The End of the Hot War – and the Beginning of the Cold War

Japanese Artist Maps History of the World’s Nuclear Explosions (1945–1998)
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I)                   The Home Front

A)    Centralized planning – 1941 was a banner production year for the auto industry, which was reluctant to abandon civilian production to make war material, and did so only under duress (and the promise of guaranteed profits of cost-plus contracts).

B)     “Dollar-a-year-men” – executives from the US firms who came to Washington to help the military plan the economy

1)      War Production Board – set prices and determined production

2)      Suspension of anti-trust laws – encouraged the formation of larger firms, which officials in the military believed would better meet their production criteria—and which made procurement easier.

3)      Construction of new factories – at the governments expense, or with low cost government loans (often, after the war, these factories that the government owned were sold to private industry for pennies on the dollar

4)      Cost-plus contracts

C)    War Labor Board – arbitrated labor-management disputes; set wage rates for all workers.  In return, labor officials promised to abide by a “no-strike” pledge, which individual workers supported, except when it involved their own grievances at work.

D)    Office of Price Administration – set price ceilings for almost all consumer goods.

E)     Selective Service – FDR administration followed the practice of Woodrow Wilson, and instituted a wide-ranging conscription program.

F)     War Manpower Commission – determined which workers work was vital to the war effort (which would prevent them from being drafted); also determined when workers could change jobs.

G)    Concentration of the Economy

1)      Procurement system – fostered further concentration of the US economy; by the end of the war the top 100 companies held 70% of all civilian and military contracts, compared with 30% five years before.

2)      Industrial boom

(a)    By 1943 unemployment disappeared

(b)   Second Great Migration – whites and blacks leave the South for the Midwest and the West Coast, where most of the jobs created by this economic boom are to be found.

3)      Real income growth – 27% between 1939 to 1945

(a)    Redistribution of wealth – income of those at the bottom of the wage scale grew at a faster rate than the heavily taxed incomes at the top of the scale.

4)      Americanization push – although there were ugly, racist aspects of this new push toward Americanization, it was not anti-European immigrant; in fact, most propaganda celebrated the ethnic diversity of America.

B)     Rosie the Riveter – women began to move into industrial jobs in unprecedented numbers during the war years; although most were force to give up those positions at the end of the war, they fought hard to remain in those positions, and a significant number of women remained in the industrial workforce after the war.

1)      Male resistance – women who moved into these jobs faced tremendous amounts of resistance from the males who remained on these jobs (give examples of harassment)

2)      Working mothers – faced problems relating to the lack of childcare, and the related problem of the alleged juvenile delinquency that their neglect caused.

3)      Role of women in society – remained largely unchanged; many saw women in these kinds of positions as temporary war expediency.

C)    Wartime intolerance

1)      Conscientious Objectors – most Americans have little patience for fellow citizens who refuse to take direct part in a war, whether for reasons of religious principles or any other principles

2)      Japanese Americans – removed from the West Coast, allegedly because of the danger of their disloyalty—although much of their property was seized.

(a)    Many Japanese American men were drafted (or chose to join the military to get out of internment camps) in 1944; some of these men were among the group that liberated the survivors at Dachau.

(b)   Internment was upheld by the Supreme Court

3)      Life in the Jim Crow Army

(a)    Egalitarian White Army – much had been made of the role the army played in promoting sense of acceptance for children of European immigrants as true American citizens; African Americans, although they served in the military, were never extended this courtesy.

(i)                  Universal draft – greater mixture from various regions than in previous wars.

(ii)                Homosexuality – “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was the unofficial policy; homosexuality was tolerated as long as it was not discovered.

(b)   African Americans in the military – excluded from the Marine Corps, Coast Guard entirely, from the Army Air Corps until 1943.

(i)                  Segregated training camps – not surprising, since many of these camps were in the South

(ii)                Segregated service – African Americans were relegated to the quartermaster corps, providing labor and transportation services for frontline troops—until crisis like the Battle of the Bulge.

(i)      Tuskegee Airmen.

4)      Birth of the modern civil rights movement – irony in the fact that the war was being fought in part against the racist German government when pogroms and discrimination were actively encouraged (or at least tolerated) by various governments in the US.

(a)    Growth of the NAACP during the war

(b)   “Double V” campaign – victory over fascism abroad, and against racism at home

(c)    CIO – the CIO, at the leadership level, was relatively colorblind (at the level of the shopfloor, however, white workers were extremely interested in maintaining the privileges of their race).

(d)   March on Washington – threatened protest led by A. Philip Randolph to expose the discriminatory hiring practices of government contractors; federal government passed the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), which was somewhat successful in removing constraints on the hiring of African Americans.

(e)    Racial tensions

(i)                  Detroit riot 1943 – in the aftermath of the Sojourner Truth Homes riot, racial tensions remained extremely high in the city, exacerbated by the tight housing market (especially for African Americans), and the large numbers of new residents.

(ii)                Zoot Suit Riots – sailors, soldiers, and Marines antagonism against African American and Mexican American wearers of so-called “zoot suits” (describe)—often stripping the wearer of his clothing.  This antagonism between the two groups was heightened because these military personnel were often cruising African American and Mexican American neighborhoods looking for prostitutes—which they assumed meant any unescorted female in the area.

II)                 End of the Hot War

A)    Victory in Europe – pretty much a forgone conclusion after the successful landing at Normandy; Allied forces were able to advance on German forces from left and right.

B)     Victory in Japan – the beginning of the Atomic Era

1)      Atomic Bomb – the Manhattan Project was able to produce three atomic bombs by the summer of 1945

2)      Why Japan?

(a)    Payback to Japanese for Pearl Harbor, Bataan (death march), other atrocities

(b)   Limit the amount of territory that would have to be surrendered to the Soviet Union for its “sphere of influence” in Asia

(c)    Limit number of American casualties – fears of massive casualties from an invasion of Japan.

(d)   Racist feeling toward Japanese, which also fueled earlier movement to use of internment camps.

3)      “Spheres of influence” – agreement between FDR, Churchill, and Stalin that would provide Soviet Union control of the countries immediately were surrounding the country so that the Soviets could maintain a buffer to decrease the likelihood that they would be invaded.

4)      Soviet entry into Pacific – the Soviet Union was scheduled to begin its role in the PTO by August 8

5)      Hiroshima – bomb dropped on August 6, 1945; 80,000 people burned to death instantly, tens of thousands died soon afterward from the effects of radiation; five square miles were leveled by the blast

6)      Nagasaki – bomb dropped August 8, 1945; 35,000 were killed instantly; 1 ½ square mile was leveled.

7)      Surrender – surrender formally signed on September 2, 1945—VJ Day

C)    Alternatives – Smithsonian controversy over the Enola Gay display; most veterans of the war do not want to hear of any alternatives to dropping the bombs, because they believe that dropping the bombs saved their lives.  There was strenuous opposition on the part of the generals advising Truman, however, who did not believe the intentional slaughter of civilians, which was clearly going to be the case in the two targets chosen in Japan, was any way to conduct a war (they wanted to limit civilian casualties to “collateral damage”).

1)      No invasion was planned until November 1945

2)      Japan had signaled a willingness to surrender months beforehand.

D)    Allied fallout

1)      Death of FDR – dynamics between the leaders of Great Britain, Soviet Union, and United States changed greatly with death of FDR; Truman less confident of abilities than FDR, nor did he initially inspire much confidence.  Truman was much more likely to follow the lead of Churchill, who was vehemently anti-Communists; Truman was anti-Communist himself, and distrusted Stalin greatly.