization

(later Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion)

Petroleum Administrator for War

Rubber Administration

Smaller War Plants Corporation

War Food Administration

War Manpower Commission

War Labor Board

War Production Board

War Relocation Authority

War Shipping Administration

Even as the election campaign proceeded, the president and Congress moved to remedy American military weakness by introducing conscription (see selective service system) and by extending aid to the UK. Then, to speed up the defence production needed to implement these decisions, Roosevelt created, in January 1941, a new agency called the Office of Production Management (see Table 3 for principal government war agencies). This had somewhat broader scope and authority than its predecessor, the National Defense Advisory Commission, and, because it was jointly administered by William S. Knudsen and by union leader Sidney Hillman, it ensured that both management and labour were represented in the defence programme. But it was not a comprehensive mobilization organization. Jealous of his own prerogatives, Roosevelt still refused to establish a ministry of supply under a mobilization tsar.

By the summer of 1941, when American rearmament had still not shifted into high gear, it was becoming obvious that civilian production would have to be curtailed to increase military production, and that the president would have to relinquish his role as the day-to-day boss of the defence programme. Nevertheless, it was not until after Pearl Harbor, in January 1942, that he established the War Production Board (WPB) with significantly greater power over defence production than the Office of Production Management. To direct the WPB, Roosevelt selected Donald M. Nelson (1888–1959), a former executive with the giant retailer Sears, Roebuck. Nelson was not, however, a mobilization tsar, for he shared authority over war production with a bewildering array of officials and agencies, which caused overlapping responsibilities and much friction.

The president also had to deal with friction between the executive and legislative branches of government and among powerful and competing private interest groups. Control of agricultural prices—part of the larger problem of economic stabilization in wartime—proved especially disruptive and a major source of controversy during 1942. Following an angry debate that pitted farm lobbies and farm bloc legislators against administration loyalists, Congress passed the Stabilization Act of 1942, which finally granted the Office of Price Administration the authority to regulate farm prices.

The dispute over agricultural price control took place shortly before the congressional elections of November 1942 and proved costly to the Democratic Party. Farming belt voters elected Republicans, who were considered more inclined to support higher farm prices and incomes. These results reflected a national trend towards the Republicans, who gained 44 seats in the House of Representatives and 9 in the Senate. Low turnout contributed to Republican success, for many low-income workers and young people, who tended to vote Democratic, had not gone to the polls, while young men and women serving in the armed forces had found voting difficult. Although the Democratic Party retained nominal control of both houses of Congress, a conservative coalition of Republicans and anti-administration Democrats now exercised de facto control of the House of Representatives and exerted substantial influence in the Senate. Roosevelt faced a hostile Congress filled with anti-administration legislators who believed they had a mandate to repeal the New Deal and prevent a postwar revival of reform.

This situation confirmed Roosevelt's perception that ancillary issues would have to be subordinated to the lowest common denominator of national unity—a military victory speedily won. Vice-President Wallace and other reformers portrayed the war as a ‘people's revolution’ that compelled attention, at home and abroad, to a wide range of social and economic concerns. Roosevelt had become convinced that emphasizing these concerns would enrage his domestic opposition, divide the country, and imperil his leadership. Therefore he was ready to sacrifice social and economic reform, and concentrate almost exclusively on those things necessary to military victory. He even acquiesced as his Congressional adversaries carried out a retroactive revenge against the New Deal. They argued that enormous government expenditures for war required deep cuts in non-war spending and proceeded to eliminate several depression-era agencies and programmes.

The Congressional backlash against the New Deal also affected several war agencies. Critics complained that the Office of Civilian Defense, the Office of War Information, and the Office of Price Administration had become sanctuaries for New Dealers who were more interested in perpetuating or initiating social and economic reforms, than in effective performance of proper wartime functions. All these agencies became targets of Congressional investigations and efforts to reduce their appropriations. Such legislative reprisals reflected the irritation of anti-administration congressmen who were compelled by the war to delegate authority to an executive branch that they distrusted and despised. Having granted power with one hand, Congress frequently tried to revoke or constrain that power with the other. Ambivalence towards delegation of power accounted for much of the friction between legislative and executive branches during the war years.

In early 1943, a serious clash took place between the president and Congress over agricultural and labour policy. Farm bloc congressmen won approval for legislation intended to raise price ceilings on agricultural commodities. On 2 April 1943 Roosevelt issued a stinging veto that warned Congress against igniting a fire storm of ‘wartime inflation and post-war chaos’. With little chance of mustering a two-thirds majority in both House and Senate, anti-administration leaders made no attempt to override the veto. Nevertheless, the episode widened the breach between farm bloc legislators and the Roosevelt administration, as did a subsequent confrontation over agricultural prices in July 1943 that produced a second presidential veto.

The farm bloc reacted bitterly to agricultural price ceilings and blamed the Roosevelt administration for ‘coddling’ urban workers and consumers. In this context, legislation aimed at punishing unions for strikes in wartime began to attract support. A series of stoppages in the bituminous coal industry intensified anti-labour sentiment in Congress. In May and June 1943, John L. Lewis, the boisterous head of the United Mine Workers, ordered shutdowns intended to extract higher wages from the coal industry and the National War Labor Board. Those strikes infuriated a large proportion of the American people who thought strikes in wartime delayed victory and threatened the lives of American soldiers. A Congressional majority agreed and adopted the Smith-Connally Act (War Labor Disputes Act) of 1943, which was designed to curb the activities of labour unions. On 25 June 1943, Roosevelt vetoed the measure because it contained features more likely to foment strikes than prevent them and because the bill contained a section prohibiting political contributions by unions. The House and Senate quickly overrode the president's veto, and the Smith-Connally Act became law. It foreshadowed a post-war labour policy less favourable to unions.

With Congress in a defiant mood, Roosevelt responded by creating buffers between irritable legislators and the executive branch. On 27 May 1943 he established the Office of War Mobilization (OWM) to oversee all the federal agencies engaged in the war effort. As director of OWM, the president chose James F. Byrnes, a former Democratic senator from South Carolina. Fred Vinson, another former congressman, replaced Byrnes as head of the Office of Economic Stabilization, the principal agency for resolving domestic economic problems. Late in June 1943, the president appointed Marvin Jones, former chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, as War Food Administrator. Byrnes, Vinson, and Jones were moderate Democrats who maintained friendly relations with Capitol Hill. If those men could not get along with Congress, no one could. With these appointments, Roosevelt in effect divested himself of detailed involvement in domestic political and economic affairs, and allowed his subordinates to run the Home Front. Under Byrnes, an unofficial ‘assistant president,’ the office of War Mobilization became the central administrative mechanism for directing the war economy.

Meanwhile, Congress began to concentrate on post-war policy, as the furore over the National Resources Planning Board (NRPB) revealed. Since 1 July 1939, the NRPB had functioned as the planning arm of the executive office of the president. With the outbreak of war, the Board had started developing plans and programmes for the post-war period. A ‘new economic bill of rights’ for the American people, drafted by the NRPB in 1939, guided its work. Two reports, released in March 1943, outlined plans and programmes designed to assure the American people of the right to education, health care, housing, employment, and economic security. What the Board proposed was nothing less than the completion of the welfare state begun during the New Deal. On Capitol Hill Republicans and anti-administration Democrats exploded with indignation. In June 1943, Congress voted to eliminate the Board and specified that none of its functions could be transferred to any other government department. Having destroyed the NRPB, anti-administration congressmen proceeded to create their own instruments for post-war planning, the special Senate and House Committees on Post-War Economic Policy and Planning, whose recommendations were limited and conservative in character.

Only in the area of veterans' benefits was Congress prepared to adopt welfare state measures. On 27 October 1943, Roosevelt transmitted a message calling for generous unemployment, social security, and educational benefits for returning servicemen. In January 1944, Congress started work on a comprehensive veterans' readjustment plan that became popularly known as the ‘GI Bill of Rights’. After prompt passage by the Senate, the House scaled down the benefits, but then passed the measure substantially intact in June 1944. The Servicemen's Readjustment Act provided educational assistance, readjustment allowances, and low interest loans for housing. It won approval because it applied exclusively to veterans: Republicans and anti-administration Democrats did not intend the Act to become a model for broader welfare programmes, though the president had that possibility in mind.

Trying to minimize conflict with Congress, Roosevelt had offered little more than token resistance to the elimination of New Deal agencies and the destruction of the NRPB. Even when he did fight back against Congressional opponents, he had little success. In February 1944, the House and Senate passed a tax bill that fell far short of treasury department recommendations. Roosevelt's advisers urged him to veto the bill, and on 22 February 1944 he did so. This measure was not a tax bill at all, he declared, ‘but a tax relief bill providing relief not for the needy but for the greedy’. Infuriated by his harsh language, Congress speedily overrode the president's veto.

Having defeated Roosevelt on taxes, anti-administration congressmen turned to the issue of absentee voting by men and women in the armed forces. Public opinion polls suggested that a majority of servicemen would support the Democrats, and the president and his political advisers wanted as many soldiers as possible to cast their vote. Republicans, on the other hand, feared that a large soldier vote would jeopardize their chance of defeating Roosevelt and his fourth term programme. They formed an alliance with southern Democrats who opposed any plan that might enfranchise black soldiers (see also African Americans at war). After a protracted struggle lasting from December 1943 until March 1944, the coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats killed the administration's absentee voting bill, which provided a federal ballot, and substituted a state-controlled voting plan that would keep most southern black soldiers from participating in the election. Republicans eagerly backed that bill because it was more cumbersome than a federal ballot and would discourage voting by servicemen. The president considered the ‘states rights’ bill unacceptable, but in March 1944 let it become law without his signature.

