As states rush to list all restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of Covid-19, many of us wonder how we got here. How can Americans place the nation at risk to pursue their personal goals? In fact, we’ve been here before, as I learned from researching my forthcoming book, A Mighty Force. A year before V-J Day, the homefront seemed headed for collapse as thousands of Americans ditched war work to seek jobs in sales and marketing.
Reacting to this threat, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration identified “essential workers”—including civilian physicians, like Dr. Elizabeth Hayes, the subject of my book—and froze them to their jobs. Their employers had to give them release forms before they could seek other work. Also affected were the 350 coal miners who went on strike to support Hayes’s battle for clean drinking water in their company-owned town. They’d long been at the mercy of the mining company that hired them and owned their housing. The job freeze made things worse.
The federal government took this unusual step to counter widespread “peace jitters.” Acting Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, coined the term in July 1944, when a widespread belief that World War II was “all but over” had left war industries with a shortage of 200,000 workers, threatening the flow of supplies and endangering lives.[1] Many Americans felt certain that Germany would fold any day now, taking munitions-plant jobs with it and leaving them adrift in the postwar future.
The homefront of Hollywood films—full of victory gardens, metal-scavenging kids, riveting Rosies, and cheerful shipyard workers—had largely evaporated by this point. A huge chunk of the Greatest Generation was prematurely ready to bail.
Presaging our varying views on the virus, many Americans underestimated the peril of leaving troops underequipped. Trying to stop the hemorrhaging, the war department filmed grim scenes of soldiers pleading for war material and screened them to millions of workers. Still, the exodus continued, perhaps because “unless you actually have seen the war you can’t grasp what they are driving at,” as some department officials suggested.
D-Day and the liberation of Paris had much the same effect as Covid vaccinations and recent dips in deaths and cases. “Our problems are created by our successes. Too many people think that we are ‘over the hump’ and that they may now let up in their war efforts,” said Paul V. McNutt, chairman of the War Manpower Commission, sounding like a prototype of Dr. Anthony Fauci. [2]
Then, as now, there was plenty of finger-pointing and charges of misinformation. Journalists said that the war department must have been hiding something if they felt that the war was going to continue much longer. The department, in turn, accused radio and newspaper outlets of “making every small step toward victory appear to be a major triumph.”[3] Wishful thinking also played a part. For some Americans, the attempted assassination of Hitler and changes in the Japanese war command signaled an imminent end to the conflict.
Corporations were charged, as they would be again, with placing profits over people. As orders from the military ebbed, manufacturers eager to re-enter the consumer market talked of making drastic layoffs. Panicked workers raced off to compete for peacetime jobs.[4]
In Force, PA, the setting of my book, Dr. Hayes and her miner allies took the job freeze seriously. Elsewhere, however, government attempts to freeze workers to “essential” war work were mostly futile. In July 1944, the United States Employment Service was assigned to oversee all hiring of males and, in some places, females, or at least those women working in “critical industries.” People weren’t supposed to quit war jobs without a signed release to show their next employers.[5]
But, as with mandates and capacity limits, the rule was widely flouted. In a warning for any proposals for vaccination passports, counterfeit job-release forms were soon available for a dime. Many employers didn’t demand the releases anyway, despite the government’s urgings.[6]
Dropping our guard didn’t change the outcome of World War II, but it may have cost lives. By November 1944, munition stockpiles had dwindled, pontoons used in bridge-building were growing scarce, and certain shells had to be hurriedly flown to a battle zone and rationed when they arrived.[7] Still ahead were months of fierce fighting, including the Battle of the Bulge in Europe and the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the Pacific.
In New Jersey, where 50,000 had left war plants, job recruiter William J. Orchard said, “Too many people are indulging in the very human characteristic of . . .wanting to do everything that seems necessary to win the war, but not being willing to knuckle down.”[8] Before flinging our masks in the trash, we should mark those words.
And for more about the WW2 homefront we never really knew about, get a copy of A Mighty Force, available now for pre-order through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.
[1] Sidney Shallet, “War Chiefs Warn of Peace Jitters,” New York Times, Jul 21, 1944.
[2] “McNutt Asks Staff to Be ‘Supersalesmen’ In Persuading War Workers to Stay on Job,” New York Times, July 27, 1944.
[3] NWNS, “This Week in Washington,” Harlan County (Alma, NE) Journal, Aug 3, 1944.
[4] Todd Wright, “Peace Jitters Peril Nation’s War Effort, Daily News (New York, NY), Dec 10, 1944.
[5] Louis Stark, “Manpower Curb Put Into Effect to Get War Labor,” New York Times, Jul 1, 1944.
[6] Wright, Ibid.
[7] “USES Head Urges Workers to Keep Defense Jobs,” Morning Call (Allentown, PA), Nov 29, 1944.
[8] “’V-E Jitters’ Are Menace to Labor,” Central New Jersey Home News (New Brunswick, NJ), Dec 1, 1944.
