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.

V Was for Victory.... (4)

Politics and American Culture During WWII (4). 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:

“…a new agency with clear, central authority…the Office of War Information, in the spring of 1942.” p. 30.

“The new policy-making post was to go to Elmer Davis, a veteran newspaperman and radio newscaster whose dry voice and sparse style symbolized reportorial accuracy and integrity.” p. 30.

“Yet Davis had to proceed with the authority only of a coordinator.” p. 32.

“As [Milton] Eisenhower put it directly to MacLeish, ‘Our job is to promote an understanding of policy, not to make policy.’ ”

“Confident that the American people could take bad news, Davis wanted to tell them more about casualties and losses than did the armed forces, who prevailed.” p. 36.

To be continued.

V Was for Victory.... (3)

Politics and American Culture During WWII (3). 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:

“The wartime function of the movies is to build morale, and morale is… education… inspiration… confidence.” Hollywood Writers Mobilization for Defense. p. 25.

“…every picture, romantic or dramatic or funny, would ‘involve consciousness of war.’ ” p. 25.

“The forthright facts…would depress people to the point of suicide.” p. 28.

“MacLeish could not…feel comfortable with the prospect of suburban love and life as the objective of the war.” p. 28.

“MacLeish was caught…as others had been before him, in the clash of competing bureaucracies in Washington.” p. 30.

“The result, as he [MacLeish] put it to Roosevelt, was a Tower of Babel.” p. 30.

To be continued.

V Was For Victory.... (2)

Politics and American Culture During WWII (2). 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:

“The President, confident that the public mood resembled his own, was comfortable in that confidence, and tough.” p. 13.

“…to use bonds to sell the war, rather than vice versa.”

“Sixty percent of the reason that I want…[the bond program] is…to give the people an opportunity to do something…to make the country war-minded.” p. 17.

“Advertisers had long maintained that they exposed demands rather than creating them.” p. 19.

“Advertisers traded upon basic human desires, upon appeals to sex, envy, anxiety and they related the satisfaction of those desires to the acquisition of commercial artifacts.” p. 19.

Ad campaign: “…War bonds…mean bullets in the bellies of Hitler’s hordes.”

The Office of Facts and Figures under the leadership of Archibald MacLeish: “Policy was to make public ‘the maximum of information on…matters concerning the war, which can be revealed without giving aid and comfort to the enemy.’ ”

To be continued.

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.

V Was for Victory....

V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During WWII . John Morton Blum. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1976.

This next book to be reviewed is the story of American propaganda during World War II. If you want an example of this propaganda, all you have to do is rent a copy of the DVD, Buck Privates, with Abbott and Costello. The film says that the American soldier is the luckiest man alive because he is being fed and trained for war by his fellow Americans from the greatest country in the world: "You're a lucky fellow, Mr. Smith" is the theme song sung by the Andrews Sisters. The movie demonstrates how men of the armed forces, supported by their women in uniform, must act as a team in order to win the war. Some of Abbott and Costello's funniest gags are incorporated into the film. But it is pure propaganda. Ray S.

The Once and Future King (15).

T.H. White. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 1939.

Why read it? Merlyn teaches King Arthur the art of leadership. Part of his training was in learning to live with the animals and gain their perspective. Finally, he founded the Round Table. Merlyn is a most amazing character. A delightful and imaginative tale of what was to become known as Camelot. And a great deal of wisdom.

Ideas:

“Now this king had an idea, and the idea was that Force ought to be used, if it were used at all, on behalf of justice, not on its own account…thought that if he could get his barons fighting for truth, and to help weak people, and to redress wrongs, then their fighting might not be such a bad thing as once it used to be.” p. 628.

Arthur: “I am giving you the candle now [the legacy of the Round Table]—you won’t let it burn out?” p. 629.

“The fantastic thing about war was that it was fought about nothing—literally nothing.” p. 630.

“If people could be persuaded to read and write, not just eat and make love, there was still a chance….” p. 631.

“The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.” p. 631.

The end.