In mid-1944, Roosevelt interrupted his concentration on war and diplomacy to consider election-year politics. When the Democratic Party held its national convention in July, his renomination was assured, but there were still decisions to be made. Because of the belief that the ill and weary president might not survive another term, the various factions of the Democratic Party fought over the vice-presidential nomination. Reformers and union leaders favoured the incumbent vice-president, Henry A. Wallace. The president, though he liked and respected Wallace, refused to insist on his renomination because he thought he had moved too far ahead of public opinion. To replace Wallace he chose Senator Harry S Truman of Missouri, who had directed a highly respected Senate investigation of war production and who was on reasonably good terms with all factions of the Democratic Party.

During the campaign of 1944, Roosevelt called for fulfilment of the new economic bill of rights to ensure housing, education, medical care, and economic security. He endorsed the goal of post-war full employment, defined as 60 million jobs, and urged the creation of a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee to prevent job discrimination against ethnic minorities. With heavy support from organized labour and from urban voters, the president received 53.4% of the popular vote and 432 electoral votes. His victory over the Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey (1902–71) was the narrowest of his four presidential contests and the closest election since Woodrow Wilson edged out Charles Evans Hughes in 1916.

With the election over and the war moving towards a climax, New Dealers expected Roosevelt to lead a revival of reform. Those expectations were doomed to disappointment. The elections of 1944 had strengthened Democratic control of Congress but had not shattered the anti-administration coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats that now dominated Capitol Hill. The fate of two presidential appointments in early 1945 revealed the continuing strength of the anti-administration coalition. On 1 March 1945 the Senate confirmed former vice-president Henry A. Wallace as secretary of commerce, but only after Congress had drained most of the power from that office. On 23 March 1945, the Senate decisively rejected Aubrey W. Williams, Roosevelt's choice to head the Rural Electrification Administration. The president faced the same kind of opposition in the new Congress that had characterized the earlier war years.

Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945 with his plans for the post-war era only half formed. His successor, Truman, had not been taken into Roosevelt's confidence and was uncertain about key national policies and decisions. During his first months as president, Truman was preoccupied with military and diplomatic concerns, including the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan, and provided little leadership on the Home Front. He tended to defer to congressional committee chairmen and was willing to let Congress set priorities, draft bills, and pass legislation.

Squabbles over reconversion policy also clogged the channels of the executive and legislative branches. Some officials in the Roosevelt administration had urged partial reconversion before the war ended so that small business firms could start civilian production. This arrangement would compensate for the fact that most war contracts had gone to big business and that the government had never made effective use of small enterprise in the war production effort (see also Smaller War Plants Corporation). However, the military services objected to piecemeal reconversion on the grounds that it might interfere with the war effort and delay victory. Large firms opposed partial reconversion because it would give smaller competitors a head start on producing for post-war markets. In the struggle over reconversion, the alliance of the military and big business prevailed.

For the American government, the Second World War proved an ambiguous experience. Executive power was enhanced, but Congress became more assertive, especially in the area of domestic policy. A conservative coalition of Republicans and anti-administration Democrats matured during the war years, rolled back part of the New Deal, and blocked passage of new domestic programmes, but the basic framework of the welfare state survived intact. The war boom ended unemployment and created a ‘politics of inflation’ that lessened support for new federal welfare measures and intensified pressures exerted on government by business, labour, and agricultural interests. In national politics and federal policy, the patterns of the post-war years had emerged before the war itself was won.

Richard Chapman

4. Defence forces and civil defence

Civilian defence served to calm fears of sabotage and attack; to turn aside demands for protection by organizing civilians to protect themselves; to generate enthusiasm for the war effort; and to provide useful services. The FBI (see Intelligence, below) wanted to handle all anti-subversion activity by itself, with no public involvement. It did a good, quiet job, but only the relocation of the West Coast Japanese-Americans, satisfied public thirst for visible action. Loud demands for anti-aircraft defences threatened to divert scarce military resources; better to have worried civilians get out and do the job themselves. By 1941, 42 states had created their own defence programmes, modelled after the successful state defence councils of 1917, New York State drew up elaborate plans to evacuate the metropolis, and in May 1941 Roosevelt created the Office of Civilian Defense, with the colourful Fiorello LaGuardia (1882–1947) as head and Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), the president's wife, as assistant director for volunteers.

LaGuardia, who continued as full-time mayor of New York City, proved incompetent; he rarely showed up at OCD headquarters. The day after Pearl Harbor he alarmed millions by warning of imminent attacks on the East Coast. The president soon gave OCD to James Landis, an efficient lawyer. With a federal staff of only 1,000, Landis stressed co-ordination with the much larger and more important state and local agencies. Manuals sent to 12,000 local offices covered the basics of organization, air raid sirens and shelters, camouflage, and defence against poison gas. Some federal money was usefully spent on fire engines; much was wasted on millions of gas masks, which cities desperately wanted. Mrs Roosevelt, interested mostly in involving blacks in the programme, was forced out. By early 1943, 12 million Americans (mostly men, nearly all white) had volunteer roles, half in protective services like air-raid warden. There were 600,000 serving as aircraft spotters; unfortunately, they turned in many false alarms. The blackout exercises saved a little electricity, but disrupted the round-the-clock movement of workers to munitions factories. Washington, of course, knew there were no enemy bombers to fear, but was distressed at the failure of one-third the population to take the war seriously, and it wanted to give the all-out enthusiasts something harmless to keep them busy. Blackouts were late coming to the Atlantic coast, where the bright lights of resort hotels silhouetted ships that were often sunk by German U-boats (see convoys). One OCD operation, the Civil Air Patrol, had civilian pilots flying their own planes. Some were armed and sent searching for German submarines; they made 57 attacks. In some large cities block organizations helped people understand the rationing scheme and hunt for war jobs; often they brought local problems to the attention of city hall.

OCD was a minor wartime agency. More effective use of volunteers was made by private agencies such as the Red Cross (which recruited nurses and collected blood), and the United Service Organization (which supported soldiers' families). With the National Guard called into service, state and local civilian defence organizations provided significant help in disasters, such as major floods in the Midwest. Disaster planning became a permanent function of government, and was the chief legacy of wartime civilian defence.

D'Ann Campbell/ and Richard Jensen

5. Armed forces

(a) High Command

All the armed forces of the USA operate under the supreme control of the president. Roosevelt, like Churchill, insisted on retaining overall direction of the American war effort, though generally speaking the US military were given a much freer hand than their British counterparts. But the demands of global coalition warfare soon exposed the inadequacy of the civilian–military command structure and the lack of army–navy co-operation, and the first meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff committee on 23 January 1942 underlined the necessity for an American equivalent of the British Chiefs of Staff. Such an equivalent was formed in February 1942 when the highest US military authority, the Joint Board, was replaced by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Later that year the command structure was further strengthened when Admiral Leahy became JCS chairman and the president's chief of staff. The strong professional bond between Leahy and Roosevelt enabled the JCS to dominate planning and co-ordination, and exercise total control over the country's armed forces. It also achieved primacy in advising the president on national strategy, production requirements, manpower allocation, and shipping.

(b) Army

Civilian control of the army, including its air arm (see below), rested with the secretary of war. He acted through the war department which contained the offices of the chiefs of the arms (infantry, field artillery, coastal artillery, and so on) and services (the suppliers and administrators) and the general staff (the planners and organizers). The secretary of war from July 1940 was Henry Stimson. His under-secretary, Robert Patterson (1891–1952), was mainly concerned with procurement so an assistant secretary, John McCloy (1895–1989), acted as Stimson's general deputy. The other assistant secretary, Robert Lovett (1895–1986), was, in effect, Stimson's air force equivalent, though nominally subordinate to him. As Roosevelt exercised his function as commander-in-chief principally through his military commanders, Stimson's responsibilities were mostly confined to the war department's civilian functions, but included development of the atomic bomb.

In September 1939 the US Army comprised, besides its air arm, the Regular Army, the National Guard, and the Organized Reserves. The Regular Army, 190,000 strong, including the territorial indigenous Philippine Scouts, was the nation's standing army. It was well trained but was under-strength and under-equipped and relied on short-term enlistments and a minuscule corps of professional officers. The National Guard comprised 200,000 civilian volunteers who were raised and trained by the individual states. They drilled for 48 evenings a year and had two weeks of federally directed training. Once the Selective Service Act had been passed in August 1940 the units of the Organized Reserves, which already had on hand a cadre of reserve officers, began to expand.

From March 1941 the USA, otherwise known as the Zone of Interior, was divided into four Defense Commands (see Map 106) which corresponded with the areas allotted to the existing four armies (numbered 1–4), while outside the continental USA were the old established Hawaii and Philippines departments and the newly formed Alaska and Caribbean Defense Commands. In March 1942 GHQ , the central training command and operational centre, was abolished and three new, co-equal, autonomous organizations were formed instead: Army Ground Forces, commanded by Lt-General Lesley McNair (1883–1944), assumed GHQ's training functions and controlled all ground combat troops within the USA; the air arm, which was given its own command structure; and Services of Supply (later Army Service Forces), commanded by Lt-General Brehon Somervell (1892–1955), which assumed responsibility for the war department's logistics and procurement.

