Week 7 Depression WWII

7/27/2019 Week 7 Depression WWII

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UE 402 : Civilisation et histoire de la littrature amricaine

Week 7: The Great Depression

World War II

Professeur Schnabel

The Great Depression

Why did the seemingly boundless prosperity of the 1920s end sosuddenly? And why, once an economic downturn began, did the GreatDepression last so long?

Economists have been hard pressed to explain why "prosperity's decade"ended in financial disaster. In 1929, the American economy appeared tobe extraordinarily healthy. Employment was high and inflation wasvirtually non-existent. Industrial production had risen 30 percent between


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1919 and 1929, and per capita income had climbed from $520 to $681.The United States accounted for nearly half of the world's industrialoutput. Still, the seeds of the Depression were already present in the"boom" years of the 1920s.

For many groups of Americans, the prosperity of the 1920s was a cruelillusion. Even during the most prosperous years of the Roaring Twenties,most families lived below what contemporaries defined as the povertyline. In 1929, economists considered $2,500 the income necessary tosupport a family. In that year, more than 60 percent of the nation'sfamilies earned less than $2,000 a year the income necessary for basicnecessities and over 40 percent earned less than $1,500 annually.Although labor productivity soared during the 1920s because of electrification and more efficient management, wages stagnated or fell inmining, transportation, and manufacturing. Hourly wages in coal minessagged from 84.5 cents in 1923 to just 62.5 cents in 1929.

Prosperity bypassed specific groups of Americans entirely. A 1928 reporton the condition of Native Americans found that half owned less than $500and that 71 percent lived on less than $200 a year. Mexican Americans,too, had failed to share in the prosperity. During the 1920s, each year25,000 Mexicans migrated to the United States. Most lived in conditions of extreme poverty. In Los Angeles the infant mortality rate was five timeshigher than the rate for Anglos, and most homes lacked toilets. A surveyfound that a substantial number of Mexican Americans had virtually nomeat or fresh vegetables in their diet; 40 percent said that they could notafford to give their children milk.

The farm sector had been mired in depression since 1921. Farm priceshad been depressed ever since the end of World War I, when Europeanagriculture revived, and grain from Argentina and Australia entered theworld market. Strapped with long-term debts, high taxes, and a sharp

drop in crop prices, farmers lost ground throughout the 1920s. In 1910, afarmer's income was 40 percent of a city worker's. By 1930, it had saggedto just 30 percent.

The decline in farm income reverberated throughout the economy. Ruralconsumers stopped buying farm implements, tractors, automobiles,furniture, and appliances. Millions of farmers defaulted on their debts,placing tremendous pressure on the banking system. Between 1920 and1929, more than 5,000 of the country's 30,000 banks failed.


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Because of the banking crisis, thousands of small businesspeople failedbecause they could not secure loans. Thousands more went bankruptbecause they had lost their working capital in the stock market crash. Aheavy burden of consumer debt also weakened the economy. Consumers

built up an unmanageable amount of consumer installment and mortgagedebt, taking out loans to buy cars, appliances, and homes in the suburbs.To repay these loans, consumers cut back sharply on discretionaryspending. Drops in consumer spending led inevitably to reductions inproduction and worker layoffs. Unemployed workers then spent less, andthe cycle repeated itself.

A poor distribution of income compounded the country's economicproblems. During the 1920s, there was a pronounced shift in wealth andincome toward the very rich. Between 1919 and 1929, the share of income received by the wealthiest one percent of Americans rose from 12percent to 19 percent, while the share received by the richest five percent

jumped from 24 percent to 34 percent. Over the same period, the poorest93 percent of the non-farm population actually saw its disposable incomefall. Because the rich tend to spend a high proportion of their income onluxuries, such as large cars, entertainment, and tourism, and save adisproportionately large share of their income, there was insufficientdemand to keep employment and investment at a high level.

Even before the onset of the Depression, business investment had begunto decline. Residential construction boomed between 1924 and 1927, butin 1929 housing starts fell to less than half the 1924 level. A major reasonfor the depressed housing market was the 1924 immigration law that hadrestricted foreign immigration. Soaring inventories also led businesses toreduce investment and production. During the mid-1920s, manufacturersexpanded their production capacity and built up excessive inventories. Atthe decade's end they cut back sharply, directing their surplus funds intostock market speculation.

The Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank, played a critical, if inadvertent, role in weakening the economy. In an effort to curb stockmarket speculation, the Federal Reserve slowed the growth of the moneysupply, then allowed the money supply to fall dramatically after the stockmarket crash, producing a wrenching "liquidity crisis." Consumers foundthemselves unable to repay loans, while businesses did not have thecapital to finance business operations. Instead of actively stimulating theeconomy by cutting interest rates and expanding the money supply the

way monetary authorities fight recessions today the Federal Reserve


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allowed the country's money supply to decline by 27 percent between1929 and 1933.

Finally, Republican tariff policies damaged the economy by depressingforeign trade. Anxious to protect American industries from foreigncompetitors, Congress passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 andthe Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930, raising tariff rates to unprecedentedlevels. American tariffs stifled international trade, making it difficult forEuropean nations to pay off their debts. As foreign economies foundered,those countries imposed trade barriers of their own, choking off U.S.exports. By 1933, international trade had plunged 30 percent.

All these factors left the economy ripe for disaster. Yet the depression didnot strike instantly; it infected the country gradually, like a slow-growing

cancer. Measured in human terms, the Great Depression was the worsteconomic catastrophe in American history. It hit urban and rural areas,blue-and white-collar families alike. In the nation's cities, unemployedmen took to the streets to sell apples or to shine shoes. Thousands of others hopped freight trains and wandered from town to town, looking for

jobs or handouts.

Unlike most of Western Europe, the United States had no federal systemof unemployment insurance. The relief burden fell on state and municipal

governments working in cooperation with private charities, such as theRed Cross and the Community Chest. Created to handle temporaryemergencies, these groups lacked the resources to alleviate the massivesuffering created by the Great Depression. Poor Southerners, whosestates had virtually no relief funds, were particularly hard hit.

Urban centers in the North fared little better. Most city charters did notpermit public funds to be spent on work relief. Adding insult to injury,several states disqualified relief clients from voting, while other cities

forced them to surrender their automobile license plates. "Prosperity'sdecade" had ended in economic disaster.

The Great Depression in Global Perspective

The Great Depression was a global phenomenon, unlike previouseconomic downturns, which generally were confined to a handful of nations or specific regions. Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North andSouth America all suffered from the economic collapse. International tradefell 30 percent, as nations tried to protect their industries by raising tariffs


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on imported goods. "Beggar-thy-neighbor" trade policies were a majorreason why the Depression persisted as long as it did. By 1932 anestimated 30 million people were unemployed around the world.

