Americans Spring into Action
Not only had Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, mobilized Americans to the war effort, it also reduced opposition to U.S. involvement in World War II to a fraction of what it had previously been. In the face of such a wholesale attack on U.S. territory, and with such massive destruction and loss of life, few Americans could object to the United States entering the war.
Despite shrinking military budgets, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had prepared as best he could for America’s possible entry into the war. In 1940, he instituted the first peace-time draft in history. By the end of 1941, over 1.5 million soldiers were on active duty. Eventually, almost 32.5 million men were registered. Of these, over 15 million men volunteered or were drafted for duty. This army of unprecedented size required a heroic effort to train, feed, house, and give medical care; the techniques used to do so modernized warfare.
In addition to sheer manpower, the United States could claim its productive capability as another military asset. The nation had the resources, factories, and labor supply to out-produce the enemy. Many U.S. factories had been converted to wartime production because of Lend-Lease; the large auto makers, Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford, were already making M-3 tanks, B-25 bombers, and plane engines for sale abroad. Now they enlarged production by instituting seven-day, round-the-clock work weeks and retooled the remaining factories for war production. The enormous scale of the changeover showed in the defense budget. From 1941 to 1942, it grew from $10 billion to $52 billion. With this overnight conversion to a full war economy, the Great Depression ended.
Shipbuilding commenced on a large scale. By 1943, almost five hundred cargo and supply ships were set afloat each month. In 1942, FDR demanded sixty thousand planes and forty-five thousand tanks built, a seemingly impossible number. Yet, in the following year, American workers built an astounding eighty-six thousand planes. In 1944, that figure leaped to ninety-six thousand.
New materials developed for the military improved the efficiency of the nation’s war machine. With some natural resources in short supply, U.S. scientists developed clever substitutes that performed better than the originals, such as plastics and synthetic rubber for metal and rubber. One billion pounds of plastics were produced for industrial uses alone. But even small things counted, such as the substitution of cellophane for tinfoil in gum wrappers, or the use of red ink instead of metal-based green. These innovations helped win the war.
Productivity came from across the social and economic spectrum of American life, not just from young white male laborers, many of whom had been drafted out of the labor force and into the military. A huge influx of women and minorities into the workforce took their place for the duration. This caused social and personal upheaval on a tremendous scale. Husbands and fathers, the traditional breadwinners of most American families, were drafted and sent overseas, and mothers, single women, and African-Americans of both sexes entered the military and paid workforce in record numbers.
Jobs sprang up in all corners of government, and new bureaucracies flourished, with such agencies as the War Production Board, Office of War Information (OWI), Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Office of Production Management, Office of Civil Defense, Office of Price Administration (OPA), and many others set up to coordinate the immense war effort.
