V Was for Victory (1)

Politics and American Culture During WWII (1). 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:

T. Roosevelt: “God save you from the werewolf and from your heart’s desire.” p. xii.

“Forty months passed, each month forever.” p. 3.

“Americans away from home, from the home where they wanted to be and where their wives and sweethearts and parents wanted them—felt their guts twist any day when they were surprised by a metaphor or a memory, one they had almost suppressed.” p. 5.

“…the emotions engendered by Wilson’s crusading rhetoric and the collapse of mood that accompanied the broken—indeed the unattainable—promises of that rhetoric.” p. 8.

“During WWII the President tried to prevent his rhetoric from whipping up emotions he could not control.” p. 8.

“He [President Roosevelt] would have preferred to employ no propaganda at all, and the little he endorsed for home consumption spoke more to the dangers of defeat than to the opportunities of victory.” p. 8.

To be continued.