McNair had the formidable task of building an army suitable for global conflict and finalizing its training before overseas deployment. To do this he created a number of new HQ for training and development: Armored Force, Anti-Aircraft Command, Tank Destroyer Center, Airborne Command (first organized as the Provisional Parachute Group), Amphibious Training Command/Center, Desert Training Center, and Replacement and School Command. Once trained, combat-ready troops were delivered to embarkation ports as required by theatre commanders. The Victory Program (see Wedemeyer), drawn up in early 1942, specified an army of 213 divisions, but this was later reduced to 90 (excluding 2nd Cavalry division which was disbanded).

Large though McNair's organization became it was dwarfed by Somervell's powerful and influential Army Service Forces which, as the war progressed, absorbed an increasing percentage of the army's manpower (see Table 4). Within its jurisdiction were such diverse units as the military police, chemical warfare service, corps of engineers, and quartermaster, ordnance, signal, medical, and transportation corps, but it did not administer air units as the air force insisted upon, and received, its own parallel supply organization. The Chemical Warfare Service activated about 375 air and ground chemical units, including those for gas warfare and 30 chemical mortar battalions (see mortars), which supported the infantry with high explosive, white phosphorus, and smoke shells. Its engineers performed herculean efforts in combat in virtually every major engagement, and they were sometimes also employed as infantry.

USA, 5, Table 4: Growth of the Army by branch, 1941–5 (reported actual strength and per cent of total Army)

	31 December 1941	31 December 1942	31 December 1943	31 March 1945
Branch	Strength	Per cent	Strength	Per cent	Strength	Per cent	Strength	Per cent
a Armoured, Tank Destroyer, and Anti-aircraft were not reported as separate arms. Because of inclusion of these specialities in the basic ground arms, exact breakdown of the ground arms cannot be made.
b This figure, at this date, includes perhaps 300,000 carried in the Troop Basis as ‘Hospital Population,’ most casualties occurring in the ground arms and to a less extent in the Air Corps.
c Includes Army Nurse Corps, Dietitians, and Physiotherapists.
Source: Greenfield, K., Palmer, R., and Wiley, B., US Army in World War II: The Organization of Ground Combat Troops (Washington, DC, 1947).
Infantry, Cavalry, Field Artillery (includes Armoured and Tank Destroyer)a	690,083	41.7	1,512,730	28.0	1,960,068	25.8	2,423,075b	29.7
Coast Artillery Corps (includes Anti-aircraft)a	177,379	10.7	425,187	7.9	590,939	7.8	330,442	4.1
total ground arms	867,462	52.4	1,937,917	35.9	2,551,007	33.6	2,753,517	33.8
Adjutant General	966	0.1	4,418	0.1	15,688	0.2	56,116	0.7
Engineers	91,476	5.5	333,209	6.2	561,066	7.4	688,764	8.4
Signal	50,596	3.0	241,227	4.5	309,641	4.1	331,105	4.1
Medicalc	129,512	7.8	469,981	8.8	622,227	8.2	670,151	8.2
Ordnance	34,278	2.1	235,350	4.3	316,174	4.2	332,042	4.1
Quartermaster	122,672	7.4	327,794	6.1	453,419	6.0	491,301	6.0
Chemical	6,269	0.4	46,182	0.8	66,610	0.9	61,458	0.7
Military Police			147,840	2.7	222,639	2.9	203,823	2.5
Transportation			51,041	0.9	167,612	2.2	260,260	3.2
total services	435,769	26.3	1,857,042	34.4	2,735,076	36.1	3,095,020	37.9
Air Corps	270,535	16.3	1,270,677	23.5	1,810,900	23.9	1,831,091	22.4
All Other (includes Women's Army Corps, Warrant and Flight Officers, and No Branch Assigned)	83,391	5.0	333,252	6.2	485,451	6.4	477,758	5.9
grand total	1,657,157	100.0	5,398,888	100.0	7,582,434	100.0	8,157,386	100.0

The creation of these three administrative commands allowed Marshall, the army's chief of staff, and his general staff to control operations and plans. To fight a war of unrivalled complexity in several theatres simultaneously Marshall reorganized the War Plans Division into an expanded Operations Division (OPD). This was the linchpin for the central direction of all operations, and through it Marshall controlled and monitored the various theatre commands, and co-ordinated their supply requirements. These included Iceland; North-West Service Command in the Yukon Territory of Canada; US Army Forces, South Atlantic (which co-operated with the Brazilian armed forces); the North African Service Command which ensured supplies to US forces serving in the Allied North African Theatre of Operations (redesignated Mediterranean Theatre of operations in November 1943); the Iran–Iraq Service Command (redesignated Persian Gulf Command in December 1943), which expedited the flow of Lend-Lease to the USSR; the European Theatre of Operations (see ETOUSA); and US Army Forces, Pacific Ocean Areas, which, with the Hawaiian Department, was responsible for administering, training, and supplying all army and air force personnel involved in the Pacific war.

In May 1942 the first of the American women's wartime services, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, was established under Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby. In 1943 it ceased to be an auxiliary force and became part of the US Army as the Women's Army Corps. Its peak strength was 99,000 women who worked in almost every military occupation except combat and from January 1943 served in every overseas theatre of war.

The US Army's highest operational field structure, the Army Group, reflected the nature of coalition warfare as its commander supervised two or more armies which often contained several nationalities. Bradley's Twelfth Army Group, which fought in north-west Europe, was almost wholly American in content, but Devers's Sixth Army Group, which fought its way into southern Germany after the French Riviera landings, was half French; and Fifteenth Army Group, formed for the Sicilian campaign and commanded by Mark Clark in the Italian campaign from December 1944, had originally been led by a British general and though predominently Anglo-American had units from many nations, including the co-belligerent Italian forces.

During the war the USA deployed eleven field armies. First, Second, Third, and Fourth were already in existence at the commencement of hostilities; Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh were raised during 1943; the Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Fifteenth in 1944. Second and Fourth Armies remained in the Zone of Interior on training and administrative duties; the First, Third, Ninth, and Fifteenth Armies fought in north-west Europe; the Fifth Army took part in the Italian campaign; the Seventh Army fought as part of Devers's Sixth Army Group; and Sixth (see also Alamo Force), Eighth, and Tenth Armies were formed for service in the Pacific, the first two under MacArthur in his South-West Pacific Area, the last for the invasion of Okinawa under General Simon Buckner.

Each army comprised two or more corps of which the US Army formed 26 during the war, all but one being deployed overseas. It was the corps commander who fought the battles and he usually had at his disposal one armoured and two infantry divisions, plus supporting arms and services. The division was the basic military formation, 68 being deployed in Europe and 22 in the Pacific. The four-regiment ‘square’ infantry division was replaced in May 1940 by the slimmer, more flexible three-regiment ‘triangular’ division, 14,250 strong, which eliminated brigade HQs. A regiment comprised three battalions (each of which had three rifle companies and one heavy weapons company), a headquarters company with six 105 mm. howitzers, a service company, and an anti-tank company. When tanks and engineers, and extra support if necessary, were attached, it was known as a Regimental Combat Team (RCT). As well as the Americal and Philippine infantry divisions, the following numbered divisions were raised; 1–9, 24–38, 40–45, 63, 65, 66, 69–71, 75–100, 102–104, and 106.

German blitzkrieg tactics encouraged the belief that the US armoured division could act as a self-sufficient task force that could, by virtue of its protective armour, fire-power, and mobility, strike deep into enemy-held territory. Altogether 16 were raised as were 60 non-divisional tank battalions. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Armored Divisions were raised under ‘heavy’ tables of organizations with 390 tanks, while 4–14, 16, and 20 were organized as ‘light’ formations having 263 tanks each (1st Armoured Division also became a ‘light’ formation later). All armoured divisions were eventually deployed in Europe, but unfavourable terrain and the superiority of German tanks and anti-tank weaponry prevented them from operating as originally envisaged until German resistance collapsed in the spring of 1945. Initially, an armoured division of 14,620 men was divided into two tank regiments and one armoured infantry regiment, each of three battalions, plus three artillery battalions, but for greater flexibility this organization was abolished in 1943 and replaced by three battalions each of infantry, tank, and artillery. These were allotted, as appropriate, by the division's HQ , to two smaller HQ , known as combat com mands (CC), which could be reinforced as necessary by non-divisional tank battalions.

USA, 5, Table 5: Deployment of the Army, 30 April 1945 (reported actual strengths)

Type of Troops	European Theatre	Mediterranean Theatres	European and Mediterranean Theatre Combined	South-West Pacific Theatre	Pacific Ocean Theatre	China and India-Burma Theatres	Principal Theatres Combined
a Including as combat troops all men in engineer, signal, and chemical units of AGF type.
b In addition, air forces totalling approximately 200,000, under direct command of the commanding general of Army Air Forces, were engaged in overseas operations, chiefly in the Pacific, without being assigned to a theatre.
Source: Greenfield, Palmer, and Wiley.
Divisional combat troops	819,342	102,485	921,827	183,798	80834		1,186,459
Non-divisional combat troopsa	595,418	37,797	633,215	113,318	102,076	15,766	864,375
total ground combat troops	1,414,760	140,282	1,555,042	297,116	182,910	15,766	2,050,834
Non-divisional service troops	828,726	128,307	957,033	214,835	142,579	69,898	1,384,345
Army Air Forces	439,425	153,005	592,430	173,343	75,438	90,949	932,160b
Replacements	171,933	34,551	206,484	34,203	20,371	4,365	265,423
Patients	128,305	15,679	143,984	41,135	6,423	1,439	192,981
Overhead	54,758	17,080	71,838	29,500	19,851	10,447	131,636
Miscellaneous	27,598	4,972	32,570	12,372	3,380	5,966	54,288
army in principal theatres	3,065,505	493,876	3,559,381	802,504	450,952	198,830	5,011,667
Percentage of Army in principal theatres to total Army (8,290,993)	37.0	6.0	43.0	9.7	5.4	2.4	60.4
Percentage of ground combat units in principal theatres to all ground combat units in Army (2,233,854)	63.4	6.3	69.7	13.3	8.2	0.7	91.9

Important as armour was in offensive, mobile warfare, it was the combination of infantry and artillery that proved the key to success.‘I do not have to tell you who won the war,’ General Patton said. ‘You know our artillery did.’ High quality radio communications and spotting, combined with great flexibility, accuracy, and sheer weight of fire-power, ensured the advancing infantry maximum support. Apart from its three artillery battalions a division could also request support from non-divisional artillery under corps or army command. Altogether, the US Army raised 326 artillery battalions, around 400 anti-aircraft battalions, and 86 tank destroyer battalions. In December 1942 non-divisional regiments of anti-aircraft artillery and field artillery were converted into separate battalions. When several battalions were employed together they were controlled by a group HQ; several groups had a Brigade HQ.

