A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror

by Larry Schweikart

  Putting the Ax to the Axis

  Unlike during the Vietnam conflict some thirty years later, in December 1941 the only Americans lying about their ages or searching for sympathetic doctors for notes were trying to fake their way into the armed forces. Men too old and boys too young to be eligible for service managed to slip past the recruitment authorities. It was easy to do with more than 16 million males enlisting or being drafted into the armed forces. Another 245,000 women in the Women’s Army Corps (WACS) and WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services, which was the women’s naval auxiliary created largely through the efforts of Senator Margaret Chase Smith), supported the effort. Other women, such as actress Ida Lupino, joined the ambulance and nurse corps, and Julia Child, later to be a cooking guru, served with the Office of Strategic Services in Ceylon. Ethnic minorities like the Japanese and blacks, discriminated against at home, brushed off their mistreatment to enlist, winning battle honors. The Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team became the most decorated American division of the war, and included future U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye, who lost an arm in combat. The all-black 99th Fighter Squadron saw action in Italy.

  Celebrities of the day did not hesitate to enter the armed forces. Even before Pearl Harbor, many well-known personalities had signed up for the reserves, including Major Cecil B. DeMille, Brigadier General Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and Colonel David Sarnoff. And once war broke out, rather than seeking safety behind the lines, a number of movie stars and sons of elite families gave up their prestige and the protections of wealth to actively pursue combat assignments. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. quit his job in 1941 to go on active duty as a colonel and later saw action on D-Day.15 Academy Award winner Van Heflin joined the army as an artilleryman; television’s Gunsmoke hero, James Arness, was in the army and wounded at Anzio, earning a Bronze Star; Eddie Albert, wounded at Tarawa, also earned a Bronze Star rescuing wounded and stranded marines from the beach; Get Smart’s Don Adams, a marine, contracted malaria at Guadalcanal; Charleton Heston was a radio operator on B-25 bombers; Art Carney, sidekick of Jackie Gleason on The Honeymooners, suffered a shrapnel wound at Saint-Lô before he could fire a shot. Ernest Borgnine, who later would play fictional Lieutenant Commander McHale in McHale’s Navy, had already served in the navy for twelve years before World War II; Lucille Ball’s famous Cuban husband, Desi Arnaz, was offered a commission in the Cuban navy, where, as an officer, he would be relatively safe on patrol in the Caribbean. He refused, choosing instead to enlist in the U.S. Navy, where he was rejected on the grounds that he was a noncitizen. Nevertheless, he could be drafted—and was—and despite failing the physical, went into the infantry, where he injured his knees. He finished the war entertaining troops.

  Other young men went on to literary or theatrical fame after the war. Novelist Norman Mailer went ashore with his infantry regiment in the Philippines, and western writer Louis L’Amour hit the beaches with his tank destroyer on D-Day. Alex Haley, later a famous novelist, served in the U.S. Coast Guard; and author William Manchester was wounded and left for dead, recovering after five months in a hospital. Tony Bennet, serving as an infantryman in Europe, got his first chance to sing while in the army. Men who later would become Hollywood stars, including William Holden, Charles Bronson, Jack Lemmon, and Karl Malden, signed up. Holden flew bombers over Germany; Ed McMahon was a U.S. Marine fighter pilot; and George Kennedy served under General George Patton. Football great Tom Landry, coach of the Dallas Cowboys, flew B-17s with the Eighth Army; and baseball legend Yogi Berra served as a gunner on a navy bombardment ship. More than a few became heroes. Future director Mel Brooks fought at the Battle of the Bulge; Tony Curtis served on a submarine; and an underage Telly Savalas, later known for his television cop-show role as Kojak, was wounded and received the Purple Heart. Academy Award winner Lee Marvin assaulted more than twenty beaches in the Pacific with his marine unit, and after one battle, only Marvin and 5 others out of 247 had survived. Walter Matthau, famous for his roles in The Odd Couple and The Bad News Bears, won an impressive six Silver Stars as an air force gunner. None was more decorated than Audie Murphy, who became an actor after the war based on his incredible career. Murphy was the most decorated soldier in World War II, having been awarded the Medal of Honor and twenty-seven other medals as well as the French Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre.

