Title: Freedom From Fear
Rating: 4 Stars
If you’ve been reading the last several blog articles, you’ll know that I’ve been reading Freedom From Fear. It’s part of the Oxford History of the United States. This series is, at least at this time, planned to be published in twelve parts. Nine of the volumes are already available. With the exception of one, they are all pretty mammoth, averaging around 900 pages each. This is the second one that I’ve read. The other is the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which I think is the best one volume history of the Civil War.
This volume covers the Great Depression and World War II (essentially the years 1929 through 1945). In the past week or so, I’ve written two other posts as I’ve read. One was about the start, cause, and effect of the Great Depression. The second post was about FDR’s response to it via the New Deal. This post will focus on World War II.
Before I start that, here’s a few words about the book. There’s certainly a historical throughline in these years. Even so, as written, this work is really two distinct books. The first twelve chapters are focused on the Great Depression and the New Deal. The final ten chapters are nearly exclusively World War II. I believe that Kennedy makes a historical argument for this by claiming that essentially the New Deal was dead by 1938. FDR overreached with his attempts to pack the Supreme Court and the new Congress was no longer willing to be bullied by the executive branch. No new New Deal initiatives were going to come about despite FDR’s efforts. In my opinion, the book suffers from disconnectedness due to having such two distinct halves.
Regarding the World War II section of this history, I wasn’t too clear how much I was going to learn. I’ve now read several WWII histories. WWII is one of the foundational events of the modern USA. Everyone thinks of it as the Good War. WWII veterans have been lionized as the heroic generation. Even though I didn’t learn anything really critical while reading, I still found it interesting.
One thing that surprised me is exactly how isolationist the US was in the time before Pearl Harbor. I knew that that thread definitely existed but I didn’t understand how strong and pervasive it was. The US Congress passed several laws that left FDR severely hamstrung. Some of these laws forbade trade with a country at war. Even if trade was allowed, the trading country had to provide cash upfront. As Britain and, later, the Soviet Union were reeling under the Nazi peril, there just wasn’t a lot that the US could do to help. FDR didn’t really have a lot of options other than to prepare Americans by using his fireplace chats to highlight how dangerous the world was getting. You really do end up getting the feeling that he was waiting for nearly any kind of pretext that would allow the US to join the fight against fascism. However, Kennedy gives absolutely no credence to the idea that FDR somehow ‘allowed’ Pearl Harbor to happen to serve as that pretext.
Another thing that I didn’t realize is exactly how active the German U-Boat activity was off the Eastern coast of the US. Citizens from the shore could see ships burning. The U-Boats basically had a open hunting license on freighters until the Allies finally came up with an effective convoy response.
During WWII, the US had the historical reputation of being the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’. This is certainly true. The US produced an overwhelming amount of material that was used to support all of the Allies. What I found interesting is that Kennedy explicitly mentioned the political and economic advantages of performing this role.
First of all, it dramatically reduced American casualties in comparison to the other Allied countries, specifically the Soviet Union. While the US was dramatically ramping up its manufacturing base in preparation to supplying war material, the Soviets were being bled dry in a brutal war of attrition. During WWII, the Soviets suffered some 24 million dead. Over 10 million of those were soldiers. Compare that to the US. The US suffered around 400,000 casualties. Nearly all of them were soldiers.
This disparity caused serious friction among the Allies. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the Nazi war effort for nearly three years before the second front was opened on D-Day in June of 1944. Stalin, already prone to paranoia, couldn’t help but believe that the US was intentionally slow rolling opening this second front in hopes that the Nazis and the Soviets would bleed each other dry.
The economic advantages were equally obvious. As the only Allied power that was not directly threatened by the Nazis, the US could ramp up its manufacturing to an almost unimaginable level. While the other nations were tearing themselves up, the US was prospering. Consumer spending was increasing in the US even as defense spending was so dramatically ramped up. While the standard of living of all other nations fighting in WWII plummeted during the war years, the US standard dramatically increased. Kennedy is definitely one of those historians that believe that it was WWII that ended the Great Depression. It ended it not just economically, but emotionally. The war effort and its great success gave the people of the US the enthusiasm and confidence that they had been lacking in the 1930s. By the end of the war, the US was producing nearly half of the world’s manufacturing and over half of the world’s electricity.
One other thing that I found interesting was Americans’ evolution on bombing. In the early stages of the war, the US was adamant against mass indiscriminate bombing. Americans condemned not just the Nazis and their London Blitz but also the area bombing initiated by the English. It was thought to be uncivilized. At some point in the war, this thinking changed. As Curtis LeMay said, “I’ll tell you what this war is about. You’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.” By the end of the war, Americans were intentionally designing bombing raids to create firestorms intended to kill as many people as possible in Tokyo. When the decision was made to drop the atomic bomb, the advisory group took a total of about ten minutes debating alternatives before recommending using it on civilian populations. This is a long way from where the US started.
Coming out of the war so strong laid the groundwork for the American century to come. Even today we are still enjoying the benefits that came out of it.
dorkenstein 