I recently finished reading No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
- integrating black Americans into factories and the military
- hysteria over the risk that Japanese-Americans would aid Japan
- strikes for higher wages as the labor market grew tight
- an ally, Churchill, who did not want to launch a cross-Channel invasion
- a wife who was uninterested in sex (though she produced six children, five of whom survived)
Black Americans had suffered horribly during the Depression. Their rate of unemployment was lower than that of whites in 1930 (older posting), but government intervention in the labor market worked to blacks’ disadvantage. Companies were prevented by law from cutting wages, which meant that workers on average were paid more than the market wage. Therefore companies wanted to keep only their most educated and most skilled workers, who tended to be white. Employers were forced to recognize unions, which tended to be run by and for white workers. The jobs boom created by World War II meant that blacks were needed in factories, however. This caused a lot of friction as white-run unions would strike rather than work shoulder-to-shoulder with blacks. Roosevelt prided himself on being a friend to Labor, but he was also commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. The parents of soldiers were infuriated any time that a union struck because the resulting lack of ammunition and arms might get one of their boys killed due. FDR used the U.S. Army on multiple occasions to seize factories and force unions back to work. The Philadelphia transit union that is currently on strike walked off the job in August 1944 “to protest the upgrading of eight Negro employees to motormen” and distributed handbills with a message from Franklin to Eleanor: “You kiss the Negroes and I’ll kiss the Jews and we’ll stay in the White House as long as we choose.” FDR moved 5,000 soldiers into Philadelphia and threatened the striking workers with the military draft. Faced with the possibility of fighting overseas, they returned to work.
In addition to striking over the injustice of having to work alongside blacks, unions of white workers took advantage of the tight labor market and war production urgency by striking for higher wages. Roosevelt, betraying his Depression-era policies, responded to public outrage by sending in the army. FDR comes across as a consummate politician attuned to the breezes of public opinion, leaving his wife to be the one with the strong and fixed convictions.
Black soldiers in the military grew increasingly angry over unequal treatment on- and off-base. The best thing that could happen to a black soldier was to be shipped over to England where there was no institutionalized segregation. The next best thing was the death of a general, admiral, or cabinet secretary. By 1944 enough of the old guys had died and been replaced by younger bureaucrats that the military became more or less integrated.
When hysteria grew over the risk of Japanese-Americans aiding the enemy, Roosevelt took the easy way out, caving in to pressure to move these U.S. citizens from the West Coast to concentration camps in the blistering interior deserts. Eleanor argued tirelessly against this policy, but was ignored. Goodwin covers the economic motivation behind many calls for the internment, notably a desire to take over rich Japanese-owned farmland.
The book is not a military history, but Goodwin covers the frictions among Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin over the practicability of a cross-Channel invasion. As far as Churchill was concerned, the time would not be ripe until the Allies could essentially walk unopposed through France and Belgium. Stalin wanted a second front opened immediately. Roosevelt had to navigate between the two and eventually force Churchill into the 1944 invasion, 5/6th of whose troops were American.
Eleanor Roosevelt traveled as far as England and Australia to check up on conditions for troops and workers, serving as FDR’s eyes and ears. She had a personal staff of one, paid for from her personal funds (compare to present day First Lady), rejected Secret Service protection, and asked a lot of tough questions. Despite her generally soft humanitarian inclinations, she had no compunction about dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. She felt “a little sad” about the necessity of using a second bomb.
Speaking of that personal staff of one… Prior to contracting polio, FDR had an affair with his wife’s social secretary, the beautiful young Lucy Mercer, who was to remain a lifelong friend and was with him when he died in1945 in Warm Springs, Georgia. He invited Crown Princess Martha, exiled from her native Norway by the German occupation, to live in the White House with her children, and spent a lot of evenings with the vivacious and charming Martha. The Press did not cover this angle of FDR’s life, nor did they publish photographs of FDR that showed his crippled legs or the President being assisted. The relationship between President and Vice-President was quite different in 1944 and 45. Roosevelt had barely met Harry Truman before the election and barely spoke to him after the election.
Any serious book about this era should be sobering to current Americans. Hoover and FDR demonstrated that brilliant politicians and aggressive government were not able to generate economic growth; Hitler, Hirohito, and Tojo handed us a recovery by making it virtually impossible to do business anywhere other than in the U.S. As we enter our 9th year of the war in Afghanistan, the example of victory in World War II (4 years for us; 6 years for most others) seems increasingly irrelevant. If FDR were president today there would scarcely be an Afghan left alive and, instead of being celebrated as a hero, he would be prosecuted as a war criminal.
On the other hand, the book offers some hope. This week we are digesting the results of an election in which most races were narrowly decided; it seems impossible to get more than 60 percent of Americans to agree on any candidate or issue. Philadelphians who earn an average of about $36,000 per year aren’t able to get to work because their public transit system union, whose members earn an average of $52,000 per year (plus pensions and health insurance that may effectively double that), are striking for higher wages. How can we overcome our difficulties as a nation if we can’t unite as we did during World War II? According to Goodwin, the U.S. was never united during World War II. Despite heated struggles among various groups, we managed to prevail over Germany and Japan, very tough opponents indeed.
More: Read No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
Philip Greenspun wrote:
> Despite heated struggles among various groups, we managed to prevail over Germany and Japan, very tough opponents indeed.