Specialized divisions were also raised for a variety of purposes. In the winter of 1942–3 three light divisions—89th (Truck), 71st (Pack, Jungle), and 10th (Pack, Alpine)—were created for jungle warfare in the Pacific. Each had 9,000 men equipped with lightweight gear that could be either animal- or man-packed. However, the concept was soon discarded as combat conditions were not as expected and the US Navy and Army amphibious engineer brigades furnished the required mobility. More importantly, the higher strengths and endurance of the regular infantry divisions were found to be necessary to combat the Japanese in tropical terrain and only the 10th (Pack, Alpine) was retained. This was brought up to the strength of a normal infantry division and as 10th Mountain Division fought in the Italian campaign. The army also experimented briefly with five motorized divisions, but their equipment would have filled so much shipping space that theatre commanders rejected them in favour of receiving additional ordinary formations, and they were therefore converted to standard infantry divisions.

More successful were the five airborne divisions that were raised. Like the light divisions they were formed as smaller counterparts to the standard infantry division, but this was not found to be successful. The 13th, 17th, 82nd, and 101st Divisions, which were deployed in Europe—where they were organized into two parachute regiments and one glider regiment, plus a battalion of 105 mm. howitzers—were increased from 8,500 to 12,799 men, but the fifth formation, 11th Airborne Division, which fought in the south-west Pacific, retained its own unique structure and size.

Two cavalry divisions were also raised: 2nd Cavalry Division, which had a high proportion of African Americans and, was disbanded (twice), and 1st Cavalry Division, which fought in the south-west Pacific. The 1st Cavalry retained the old ‘square’ divisional formation of four regiments as well as the names and traditions of some of the US Army's most famous regiments, including Custer's 7th Cavalry, and was theoretically still organized as horse cavalry which fought dismounted.

Unlike in the First World War, when some divisions had had to be stripped for replacements, all 90 divisions were kept in being and were deployed all round the world (see Table 5). as by the start of the final year of the war 47 infantry regiments had sustained a casualty rate which varied from 100% to 200% this was no mean achievement (see also Ground Force Replacement System). But 90 proved to be barely sufficient (the Red Army raised 400, Germany 300, Japan 170) and all saw combat. When the German Ardennes offensive began in December 1944 the few remaining in the USA were moved to Europe and no more were then being formed.

Excluding Army Air Force personnel, by the end of the war US Army strength had risen to over 6,000,000. Casualties, including those en route to combat theatres, amounted to 820,877 including 182,701 dead.

(c) Army Air Forces

In September 1939 the army's air arm was administratively organized into the US Army Air Corps, commanded by Maj-General Arnold, and GHQ Air Force. A series of changes in this administrative structure, influenced by the air force's desire for greater autonomy, by the growing realization that its mission implied more than support for the ground forces, by the war in Europe, and by the unsatisfactory nature of the chain of command, culminated in the US Army Air Forces (USAAF), as it was called from June 1941, becoming, in March 1942, one of the army's three co-equal commands. In reality, however, it achieved equal status with the army and navy, for its commanding general, Arnold, sat with the other two service chiefs on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Combined Chiefs of Staff committees, and directed air operations without formal reference to the army's chief of staff. After March 1942 the Air Corps remained the USAAF's main component, but GHQ Air Force (called Air Force Combat Command from June 1941 to March 1942) was dissolved and its responsibilities taken over by the newly formed USAAF HQ.

The expansion of the USAAF during the war years was phenomenal. In 1939 there were 17 air bases in the USA; by 1943 there 345 main bases, 116 sub-bases, and 322 auxiliary fields. It grew in strength from 20,196 men in June 1938 to nearly 1,900,000 men and women in March 1945, rising from 11% of the army's strength to over 22%. In September 1939 it had 2,470 aircraft; in July 1944, when the maximum number was reached, it had 79,908. In September 1939 it possessed only 23 B17 bombers, its one modern aircraft type; by 1945 it had at least one aircraft type in each conventional class (but not in jets), which was equal to the best of its opponents and in some cases, such as transport aircraft and heavy bombers, its superiority was unchallenged.

Administratively the USAAF relied on a number of Commands or similar organizations, for such support functions as supply, transport, and meteorological intelligence, and the larger ones had sub-commands under them. The world-wide network of radio communications was organized by the Army Airways Communications System. Training was the responsibility of Troop Carrier Command—initially called Air Transport Command until this name was transferred to the Air Ferrying Command in June 1942—and of the four home-based air forces (see below) which in May 1945 were grouped together as the Continental Air Forces (see Chart).

The USAAF employed 422,000 civilians, including WASP pilots and those who manned the Civil Air Patrol, and more than 39,000 members of the Women's Army Corps. It also controlled a wide variety of ancilliary units drawn from the army (for example, medical, police, and signal services) which were officially designated Arms and Services with AAF (ASWAAF), and an estimated 1,500,000 volunteers joined its Ground Observer Corps (seedefence forces and civil defence, above).

To carry out combat missions sixteen separate air forces were formed, numbered in the order in which they were raised. These were usually divided into a number of subordinate commands, some of which were Allied ones. A Fighter, a Bomber, and an Air Service Command was the normal minimum, but air force organizations varied widely and a system of directorates and divisions, abandoned by USAAF HQ in 1943, continued to be employed by some.

The First, Second, Third, and Fourth Air Forces, which supported First, Second, Third, and Fourth Armies, remained within the Zone of Interior for defence purposes and for training. Fifth Air Force, originally created as the Philippine Department Air Force, was part of MacArthur's South-West Pacific Area command; Sixth protected the Panama Canal and adjacent shipping lanes; Seventh protected Hawaii and then participated in the Central Pacific offensive; Eighth was based in the UK and took part in the strategic air offensives against Germany and German-occupied Europe; Ninth was employed during the North African campaign before moving to the UK to provide tactical air support for Allied ground troops in north-west Europe; Tenth, based in India, organized the Hump supply route and supported ground troops in Burma and China; Eleventh was based in Alaska; Twelfth served in North Africa and then in the Italian campaign, becoming the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations tactical air force in November 1943; Thirteenth, based in New Caledonia, provided tactical air support to Allied forces in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea campaign, and the Philippines; Fourteenth, formed as a consequence of the American Volunteer Group, augmented Tenth in operations in South-East Asia; Fifteenth, based in Italy, aided Eighth in the strategic air offensives against European targets; and Twentieth, based first in China and later in the Marianas, mounted the strategic air offensive against Japan and dropped the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces formed Spaatz's US Strategic Air Forces in Europe in January 1944; Fifth, Seventh, and Thirteenth Air Forces made up Lt-General George C. Kenney's Far East Air Forces when this was formed in August 1944; and Twentieth, controlled directly by Arnold from the Pentagon, was redesignated US Strategic Air Forces, Pacific, in July 1945.

The combat units in an Air Force, and their size and content, also varied considerably. Before the war the wing had been the key tactical and administrative organization with which GHQ Air Force had controlled its combat units. It continued in limited use during the war, but it was the group, roughly parallel to an army regiment, which was administratively and operationally the most important unit. Altogether, 243 fully equipped groups were raised, each of which usually contained three or four squadrons. Squadrons were the USAAF's basic permanent combat unit as well as the basic organization for supporting services. They, and the group or wing to which they belonged, were always described by function (see Table 6) as well as being numbered, and they normally did their advanced training together and fought as a unit—though squadrons could, and often did, operate separately. In 1944 a squadron, which comprised flights of three or more aircraft, contained from 7 B29 Superfortresses to 25 fighters and numbered from 200 to 500 men. A composite group or wing, as the term implies, had a mixture of squadrons.

By the end of the war the USAAF had taken delivery of 158,800 aircraft, including 51,221 bombers and 47,050 fighters, of which 22,948 were lost in action. During the 2,363,800 combat sorties which had been mounted 2,057,000 tons of bombs had been dropped—75% of them on Germany—and 459,750,000 rounds of ammunition fired. Casualties of 115,382 included 40,061 dead, 17,021 of whom were officers.

