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Of all the various ways that American participation in World War II contributed to Allied victory, the most critical, and in the end the most decisive, was American industrial productivity, and particularly shipbuilding. United States ship construction between 1941 and 1945 dramatically outstripped both its own allies and all of its foes combined. The United States was not only the "arsenal of democracy" (Franklin Roosevelt's phrase) but also the Allies' shipbuilder, and superiority in shipping is what allowed the Allies to win the Battle of the Atlantic, conduct the DDay invasion, and mount a simultaneous offensive in the Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguably the greatest self-inflicted catastrophe in human history, the Second World War resulted in an estimated 60 million dead. Unprepared when the war began, the United States quickly gathered momentum to become the decisive economic power, with an unprecedented ability to project that power through the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere. While in the European theater the Soviet Union emerged as the preeminent killing power among the Allies, the United States demonstrated logistical brilliance, firepower, mobility, mechanical aptitude, and an economic preponderance that produced much more than the Axis powers, all while committing a smaller proportion of the country's gross domestic product to the war than any other major belligerent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Mexican American military personnel who played baseball while serving in the U.S. Armed forces during World War II. It provides biographical sketches of various baseball players including Tommie Encina who was a medical corpsmen in the U.S. Army who later became a professional baseball player, U.S. Marine Joe Andrade played for various military teams including the Fort Bragg All-American team, and U.S. Air force wing armorer Ramon A. Martínez served at Wattisham Air Force Base in England.

The article focuses on the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) alumni who served on the United States War Department General Staff during World War II. The author discusses the roles of officers General George Catlett Marshall, who served as chief of staff of the army, General Leonard "Gee" Gerow, who served as assistant chief of staff and chief of the War Plans Division (WPD), and General Thomas Handy, who served as assistant chief of staff and chief of the Operations Division (OPD).

The present article brings together a comparison of two distinct epochs in the world economic order: the crisis of English hegemony at the end of the 19th century, along with the consolidation of American hegemony at the end of World War II and the contemporary process of the crisis of American hegemony beginning in 2001 and continuing today. This approach is based on a structural perspective of the economy in which the global productive system is transformed across the span of different historical periods, and which along with other elements -such as the global monetary order and political, institutional and military leadership- transforms the economic order and hegemony. Applying this methodology leads to the conclusion that the two periods show various similarities, though there are also profound differences, and that currently the global order is in the process of changing towards multipolarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies a significant hole in the literature of World War II. Few works discuss the everyday life of medical personnel and fewer still detail the lives of naval medical providers; those that do tend to focus on the exciting and bloody aspects of a medico at war. Filling this gap, this article argues that the most accurate picture of life at war should include life's routine features and then describes the everyday experiences of a U.S. Navy doctor in the Pacific from September 1944 to December 1945, whose daily existence was far different from and more typical than the one most often portrayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians have long believed that the Victory Program that formed the basis of U.S. military and production strategy during World War II was mostly the work of a sole genius—Major Albert C. Wedemeyer. This article makes the case that Wedemeyer's paper—"Ultimate Requirements Study: Estimate of Army Ground Forces"—had very little impact during the war. Its postwar prominence as an all-seeing document of remarkable foresight is a myth perpetuated for over fifty years by Wedemeyer himself. The true Victory Program combined a military strategy worked out by Admiral Harold Stark, and a production program worked out by three almost forgotten economists, Robert Nathan, Simon Kuznets, and Stacy May. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a lesson plan for eleventh-grade history education which teaches concepts about the social history of the American West during World War II, focusing especially on California as a case study.

In 1942 photographer Andreas Feininger travelled across the United States documenting war industries for the Office of War Information, a New Deal agency. In the midst of world war, Feininger's straightforward photographs of plane production, copper mining, and other key industries were carefully crafted propaganda designed to combat German rhetoric and bolster public support and confidence in the war effort. Feininger's style, an admixture of modernist ideas and social detachment, found resonance within US ideological efforts that stressed data and facts, and became known as the 'Strategy of Truth'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a brief historical introduction, this paper analyzes the rhetorical and persuasive elements of the patriotism of State in the sphere of political regimes of force that ruled some European Nations during the first third of 20th century. The paper ends with the analysis of the patriotism of State as persuasive element of propaganda in the United States after the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the exhibition "Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps during World War II" held at the Special Collections and Archives Research Center at Valley Library in Oregon State University on October 9, 2017 to January 5, 2018, on Japanese American detainees during World War II.

The article looks at the war and human rights abuses in the U.S. during World War II and the Cold War. It examines how these crises facilitated human rights violations against U.S. citizens through illegal human experimentation. It also demonstrates the effects of war making on the rights of these citizens in a constitutional democracy.