Also, in contrast to the relatively brief economic "panics" of the past, theGreat Depression dragged on with no end in sight. As the depressiondeepened, it had far-reaching political consequences. One response to thedepression was military dictatorship a response that could be found inArgentina and in many countries in Central America. Westernindustrialized countries cut back sharply on the purchase of raw materialsand other commodities. The price of coffee, cotton, rubber, tin, and othercommodities dropped 40 percent. The collapse in raw material andagricultural commodity prices led to social unrest, resulting in the rise of military dictatorships that promised to maintain order.

A second response to the Depression was fascism and militarism aresponse found in Germany, Italy, and Japan. In Germany, Adolph Hitlerand his Nazi Party promised to restore the country's economy and torebuild its military. After becoming chancellor in 1932, Hitler outlawedlabor unions, restructured German industry into a series of cartels, andafter 1935, instituted a massive program of military rearmament thatended high unemployment. In Italy, fascism arose even before theDepression's onset under the leadership of Italian dictator BenitoMussolini. In Japan, militarists seized control of the government duringthe 1930s. In an effort to relieve the Depression, Japanese militaryofficers conquered Manchuria, a region rich in raw materials, and coastalChina in 1937.

A third response to the Depression was totalitarian communism. In theSoviet Union, the Great Depression helped solidify Joseph Stalin's grip onpower. In 1928 Stalin instituted a planned economy. His first Five YearPlan called for rapid industrialization and "collectivization" of small peasant

farms under government control. To crush opposition to his program,which required peasant farmers to give their products to the governmentat low prices, Stalin exiled millions of peasant to labor camps in Siberia,and instituted a program of terror called the Great Purge. Historiansestimate that as many as 20 million Soviets died during the 1930s as aresult of famine and deliberate killings.

A final response to the Depression was welfare capitalism, which could befound in countries including Canada, Great Britain, and France. Under

welfare capitalism, government assumed ultimate responsibility forpromoting a reasonably fair distribution of wealth and power and for


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providing security against the risks of bankruptcy, unemployment anddestitution.

Compared to other industrialized countries, the economic decline broughton by the Depression was steeper and more protracted in the UnitedStates. The unemployment rate rose higher and remained higher longerthan in any other western society. European countries significantlyreduced unemployment by 1936. However, the American jobless rate stillexceeded 17 percent as late as 1939, when World War II began in Europe.It did not drop below 14 percent until 1941.

The Great Depression transformed the American political and economiclandscape. It produced a major political realignment, creating a coalitionof big city ethnics, African Americans and Southern Democrats committed,

to varying degrees, to interventionist government. The Depressionstrengthened the federal presence in American life, producing suchinnovations as national old age pensions, unemployment compensation,aid to dependent children, public housing, federally subsidized schoollunches, insured bank deposits, the minimum wage, and stock marketregulation. It fundamentally altered labor relations, producing a revivedlabor movement and a national labor policy protective of collectivebargaining. It transformed the farm economy by introducing federal pricesupports and rural electrification. Above all, the Great Depressionproduced a fundamental transformation in public attitudes. It ledAmericans to view the federal government as the ultimate protector of public well-being.

Waste of human resources

After more than half a century, images of the Great Depression remainfirmly etched in the American psyche: breadlines, soup kitchens, tin-canshanties and tar-paper shacks known as "Hoovervilles," penniless menand women selling apples on street corners, and gray battalions of Arkiesand Okies packed into Model A Fords heading to California.

The collapse was staggering in its dimensions. Unemployment jumpedfrom less than 3 million in 1929 to 4 million in 1930, to 8 million in 1931,and to 12 million in 1932. In that year, a quarter of the nation'sfamilies did not have a single employed wage earner. Even thosefortunate enough to have jobs suffered drastic pay cuts and reductions in

working hours. Only one company in ten failed to cut pay, and in 1932


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three-quarters of all workers were on part-time schedules, averaging just60 percent of the normal work week.

The economic collapse was terrifying in its scope and impact. By 1933average family income had tumbled 40 percent, from $2,300 in 1929 to

just $1,500 four years later. In the Pennsylvania coal fields, three or fourfamilies crowded together in one-room shacks and lived on wild weeds. InArkansas, families were found inhabiting caves. In Oakland, California,whole families lived in sewer pipes.

Vagrancy shot up as many families were evicted from their homes fornonpayment of rent. The Southern Pacific Railroad boasted that it threw683,000 vagrants off its trains in 1931. Free public flophouses andmissions in Los Angeles provided beds for 200,000 of the uprooted.

To save money, families neglected medical and dental care. Many familiessought to cope by planting gardens, canning food, buying used bread, andusing cardboard and cotton for shoe soles. Despite a steep decline in foodprices, many families did without milk or meat. In New York City, milkconsumption declined by a million gallons a day.

President Herbert Hoover declared, "Nobody is actually starving. Thehoboes are better fed than they have ever been." But in New York City in1931, there were 20 known cases of starvation; in 1934, there were 110deaths caused by hunger. There were so many accounts of peoplestarving in New York that the West African nation of Cameroon sent $3.77in relief.

The Depression had a powerful impact on families. It forced couples todelay marriage and drove the birthrate below the replacement level forthe first time in American history. The divorce rate fell, for the simple factthat many couples could not afford to maintain separate households or topay legal fees. Still, rates of desertion soared. By 1940 there were 1.5million married women living apart from their husbands. More than200,000 vagrant children wandered the country as a result of the break-up of their families.

The Depression inflicted a heavy psychological toll on jobless men. Withno wages to punctuate their ability, many men lost power as primarydecision makers. Large numbers of men lost self-respect, becameimmobilized and stopped looking for work, while others turned to alcoholor became self-destructive or abusive to their families.


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In contrast to men, many women saw their status rise during theDepression. To supplement the family income, married women enteredthe work force in large numbers. Although most women worked in menialoccupations, the fact that they were employed and bringing home

paychecks elevated their position within the family and gave them a say infamily decisions.

Despite the hardships it inflicted, the Great Depression drew some familiescloser together. As one observer noted, "Many a family has lost itsautomobile and found its soul." Families had to devise strategies forgetting through hard times because their survival depended on it. Theypooled their incomes, moved in with relatives in order to cut expenses,bought day-old bread, and did without. Many families drew comfort fromtheir religion, sustained by the hope things would turn out well in the end;others placed their faith in themselves, in their own dogged determinationto survive that so impressed observers like Woody Guthrie. ManyAmericans, however, no longer believed that the problems could be solvedby people acting alone or through voluntary associations. Increasingly,they looked to the federal government for help.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

In June 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt received the Democratic presidentialnomination. At first glance he did not look like a man who could relate toother peoples' suffering Roosevelt had spent his entire life in the lap of luxury. No fewer than 16 of his ancestors had come over on theMayflower. A fifth cousin of Teddy Roosevelt, he was born in 1882 to oneof New York's wealthiest families. Roosevelt enjoyed a privileged youth.He attended Groton, an exclusive private school, and then went toHarvard University and Columbia Law School. After three years in the New

York state senate, Roosevelt was tapped by President Wilson to serve asassistant secretary of the navy in 1913. His status as the rising star of theDemocratic Party was confirmed when James Cox chose Roosevelt as hisrunning mate in the presidential election of 1920.

