Introduction
00:00:00Wartime Mobilization Supercharges State Power and Industry War mobilization put federal boards in charge of wages, prices, and production quotas, rationing goods and even halting new civilian car models. Employment surged as factories churned out planes and ships; GNP more than doubled, funded by debt and newly broadened income taxes with paycheck withholding. Cost‑plus contracts swelled big business dominance while defense spending built the West Coast into an industrial hub and left much of the rural South behind. Government‑brokered labor peace expanded unions, and millions of women—especially married workers—filled industrial jobs only to be pushed out after victory.
Freedom Reimagined: Four Freedoms, GI Bill, and Free Enterprise FDR framed the war around the Four Freedoms and proposed an Economic Bill of Rights promising jobs, income, housing, medical care, and education. Southern Democrats blocked that domestic expansion, but the GI Bill sent millions to college and into homes, fueling a suburban housing boom. Corporations recast freedom as free enterprise and consumption, while Henry Luce heralded an “American Century” of exporting products and ideals. Friedrich Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom that planning imperiled liberty, seeding a postwar conservative critique of New Deal liberalism.
Pluralism Promised, Prejudice Practiced Fighting racist fascism encouraged a civic creed of diversity and equal rights, with officials defining Americanism as allegiance of mind and heart rather than ancestry. Yet anti‑Semitism constrained rescue, race tensions exploded in Detroit and Los Angeles, and Indian reservations saw little of the boom. Wartime labor needs drew Mexican migrants under the Bracero program and sent hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans into uniform. Restrictions on Chinese immigration eased to aid an ally, but Executive Order 9066 uprooted 110,000 Japanese Americans—most U.S. citizens—into guarded camps. Fred Korematsu’s challenge failed at the Supreme Court, entrenching one of the era’s gravest civil‑liberties violations.
The Double V Spurs the Modern Civil Rights Movement Over a million African Americans served in segregated units while 700,000 migrated to northern and western cities for defense work, stoking new urban tensions. A. Philip Randolph’s threatened march won Executive Order 8802 and the Fair Employment Practices Commission, prying open defense jobs despite weak enforcement. By 1944 more than a million Black workers—300,000 women—held manufacturing jobs, embodying a Double‑V drive against fascism abroad and racism at home. Civil rights and desegregation entered the liberal agenda, and the armed services began halting steps toward integration that would accelerate after the war.
From War to World Order: Bretton Woods, the UN, and the American Creed U.S. leaders shaped the peace through Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam, dividing Germany and trying Nazis while conceding Soviet sway in Eastern Europe that seeded the Cold War. Bretton Woods made the gold‑backed dollar the world’s currency and created the World Bank and IMF, cementing U.S. financial primacy. Washington championed the United Nations, secured a permanent Security Council seat, and abandoned any pretense of isolation as only it and the USSR retained great‑power clout. Victory ended the Depression, transformed the economy, and broadened liberalism even as the Atlantic Charter linked global freedom to labor standards, prosperity, and social security. World War II recentered national purpose on the American Creed of equality, justice, and opportunity, underscoring how ideas drive policy at home and abroad.