  Others, such as directors John Huston and John Ford, entered combat situations armed with movie cameras instead of guns, shooting war documentaries for propaganda. Captain Ronald Reagan commanded a Hollywood documentary film company that, among its varied duties, filmed the aftermath of the European war, including the Nazi death camps. Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury honed his skills writing patriotic radio commercials. Jazz great Al Hirt entertained troops as part of the 82nd Army Band, and bandleader Glenn Miller, who had enlisted in the air force and was commissioned a captain, died while flying to Europe to entertain troops. Even civilians, at home or in service at the front, occasionally made the ultimate sacrifice, as when actress Carole Lombard died in an airplane crash on a tour selling war bonds. Ironically, one of the heroes most frequently associated with the military, John Wayne, was not drafted because of his large family, although he made several war movies that boosted morale immeasurably.

  Movie studios, including Walt Disney’s cartoon factory, which had made a war hero out of Donald Duck, increased production fivefold. Under the tight control of wartime bureaucrats, costs for producing a typical film dropped from $200 per foot of film shot to $4 as the Disney studios released a torrent of training projects for the military: Dental Health, Operation of the C-1 Auto Pilot, High Level Precision Bombing, and Food Will Win the War for civilians. (Reagan was prominent in many of these military training films.) Probably the most successful war cartoon ever, Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943), with Donald Duck, won an Academy Award. The music industry kicked in too. New York’s song-writing mecca, Tin Pan Alley, cranked out propaganda ditties like “It’s Our Pacific, to Be Specific” and “Let’s Put the Ax to the Axis” as well as some racist tunes like “When the Cohens and the Kellys Meet the Little Yellow Bellies” and “Let’s Find the Fellow Who Is Yellow and Beat Him ’til He’s Red, White, and Blue.” Germans, as they had been in World War I, were routinely portrayed as Huns, replete with blooddrenched fangs and bearskin clothes. Yet it would be a mistake to overly criticize the necessity of such propaganda. Americans, as a rule, were not natural-born killers. Once aroused, the essence of civic militarism produced a warrior who displayed individuality, determination to stay alive (as opposed to die gloriously), and constant adaptation to circumstances (as opposed to unbending obedience to doctrine).16

  Many of these young men came from a generation whose parents had never seen an ocean, and the longest journey they had ever made was from one state to another. They came from a time when homes did not even have locks on the doors. Most knew little of fascism, except that they instinctively hated Hitler—the “paper hangin’ son of a bitch,” Patton called him. The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor struck deeply at their sense of right and wrong and, in their way of thinking, put the Nazis, Italians, and Japanese all in the same category.17

  America’s soldiers were not just motivated; they were also the best educated in the world and arrived at induction centers highly skilled. The U.S. Army put soldiers into the field who often were well versed in the use of motor vehicles and mechanized farm implements, meaning that they could not only drive them, but could often rebuild and repair them with little training. Prior to the war, America had had a motor vehicle ratio of four people to one car, whereas Germany’s ratio was thirty-seven to one. The GI was four to seven times more likely to have driven a motor vehicle than any of his allies or opponents.18 Americans were the highest paid and best fed soldiers in the war, and they received, by far, the best medical attention of any army in history. When that was combined with the good—and improving—training they received, American warriors possessed decided advantages. The
y soon benefited from an industrial tsunami from the capitalists back home.

  Democracy’s Industrial Tsunami

  Aside from the obvious self-sacrifice of the soldiers and sailors who fought, the key contribution to winning the war came not from Hollywood or Tin Pan Alley, but from American industry, which had unleashed a tidal wave of war materials, paid for with $80 billion from Uncle Sam. “Capitalism, U.S.A.” buried the fascists and imperialists under a mountain of fighter planes, tanks, and ships. Yankee factories turned out war materials at nearly incomprehensible levels: 221,000 aircraft and more than 1,500 warships, doubling the entire military production of the Axis powers combined by 1944. Indeed, American business produced almost as much as all other nations of the world combined. From 1941 to 1945, the U.S. Navy commissioned 18 fleet carriers, 9 light carriers, 77 escort carriers, 8 battleships (and repaired all the battleships damaged at Pearl Harbor except the Arizona), 46 cruisers, 349 destroyers, 420 destroyer escorts, and more than 200 submarines. In the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the United States had more destroyers deployed than the Japanese had carrier aircraft!