The Election of 1932

Handsome and outgoing, Roosevelt seemed to have a bright politicalfuture. Then disaster struck. In 1921 he was stricken with polio. Thedisease left him paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a


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wheelchair for the rest of his life. Instead of retiring, however, Rooseveltlabored diligently to return to public life. "If you had spent two years inbed trying to wiggle your toe," he later declared, "after that anythingwould seem easy."

Buoyed by an exuberant optimism and devoted political allies, Rooseveltwon the governorship of New York in 1928 one of the few Democrats tosurvive the Republican landslide. Surrounding himself with able advisors,Roosevelt labored to convert New York into a laboratory for reform,involving conservation, old-age pensions, public works projects, andunemployment insurance.

In his acceptance speech before the Democratic convention in Chicago,Roosevelt promised "a New Deal for the American people." Although his

speech contained few concrete proposals, Roosevelt radiated confidence,giving many desperate voters hope. He even managed during thecampaign to turn his lack of a blueprint into an asset, offering instead apolicy of experimentation. "It is common sense to take a method and tryit," he declared, "if it fails, admit it frankly and try another."

The First 100 Days

The nation's plight on March 4, 1933, the day Franklin Roosevelt assumedthe presidency, was desperate. A quarter of the nation's workforce was

jobless. A quarter million families had defaulted on their mortgages theprevious year. During the winter of 1932 and 1933, some 1.2 millionAmericans were homeless. Scores of shantytowns (called Hoovervilles)sprouted up.

Since 1929, about 9,000 banks, holding the savings of 27 million families,had failed. Of those bank failings, 1,456 folded in 1932 alone. Farm

foreclosures were averaging 20,000 a month. The public was desperatefor action. Hamilton Fish, a conservative Republican congressman,promised the president that Congress would "give you any power that youneed."

A month before taking office, Giuseppe Zangara, a mentally ill bricklayer,tried to assassinate the president-elect in Miami. Chicago's mayor waskilled, but Roosevelt miraculously escaped injury. In his inauguraladdress, Roosevelt expressed confidence that his administration could endthe Depression. "The only thing we have to fear," he declared, "is fearitself."


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In Roosevelts first hundred days in office, he pushed 15 major billsthrough Congress. The bills would reshape every aspect of the economy,from banking and industry to agriculture and social welfare. The presidentpromised decisive action. He called Congress into special session and

demanded "broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency,as great as the power that would be given me if we were in fact invadedby a foreign foe."

Roosevelt attacked the bank crisis first. He declared a national bankholiday, which closed all banks. In just four days, his aides drafted theEmergency Banking Relief Act which permitted solvent banks to reopenunder government supervision, and allowed the RFC to buy the stock of troubled banks and to keep them open until they could be reorganized.The law also gave the president broad powers over the Federal ReserveSystem. The law radically reshaped the nation's banking system;Congress passed the law in just 8 hours.

Roosevelt appealed directly to the people to generate support for hisprogram. On March 12 he conducted the first of many radio "firesidechats." Using the radio in the way later presidents exploited television, heexplained what he had done in plain, simple terms and told the public tohave "confidence and courage." When the banks reopened the followingday, people demonstrated their faith by making more deposits thanwithdrawals. One of Roosevelt's key advisors did not exaggerate when helater boasted, "Capitalism was saved in eight days."

The president quickly pushed ahead on other fronts. The FederalEmergency Relief Act pumped $500 million into state-run welfareprograms. The Homeowners Loan Act provided the first federal mortgagefinancing and loan guarantees. By the end of Roosevelt's first term, theHomeowners Loan Act provided more than 1 million loans totaling $3billion. The Glass-Steagall Act provided a federal guarantee of all bank

deposits under $5,000, separated commercial and investment banking,and strengthened the Federal Reserve's ability to stabilize the economy.

In addition, Roosevelt took the nation off the gold standard, devalued thedollar, and ordered the Federal Reserve System to ease credit. Otherimportant laws passed during the 100 days included the AgriculturalAdjustment Act the nation's first system of agricultural price andproduction supports; the National Industrial Recovery Act the first majorattempt to plan and regulate the economy; and the Tennessee Valley

Authority Act the first direct government involvement in energyproduction.


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The Farmers

Roosevelt moved aggressively to address the crisis facing the nation'sfarmers. Farmers and farm workers were probably the hardest hit duringthe Depression. At the start of the Depression, a fifth of all Americanfamilies still lived on farms. These families, however, were in deeptrouble. Farm income fell by a staggering two-thirds during theDepression's first three years. A bushel of wheat that sold for $2.94 in1920 dropped to $1 in 1929 and 30 cents in 1932. In one day, a quarterof Mississippi's farm acreage was auctioned off to pay for debts.

The farmers' problem, ironically, was that they grew too much. Worldwidecrop production soared a result of more efficient farm machinery,stronger fertilizers, and improved plant varieties but demand fell. People

ate less bread, Europeans imposed protective tariffs, and consumersreplaced cotton with rayon. Too much was being grown, and the glutcaused prices to fall. In order to meet farm debts in 1932, farmers neededto grow 2.5 times as much corn as they grew in 1929, 2.7 times as muchwheat, and 2.4 times as much cotton.

As farm incomes fell, farm tenancy soared; two-fifths of all farmersworked on land that they did not own. The Gudgers, a white southernAlabama sharecropping family of six, illustrated the plight of tenants who

were slipping deeper and deeper into debt. Each year, their landlordprovided them with 20 acres of land, seed, an unpainted one-room house,a shed, a mule, fertilizer, and $10 a month. In return, they owed him half of their corn and cotton crop and 8 percent interest on their debts. In1934, they were $80 in debt; by 1935, their debts had risen another $12.