The Second World War (after June 1941) was a high point for the international communist movement with the Popular Front against fascism bringing many new people into Communist Parties in the global West. In the United States, South Africa and Australia, the Communist Party supported the war effort believing that the war against fascism would eventually become a war against imperialism and capitalism. Part of this support for the war effort was the support of black and indigenous soldiers in the armed forces. This activism fit into a wider tradition of these communist parties' anti-racist campaigning that had existed since the 1920s. This article looks at how support for the national war effort and anti-racist activism intertwined for these CPs during the war and the problems over 'loyalty' and commitment to the anti-imperial struggle that this entanglement of aims produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disciplinary geography's history represents an important source for contemporary debates over the status of geographical knowledge across the social sciences. This article argues for a reorientation of geography's history by examining its interface with the development of area studies in the United States. It investigates the epistemological and institutional transformations that occurred in the decades before and after the Second World War as the regional concept transmuted into area studies. The article finds that although geography's regional concept shaped the spatial constructions of area studies, the latter's imaginative geographies fixed the regional concept along geopolitical visions of the nation-state and Cold War regional blocs that continue to occlude social scientific attempts to redraw the borders of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During World War II, several hundred Chinese Mexicans traveled north to the United States to work as cooks for the Threlkeld Commissary Company in a special exception to the Chinese Exclusion Act. Using archival sources as well as memoirs, this article traces the Chinese Mexican contribution to the Mexican Track Labor Program and the ways in which these workers became purveyors of Mexican culinary traditions in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of U.S. censorship, violence and moral judgement in a wartime democracy from 1941 through 1945. It reexamines war censorship to rethink the relationship between liberal democracy in the U.S. and international violence. It attempts to make three related arguments on military press censorship, that censors actively encouraged analogous textual reporting, and that censors and journalists both shared a language of realism and toughness while demanding the public to confront the negative aspects of internationalism as a duty of citizenship.

The article discusses the increase in support for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) among congressional members, interest groups and the general public in the U.S. from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s. It tackles the use of the destabilizing nature of the Great Depression and World War II by ERA proponents to create a coalition of supporters, the role of the Fair Labor Standards Act in the growth in energy behind the ERA, and the change in women's relationship to the state by the 19th Amendment.

The article focuses on feminist and historian Leila Rupp's scholarship on the history of sexuality. Leila puts women-loving women at the center of her historical inquiry and of women's history and queer history. She wrote history that was not constrained by national borders as depicted in her book "Mobilizing Women for War," a comparative history of World War II propaganda in the U.S. and Germany.

Historical (national) memory is considered in this article as one of the most important pillars of national identity. In addition to identifying some of the characteristic features of national, historical memory, the author shows that historical memory is influenced by two factors—the direct experience of the witnesses and participants of past events and official propaganda. As the direct witnesses of events disappear, the possibility of reconstructing and distorting historical memory increases. The ideas put forth in this article are formulated based on the historical memory of World War II in the United States, Russia, Germany, and other European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To date, scholars have provided seemingly contradictory accounts of violent crime during the US occupation of Germany. Social disorder and violence are commonly described extending for months or years after the war. For scholars of US Military Government, however, the imposition of a strict military regime precluded such crime. Meanwhile, Alan Kramer's quantitative study suggests lower rates of violent criminality and Jose Canoy found fear of crime may have exaggerated perceptions of violence. Both studies reveal how little is known about criminality during the early occupation. This article seeks to clarify divergent accounts by examining new records from German and American archives, and providing a more comprehensive account of criminal violence in the US Zone during the transition from war to peace, March to July 1945. This narrow window of time complements a well-documented increase in American-perpetrated violent crime. The present study uses data of civilian criminality alongside discovery of higher rates of American crime. It reveals a wave of severe disorder that Military Government rapidly brought under control. But in the process, Germans were disempowered and left at the mercy of American soldiers. Consequently, society remained violent even as civilians were forced to live by tight military standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to define the field of higher education and clarify its identity. It examines three analytical dimensions which, it proposes, shape the field: knowledge, approach and community. It argues that contextual knowledge around the issue of higher education has defined the field but has not determined techniques that are specific to it. The core elements of these three dimensions- contextual knowledge, the diversity in approaches and the multi-disciplinary and loosely coupled community-suggest diversity in the field and in its identity rather than coherence and consolidation. The two dimensions of approach and community partially relate to the development of the field as a product of efforts to solve financial and management problems caused by the expansion of higher education after World War II in the US, and, in terms of experience, in Europe where expansion came much later, increasing public interest in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Vietnam War, the United States has refrained from the widespread, intentional targeting of civilian populations in times of war. Public opinion polls seem to reflect a marked decline in American support for targeting foreign civilians since that time. Drawing on original public opinion surveys, as well as other historical material, this essay explores several explanations for these changes. Although there is some evidence that the public's views about the morality of civilian targeting have shifted, I argue that two other explanations also play an important role in the changes in the conduct of American wars. First, a mounting skepticism, especially within the U.S. military, about the efficacy of killing civilians, has undercut the primary motivation to even consider such tactics. Indeed, many U.S. military leaders now perceive that killing adversary civilians in large numbers-intentionally or unintentionally - usually backfires, making the adversary fight harder or driving more civilians to join or support the adversary's forces. Second, due to the lower stakes, and especially the dramatically lower fatality rates suffered by American troops in recent wars, the temptation to attempt to end wars quickly with a "death blow" against adversary cities has become less potent. Under certain conditions, however, a majority of Americans would still support today the kind of population bombing last practiced during World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As American combat photographers documented the horrors and heroism of every major front of World War II, photo editors worked behind the scenes to bring their images to publication. Matching photographers with assignments and selecting images that best told the story—all while navigating censorship, publication expectations, and intercultural societal norms—the photo editor was indispensable to the combat photographer. The partnership of Robert Capa and Elmer W. Lower exemplified such a mutualistic relationship. Whether serendipitous, as it was early in the war when Lower provided assistance in exchange for Capa's photos, or calculated, as it was later in the war when both were employed by Life magazine, their experience exemplifies the mutually beneficial relationship of war photographers and their editors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the condition of the American greeting card industry during World War I and World War II, dealing with topics including businesses' and families' response to war, the trends in greeting card design and wording, and industrywide conditions.