  Obviously, the United States had an enormous advantage in sheer economic capability, even despite the Great Depression. American gross domestic product (1990 prices) topped $1.4 trillion, whereas Japan, Germany, and Italy mustered barely half that. But whereas Germany had had five years to gear up for war, and Italy had had close to fifteen, the United States had accelerated to its phenomenal production capacity within a matter of months. Between 1942 and 1943, GDP rose nearly $200 billion—more than Japan’s entire economy.

  After only a year of war, the United States had gone from a handful of fighter planes to 78,000, from 900 tanks to 65,000, and from 544 major naval vessels to 4,500.19 American shipyards turned out 16 warships for every 1 Japan built. The Soviet Union—often held up as the model of wartime production—turned out 80,000 fewer aircraft than did the United States, and well into mid-1943, the “top Soviet Aces flew Lend-Lease aircraft such as the P-39 Airacobra.”20

  The relationship between Russian blood and American dollars in the “grand alliance” cannot be overstated. Both were necessary in the watershed year 1943. Although the German army had been blunted at Moscow and Stalingrad, the outcome was not sealed until Kursk and, on the Western Front, until the invasion of Sicily, when Hitler was finally forced to fight a two-front war. Thus, it behooves us to consider the mind-boggling war production of the United States as part and parcel of the Soviet offensives of 1943. For example, by that time, the bulk of German air power in the East had been withdrawn to defend against Allied bombing in the West, and it is no surprise that only after German air power had been siphoned off to contest the Anglo-American bombers did the Soviets consistently win large offensive armored battles.

  It is true that Soviet industry made plenty of tanks. But by the pivotal battle of Kursk in July 1943, some 20 percent of Soviet armored brigades already consisted of Lend-Lease American-made tanks.21 Trucks and other vehicles proved even more important: by June 1943 the USSR had received 90,000 trucks and 17,000 jeeps, again giving the Red Army important advantages. At Kursk, one new study has concluded, “Lend-Lease trucks and jeeps made a major contribution,” and even today, “Studebaker” and “Villies” (Willys) are familiar words to Russian veterans of the Great Patriotic War.22 Then there was the American contribution of 100-octane aviation fuel, which by itself improved the performance of Soviet aircraft against the Germans, and waterproof telephone wire, which the Soviets could not produce and which they relied on heavily.23 Despite the reputation of the Red Army for turning out armored vehicles, the United States nearly matched the USSR in tank/personnel carrier output (99,500 to 102,800), while constructing some 8,700 more ships—all the while secretly pouring seemingly limitless funds into the Manhattan Project’s development of the atomic bomb.

  Once American businesses saw that FDR would not undercut them with government policies, they responded with mind-boggling speed. Uncle Sam came up with the money by borrowing both from current citizens and from generations unborn; then it provided the buildings (through the Defense Plant Corporation); then it got out of the way, authorizing the titans of business to make good arms and fast ships. Newport News, Litton Ingalls, and other shipbuilders could put a completed aircraft carrier in the water fifteen months from keel laying (compared to nearly ten years in 1999); and a tank rolled off the assembly line in less than five hours, fabricated from scratch. Perhaps the most miraculous construction efforts came in the form of Liberty Ships, the simple freighters designed to carry food, munitions, and other supplies in convoys to England.

  Henry Kaiser, who had supervised construction of the Boulder Dam, received an order from Roosevelt to build ships as fast as possible, regardless of cost. He opened several California shipyards, importing inner-city workers from Chicago, Detroit, and the East Coast, paying them the highest wages. Aware that the ship workers would have no place to live, Kaiser developed the world’s first modular homes, which allowed him to attract employees, and he provided day care for the children of working mothers. Once shipyards had begun production, Kaiser was able to slash the building time of a Liberty Ship from 196 days to 27, setting a record in turning out the Robert E. Peary, from its keel laying to christening, in 4.5 days. By 1943, the Kaiser yards were spitting out a Liberty Ship nearly every 2 days.