USA 7, Table 7: US Navy, US Marine Corps, US Coast Guards. Officers, men, and women on active duty, 1 July 1940–31 August 1945

	1 July 1940	31 Dec 1941	30 June 1942	31 Dec 1942	30 June 1943	31 Dec 1943	30 June 1944	31 Dec 1944	31 Aug 1945
Annual totals and grand totals also include numbers of officer candidates.
Source: Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 10 Jan. 1946 pp. A 14-15.
Navy
Officers, Men	13,162	38,601	67,786	117,268	170,418	212,820	260,143	291,357	316,675
Officers, Women	0	0	0	770	3,827	6,459	7,611	8,744	8,399
total officers	13,162	38,601	67,786	118,038	174,245	219,279	267,754	300,101	325,074
Nurses	442	823	1,778	2,907	5,431	7,022	8,399	8,893	10,968
Enlisted, Men	144,824	332,274	556,477	1,099,109	1,486,696	1,995,893	2,542,653	2,735,270	2,935,695
Enlisted, Women	0	0	0	3,109	21,083	38,450	57,500	72,864	73,685
TOTAL NAVY	160,997	383,150	640,570	1,259,167	1,741,750	2,381,116	2,981,365	3,201,755	3,408,347
Marine Corps
Officers, Men	1,819	4,067	7,138	13,151	21,140	27,588	31,991	34,598	36,851
Officers, Women	0	0	0	0	244	605	797	824	813
Enlisted, Men	26,545	70,908	135,688	223,243	284,481	356,533	415,559	414,561	427,017
Enlisted, Women	0	0	0	0	3,313	9,720	16,669	17,012	17,350
total marine corps	28,364	75,346	143,528	238,423	310,994	405,169	472,582	472,380	485,833
Coast Guard
Officers, Men	1,360	1,854	3,507	5,462	8,104	10,038	11,275	11,697	11,766
Officers, Women	0	0	0	15	235	514	704	918	855
Enlisted, Men	12,261	25,575	55,142	135,231	142,631	154,251	149,589	147,865	148,629
Enlisted, Women	0	0	0	69	2,956	5,570	7,392	8,911	8,646
total coast guard	13,766	27,730	58,998	141,769	154,976	171,939	169,258	169,871	170,275
grand total	203,127	486,226	843,096	1,639,359	2,207,720	2,958,224	3,623,205	3,844,006	4,064,455

(d) Navy

Civilian control rested with the secretary of the navy. He acted through the navy department and its various bureaus, and was advised by a navy board. In July 1940 the then secretary, Charles Edison, was replaced by Knox, and in August Forrestal assumed the new post of under secretary. When Knox died in May 1944, Forrestal replaced him.

In September 1939 the US Navy was still oriented towards capital ships, of which it had fifteen, though one dated back to 1912 and two others to 1923. It also had 5 carriers, 18 heavy cruisers, 19 light cruisers, 61 submarines, and a miscellany of destroyers, patrol craft, gun boats, and wooden submarine chasers. It controlled its own aviation which operated land-based sea patrols and the specialized aircraft employed on its carriers (see carriers, 2). Between July 1940 and August 1945 more than 75,000 aircraft were delivered and naval air personnel rose from 10,923 (2,965 pilots) in mid-1940 to 437,524 (60,747 pilots) by August 1945, while the navy as a whole expanded at a similar rate (see Table 7). It also manned the guns of armed American merchantmen with personnel of the Naval Armed Guard; and inducted a large number of women (see WAVES).

Between the wars the navy's highest commander was designated Chief of Naval Operations (Opnav), a position held in September 1939 by Admiral Stark. The preponderence of the navy's strength lay in the Pacific Fleet, commanded by Admiral James O. Richardson as C-in-C US Fleet (CINCUS), which was based in the Hawaiian Islands. But there was also a small Asiatic Fleet, based on Manila, and the Atlantic Squadron. On 5 September 1939 the Atlantic Squadron started the Neutrality Patrol with its four old battleships, one carrier, four cruisers, and one destroyer squadron, and on 1 November 1940 it was redesignated Patrol Force United States Fleet before becoming the Atlantic Fleet in February 1941.

The same month the position of C-in-C, US Fleet, was abolished, and a true ‘two-ocean navy’ came into being when an Atlantic and a Pacific Command were created. Vice-Admiral King, who had commanded the Patrol Force since the previous December, was appointed C-in-C Atlantic Fleet, while Rear-Admiral Kimmel took command of the Pacific Fleet; but after the USA entered the war in December 1941 the position of C-in-C US Fleet was resurrected and King was appointed to it. At King's insistence his abbreviated title was known not as CINCUS, because it was pronounced ‘sinkus’, but COMINCH, and he was granted unprecedented powers. They excluded control of the bureaus, traditionally accountable to the navy secretary, but he was made directly responsible to the president and for current plans. Stark continued to have responsibility for long-term plans but in March 1942 he moved to London as C-in-C US naval forces in Europe and the office of Opnav was merged with COMINCH.

USA 7, Table 8: Strength of the US Navy, 1940-5

Date	Number of Vessels of all Types
Source: The United States Naval Chronology, World War II (Washington DC, 1955).
30 June 1940	1,099
30 June 1941	1,899
30 June 1942	5,612
30 June 1943	18,493
30 June 1944	46,032
30 June 1945	67,952
Warships completed or acquired between 1 July 1940 and 31 August 1945
Battleships	10
Aircraft carriers (CV, CVL)	27
Escort carriers (CVE)	111
Cruisers (CB, CA, CL)	47
Destroyers	370
Destroyer escorts	504
Submarines	217
Minecraft	975
Patrol ships and craft	1,915
Auxiliary ships	1,612
Landing ships and craft	66,055
District craft (yard craft)	3,053
total	74,896

In July 1940 Congress authorized a large increase in construction (see Table 8) and the same month Roosevelt declared his intention of giving the UK all possible help ‘short of war’ a policy which, by the following year, committed King's forces to actions hardly distinguishable from those of the belligerents (see Greer, Kearny, and Reuben James).

The US continental coastline, and some adjacent sea areas such as the Hawaiian Islands, were divided into numbered Naval Districts, but these were administrative areas not geared to directing modern anti-submarine warfare. So in July 1941 Stark formed four Sea Frontiers. Designated Eastern, Gulf, Caribbean, and Panama (which covered both ends of the canal), their areas of responsibility extended not only along a length of the coastline but about 350 km. (200 mi.) out to sea. Their task was to protect local convoys within their areas with Coast Guard cutters, blimps, and whatever other units were allotted them. (Air cover for transatlantic convoys was initially the responsibility of the USAAF's No. 1 Bomber Command—Anti-Submarine Command from October 1942—but in September 1943 the command was disbanded. The Navy then took over its aircraft and assumed its responsibilities, though the air crews remained members of the USAAF.) The Eastern Sea Frontier, which operated the few Q-ships the US Navy used during the war, was the parent organization. Working closely with Anti-Submarine Command at his New York HQ , the frontier's commander had complete operational control over all forces allocated to him, and he continued to be responsible for any coastal convoys that originated from his frontier when they left it.

In December 1941, when the Japanese launched their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet comprised 9 battleships, 3 carriers, 21 heavy and light cruisers, 67 destroyers, and 27 submarines. The attack caused heavy losses, especially to the battleships, but the carriers were at sea, and many of the ships were later salvaged and put back into commission. The Asiatic Fleet, which in December 1941 comprised 3 cruisers, 13 destroyers, 29 submarines, 2 seaplane tenders, and 6 gunboats, became part of ABDA Command and its commander, Admiral Hart, was appointed its naval commander (ABDAFLOAT). But he lost his principal base when the Japanese overran Luzon (see Philippines campaigns) and nearly all his ships in a number of naval actions when the Japanese moved into the Netherlands East Indies (see Java Sea battle).

In March 1942 Admiral Nimitz, who had succeeded Kimmel as C-in-C Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC), was also appointed to command all US forces in the Pacific Ocean Areas (CINCPOA) which was divided into three geographical zones: North Pacific, Central Pacific, and South Pacific. But the two separate offensives which were launched in the Pacific war—Nimitz's Central Pacific one and MacArthur's towards the Philippines—were co-ordinated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In February 1943 the naval forces in MacArthur's South-West Pacific Area (SWPA) were redesignated Seventh Fleet and in March Halsey's South Pacific command became Third Fleet (established 15 March 1943) and Central Pacific command became Fifth Fleet (established 26 April 1944). In June 1944 these two fleets merged to become the Pacific Fleet's main strike force with their commanders taking it in turns to command it (called Third Fleet when commanded by Halsey; Fifth Fleet when commanded by Spruance). In the Atlantic and Mediterranean South Atlantic command became Fourth Fleet in March 1943; Naval Forces, North-West African Waters, became Eighth Fleet; and Naval Forces, Europe, became Twelfth Fleet.

Tenth Fleet, the shore-based anti-submarine command, was formed by King in May 1943. Though designated a fleet this command had no ships, but brought together a number of organizations, such as those which dealt with convoy routing and with intelligence, which were already in existence when it was formed. By combining them under one roof King achieved greater co-ordination as well as greater security, and from it was monitored the movement of every merchant ship, warship, and aircraft in the US-controlled western Atlantic (US Strategic Zone).

The strength of each of the sea-going fleets varied, but their offensive units were always formed into task groups and task forces. By far the most powerful of these was Third Fleet's Task Force 38 (Task Force 58 when Third Fleet was operating as Fifth Fleet), which was built around the Pacific Fleet's fast carriers and was supplied across the vast stretches of the Pacific by the Fleet Train, one of the war's most outstanding feats of logistics. So powerful did this force become that by 1944 Nimitz was able to muster 14 battleships, 15 fleet carriers, 10 escort carriers, 24 cruisers, and a host of smaller vessels to support the invasion of the Marianas. The navy's submarine forces, by applying a stranglehold on Japan's shipping routes, also played a crucial role in winning the Pacific war, as did the amphibious forces of the US Marine Corps (see below), which did much of the fighting on land.