Nature itself seemed to have turned against farmers. In the South, theboll weevil devoured the cotton crop; on the Great Plains, the top soilliterally blew away, piling up in ditches like "snow drifts in winter." The

Dust Bowl produced unparalleled human tragedy, but it had not occurredby accident. The Plains had always been a harsh, arid inhospitableenvironment. Nevertheless, a covering of tough grass-roots, called sod,permitted the land to retain moisture and support vegetation. During the1890s, however, overgrazing by cattle severely damaged the sod. Then,during World War I, demand for wheat and the use of gasoline-poweredtractors allowed farmers to plow large sections of the prairie for the firsttime. The fragile skin protecting the prairie was destroyed. When droughtstruck, beginning in 1930, and temperatures soared (to 108 degrees in

Kansas for weeks on end) the wind began to blow the soil away. One


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Kansas county, which produced 3.4 million bushels of wheat in 1931,harvested just 89,000 bushels in 1933.

Tenant farmers found themselves evicted from their land. By 1939, amillion Dust Bowl refugees and other tenant farmers left the Plains towork as itinerant produce pickers in California. As a result, whole countieswere depopulated. In one part of Colorado, 2,811 homes were abandoned,while an additional 1,522 people simply disappeared.

The New Deal attacked farm problems through a variety of programs.Rural electrification programs meant that for the first time Americans inAppalachia, the Texas Hill Country, and other areas would have theopportunity to share in the benefits of electricity and running water. Aslate as 1935, more than 6 million of America's 6.8 million farms had no

electricity. Unlike their sisters in the city, farm women had no washingmachines, refrigerators, or vacuum cleaners. Nor did private utilitycompanies intend to change things. Private companies insisted that itwould be cost prohibitive to provide electrical service to rural areas.

Roosevelt disagreed. Settling on the 40,000 square mile valley of theTennessee River as his test site, Roosevelt decided to put the governmentinto the electric business. Two months after he took office, Congresspassed a bill creating the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The TVA was

authorized to build 21 dams to generate electricity for tens of thousandsof farm families. In 1935 Roosevelt signed an executive order creating theRural Electrification Administration (REA) to bring electricity generated bygovernment dams to America's hinterland. Between 1935 and 1942 thelights came on for 35 percent of America's farm families.

Electricity was not the only benefit the New Deal bestowed on farmers.The Soil Conservation Service helped farmers battle erosion; the FarmCredit Administration provided some relief from farm foreclosures; and the

Commodity Credit Corporation permitted farmers to use stored productsas collateral for loans. Roosevelt's most ambitious farm program,however, was the Agriculture Adjustment Act (AAA).

The AAA, led by Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, sought apartnership between the government and major producers. Together thenew allies would raise prices by reducing the supply of farm goods. Underthe AAA, the large producers, acting through farm cooperatives, wouldagree upon a "domestic allotment" plan that would assign acreage quotasto each producer. Participation would be voluntary. Farmers who cutproduction to comply with the quotas would be paid for land left fallow.


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Unfortunately for its backers, the AAA got off to a horrible start. Becausethe 1933 crops had already been planted by the time Congressestablished the AAA, the administration ordered farmers to plow theircrops under. The government paid them over $100 million to plow under

10 million acres of cotton. The government also purchased andslaughtered six million pigs, salvaging only one million pounds of meat forthe needy. The public neither understood nor forgave the agency fordestroying food while jobless people went hungry.

Overall, the AAA's record was mixed. It raised farm income, but did littlefor sharecroppers and tenant farmers the groups hardest hit by theagricultural crisis. Farm incomes doubled between 1933 and 1936, butlarge farmers reaped most of the benefits. Many large landowners usedgovernment payments to purchase tractors and combines, allowing themto mechanize farm operations, increase crop yields and reduce the needfor sharecroppers and tenants. One Mississippi planter bought 22 tractorswith his payments and, subsequently, evicted 160 tenant families. TheNew Deal farm policies unintentionally forced at least 3 million smallfarmers from the land. For all its inadequacies, however, the AAAestablished the precedence for a system of farm price supports, subsidies,and surplus purchases that still continues more than half a century later.

The National Recovery Administration (NRA)

Congress established the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to helprevive industry and labor through rational planning. The idea behind theNRA was simple: representatives of business, labor, and governmentwould establish codes of fair practices that would set prices, productionlevels, minimum wages, and maximum hours within each industry. TheNRA also supported workers' right to join labor unions. The NRA sought tostabilize the economy by ending ruinous competition, overproduction,

labor conflicts, and deflating prices.

Led by General Hugh Johnson, the new agency got off to a promisingstart. By midsummer 1933, over 500 industries had signed codes covering22 million workers. In New York City, burlesque show strippers agreed ona code limiting the number of times that they would undress each day. Bythe end of the summer, the nation's ten largest industries had been wonover, as well as hundreds of smaller businesses. All across the landbusinesses displayed the "Blue Eagle," the insignia of the NRA, in their

windows. Thousands participated in public rallies and spectaculartorchlight parades.


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The NRA's success was short-lived. Johnson proved to be an overzealousleader who alienated many businesspeople. Instead of creating a smooth-running corporate state, Johnson presided over a chorus of endlesssquabbling. The NRA boards, which were dominated by representatives of

big business, drafted codes that favored their interests over those of smallcompetitors. Moreover, even though they controlled the new agency fromthe outset, many leaders of big business resented the NRA for interferingin the private sector. Many quipped that the NRA stood for "national run-around."

For labor, the NRA was a mixed blessing. On the positive side, the codesabolished child labor and established the precedent of federal regulation of minimum wages and maximum hours. In addition, the NRA boosted thelabor movement by drawing large numbers of unskilled workers intounions. On the negative side, however, the NRA codes set wages in mostindustries well below what labor demanded, and large occupationalgroups, such as farm workers, fell outside the codes' coverage.

Putting Americans to work

Harry Hopkins, one of Roosevelt's most trusted advisors, asked why thefederal government could not simply hire the unemployed and put them towork. Reluctantly, Roosevelt agreed.

The first major program to attack unemployment through public workswas the Public Works Administration (PWA). It was supposed to serve as a"pump-primer," providing people with money to spend on industrialproducts. In six years the PWA spent $6 billion, building such projects asthe port in Brownsville, Texas, the Grand Coulee Dam, and a sewersystem in Chicago. Unfortunately, the man who headed the program,Harold Ickes, was so concerned about potential graft and scandal that thePWA did not spend sufficient money to significantly reduce unemployment.

One of the New Deal's most famous jobs programs was the CivilianConservation Corps (CCC). By mid-1933, some 300,000 jobless youngmen between the ages of 18 and 25 were hired to work in the nation'sparks and forests. For $30 a month, CCC workers planted saplings, builtfire towers, restocked depleted streams, and restored historic battlefields.Workers lived in wilderness camps, earning money that they passed alongto their families. By 1942, when the program ended, 2.5 million men had

served in Roosevelt's "Tree Army." Despite its immense popularity, theCCC failed to make a serious dent in Depression unemployment. It


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excluded women, imposed rigid quotas on blacks, and offeredemployment to only a miniscule number of the young people who neededwork.

