V Was for Victory.... (5)

Politics and American Culture During WWII (5). John Morton Blum. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1976.

Why read it? Perspective from the Home Front in World War II. The effects of American propaganda on the American people. A completely different view of a war from our more recent wars, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Ideas:

“In war time, as Vice President Henry Wallace once wryly remarked a coordinator was only a man trying to keep all the balls in the air without losing his own.” p. 45.

“The comic strips depicted the Japanese as teeth and spectacles, a subhuman species… ‘murderous little ape-men’ ” p. 46.

English author Nevil Shute depicted the Germans as ‘…deadly, serious, efficient, arrogant…. They never seemed to laugh…except when they killed.” p. 50.

Archibald MacLeish: “…his reminder to his countrymen that Christian doctrine called upon man to hate the sin but to forgive the sinner.” p. 50.

“The stories…gave the impression that any American could lick any twenty Japs.” p. 54.

To be continued.