During the war years the US Navy also administered and controlled the US Coast Guard. This organized the auxiliary Coastal Picket Patrol and performed a variety of tasks on land, in the air, and at sea under the command of the four Sea Frontier commanders. Its primary function was the protection of coastal convoys, but its personnel also regulated merchant shipping in port and at wharves; patrolled beaches; manned look-out stations, and some troop transports and landing craft; and undertook air-sea rescue operations. Its personnel strength grew from 13,766 in 1940 to 170,275 in 1945, including 9,501 women (see SPARS). It was then operating more than 800 vessels over 20 m. (65 ft.) in length, and was also manning 351 naval vessels and 288 USAAF aircraft.

(e) Marine Corps

A separate service within the navy department, the USMC had the traditional marine role of being the navy's soldiers, but unlike any other marine force in the world it controlled its own aviation. The highest serving marine officer, the Corps Commandant ( General Thomas Holcomb, 1936–43; General Alexander Vandegrift, 1944–7), had his own HQ and staff, but aboard ship marines were always subordinated to naval command and, until 1947, the USMC was not represented on the JCS Committee.

In 1933 the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) was established to undertake amphibious landings and by mid-1939 a quarter of the corps' total strength of nearly 20,000 men were part of it. The FMF was organized into two brigades (1st and 2nd) which were each supported by a Marine Aviation Group (AVG). One brigade was based at Quantico, Virginia, the other at San Diego, and there were also marine units scattered all over the world on guard and garrison duties. In February 1941 the two FMF brigades were redesignated 1st and 2nd Marine Division, each made up of three infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, and various support units, and their supporting aviation became 1st and 2nd Marine Aircraft Wings. It was these formations under an administrative and co-ordinating corps HQ (First Marine Amphibious Corps, or IMAC) which undertook the marines' first operation of the war when they landed on Guadalcanal in August 1942, and IMAC (redesignated Third Amphibious Corps in April 1944) became the amphibious operations planning HQ for the South Pacific area.

The USMC expanded as quickly as the other services (see Table 8) and altogether six marine divisions were activated: 3rd, 4th, and 5th in the USA between August and November 1943 and 6th, on Guadalcanal, in September 1944. The marines also raised Raider battalions (see Special Forces, below), parachute battalions (paramarines), a glider group, barrage balloon squadrons, and seven defence battalions for guarding island bases such as Wake and Guam.

Marine Corps aviation kept up with this growth. In December 1941 there were 641 pilots and 13 squadrons; by September 1945 there 10,049 pilots and 128 squadrons formed into 5 aircraft wings (1st–4th, and 9th, a training wing), plus 106,475 ground officers and enlisted men and women. Squadrons were designated by numbers and by the letters VM to which was added another letter for identification (e.g. VMF for fighter squadrons, VMB for bomber squadrons).

Before the start of Nimitz's Central Pacific offensive V Amphibious Corps (VAC) was formed in September 1943 and this subsequently oversaw the invasions of the Gilbert Islands (see Tarawa) and the Marshall Islands. Both Amphibious Corps came under the Fleet Marine Force which was redesignated Fleet Marine Force, Pacific (FMFPac) in 1944. Initially, both FMFPac and VAC were commanded by Maj-General Holland M. Smith (1882–1967) during the Central Pacific offensive, but he relinquished the latter post to Maj-General Harry Schmidt in October 1944. Marine Corps casualties during the war amounted to 91,718; 24,511 of whom were killed or died.

(f) Special Forces

The Marine Corps raised the first special forces when 1st and 2nd Raider Battalions were formed in February 1942 to spearhead amphibious landings on normally inaccessible beaches, mount surprise raiding expeditions, and conduct guerrilla-style missions. At the start of the Guadalcanal campaign 1st Raider Battalion landed on Tulagi and Savo islands, but the troops were then used in an infantry role, for which their training had not fitted them, on Guadalcanal. The 1st Raider Battalion took part in the battle for Edson's Ridge (so called after the battalion's commander) and 2nd Raider Battalion, known as Carlson's Raiders, pursued and destroyed a Japanese regiment during the course of a 240 km. (150 mi.) patrol through the jungle.

Two more Raider Battalions (3rd and 4th) were raised in the Pacific theatre in September– October 1942 and all four became part of 1st Raider Regiment formed in the New Hebrides in March 1943, but they did not always operate together. In September 1943 2nd Raider Regiment (Provisional) was formed from 2nd and 3rd Battalions which fought on Bougainville, but the increasing need for Marine Corps reinforcements, and the lack of opportunity to employ the raiders in their specialist role, led to their disbandment in January 1944, and all four battalions became 4th Marine Regiment to replace the one which had been lost in the Philippines in 1942.

The army's special forces were called the Rangers. The first battalion, the idea of Brig-General Truscott who modelled it on the British commandos, was raised from US troops stationed in Northern Ireland in mid-1942, and 50 rangers participated in the Dieppe raid that August. The 29th Ranger Battalion (Provisional), formed in the UK in December 1942, participated in raids on Norway while attached to the British commandos, and two more (3rd and 4th) were raised in Morocco during May 1943. The 1st, 3rd, and 4th took part in the Sicilian campaign and then landed at Salerno ( September 1943) and Anzio ( January 1944). They took their objective, the town of Anzio, with relative ease; but though specifically trained for raiding, and therefore lightly equipped, they were then used as conventional infantry. On 29 January two battalions (1st and 3rd) were used to spearhead the attack on Cisterna but were ambushed and almost totally annihilated. When the remaining battalion tried to reach them it suffered heavy casualties and out of the original 1,500 men only 449 remained. Two more Ranger Battalions (2nd and 5th) were activated in the USA and took part in the Normandy landings in June 1944 (see OVERLORD), 2nd landing on OMAHA beach while 5th stormed Pointe du Hoc. The 6th Ranger Battalion was formed in New Guinea in September 1944 and was employed in raids on the Japanese-occupied Philippines.

A joint US–Canadian brigade-sized unit called the First Special Service Force was also raised. It was trained in amphibious, mountain, and arctic warfare techniques with the idea of making a large-scale raid on Norwegian industry in tracked vehicles which were being developed in the UK for arctic warfare. The Norwegian government-in-exile vetoed the raid but the force, which was commanded by a US Army officer, Brigadier R. Frederick, remained in being. It landed on Kiska unopposed during the Aleutian Islands campaigns and then took part in the Italian campaign and landed at Anzio. It was also employed during the French Riviera landings in August 1944 when it took two of the Hyères islands to protect the invasion's left flank. It then operated as part of Devers's Sixth Army Group in southern France, but by then its specialist techniques were no longer required—it also proved to be highly complicated to administer—and it was disbanded in December 1944. See also GALAHAD, Mars Task Force, and Office of Strategic Services.

I. C. B. Dear and Shelby Stanton

6. Intelligence

In the Second World War, the gathering and processing of military intelligence depended less on the traditional methods of espionage agents and clandestine reconnaissance, and more on the sophisticated technologies of electronic eavesdropping and communications intelligence.

The American military intelligence units, designated G-2 in the army and N-2 in the navy, were transformed almost beyond recognition by the incorporation of scientific techniques into the age-old quest to ‘see to the other side of the hill’. The army also had the Counter Intelligence Corps (Corps of Intelligence Police until January 1942), but most important was the Signal Intelligence Service—later called the Special Branch, Military Intelligence Service—established in 1929 under the cryptologist Colonel William F. Friedman (1891–1969). The analogous navy organization was the Communication Security Unit, also known as OP-20-G, formed in 1924 under Commander Laurence F. Safford. Rivalling these units in size and importance was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), created on 13 June 1942 under William J. Donovan.

Communications intelligence was broken into two broad categories: cryptanalysis and traffic analysis. Cryptanalysts engaged in the traditional practice of code-breaking, or deciphering the other side's encoded messages (and, reciprocally, devising and constantly revising codes for the secure transmission of their own nation's messages). But modern codes had become so complex—for example, the Japanese naval code, JN-25, comprised some 45,000 five-digit groups, each signifying a word or phrase, and each further embedded in additive five-digit groups taken from a continually changing list of 50,000 random numbers—that rudimentary computers and advanced mathematical theory were required to crack them.

American cryptanalysts led by Friedman had broken the Japanese diplomatic code, known as PURPLE, even before the outbreak of war. In the doomed negotiations between Tokyo and Washington (see introduction, above) just before Pearl Harbor, deciphered Japanese diplomatic messages, called MAGIC by the Americans, were often in the hands of Roosevelt and Hull before the messages were formally presented to the Japanese diplomats who were their intended recipients. Probably the greatest triumph of American cryptanalysis in the war was the accurate prediction by the Pearl Harbor branch of 0P-20-G, under Commander Joseph J. Rochefort Jr. of the Japanese attack on Midway, 3– 6 June 1942 (see ULTRA, 2).

Traffic analysis (see signals intelligence warfare), depended not on actually reading encrypted enemy communications, but on identifying patterns in the volume, sources, destinations, and other characteristics of radio transmissions. In the battle of the Atlantic, traffic analysis of data provided by high-frequency direction finders (see huff-duff) enabled the British and American navies to plot the approximate locations of German U-boats, by monitoring the frequent radio communications between submarines at sea and their bases in Germany. This kind of intelligence ultimately proved crucial in breaking the back of the German submarine warfare campaign.