Far more ambitious was the Civil Works Administration (CWA), establishedin November 1933. Under the energetic leadership of Harry Hopkins, theCWA put 2.6 million men to work in its first month. Within two months itemployed four million men building 250,000 miles of road, 40,000schools, 150,000 privies, and 3,700 playgrounds. In March 1934,however, Roosevelt scrapped the CWA because he (like Hoover) did notwant to run a budget deficit or to create a permanent dependent class.

Roosevelt badly underestimated the severity of the crisis. As governmentfunding slowed down and economic indicators leveled off, the Depression

deepened in 1934. This intense despair triggered a series of violentstrikes, which culminated on Labor Day 1934, when 500,000 garmentworkers launched the single largest strike in the nation's history. Allacross the land, critics attacked Roosevelt for not doing enough to combatthe Depression. These charges did not go unheeded in the White House.

Following the congressional elections of 1934, in which the Democratswon 13 new House seats and 9 new Senate seats, Roosevelt abandonedhis hopes for a balanced budget. He decided that bolder action was

required. He had lost faith in government planning and the proposedalliance with business, which left only one other road to recovery government spending. Encouraged by the CCC's success, he decided tocreate more federal jobs for the unemployed.

In January 1935, Congress created the Works Progress Administration(WPA). Roosevelt's program employed 3.5 million workers at a "securitywage" twice the level of welfare payments, but well below union scales.Roosevelt, again, turned to Harry Hopkins to head the new agency. Since

the WPA's purpose was to employ men quickly, Hopkins opted for labor-intensive tasks, creating jobs that were often makeshift and inefficient.Jeering critics said the WPA stood for "We Piddle Along," but the agencybuilt many worthwhile projects. In its first five years alone, the WPAconstructed or improved 2,500 hospitals, 5,900 schools, 1,000 airportfields (including New York's LaGuardia Airport), and nearly 13,000playgrounds. By 1941 it had pumped $11 billion into the economy.

The WPA's most unusual feature was its spending on cultural programs.Roughly five percent of the WPA's spending went to the arts. Whilefolksingers like Woody Guthrie honored the nation in ballads, other artists


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were hired to catalog it, photograph it, paint it, record it, and write aboutit. In photojournalism, for example, the Farm Security Agency (FSA)employed scores of photographers to create a pictorial record of Americaand its people. Under the auspices of the WPA, the Federal Writers Project

sponsored an impressive set of state guides and dispatched an army of folklorists into the backcountry in search of tall tales. Oral historianscollected slave narratives, and musicologists compiled an amazingcollection of folk music. Other WPA programs included the Theatre Project,which produced a live running commentary on everyday affairs; and theArt Project, which decorated the nation's libraries and post offices withmurals of muscular workmen, bountiful wheat fields, and massivemachinery.

Valuable in their own right, the WPA's cultural programs had the addedbenefit of providing work for thousands of writers, artists, actors, andother creative people. In addition, these programs established theprecedent of federal support to the arts and humanities, laying thegroundwork for future federal programs to promote the life of the mind inthe United States.

In 1939, a Gallup Poll asked Americans what they liked best and whatthey liked worst about Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The answerto both questions was: the WPA, the Works Projects Administration.

Work crews were criticized for spending days moving leaf piles from oneside of the street to the other. Unions went on strike to protest theprogram's refusal to pay wages equal to those of the private sector.President Ronald Reagan, a staunch critic of large-scale governmentprograms, was one of the WPA's defenders, however. "Some people," hesaid, "have called it boondoggle and everything else. But having livedthrough that era and seen it, no, it was probably one of the socialprograms that was most practical in those New Deal days."

Approximately five percent of its budget was devoted to the arts. WPAalumni include writers Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, andRichard Wright, the artist Jackson Pollack, and actor and director OrsonWelles.

The WPA was not especially efficient. In Washington, D.C., constructioncosts typically ran three-to-four times the cost of private work. Although,this was intentional. The WPA avoided cost-saving machinery in order tohire more workers. At its peak, the WPA spent $2.2 billion a year, orapproximately $30 billion annually in current dollars.


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The Wagner Act

In 1932, George Barnett, a prominent economist and president of theAmerican Economics Association, forecasted a bleak future for organizedlabor. "The changes, occupational and technological, which checked theadvance of unionism in the last decade, appear likely to continue in thesame direction," he intoned.

In 1930, only 3.4 million workers belonged to labor unions down from 5million in 1920. Union members were confined to a few industries, such asconstruction, railroads, and local truck delivery. The nation's majorindustries, like autos and steel, remained unorganized.

In 1935, Congress passed the landmark Wagner Act (the National Labor

Relations Act), which spurred labor to historic victories. One such successincluded a sit-down strike by auto workers in Flint, Michigan in 1937. Thestrike led General Motors to recognize the United Automobile Workers.Union membership soared from 3.4 million in 1932 to 10 million in 1942and to 16 million in 1952.

Bitter labor-management warfare erupted as the Depression dragged on.In 1934, some 1.5 million workers went on strike. Auto and steel workersand longshoremen became involved in violent strikes. Police shot 67striking Teamsters in Minneapolis. In August, textile workers staged thelargest strike the country had ever seen a total of 500,000 workers in 20states. In Massachusetts alone, 110,000 workers went on strike, and60,000 workers in Georgia struck. While some of the strikes aimed athigher wages, a third demanded union recognition.

Labor unrest forced the federal government to step into labor relationsand to forge a compromise between management and labor. Under theWagner Act of 1935, the federal government guaranteed the right of employees to form unions and to bargain collectively. It also set up theNational Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which had the power to prohibitunfair labor practices by employers.

During the mid-1930s, a bitter dispute broke out within labor's ranks. Itinvolved an issue that had been simmering for half a century: Shouldlabor focus its efforts on unionizing skilled workers; or should laborunionize all workers in industry, regardless of skill level? The country'smajor labor federation, the American Federation of Labor, consisted of craft unions organized by occupation. In late 1935, a group of union

leaders including John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers, DavidDubinsky of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and Sidney Hillman of


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the International Ladies' Garment Workers formed the Committee of Industrial Organization (CIO) to organize unskilled workers in America'smass production industries. The CIO formed unions in the auto, glass,radio, rubber, and steel industries, and by the end of 1937, it had more

members than the American Federation of Labor (AFL) 3.7 million CIOmembers against 3.4 million AFL members.

