scholarly journals “Doing Their Bit”: The USO in New Jersey During World War II

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Patricia Chappine
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Professional Baseball ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Feminine Ideals ◽  
The Military

The participation of NJ women during World War II encompassed a wide array of new challenges and responsibilities. Not only were women moving into newly opened employment opportunities, but they also joined military branches, worked for the defense industry, and even played professional baseball. However, paid positions were only part of the story. Volunteerism was a significant, even integral part of the war effort, both on the home front and abroad. For women who volunteered as hostesses, the USO upheld feminine ideals of emotional labor and caregiving, emphasizing the activities that prepared young women to be wives and mothers.  The ideological safety of USO work during WWII has served as a barrier to comprehensive academic consideration of their contributions on a national, regional, and local level. Demographic variations of USO clubs have yet to be analyzed comprehensively on a state-by-state basis. Research on NJ’s USO groups forms a unique narrative of women’s volunteerism and civic engagement, which upheld social constructs of femininity while impacting the war effort, especially the morale of the military, significantly.

scholarly journals An American-Made Miracle: The Politicization of Penicillin During World War II

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Herst
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Venereal Diseases ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Military ◽  
Alexander Fleming

The discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928 revolutionized the way infections were treated. In the context of World War II, the government of the United States politicized the production and use of penicillin as yet another weapon to win the war. It was carefully rationed on the home front, while being used with reckless abandon in the treatment battle wounds and venereal diseases on the battlefield. Penicillin was described as a miracle drug that would be able to cure everyone, when in reality it was only being used to benefit the military and the American war effort, at the expense of civilian lives.

Die Abteilungen für Luftfahrt an deutschen Universitäten unter dem NS-Regime

STADION ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-85
Author(s):  
Alexander Priebe
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Military Training ◽  
World War ◽  
Universities And Colleges ◽  
Aviation Training ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Training And Research ◽  
Aeronautical Engineering ◽  
The Military ◽  
Scientific Fields

On 17 November 1934, the Reich Education Ministry (REM) issued a decree on the “cultivation of aviation in schools and universities”. It aimed at “ensuring the next generation of aviation professionals in the practical, aeronautical, technical, and scientific fields”, the importance of which, according to the REM, “had even increased with the resurgence of the German Luftwaffe”. Hence, universities and colleges of physical education were deemed responsible for further civil and - increasingly - military training and research in aviation, whereas research in aeronautical engineering was carried out at technical universities, under the enforced auspices of the Reich Ministry of Aviation. From 1934 onwards, aviation training would be coordinated by departments of aviation, which were also responsible for the gliding training of students and, above all, sports instructors. The recast decree of 30 December 1939 would expand and enforce training and research defined as “essential for the war effort”. This crucial development, which essentially bolstered the military strategy of the Nazis before and during World War II, i.e., the so-called “Blitzkrieg”, is presented in a detailed overview, based on recently discovered archival sources.

Germany’s Great Love vs. the American Fortress: Home Front Melodrama

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Heins
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Great Love

This chapter compares Hollywood and Nazi uses of melodrama during World War II and demonstrates that the American home front film portrayed the war effort as a defense of middle-class domesticity, while the Nazi home front melodrama suggested that war provided a means to intensified erotic experience. Home front melodramas featuring female main protagonists, contemporary settings, and a thematization of the war were produced in Hollywood and in Babelsberg, but the form and extent of this treatment was not identical in the two cinemas. The chapter considers the approaches to cinematic propaganda advocated by the leadership of both sides, by looking at the paradigmatic Hollywood home front films Mrs. Miniver and Since You Went Away (1944) in detail. It then examines Nazi home front melodramas in relation to conventions established by these Hollywood films.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 370-388
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Guglielmo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Military Service ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American People ◽  
World War ◽  
American Military ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Military

The conclusion traces the ways that racist boundaries waxed and waned in the final stages of World War II military service and addresses the larger impact that these boundaries had on American troops, the American military, and the nation. In the end, black-white lines, if blurred some, still defined many troops’ last days in uniform. White-nonwhite lines also appeared here and there, but still lacked the same institutionalization, reach, and force. And this broader complex of lines fundamentally shaped postwar America in numerous, complicated, and too often forgotten ways. They politicized a varied and substantial group of veterans, who returned home prepared and determined to democratize the military and the nation. But the cost of these lines was enormous. They impeded America’s war effort, undermined the nation’s Four Freedoms rhetoric, traumatized, even killed, an unknowable number of nonwhite troops, further naturalized the very concept of race, deepened many whites’ investments in white supremacy, especially anti-black racism, and further fractured the American people and their politics.

scholarly journals Plowshares to Swords and Back

2005 ◽  
Vol 127 (07) ◽  
pp. 34-36
Author(s):  
Harry Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Automotive Industry ◽  
Air Transportation ◽  
World War ◽  
Love Affair ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Us ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Military ◽  
Indirect Route

