Abstract
Contrary to what the title implies, this is not a history of the origins of the post-war military-industrial complex. Rather the author is concerned with the myriad ways government sought to promote the war effort by manipulating public opinion.
Coercion was vital, of course. The majority of Americans who served in uniform did not do so by choice but because they had been drafted, or enlisted so as to choose their service branch. Virtually all working Americans paid taxes to support the war effort because they were required to do so by law. All Americans had to have ration books in order to purchase scarce items and commodities. However, to a remarkable degree the government relied upon voluntary cooperation to achieve its wartime goals. For example, unlike in the United Kingdom, the most fully mobilized of the western democracies, there was no labour draft. Civilians were free to choose where they would live and what kind of jobs they would take. They were also free to decide how much money, if any, they would devote to buying war bonds, whether or not to grow ‘victory gardens’, and how many items, if any, they would donate to aluminium and other collection drives. As a result the federal government made enormous efforts to persuade citizens to help meet its goals of their own free will. These are described here in great detail.
The author asserts that the uniquely close relation between the citizenry and its government established the model that would prevail in the post-war era and beyond. But in reality he proves nothing of the sort. The Second World War differed from the Cold War and all subsequent hot wars in enjoying almost universal support. Although a majority of Americans opposed entering the war before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attack on Hawaii on 7 December 1941 and Hitler’s declaration of war four days later changed everything. The powerful pacifist movement, or isolationism as its critics called it, all but disappeared for the duration. It now became possible for government to spend virtually unlimited sums of money so long as they directly pertained, or seemed to pertain, to military activities. Even so, a remarkable feature of the American war effort was the degree to which President Roosevelt’s administration lacked confidence in the willingness of people to make sacrifices for the cause, hence the lack of a labour draft, and the failure to draft women despite an acute military manpower shortage that began to develop in 1944.
Never again was support for a war so great, and no later administration dared to impose rationing or raise taxation to Second World War levels. Except for conscription, briefly abandoned after the war and then brought back because even the low army manpower requirements pre-Korea could not be met by volunteers alone, none of Roosevelt’s great wartime initiatives ever appeared again. After Vietnam even conscription disappeared, with subsequent conflicts being fought by all-volunteer armed forces. When President George W. Bush invaded Iraq and the costs began to pile up, he was asked what people could do to support the troops and he suggested that they go shopping. At this point the country was not just generations but light years away from the days of ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’. The one constant over this long period from 1941 to the present is that Americans quickly became used to being over-armed at all times, so that today, with no serious enemies in sight, two or three times as much is spent on defence as necessary – there now being a consensus that extravagant military budgets are good for the economy, almost the only form of economic stimulus to which few people object.
Given America’s actual evolution from isolationism to permanent excessive defence spending, it is difficult to agree with Professor Sparrow that Second World War policies explain how this came about. But what he has accomplished, and it is no small thing, is to show how the Roosevelt administration induced people to buy bonds, pay extremely high taxes, and otherwise support the war effort with a minimum of coercion and a maximum of coaxing. This is an interesting and important story and one that he tells well, but most of what he writes about is specific to that one war and has little bearing on what came later.