The 44-day sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan forced General Motors torecognize the United Auto Workers. A few weeks later, U.S. Steel acceptedunionization without a strike, but the "Little Steel" companies Bethlehem,Inland, National, Republic, and Youngstown Sheet & Tube vowed to resistthe steel workers union. In response to the opposition, 75,000 workerswalked out and violence flared. In May 1937, police in South Chicagoopened fire on marchers at the Republic mill, killing ten. Soon after, thestrike was routed, but in 1941 the National Labor Relations Board ordered"Little Steel" to recognize the United Steelworkers of America and to re-instate all workers fired for union activity.

Sources:

Digital History

Kennedy, David. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 , 1999.

Lowitt, Richard and Beardsley Maurice, eds. One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickock Reportson the Great Depression, 1981.

McElvaine Robert S. The Great Depression , 2nd ed., 1993.

Shlaes, Amity. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression , 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amity_Shlaeshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amity_Shlaes


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World War II Propaganda

Propag anda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts toinfluence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages which may or may not be factual via mass and direct media channels. Richard AlanNelson

Propaganda makes up our minds for us, but in such a way that it leaves us the sense of pride and satisfaction of men who have made up their own minds. And in the last analysis, propagandaachieves this effect because we want it to. This is one of the few real pleasures left to modernman: this illusion that he is thinking for himself when, in fact, someone else is doing his thinkingfor him. Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)

Propaganda is essentially an appeal to emotion, not intellect. It sharestechniques with advertising and public relations, each of which can be thought of as propaganda that promotes a commercial product or shapes the perception of an organization, person or brand, though in post-World War II usage the word

propaganda more typically refers to political or nationalist uses of these specifictechniques or to the promotion of a set of ideas.

War propaganda is used to dehumanize and create hatred toward the enemy, orsupposed enemy, either internal or external, by creating caricatural orstereotypical images in the mind. This can be done by using derogatory or racist

terms, by making allegations of enemy atrocities, depicting the enemy as ugly,loathsome, subhuman and savage. Most propaganda wants the home populationto believe the enemy has inflicted an injustice, which may be imagined or basedon facts. The home population must also decide that the cause of their nation is

just and the cause of the enemy is unjust.

Propaganda is also one of the methods used in psychological warfare, which mayalso involve false flag operations. The term propaganda may also refer to falseinformation meant to reinforce the mindsets of people who already believe as thepropagandist wishes. The assumption is that, if people believe something false,

they will constantly be assailed by doubts. Since these doubts are unpleasant(see cognitive dissonance), people will be eager to have them extinguished, andare therefore receptive to the reassurances of those in power. For this reasonpropaganda is often addressed to people who are already sympathetic to theagenda. This process of reinforcement uses an individual's predisposition to self-select "agreeable" information sources as a mechanism for maintaining control.

During the Pacific War, Allied propaganda aimed at their own citizens typically

sought to vilify the enemy, amplify the sense of threat posed by his armedforces, and appeal to the population's patriotism. It varied from benign
http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/U/n/United_Nations.htmhttp://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/U/n/United_Nations.htm


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admonitions to work harder "to help bring the boys home" to blatantly racistdepictions of the enemy. The latter played on ugly stereotypes of the Japanese, emphasizing their Oriental features and often depicting them as rats, snakes, orother disgusting animals. It is difficult to accurately assess the effectiveness of such propaganda, but the success of ordinary advertising suggests that suchpropaganda could have a significant effect.

Information in propaganda from the Office of War Information (OWI) in theUnited States was rarely blatantly false, but it was selected to promote moraleand sometimes stretched the truth. For instance, the deaths of the five Sullivanbrothers was used for propaganda purposes, but the fact that some of thebrothers probably died because their task force dared not linger to search forsurvivors was omitted. While the decision to sail on was probably the correctmilitary decision, it was not the kind of decision that it was thought would play

well with the public. On the other hand, Yamamoto expressed astonishment thatthe American government had released accurate information on the casualties atPearl Harbor within a few months of the attack. By contrast, the Japanese Navyroutinely exaggerated enemy casualties while concealing its own, sometimeseven from the Japanese Army and government.

During the Second World War, the United States printed innumerable posters toincite the American public to change some of its consumer habits and thus takean active part in helping their soldiers abroad. Many of these sought to promotethrift and economy so that the army, navy and air force would not be lacking

overseas. When you ride ALONE you ride with Hitler! is a poster that advocatedthe idea of car-sharing to save gasoline.

Other posters attacked carelessness and waste since products were sometimes inshort supply and were often needed by the military. Americans were encouragedto grow their own vegetables and to can it so that their families would haveenough to eat in the winter. They were also asked to eat nutritional food to stayhealthy since workers would be more productive that way.

Factories often urged its workers to make material carefully and speedily sincethe country is depending on everyone to supply its soldiers with what they needto fight the war.

Buying war bonds or victory bonds was also another important theme during thewar effort and people were asked to make financial sacrifices to win the war andsave the lives of American soldiers. One poster promoting the purchase of warbonds depicted a young American mother protecting her young infant against theclutches of Nazi Germany and Japan, as represented by the swastika and theemblem of the rising sun.

Women were seen as playing a vital role in the war and were thus urged to go to

their nearest recruiting station to enlist, if they could. Women working at homewere encouraged to be as productive as possible, like all workers, since
http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/J/a/Japan.htmhttp://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/Y/a/Yamamoto_Isoroku.htmhttp://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/C/a/Casualties.htmhttp://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/C/a/Casualties.htmhttp://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/Y/a/Yamamoto_Isoroku.htmhttp://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/J/a/Japan.htm


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increased productivity could help to win the war. No profession was consideredunimportant during the war, and all patriotic Americans were asked to do theirpart. One poster shows a young American woman sitting at her typewritersaluting the viewer, with the colors of the Stars and Stripes behind her, with thetitle in bold print: Victory waits on your fingers. Secretaries and stenographerswere important too.

One of the most famous WWII propaganda slogans was, careless talk costslives. This slogan suggested that spies could be lurking everywhere, on thebusses, in restaurants, in stations, hoping to learn something important from theenemy. A related topic was that of dissent. Dissenters were thought to beunpatriotic, un-American.


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Propaganda was most effective when it was somewhat realistic. Propaganda thatlooked like propaganda was almost completely ineffective either at buildingfriendly morale or at destroying enemy morale. The Collier's cover depictingJapan as a fanged bat was probably much less effective than the realisticdepiction of a Japanese rifleman taking aim at the viewer.

Office of War Information

The Office of War Information (OWI) was one of the numerous governmentbureaucracies created during World War I. On June 13, 1942, the White Houseannounced the creation of the OWI and the appointment of its chief, ElmerDavis. OWI was to undertake campaigns to enhance public understanding of thewar at home and abroad; to coordinate government information activities; and tohandle liaison with the press, radio, and motion pictures. In effect, the OWI wascharged with selling the war. The agency issued elaborate guidelines, dividedinto numerous categories, to insure conformity in every film. OWI asked filmmakers to consider the following seven questions before producing a movie:

1. Will this picture help win the war?

2. What war information problem does it seek to clarify, dramatize, or

interpret?