On the Home Front, primary responsibility for intelligence gathering and analysis rested with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover. The Bureau existed principally to investigate violations of federal law, and to collect evidence to support criminal prosecutions, its enabling statute also authorized it to investigate any matters referred to it by the state department. Accordingly, President Roosevelt on 25 August 1936 directed Secretary of State Hull officially to request the FBI to collect information on ‘subversive activities’.

That request provided the FBI with the authority it needed to create a General Intelligence Section, without formally notifying Congress or the public. The creation of that section vastly amplified the scope of the FBI's activity, and helped to fuel the growth of the FBI from 391 agents in 1933 to some 3,000 in 1942, and 4,886 in 1944.

Even before the USA entered the war, the FBI conducted an investigation into the legality of the camps run by the German-American Bund, and also made an extensive investigation of Nazi espionage activities in America, resulting in the indictment of eighteen persons in 1938. In that same year Hoover began attaching security specialists to each of the Bureau's 45 field offices. On 21 May 1940 Roosevelt authorized wiretapping of ‘persons suspected of subversive activities’. The FBI also established a Custodial Detention Programme in 1940, identifying ‘dangerous’ individuals for arrest in case of emergency. Included on this list by December 1941 were 770 Japanese aliens whose arrest Hoover ordered after the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Hoover remained convinced that the FBI could contain any threat of Japanese subversion with individually targeted arrests of this kind, and he was critical of the later decision to intern the entire West Coast population of some 110,000 Japanese-Americans.)

A presidential directive on 26 June 1939, allocating intelligence duties among the army, navy, and FBI, assigned responsibility for both domestic and Latin American intelligence to the FBI. The Bureau investigated some 19,649 reports of sabotage in the USA during the war (none of which was definitively established to be sabotage), and foiled several German efforts to land saboteurs by submarine. In early 1941 it rounded up and imprisoned 33 Nazi suspects which accounted for all the German agents in the USA. In June 1942 eight saboteurs were landed by submarine, four on Long Island and four near Jacksonville, Florida. The FBI rounded up these as well before they could do any damage. Six were subsequently executed and two imprisoned as were some of those who helped shelter them. Another two agents were landed by submarine in Frenchman's Bay in Maine in November 1944. Their mission was to discover for Goebbels how effective his propaganda broadcasts were, but they, too, were quickly captured by the FBI and sentenced to death, though this was later commuted to life imprisonment. In Latin America, the approximately 360 agents of the FBI's Special Intelligence Service (SIS) co-operated with the Office of the Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs in denying strategic raw materials to enemy powers, and monitoring enemy intelligence and propaganda activity.

A major purpose of the FBI's wartime role was to forestall the kind of hysteria and vigilante disruption that had swept the USA during the First World War. Accordingly, the Bureau undertook extensive training and liaison activities with local police forces, established a network of informants in defence plants, and pre-empted a scheme by the American Legion to organize its own counter-espionage force by recruiting some 60,000 legionnaires into its American Legion Contact Program.

David M. Kennedy

7. Merchant marine

One way to understand the Second World War is to appreciate the critical role of merchant shipping in its prosecution. Throughout the entire conflict, the availability or non-availability of merchant shipping determined what the Allies could or could not do militarily. This was most evident in the early stages of the war when sinkings of Allied merchant vessels exceeded production, when slow turnarounds, convoy delays, roundabout routeing, and long voyages taxed transport severely, or when the cross-Channel invasion planned for 1942 had to be postponed for many months for reasons which included insufficient shipping. But in time, the bottoms required to help turn the tide became a reality. These were provided overwhelmingly by the USA, primarily through construction. From 1939 to 1945, the US Maritime Commission built 5,777 ships, mostly large cargo carriers and tankers, for a total of 56.3 million deadweight tons, or almost five times the size of the nation's entire 1939 fleet (see Graph 2); it was the most prodigious construction of ships ever undertaken. Had these ships not been produced, the war would have been in all likelihood prolonged many months, if not years—some argue the Allies would have lost—as there would not have existed the means to carry the personnel, supplies, and equipment needed by the combined Allies to defeat the Axis powers. The US wartime merchant fleet, built by a labour force which, at its peak, numbered more than 600,000 men and women at 70 principal private and government shipyards at a cost of $13 billion, constituted one of the most significant contributions made by any nation to the eventual winning of the Second World War.

Few could have predicted such an extraordinary American maritime growth before the outbreak of war. In 1937 the US merchant fleet was on the verge of obsolescence. In late 1938, however, the newly constituted US Maritime Commission (USMC) under Admiral Emory S. Land inaugurated a long-range construction programme geared to provide 50 ships a year for 10 years. This timely undertaking provided the nation with just enough ships, shipyards, and expertise to enable it and the Allies to weather the storm in the early stages of the war.

One of the more conspicuous manifestations of its gradual move away from neutrality was the shipping assistance the USA provided the Allies. The USMC sold large numbers of its First World War reserve fleet to the British, which, while helping the USA dispose of obsolete ships at reasonable prices, provided the UK with much needed tonnage. The USMC also constructed vessels for the Allies, in particular the UK. To facilitate mass, rapid, and efficient construction of these, a British design for an emergency 11 knot, 10,800 dwt dry cargo ship with reciprocating steam engines, the famous Liberty ship, was adopted, and orders for 260 of these, including 60 for the UK, were placed in early 1941. These and other ship type orders more than doubled with the establishment of Lend-Lease. Following Hitler's invasion of the USSR in June 1941, and reflecting continued enormous losses of Allied shipping to German attacks, the building programme was supplemented yet again. Once the USA entered the war, the main task facing the USMC was to produce merchant vessels faster than the Axis could sink them. In 1941 and 1942 the Allies were not only losing the war on land, they were losing it at sea, and a successful Axis severing of their line of supply seemed possible. Not until 1943 was the disparity between sinkings and construction overcome.

But the neutralization of the submarine menace did not diminish the need for ships, as supply lines to American and Allied forces fighting abroad on ever widening and remote fronts had to be assured. It took seven to eight tons of supplies to sustain a soldier in Europe in 1942, and double that in the Pacific. The shipyards under the USMC met the challenge admirably. In 1943 alone they launched 18 million tons. Although the USMC built some warships, including LSTs, escort carriers (‘baby flattops’), and attack cargo ships (see landing craft), most of its types, or about 77% production, were of commercial design. These included progressively more advanced vessels. The Liberty ship design, for example, was replaced by that of the Victory ship, a minimally larger, but much faster and rangier, and more commercially desirable, turbine-driven cargo carrier.

The allocation and control of the government's ships was just as significant as their construction. Once launched, the ships had to be supervised. The most efficient employment and turnaround of all ships, new or old, government or private, had be accomplished. Some balance had to be achieved between the USA's incoming strategic materials needs, and its outgoing military shipping requirements. Lend-Lease had to be serviced. The UK's minimal domestic requirements alone exceeded 25,000,000 annual tons of imported food and supplies for its civilian population. The USSR had to be supplied via long and extremely hazardous sea lanes (see Arctic convoys). In 1943, US merchant ships in Lend-Lease made 2,267 voyages to the UK, 328 to the USSR, and 281 to other Allied nations.

In order to effect efficient control and operation of the vast flotilla of merchant ships, in February 1942 Roosevelt created the War Shipping Administration (WSA), under the direction of Lewis W. Douglas. Admiral Land, as head of the USMC, continued, with his deputy, the indispensable Admiral Howard L. Vickery, to oversee shipbuilding. Douglas ultimately succeeded in creating a co-ordinated, scientifically managed, and balanced pool of ships for both war and civilian cargoes, including in the latter the critical United Kingdom Import Program. Among Douglas's and the WSA's major obstacles were the US service branches, as the US Army and Navy naturally favoured military over civil programmes, resented civilian handling of military cargoes, and actually sought to use the distribution or denial of US tonnage to the Allies as a means of influencing Allied strategic thinking, particularly during 1942 and early 1943 when British military planning was dominant. Douglas's long-range view was also in conflict with Admiral Land's and the USMC's goal of rebuilding the USA into a great post-war merchant shipping power. As Douglas saw it, the USA, with its general economic superiority, could not justify wresting control of the seas from Allied nations whose prosperity depended upon maritime revenues. For Douglas and the WSA the Atlantic Charter of 1941—the Roosevelt–Churchill agreement of fair play and global interdependence between nations allied in war—and not the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, with its strong nationalistic commitment to the economic welfare of the US shipping industry, provided the preferable guideline. In this interpretation Douglas enjoyed the invaluable support of Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's closest aide. Together, Douglas and Hopkins, with periodic support from the president, formed the staunchest pro-British team in the US war administration.

Even so, the WSA frequently had to devote as much time to soothing British anxiety about the potential post-war commercial uses of America's huge new fleet—a ‘floating avalanche’ was one British name for it—as it did to the US service branches' attempts to commandeer it. British concerns were understandable; in 1943 the US merchant fleet equalled that of the UK's in tonnage, and in 1945 had doubled it (see Graph 3). Ultimately, the British reconciled themselves to the inevitability and necessity of US shipping growth, and throughout the war were increasingly beneficiaries of it, as the WSA laboured to make up the UK's shipping losses and guarantee its post-war maritime recovery. The benefits included the continued allocation of US ships to the UK Import Program, the loan of two million tons of US vessels to London on bareboat charters, and the formalization of an Anglo-American authority, the United Maritime Authority, over all Allied shipping to prevent the chaotic and ruinous competition that followed precipitous decontrol in the First World War. The WSA also assigned many ships to European civil relief and rehabilitation programmes in 1944–5, thereby contributing significantly to the stabilization and recovery of the liberated nations.

