V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During WWII. John Morton Blum.

V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During WWII
John Morton Blum.
New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
1976

Why read it? Politics did not disappear in World War II. Blum discusses how war was sold to Americans. Propaganda was used to produce popular images of our own fighting men, our allies and the enemy. Other topics: The return of prosperity after the dong depression and its effect on consumers, business and government. How we treated Italians and Italian-Americans, Japanese and Japanese-Americans and our attitude toward Jewish refugees. The growth of black self-awareness and its results. Party politics of the time, with special attention to Wendell Wilkie and Henry A. Wallace as well as to Franklin Roosevelt. The coming of victory and what it portended for the nation and the world. Blum uses generous helpings of irony.

RayS: Having lived through the era of WWII, having seen its movies and newspaper accounts, I think I was most startled at the way in which the government used propaganda to sell the war and to denigrate the enemy. My attitudes were manipulated and I did not know it. And the media joined in the use of propaganda. Never again was the media to be willingly manipulated in the way the government manipulated it during WWII.

Some sample ideas from the book:
"Forty months passed, each month forever." "Americans away from home, from the home where they wanted to be and where their wives and sweethearts and parents wanted them--felt their guts twist any day when they were surprised by a metaphor or a memory, one they had almost suppressed." "...to use bonds to sell the war, rather than vice versa." "The bond program, Morgantheau believed, served as 'the spearhead for getting people interested in the war.' " "War bonds mean bullets in the bellies of Hitler's hordes."

"The wartime function of the movies...is to build morale, and morale is... education... inspiration... confidence." "...every picture, romantic or dramatic or funny, would 'involve consciousness of war.' " Raymond Moley: "It was if Mr. MacLeish...had handed a man who wanted 'accurate' information about Denmark a copy of Hamlet." "MacLeish was caught...as others had been before him, in the clash of competing bureaucracies in Washington." "The comic strips depicted the Japanese as teeth and spectacles, a subhuman species.... 'murderous little ape-men.' " "Gradually, with the experience of the actual fighting and the impact of supporting imagery, the Nazis and ultimately all Germans acquired in the public mind the attributes of unequivocal evil." English author Nevil Shute: "They [the Germans] never seemed to laugh...except when they killed." "The picture of the enemy that Americans were shown left Japanese and Germans...stripped of their humanity."

"The stories...gave the impression that any American could lick any twenty Japs." "Whether consciously or inadvertently, the reporters tended to find in the young men they described the traits that Americans generally esteemed." What were the American soldiers fighting for? "Jesus, what I'd give for a piece of blueberry pie." "To get the goddam thing over and get home." "Most regard the war as a job to be done and there is not much willingness to discuss what we are fighting for." Ernie Pyle: "We see the war from the worm's eye view, and our segment of the picture consists only of tired soldiers who are alive and don't want to die...of shocked men wandering back down the hill from battle...." "But all I want to do is beat these Nazi sons-of-bitches so we can get at those little Jap bastards." Ernie Pyle: "You don't fight a Kraut by Marquis of Queensbury rules." "You shoot him in the back, you blow him apart with mines, you kill or maim him...with the least danger to yourself and he does the same to you...and if you don't beat him at his own game, you don't live to appreciate your own nobleness." Billboard over Tulagi Harbor: "Kill Japs, kill more Japs, you will be doing your part if you help to kill those yellow bastards."

After the War:
Quote: "Little boxes on the hillside,/ Little boxes made of ticky tacky,/ Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same;/ There's a green one and a pink one/ and a blue one and a yellow one/ And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same."

Quote: "And the people in the houses/ All went to the university,/ Where they were put in boxes/ and they all came out the same;/ And there's doctors and there's lawyers/ and business executives,/ And they're all made out of ticky tacky/ And they all look just the same."

Malvina Reynolds: "Little Boxes and other Handmade Songs."