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3. If it is an "escape" picture, will it harm the war effort by creating a falsepicture of America, her allies, or the world we live in?

4. Does it merely use the war as the basis for a profitable picture,contributing nothing of real significance to the war effort and possiblylessening the effect of other pictures of more importance?

5. Does it contribute something new to our understanding of the worldconflict and the various forces involved, or has the subject already beenadequately covered?

6. When the picture reaches its maximum circulation on the screen, will itreflect conditions as they are and fill a need current at that time, or will itbe out-dated?

7. Does the picture tell the truth or will the young people of today havereason to say they were misled by propaganda?

This last question was, at first, a consideration of extreme importance for OWI.The agency, which was often classified as "liberal" by other branches of thegovernment, started out with the intention of truthfully representing the war.Films like Casablanca , despite its unctuous sentimentalism, made an attempt toinform the movie-going public of the causes of and reasons for the war, thoughnobody has trouble identifying the good guys and the bad guys. In the beginningat least, the OWI sought to avoid hate pictures, providing instead a balancedview. These good intentions quickly dissolved, though, as the OWI found itnecessary to crack down on the motion picture industry. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hollywood turned out numerous anti-Japanese films, some of them

quite racist. Particularly, the mid-summer 1942 Little Tokyo , U.S.A ., which dealtwith the controversial subject of Japanese internment, caused the OWI to crackdown on the artistic license of Hollywood. As the OWI became more regulatory,truthfulness gave way to the use of sentimental symbolism to manipulate opinionby denying or clouding relevant information. By the end of World War II, theOWI was making unprecedented decisions and in virtually all films produced byHollywood, as the quotation below clearly shows.

For the benefit of both your studio and the Office of War Information, it wouldbe advisable to establish a routine procedure whereby our Hollywood office would

receive copies of studio treatments or synopses of all stories which youcontemplate producing and of the finished scripts. This will enable us to makesuggestions as to the war content of motion pictures at a stage when it is easyand inexpensive to make any changes which might be recommended.

The Battle Ground

The first year of America's involvement in World War II constituted a period of

almost unrelieved bad news. Allied outposts in the South Pacific fell, the Nazispushed toward Stalingrad, and the Suez Canal was threatened. What victories


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did occur, such as the defensive victory at Midway, carry more importance inretrospect than they did during 1942. A year of bad news left the Americanpublic fearing that, perhaps, "we could have lost that war, and were withininches of losing it..." The grim atmosphere of 1942 caused the OWI to take "Willthis picture help the war?" quite seriously. Every act seemed to carry greatimportance for the war. OWI decided that drastic measures were needed to bringHollywood in line with the agency's propaganda program.

The tightened control of the motion picture industry resulted in an outpouring of films about war. Hollywood produced numerous battle films dealing directly withthe conflict, in an effort to offset the ominous events following Pearl Harbor.These films offered the same theme: as in World War I, the Yanks were coming.The early battles were lost, but final victory would belong to America. Film afterfilm pictured Americans routing their enemies and liberating enslaved nations.

The general victory motif included themes on military strength, heroism, andAllied cooperation. While many of these war films were turkeys, some representWorld War II Hollywood at its best. Films like Sahara, Bataan, Flying Tigers ,Guadalcanal Diary , and Wake Island represent not only the best of Hollywood'spersuasive skills, but also what many would qualify as classic cinema.

These films filled a void left by the depressing news from the fronts. Later, whenthe tides turned toward victory, the battle-film genre served to glorify Americanmilitary spirit. What about the issues facing the home front? The fact that, by thefinal phase of World War II, less than one-third of all films were directly

connected to the war indicates that Hollywood did not spend the entire warperiod shooting down Japanese planes and exploding Nazi tanks. Hollywoodturned to different genres the comedy, musical, and nostalgia films for obviousreasons: audiences wanted to laugh and be amused, not just delight in seeing

Japs and Krouts smashed to smithereens . The propaganda of these films was just as incisive, if not more, as the battle films.

Courage, Comedy, and American Nostalgia

While American soldiers were off fighting the Axis powers in faraway places,civilians at home found their normal way of life completely altered. Consumergoods became limited as rationing went into effect: crude oil, rubber, butter,meat, canned goods, clothing and shoes were all in short supply. Unaccustomedto such constraints, Americans chaffed under the restrictions of home frontmobilization. One of the few places where the public could still spend its moneyfreely without feeling guilty, was at the movies, so movie goers flocked to thelocal movie theatre to escape an often drab reality.

The OWI was quick to recognize the discontent of average Americans and soughtto counterbalance this mobilization effect with fun entertainment, enlisting the


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help of the Hollywood dream machine to boost the morale of the Americanpublic. Hollywood naturally responded with enthusiasm if there was one subjectHollywood producers thought they knew, it was surely America. The Hollywoodpropaganda machine cranked out countless morale films in an effort to sustainspirits on the home front. Studios produced upbeat stories with happy endingsabout people who were beautiful, witty and successful, but not so far removedfrom a middle class norm as to make it difficult for audiences to identify with theactors. They were the kinds of people audiences were meant to respect, the kindthey wish they knew. They were authentic, down to earth Americans. The filmsobviously presented an idealized version of American society, glorifying theaverage citizen who made personal sacrifices for the war effort because theyloved democracy so much. Hollywood and the OWI found that they could usesimilar myths and symbols to promote propaganda.

Many of the films of the war period dealt directly with issues facing the homefront. Joe Smith, American lauded the everyday virtues of an ordinary assembly-line factory worker... who is captured and tortured by Nazi agents, but stoicallyrefuses to answer their questions about American the armaments industry. InSaboteur , yet another factory worker thwarts the Nazi foe. Pittsburgh extolledthe importance of the steel works industry.

In addition to praising the virtues and importance of the factory workers,Hollywood attempted to bolster the courage of the American people by depictingthe integrity and fortitude of the average citizen dealing with home front

constraints. One of the most popular vehicles for this theme was that of the trialsand tribulations of American women left at home. Tender Comrade dramatizedthe daily existence of five working women sharing joy, sorrow, shortage, and anapartment, while their men were at war. Since You Went Away attempted thesame on a more upper-class level, but got bogged down in subplots and kitsch.

