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The Propaganda

Figure 1.1 "Ours to fight for: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear"

The Propagandists

In June of 1942, the Office of War Information (OWI) was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9182,⁷and charged with handling all domestic propaganda before 1943. Initially, the OWI was met with resistance from the mass media that was not used to and did not enjoy being told what to do as "free press." It did not help that media executives generally considered the OWI's overtly blatant and did not agree with all of the methods of utilizing media to propagandize the public. Disapproval from Congress and suspicion that President Roosevelt might be utilizing the agency for his own political purposes, the OWI reduced its demands and negotiated with the media. Ultimately, the domestic propaganda methods were most successful when they portrayed the war as a fight to maintain the "American way of life and stressed components – both spiritual and material – that...made America great,"⁸as seen in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.2 "United we win"

Fiture 1.3 "This is Nazi brutality"

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Figure 1.4 "Don't let the shadow touch them – buy war bonds"

Figure 1.5 "Someone talked!"

Media Utilization Techniques

The OWI published various forms of print propaganda such as pamphlets and posters to strengthen support for the war. It even partnered with private book publishers and the Council on Books in Wartime (CBW) to oversee censorship.⁹Efforts to strengthen support for the war is reflected in the numerous posters circulated throughout the country that often appealed to the American people's patriotism and sense of duty and highlighted the importance of unity and cooperation (Figure 1.2). Others appealed to fear, stressing the atrocities of the Axis Powers (Figures 1.3, 1.5) and repeated the message that the future of American life was at stake due to the horrors of war (Figures 1.1, 1.4).

Radio was also used extensively as a form of communication and to spread propaganda, which governments around the world quickly took advantage of. President Roosevelt used his Fireside Chats to speak directly to the American public like never before, soon becoming a source of comfort to many Americans.¹⁰This was especially useful when the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor, and Roosevelt informed and consoled the public two days later. After the December 7 attack, the OWI took over radio broadcast stations collectively known as the Voice of America, eventually expanding to 36 transmitters from the original 12 and broadcasting for 50 hours at a time.¹¹

Figue 1.6 "President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Fireside Chat following the Declaration of War on Japan, 1941-1942" audio

The film industry joined in on the propaganda effort as well, although not in the way propagandists originally intended. Many pro-Allies, anti-Nazi films had been produced before the United States even declared war, such as Confessions of a Nazi Spy released in 1939. The first major fictionalized war film was Wake Island in 1941 (Figure 1.7), reaching a much larger audience than most documentaries created specifically for propaganda purposes.¹²Realizing that audiences were "far more sophisticated than expected" and were rejecting most attempts of blatant propaganda, propagandists switched tactics and ultimately softened their targeting efforts.¹³Thus, what the Hollywood industry ended up supporting was morale as entertainment became not only a luxury but an "emotional necessity."¹⁴

Figure 1.7 "Wake Island" trailer

Target Audience

Military recruitment during this time expanded to include all men due to an amendment in the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 which stated that "any person, regardless of race or color,...shall be afforded opportunity to volunteer for induction..."¹⁵Even though the military was still not desegregated and public recruitment aimed mainly at white men (Figure 1.8), one-sixth of the male population was drafted, including: hundreds of thousands of Black, Asian, Indigenous, and Latino citizens and immigrants, as well as men of Japanese ancestry.¹⁶The US government also attempted to defuse racial tensions for the war effort and published posters of the first national hero of World War 2, Doris "Dorie" Miller, who was awarded the Navy Cross seen in Figure 1.10.¹⁷

Volunteer women were also recruited for military service, leading to the creation of the Women's Army Corps (WAC) which was given full military status. This was soon followed by the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) in the Navy and similar outfits in other branches of the military. Although women were not given combat roles, around 350,000 Black, Asian, white, Indigenous, and Latina-American and immigrant women served in the Armed Forces, sometimes in dangerous roles that cost their lives. The Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) lost dozens of pilots over the course of the War and was later awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.¹⁸

Back home, women were strongly urged to fill in positions left by the men drafted for the War, although due to the Great Depression, they had already begun entering the workforce. Aviation especially saw a massive increase in numbers until 65% of the total workforce comprised women. The iconic "Rosie the Riveter" poster seen in Figure 1.11 was based on employees of the munitions industry, which also heavily recruited women (despite rarely being paid more than 50% of the wages of their male counterparts).¹⁹All people in America were encouraged to make financial contributions such as by purchasing war bonds (Figure 1.4) and conserving economic resources by not wasting food, oil, metal, etc. (Figure 1.9).

Figure 1.8 "Man the guns"

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Figure 1.9 "Save your cans – help pass the amunition"

Figure 1.10 "Above and beyond the call of duty"

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Figure 1.11 "We can do it!"

Counterpropaganda

Although there was a little anarchist and socialist opposition to the "capitalist war,"²⁰the American isolationist movement was laden with far-right, anti-Semitic extremism. Prolonged social, economic, and political instability inspired people like Father Charles Coughlin and Elizabeth Dilling to attack Jewish bankers and "Jew-Communists," starting as early as the 1930s.²¹²² Coughlin took advantage of his success as a public figure and radio broadcast, preaching his message of neutrality and his belief that the Great Depression had been "precipitated" by international bankers.²³Dilling also targeted like-minded and fearful white, middle-class, and Christian Americans who believed they and their country were under attack. In fact, she was described as the "female fuhrer" of the United States by the German press.²⁴

Various mothers' and women's movements such as the National Legion of Mothers of America (NLMA) and Women's National Committee to Keep the US out of War were either founded by extremists or infiltrated by them in droves.²⁵These crusades reflected not only the early radical feminist beliefs that women were "morally superior" to men but that of mothers who feared their "Christians sons were going to die for Jews."²⁶Leaders such as Catherine Curtis attacked Roosevelt and Congress and then Eleanore Roosevelt, who had planned to propose conscription for women.²⁷Meanwhile, wealthy and powerful men, such as automobile manufacturer Henry Ford who was the "inspiration and financial godfather" to many of these anti-Semitic propagandists, provided funds to nationalist Nazi sympathizers including Diling.²⁸