The article presents a study which examines the crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Europe during and after World War II in May 1945 to July 1946. It analyzes statistical summaries of investigations and charges against American soldiers in the European Theater of Operations. It also discusses the important implications of a higher rate of American crimes, such as rape, for historical interpretation of Wester Europe's cultural and social transition from war to recovery.

Recovery from the Great Depression began in March 1933, simultaneous to Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration. However, the pace of that recovery between that date and the Second World War was extremely uneven with some dramatic starts and stops. Between March and July 1933, manufacturing production rose 78%, production of durable goods was up 199%, total industrial production rose 57%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 71%. Then the economy contracted sharply again beginning in August 1933–the July 1933 level of industrial production was not reached again until August 1935. This paper addresses two questions. What factors were responsible for bringing about the sharp recovery in the spring of 1933 and what factors brought this short-lived economic surge to an end? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which discusses the role of German Jewish immigrants, or émigrés, to the U.S. in fighting against German Nazism during World War II, with a particular focus on the German graduates of the Military Intelligence Training Center (MITC) at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. The role that German Jewish graduates of Camp Ritchie's role in postwar Germany, including in increasing Holocaust awareness, is discussed.

The discipline of geography has a long albeit uneven engagement with militarism. This is witnessed in the ongoing efforts of geographers to influence military policy as well as the development of technologies used in military action. This forum, based on papers originally presented at the 2014 Association of American Geographers annual meeting in Tampa, Florida, provides a critical introduction to contemporary issues related to geographies of militarism. Collectively, these essays demonstrate that geographers located within the nonmilitary academy have failed to reflect adequately on the implications of militarism on the discipline. Consequently, we forward the argument that the American Association of Geographers must initiate a review of the relationship between academic geography and militarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the military duties of a number of U.S. geographers during World War II. It divides those duties into three kinds: spies, teachers, and occupiers. In each case, a specific form of geographical expertise was deployed--instrumental to achieving a particular military end. In particular, the article examines the roles of geographers: first, in the analysis of military intelligence at the Office of Strategic Services; second, in the provision of geographical courses for the university-based Civil Affairs Training School and the Army Specialized Training Program; and, finally, as agents of occupation in Japan once World War II ended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF) Aircrew College Detachment Training Program in Buffalo, New York during World War II in 1939-1945.

A case study is presented that examines the establishment of a preparedness group known as the Victory Corps at Austin High School (AHS) in Austin, Texas, during World War II, particularly concerning changes in Austin Independent School District (AISD) policies regarding race, class equity, and gender. It discusses the democratization of school-supported groups and resistance to social change.

The article discusses the history of American Jews and name changing in New York City during the World War II era from 1939 to 1945. It builds on various scholarly interpretations emphasizing the insidious nature of anti-Semitism, which may have encouraged the resistance less grounded in civil rights protests than in personal identity and bureaucracy, and the complicated responses of Jews.