Yes, our generally incompetent government nominally [1] prevailed in a knock-down drag-out fight with three other incompetent governments suffering from overwhelming resource disadvantages.
Unfortunately for the present, that doesn’t provide much in the way of hope. The structural problems we face — crushing debt, immense unfunded liabilities, industrial atrophy, ablation of our capital stock, and political disincentives against correct policy — can’t be overcome by simply being less incompetent than some other government.
[1] The Soviets would contest whether the victory was actually ours or theirs. If you assume for a moment that the victory was ours, it seems rather strange that our bounty was to end up with half of Europe under Soviet rule.
For your next reading project I recommend Michelle Malkins’, “In defense of internment.” The government had plenty of reason to be suspicious of Japanese-Americans. Read about the incident where a Japanese fighter crash landed on a small Hawaiian island after attacking Pearl Harbor. The local Japanese-Americans hid the pilot and supported him to the point of attacking and severely injuring a non-Japanese Hawaiian who wanted to turn him in. Several were convicted and did jail time. Also, many US born issei (or nissei, I don’t recall the correct term) went to Japan to fight with them against the US. There are a lot of other well-documented facts in the book that are ignored by leftists like Goodwin.
This is an important issue today. Partly because of the hysteria drummed up by the Left about the Japanese in WW2, we cannot properly defend ourselves against the Islamo-fascists in the US today. Do a search on google news about the firefight in Detroit when the FBI tried to arrest an Imam who was openly plotting to setup a separate sharia law nation here in the US.
“Roosevelt had to navigate between the two and eventually force Churchill into the 1944 invasion, 5/6th of whose troops were American.” 5/6 American? Wikipedia shows the Normandy Invasion Order of Battle as 2nd British Army 85,115 troops (61,715 of them British, most of the remainder Canadians) and 1st American Army 89,000 men.
Jim: On page 461 of the book, in the context of discussing the “Quebec Conference” (August 1943) between Churchill and Roosevelt, which was to determine the date of the cross-Channel invasion, Goodwin says that “Churchill recognized that the Americans would be sending ‘a very great preponderance” of the troops, five times more than the British. When Roosevelt argued for an American commander on the basis of the numbers, Churchill gracefully agreed.'”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord says that, through August 1944, the Allies landed more than 2 million soldiers. Perhaps Churchill and Roosevelt were talking about the whole summer rather than just the first few days. My summary as “5/6th American” might be inaccurate. Wikipedia notes that Canadian (a lot) and “Free French” (a few) troops were involved as well.
Bob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment says that 127,000 Japanese-Americans were interned for 3.5 years. Evidence for any anti-American activity among these folks is very slim. It seems doubtful that all of the “bad apples” combined among the Japanese-Americans did as much damage to the American war effort as any one of the strikes described by Goodwin. We deprived ourselves of the productive efforts of 127,000 of our smartest and hardest-working citizens. We incurred substantial costs in setting up and running the camps. Ignoring the moral and legal questions, I don’t see how it made sense even as a wartime expedient.
And now these same Japanese-Americans are being blamed for our inability to protect ourselves against angry Muslims in Michigan! Can I blame them for my high cholesterol? For the motion sensor light outside my garage that seems to be stuck on?
Phil
You say “Evidence for any anti-American activity among these folks is very slim.” I again recommend Malkin’s book. I do not believe wikipedia is a reliable source given the highly charged partisan nature of the story. It has been a while since I read the book but a lot of the rebuttal of the Left’s claims against by government officials was hampered because the evidence was obtained through the breaking of the Japanese codes, which was a highly classified secret for decades even after the war.
I do not know whether you are being deliberately obtuse about my point on the relevance today. Of course I do not blame the Japanese-Americans directly although many of their activists have been the most strident opponents of any sort of scrutiny of Muslims. I said that this episode has been used by the Left to hamstring us in defending ourselves. So we have ridiculous policies like an 80 year old grandmother getting the same treatment at airport checkpoints as a 25 year old Saudi.
If you need an example of this obsession with not profiling you need look no further than the murders by the Muslim soldier at Ft. Hood. Why was this guy not kicked out immediately by the Army after his statements and behavior? Maybe because CAIR would scream that this was the WW2 Japanese internment all over again.
Bob: I’m not an expert on the Japanese internment, and I guess you could argue that we can’t know how much anti-American activity was prevented because the potential aggressors were interned. But I do know that Japanese-American Army units fought with distinction in Europe. There were no incidents in which a Japanese-American soldier attacked his fellow troops. And I don’t think it is reasonable to suppose that American authorities allowed Japanese agents to escape prosecution or incarceration because they did not want to reveal to anyone that codes had been broken. As we have shown recently, we are able to create special courts and procedures to deal with people who are tough to prosecute via the standard criminal courts.
I don’t think it makes sense to compare a Japanese-American’s potentially divided loyalty to a devout Muslim who believes that God requires him to kill infidels. The level of threat is completely different.
I think as an interesting counterpoint, you would find Jennet Conant’s book “The Irregulars” to be very interesting, covering as it does some of the intrigue by the British carried out in Washington DC during the war. Also covers the plans to carve up airline rights among the various countries, with the USA of course being the recipient of the largest piece of the pie.
I said that this episode has been used by the Left to hamstring us in defending ourselves. So we have ridiculous policies like an 80 year old grandmother getting the same treatment at airport checkpoints as a 25 year old Saudi.
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I had no idea the Bush administration was filled with “the Left.”