  The early Kaiser ships were not given the best steel, however, because of military requirements that sent the higher-quality steel to “pure” warships. As a result, several of the first Liberty Ships literally split in half at sea, especially on runs to Murmansk. Concerned investigators found no fault with the Kaiser production techniques, but they learned that the cheaper grade of steel mandated by the government became exceedingly brittle in icy water. Upon learning of the brittleness problem, Kaiser adopted a simple solution, which was to weld an additional huge steel support beam on each side of a ship’s hull, thereby ending that particular problem. Indeed, Kaiser’s original innovation had been to weld the Liberty Ships instead of using rivets because welding took far less time and permitted crews to construct entire sections in a modular process, literally hoisting entire prefabricated deckhouses into position on a finished hull.

  Another shipbuilder, Andrew Jackson Higgins, designed new shallow-draft wooden boats specifically for invading the sandy beaches and coral atolls in the Pacific. Higgins, who hailed from land-locked Nebraska, had built fishing and pleasure craft before the war. When the war started, the navy found it had a desperate need for Higgins boats, which featured a flat lip on the bow that dropped down as the vessel reached shore, affording the troops a ramp from which to run onto the beach. After the war a reporter asked Dwight Eisenhower who had proved most valuable to the Allies’ victory, fully expecting Ike would name generals like George Patton or Douglas MacArthur or a naval commander like Admiral Chester Nimitz. Instead, Eisenhower said Higgins was “the man who won the war.”

  Without question, though, countless Americans played a part and voluntarily would have done even more. A Roper poll in 1941, prior to Pearl Harbor, showed that 89 percent of American men would spend one day a week training for homeland defense and that 78 percent of all Americans would “willingly” pay a sales tax on everything and cut gasoline consumption by a third in the event of war.24 By 1945, pollster George Gallup had found that more than two thirds of Americans thought they had not made any “real sacrifice” for the war, and 44 percent of the respondents in a 1943 Gallup poll said that the government had not gone “far enough” in asking people to make sacrifices for the war (40 percent said the government’s demands were “about right.”)25 Despite the largest commitment in history by both the U.S. civilian and military sectors, large numbers of Americans thought they still could do more!

  In reality, civilians did far more than they imagined. Important equipment like the jeep came from civilian-submitted designs, not government bureaucracy. Farmers pushed their productivity up 30 percent, and average citizens a
dded 8 million more tons of food to the effort through backyard “victory” gardens. Scrap drives became outlets for patriotic frenzy, and a thirteen-year-old in Maywood, Illinois, collected more than 100 tons of paper from 1942 to 1943.26 Some 40 percent of the nation’s retirees returned to the workplace. It was as close to a total-war effort as the United States has ever seen.

  Is This Trip Really Necessary?

  The war allowed Roosevelt to accelerate implementation of some of his New Deal goals. In 1941, FDR proposed a 99.5 percent marginal tax rate on all incomes over $100,000. The measure failed, but undaunted, he issued an executive order to “tax all income over $25,000 at the astonishing rate of 100 percent.”27 Other insidious changes in taxation found their way into the code, the most damaging of which involved the introduction in July 1943 of withholding taxes from the paychecks of employees. That subtle shift, described sympathetically by one text as an “innovative feature” where “no longer would taxpayers have to set aside money to pay their total tax bill…at the end of the year,” in fact allowed the government to conceal the total tax burden from the public and make it easier to steadily raise taxes, not just during the war, but for decades.28 It was that burden of laying aside the money that had focused the public’s attention on taxation levels. Subsequently, many limited-government critics have argued that the single most effective change in regaining control of the bloated tax code would be to abolish withholding and require that all individuals make a one-time tax payment per year, due the last week in October—right before the November elections.