Although Douglas left the WSA in 1944, his concepts were carried through by his successor, Captain Granville Conway, by the White House, the treasury, the Office of Lend-Lease Administration, and the state department. For the degree to which the principles of the Atlantic Charter prevailed in respect to shipping, the Potsdam accords of 1945 and the Ship Sales Act 1946 assured both the maintenance of a strong American merchant marine for foreign trade and national defence, and the beneficent policy which helped restore post-war international commerce by rehabilitating the merchant fleets of the Allies.

In the final assessment, the huge US merchant fleet not only provided critical logistical support to the war effort, but helped place the economies of the Allied and liberated nations on a more solid footing, thereby adding a substantial degree of stability to the post-war political situation.

Jeffrey J. Safford

8. Culture

(For the US film industry, see Hollywood.)

The war, filled with human drama vivid action, and exotic locales, suffused US culture during most of the 1940s. Americans, flushed with prosperity and eager for relief and relaxation, created a boom in popular entertainment. Although both popular and serious culture were characterized more by quantity than quality, a hungry public turned to a wider variety of outlets for reassurance, enlightenment, and sheer escape.

The theatre—which still chiefly meant Broadway—offered relatively little of a serious nature about the war. Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine (later made into a movie) delivered a ringing call to anti-fascist arms in 1941 before Pearl Harbor, but its topical material left it time-bound. John Steinbeck's 1942 play The Moon Is Down (based on his novel of the same title) probed the human dilemmas of the German occupation and the Norwegian resistance, but was hotly controversial for its treatment of a German officer as a likeable boy-next-door caught up by irresistible forces. The few plays that entered the repertory during the war had little to do with the global conflict. The most memorable was The Glass Menagerie, which in 1945 heralded the arrival of one of America's major playwrights, Tennessee Williams.

The war, curiously, played better as a musical. Irving Berlin, the leading US song-writer, recast Yip Yip Yaphank, his light-hearted look at First World War military life, as This Is the Army ( 1942) featuring big chorus numbers performed by 300 servicemen. It was an all-male, white-dominated show, casting blacks all too aptly as second-class citizens, and with the women's roles played by men in drag. (This Is the Army was made into a popular movie, starring future politicians George Murphy and Ronald Reagan as father and son.) If This Is The Army looked backward in time, On The Town ( 1944) forecast the future. A happy collaboration of Leonard Bernstein, a major figure in American music for the next half-century, and choreographer Jerome Robbins, it celebrated high-spirited sailors who romped through New York on shore leave. It was brassy, sexual, and urban, but nostalgia for a simpler, halcyon America also continued to be big box office, notably in the enduring Richard Rodgers– Oscar Hammerstein collaboration Oklahoma! ( 1943).

Popular music took on a patriotic, martial air. The industry boomed as huge audiences were glued to their radios for war news and a mobile population with money to spend flocked to big-city clubs and country music venues. Irving Berlin's ‘God Bless America’, written in 1938 and rocketed to instantaneous recognition by Kate Smith, became the unofficial national anthem. Tin Pan Alley tried to equal such memorable hits from the First World War as ‘Over There’ and ‘K-K-K Katy’, but the innocence that had buoyed such tunes was missing in this greater, more terrible war: efforts such as ‘Goodbye Mama, I'm Off to Yokohama’ and ‘You're a Sap, Mr Jap’ fell flat.

The reality of the war was captured more by such songs as Frank Loesser's ‘Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition’. Domestic dislocations received bittersweet recognition in a woman's lament, ‘They're Either Too Young or Too Old’. Nostalgia for a vanished world fuelled hits like ‘The Last Time I Saw Paris’ by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein.

New musical forms and entertainers came into the spotlight. Country music was less narrowly defined by region and class as military and industrial demands brought people of diverse backgrounds side-by-side. ‘There's a Star-Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere’, which claimed to be the most popular song of the period, suggested the fusion of patriotism and nostalgia as country music went mainstream. GIs in Europe ranked Roy Acuf their favourite performer, and 25 country music groups played at army camps in the European theatre alone.

Big band jazz enjoyed great popularity, even though conscription and travel restrictions made staffing a nightmare. War audiences wanted loud, full music with a lively beat. From the big band scene emerged one of the biggest stars of the post-war era: Frank Sinatra. His ‘nice guy’ image combined with jazz-inspired phrasing and supple microphone work propelled him to stardom in 1943. Simultaneously the ‘bebop’ or ‘bop’ movement, an antidote to the bland commercialism of jazz and popular music, began to grow under the influence of the legendary Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. Though initially ridiculed by many critics, bop's voice from the inner city was destined to have a major effect on post-war jazz and rock. Carried abroad by GIs and their bands, the dazzling variety of American music attained new international influence.

The classical music scene languished during the war as symphony orchestras and opera companies lost musicians to military bands. American composers sometimes turned to war subjects, although few had the lasting appeal of Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, written as a declaration of faith in 1942 during the dark night of Allied losses. The most lasting compositions came from the pen of Béla Bartók, in particular his Concerto for Orchestra. Like many members of Europe's intelligentsia, Bartók, a Hungarian émigré, took refuge in the USA in the 1930s and enormously enriched American cultural life.

For serious discussions of the war the public found a flood of books, mostly by war correspondents and politicians. Non-fiction overtook novels in popularity, a trend evident with the two best-sellers of 1941. William L. Shirer's Berlin Diary chillingly portrayed Hitler's Germany, and then surrendered its lead to Joseph E. Davies's Mission to Moscow, which offered a reassuring, if over-credulous, view of the Soviet ally. In 1943 Wendell Willkie, the Republican presidential candidate of 1940, distilled his passionate internationalism into the suggestively titled One World, which sold two million copies in two years, a record to that point in American publishing. Sober readers worked through Walter Lippmann's US Foreign Policy and Sumner Welles's The Time for Decision.

The murkiness of geopolitics was leavened by human-interest stories about average GIs. Private Marion Hargrove's cosy sketches of boot camp in See Here, Private Hargrove ( 1942) became a phenomenal best-seller. As GIs moved from camp to battlefield, an obscure newspaperman named Ernie Pyle rocketed to fame with his loving portraits of ordinary soldiers. Late in the war in Up Front, Sergeant Bill Mauldin's writings and drawings conveyed a first-hand authenticity that could only have come from one who was there.

For American fiction the war would be a catalyst. During the conflict religious novels, like movies offering the reassurance of faith, proved popular. A harbinger of war-inspired subject matter and a new generation was the youthful John Hersey's A Bell for Adano, a tale of the Italian campaign, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. Major works of the war-inspired generation led by men such as Norman Mailer, James Jones, Herman Wouk, and Gore Vidal lay over the horizon.

The war spurred economic developments that shook up the genteel book trade and helped democratize American reading. It abetted the paperback revolution, begun in 1939 with Pocket Books' cautious release of ten paperbacks selling for 25 cents each. Wartime paper rationing, which squeezed books into smaller formats, helped make paperbacks respectable, and a mobile public liked the slim, light volumes. The Armed Services Editions became the biggest mass publishing venture in American history. Sixty million books, ranging from Charles Dickens and Joseph Conrad to mysteries and westerns, poured into the hands of soldiers and sailors—free. Charges of censorship flared as zealous officers tried to circumscribe what GIs, whose experiences outran many writers' imaginations, might read.

In the end the war transformed American culture. Freed from previous constraints, 12 million soldiers and sailors experienced worlds vastly different from the conventional pieties in which they had been raised. If the depression had coloured the outlook of an era, the war shaped the attitudes of a new generation prematurely powerful, sceptical, and worldly. When the veterans returned home they began reshaping the American cultural imagination to account for their experience.

Clayton R. Koppes

Bibliography

Introduction/domestic life/government Blum, J. M. , V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (New York, 1976).
Burns, J. M. , Roosevelt: the Soldier of Freedom, 1940–1945 (New York, 1970).
Campbell, D'A. , Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era (Cambridge, Mass., 1984).
Chapman, R. , Contours of Public Policy, 1939–1945 (New York, 1981).
Dallek, R. , Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York, 1979).
Feis, H. , The Road to Pearl Harbor (Princeton, 1950).
Freidel, F. , Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (Boston, 1990).
Kearns Goodwin, D. , No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York, 1994).
Kennedy, D. M. , Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York, 1999).
Lingeman, R. , Don't You Know There's a War On? (New York, 1970).
Polenberg, R. , War and Society: The United States, 1941–1945 (Philadelphia, 1972).
US Civilian Production Administration, Industrial Mobilization for War: History of the War Production Board and Predecessor Agencies 1940–1945 (Washington, DC, 1947).

Bibliography

Armed forces Maurer, M. (ed.), Air Force Combat Units of World War II, Air University ( 1961; repr. Washington, DC, 1980).
Rhodes, R. , The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York, 1986).
Stanton, S. , Order of Battle: US Army, World War II (Novato, Calif., 1984).

Bibliography

Intelligence Powers, R. G. , Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York, 1987).

Bibliography

Merchant marine Land, E. , Winning the War with Ships: Land, Sea, and Air—Mostly Land (New York, 1958).
Lane, F. C. , Ships for Victory: A History of Shipbuilding under the United States Maritime Commission During World War II (Baltimore, Md., 1951).
Safford, J. J. , ‘Anglo-American Maritime Relations During the Two World Wars: A Comparative Analysis’, The American Neptune, 41:4 ( October 1981), pp. 262–79.

Bibliography

Culture Schuller, G. , The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930–1945 (New York, 1989).