Hollywood also sought to alleviate the pressures of the war effort throughcomedy and dance spectaculars. There were some lighthearted moments on thehome front when large groups of Americans gathered to sing popular tunes anddance fancy steps, while making derogatory remarks about Hitler, Mussolini, and

Tojo. By V-J Day, over seventy-five war period musicals had been released. As agenre, musicals surpassed every other film category during the war period.Some, like Stage Door Canteen and Hollywood Canteen made attempts to dealdirectly with the war situation. Others, such as Holiday Inn , ignored the conflict,preferring instead to devote its time to song-and-dance numbers. Yankee DoodleDandy presented an elaborate diorama of American patriotism: musical numberscovered everything from the American Revolution to George M. Cohan's WWIclassic, "Over There".

One of the most surprising outputs of the WWII propaganda machine was thefilm genre of American nostalgia. These films, which had no direct relation to thewar itself, subtly reminded the American moviegoer why the war was being


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fought. These films fondly looked upon eras of American history and culture.Films such as Meet Me In St. Louis and Life With Father depicted turn-of-thecentury America. Ironically, these films represent some of the best Hollywoodpropaganda. The American public unknowingly absorbed the message that theymust continue to make personal sacrifices for the war effort in order to preservethe innocent and ideological American society portrayed on the screen.

Hollywoods Stars Go to War

The Hollywood propaganda machine did not limit itself to turning out films for thewar effort. Hollywood stars literally joined up, enlisting in the armed services andtouring with the United Service Organizations (USO). Whether for publicity, orout of a genuine desire to contribute to the war effort, Hollywood personalitiesfought, sang, and danced their way across the war fronts, bolstering the spiritsof the American service men and civilians.

The most popular service for the stars to join was the Air Force-perhaps thetheatrics and drama of flying appealed to those accustomed to life on the screen.Although he was technically too old for the draft, Clark Gable joined up andbecame a Major. Cable flew missions over Europe in B-17s to obtain combatfootage, although he was neither required nor expected to do so. James Stewartflew combat missions for the Air Force in both B-17 and B-24 bombers. Stewart

was recognized for his leadership during a raid on German aircraft factories, andwas awarded many medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross, and theFrench Palme de Guerre. After World War II, Stewart continued to serve in thereserves, eventually becoming a Brigadier General. At a memorial service heldafter Stewart's death, the Air Force praised the actor, calling him the"embodiment of the citizen-warrior."

Disney Studios and WWI

Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi is an animated short film producedby Walt Disney and released on January 15, 1943 by RKO Radio Pictures. It wasdirected by Clyde Geronimi and principally animated by Ward Kimball.

This impressive propaganda film was released when Disney was undergovernment contract to produce 32 animated shorts from 1941-1945. This wasdue to the fact that in 1940 Walt Disney spent four times his budget on thefeature film Fantasia (1940) which produced very little in the box office. Nearingbankruptcy and faced with a strike that left less than half of his employees on

the payroll, Walt Disney was forced to look for a solution to upturn theproduction of the studio. Physical proximity to the military aircraft manufacturer,


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Lockheed, in southern California, made it convenient for the United Statesgovernment to offer Disney a contract for 32 short propaganda films at $4,500each a respectable sum at the time which would create work for his employeesand in turn save the studio.

The dialogue of the characters is in German, neither subtitled nor directlytranslated by Art Smith's lone English language narration. A voice track of Adolf Hitler in full demagogic rant is used in a torchlight rally scene.

The audience sees Hans, a young, innocent German child, sick in bed. His motherprays for him, knowing it will only be a matter of time before the authoritiescome and take him away to serve the Nazi war machine. An aggressive Naziofficer bangs on the door to take Hans away, but his mother says he is sick andneeds care. The officer commands her to heal her son quickly and have himready to leave, suggesting that if Hans does not get well, he will be euthanized.

Hans eventually recovers and resumes his "education" in a classroom where heand the rest of his classmates watch as the teacher draws a cartoon on theblackboard of a rabbit being eaten by a fox, prompting Hans to feel sorry for therabbit. The teacher, furious over the childs unorthodoxy, orders Hans to sit inthe corner. Hans hears the rest of the classmates "correctly" interpret thecartoon as "weakness has no place in a soldier" and "the strong shall rule theweak". This sparks Hans to recant his remark, and agrees that the weak must bedestroyed.

Hans then takes part in a book-burning crusade, burning any books that opposeHitler, replacing the Holy Bible with Mein Kampf and the crucifix with a Nazisword, and burning a Catholic Church. Hans then spends the next several years"Marching and heiling, heiling and marching!" until he reaches his teens still"marching and heiling" until he becomes the "Good Nazi" embroiled in hatredtowards anyone else who opposes Hitler, "sees nothing but what the party wantshim to see, says nothing but what the party wants him to say, and he does nomore than the party wants him to do."

In the end, Hans and the rest of the soldiers march off to war only to fade intorows of graves. Thus Hans's education is complete.

Some of the animated films produced by Disney Studios were of a differentnature, though. Der Furhers Face , distributed in 1944, stars the ever popularcartoon character Donald Duck. Humor and derision being an importantingredient in wartime propaganda, this film mocks the so-called Nazi supermen,depicting them as pompous, fatuous, ridiculous characters, more subhuman thansuperhuman. Donald is caught in the Reichs frenzy, forced to work like a s lave inthe weapons industry until he finally goes berserk. All is not lost however, as hisnightmare turns out to be only a dream and he thankfully embraces the Statue


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of Liberty when he wakes up in the good old United States of America, with notidiotic Nazis pointing bayonets at him.

Film documentaries such as Our Enemy The Japanese , a training film for theNavy produced by the Office of War Information and its Bureau of MotionPictures, creates a purely negative image of the enemy. In the openingsequ ence, the narrator asserts that the Japanese are as different from ourselvesas any people on our planet, and apparently he should know, because he hadlived with them for ten years The purpose of the documentary is to help ussize up our enemy: Japan. During the film, the viewer learns that the Japaneseare murderous and fanatical.

Women in Defense (1941), produced by the Office for Emergency Managementand narrated by Hollywood star Katherine Hepburn, is a propaganda film thatfocuses on the important role of women, all women, skilled or unskilled, incombating the enemy and defending democracy. Films such as this were meantto inspire respect and mobilize Americans in the war effort.

Our Enemy The Japanesehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBxYy9rOVEk&NR=1

Education for Death Disneyhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG15bVweujE

Der Furhers Face 1944 Disneyhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4tDTe9sOdU&feature=related

Women in Defense, 1941http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu1CPUrRMl0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBxYy9rOVEk&NR=1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBxYy9rOVEk&NR=1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG15bVweujEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG15bVweujEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4tDTe9sOdU&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4tDTe9sOdU&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu1CPUrRMl0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu1CPUrRMl0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu1CPUrRMl0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4tDTe9sOdU&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG15bVweujEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBxYy9rOVEk&NR=1


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Gallery of WWII propaganda posters


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Week 7 Depression WWII

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