World War II and American Democracy

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World War II and American Democracy
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American Foreign Policy on the Eve of WWII

• FDR Non-entanglement v. Internationalism
• Neutrality Acts
• 1935-prohibit arm sales
• 1936-prohibit loans
• 1937-cash and carry
• Lend-Lease Act

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Freedom, Democracy and WWII

• Atlantic Charter
• Allied principles of war
• Four Freedoms
• Differing interpretations
• Origins of Postwar Economic thought
• Growing Pie metaphor

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Mobilizing America

• Hollywood and the War
• Office of War Information Motion Picture Bureau
• Wartime Film work
• training films,
• commercial movies
• Democracy and Wartime Propaganda

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Women and WWII

• Rosie the Riveter
• Increased number of women workers
• Publicized as temporary
• War posters
• Govt Child Care policy

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War, Race, Democracy, and Origin of Civil Rights

• Patriotic Assimilation and White Ethnics
• African Americans
• Randolph and March on Washington
• New migration
• Latinos
• Zoot Suit Riot
• Bracero Program

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Race, Civil Liberties, and WWII

• Yellow Peril and the West Coast
• Stereotypes and Images of Japanese
• Japanese Internment
• General DeWitt
• Executive Order 9066
• Hirabayashi v. US (1943)
• Korematsu v. US (1944)
• Ex parte Endo (1944)

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The war power of the national government is 'the
power to wage war successfully'. . . It extends
to every matter and activity so related to war as
substantially to affect its conduct and progress.
The power is not restricted to the winning of
victories in the field and the repulse of enemy
forces. It embraces every phase of the national
defense, including the protection of war
materials and the members of the armed forces
from injury and from the dangers which attend the
rise, prosecution and progress of war. . .Since
the Constitution commits to the Executive and to
Congress the exercise of the war power in all the
vicissitudes and conditions of warfare, it has
necessarily given them wide scope for the
exercise of judgment and discretion in
determining the nature and extent of the
threatened injury or danger and in the selection
of the means for resisting it. . .Where, as they
did here, the conditions call for the exercise of
judgment and discretion and for the choice of
means by those branches of the Government on
which the Constitution has placed the
responsibility of warmaking, it is not for any
court to sit in review of the wisdom of their
action or substitute it judgment for theirs.
--Hirabayashi v. US (1943)
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MR. JUSTICE MURPHY, dissenting. Korematsu .v US
(1944) This exclusion of "all persons of
Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien,"
from the Pacific Coast area on a plea of military
necessity in the absence of martial law ought not
to be approved. Such exclusion goes over "the
very brink of constitutional power" and falls
into the ugly abyss of racism. . . I dissent,
therefore, from this legalization of racism.
Racial discrimination in any form and in any
degree has no justifiable part whatever in our
democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any
setting but it is utterly revolting among a free
people who have embraced the principles set forth
in the Constitution of the United States. All
residents of this nation are kin in some way by
blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are
primarily and necessarily a part of the new and
distinct civilization of the United States. They
must accordingly be treated at all times as the
heirs of the American experiment and as entitled
to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the
Constitution.
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Impact and Legacy of WWII

• Diplomatic
• Cold War and Nuclear Age
• Political
• Anti-communism and party politics
• Economic
• Ended depression and demand for friendly
  capitalist world economy
• Social/Cultural
• Rosie to June to Gloria
• Confronting racism
• Rise of the Sunbelt
• Hollywood and the American mind

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Web Sites

• WWII Propaganda
• Hollywood Images and WWII
• Powers_of_Persuasion
• Dr. Seuss Collection
• Authentic History WWII
• Japanese Internment
• PBS Children of the Camp
• Miss Breed Letters to the Camps