This article reviews the military buildup of World War II that led to victory and, by an indirect route, to a richer world. The creation of the US armaments industry is breathtaking for the speed with which it developed. After the surprise attack at the close of 1941, it did not take much time for the country to respond. Shocked by a sneak attack, Americans were able to put their love affair with the car on hold to make war machines. The entire US automotive industry converted its plants to the war effort, and much of that industrial might was devoted to building airplanes. Technologies developed for the war were quickly given civilian uses. After years of rationing and the Great Depression before that, there was plenty of demand stored up. GPS today keeps watch on truck fleets, tracks stolen cars, and serves a multitude of other civilian uses that save lives, property, and money. The Predator and other unpiloted aerial vehicles are believed to represent the future of commercial air transportation.

scholarly journals The Scientists and the Shrub

2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-98
Author(s):  
Jonathan van Harmelen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
World War ◽  
Private Industry ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Government Bureaucracy ◽  
Experimental Project ◽  
The Military

During World War II, Japanese American scientists and engineers imprisoned at the Manzanar War Relocation camp were engaged in an experimental project to grow guayule and process it into latex, a needed war materiel. In this way, they contributed to the American war effort, despite their race-based incarceration. The guayule research project undermines the rationale for the wartime confinement of West Coast Japanese Americans. The laboratory at Manzanar partnered with universities, private industry, and government bureaucracy as an early instance of the military-industrial complex.

World War II and the “Crisis” of Small Business: The Smaller War Plants Corporation, 1942–1946

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-243
Author(s):  
Jonathan J. Bean
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Small Business ◽  
World War ◽  
Big Business ◽  
Antitrust Laws ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Defense Contracts ◽  
The Military ◽  
Small Manufacturers ◽  
Total Effort

On the eve of America's entry into World War II, Senator Joseph O'Mahoney (D-Wyo.) warned that “if we let little business go down in a total effort to defend democracy we shall let the very foundation of democracy perish. The total effort will result in total government.” O'Mahoney was concerned that the growing concentration of defense contracts with large corporations would tie big business to big government and thereby leave small business out of the military buildup. This fear that big business might squeeze small manufacturers out of the war effort fueled demands for government assistance. With the antitrust laws suspended for the duration of the war, congressional small-business advocates took positive action, using crisis rhetoric and the ideological appeal of small business to secure the creation of the Smaller War Plants Corporation (SWPC), the first federal agency to represent small manufacturers.

World War II in Assam and the North-Eastern Frontier

2019 ◽  
pp. 127-170
Author(s):  
Colin R. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
The North ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Military

Japan was able to capture almost all of Burma by May 1942, after the Allied forces departed the capital, Rangoon, on 7th March in a ‘scorched earth’ retreat causing the first of several refugee crises into Assam. This chapter on Assam is split into several sections. The first covers the strategic importance of the Indian sub-continent to the Allied war effort, and, more specifically, Assam’s importance to the Empire. The chapter focuses on civilian activities and the civilian decision-making that occurred around these issues from the ICS and other organizations as well as discusses relations between the ICS and the military during the period. As such Clow’s contribution and actions as Governor of the province from May 1942 is understood within the perspective of the greater political and military aims of the time.

It’s Easy for a Soldier Boy to Catch Rides

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-72
Author(s):  
Jack Reid
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Law Enforcement Officials ◽  
The Media

This chapter explores how several factors during World War II made hitchhiking widely accepted and commonly practiced on the home front. Gasoline and tire rationing, increased volunteerism during the war effort, and the fact that most hitchhikers were now servicemen in uniform instead of unemployed transients led many Americans to look more favourably upon the practice. Even critics of hitchhiking during the Depression years came to see offering soldiers lifts to and from their bases—as well as civilians heading to work—as a patriotic duty. As a result, the media, government regulators, and law-enforcement officials typically looked past periodic acts of violence associated with ride solicitation—focusing instead on ideas of duty and sacrifice in the name of the war effort.

scholarly journals Socks at War: American Hand Knitters and Military Footwear Production for the World Wars

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-92
Author(s):  
Rachel P. Maines
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Option ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
World War ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

Abstract In both World Wars, combatant nations, including the United States, Britain, and Germany, learned that inadequate or poorly-maintained footwear produced costly and preventable casualties from trench foot and frostbite. While provision of shoes and boots to troops were major issues in earlier conflicts, no nation before World War I had fully appreciated the significance of warm, dry, well-fitting socks to the effectiveness of soldiers in the field. The large numbers of trench foot casualties in World War I, especially among the French and British, convinced policymakers that this vital commodity must receive a higher priority in military production planning, but few nations in wartime could shift production to knitting mills rapidly enough to make a difference. Thus, in Britain and the U.S, the best policy option proved to be recruiting women and children civilians to knit socks by hand for the military in the first war, and for refugees, prisoners and civilians in the second. This paper discusses the economic and military importance of this effort, including the numbers of pairs produced, and the program’s role in supplementing industrial production. The production of this low-technology but crucial item of military apparel is typical of detail-oriented tasks performed by women under conditions of full mobilization for war, in that they have a high impact on battlefield and home front performance and morale, but very low visibility as significant contributions to national defense. Often, both during and after the emergency, these efforts are ridiculed as trivial and/or wasteful. Unlike women pilots or industrial workers, handcrafters of essential supplies are regarded as performing extensions of their domestic roles as makers and caretakers of clothing and food. This was especially true in the U.S. in and after World War II, a wealthy industrialized nation that took pride in its modern - and thoroughly masculinist - military industrial complex.

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