history discussion
The Politics of Sacrifice on the American Home Front in
Mark H. Leff
War is hell. But for millions of Americans on the booming home front. World War 11 was also a hell of a war. Both then and today, the mystique of home front sacrifice suffused visions ofthat wartime experience. The politics set in motion by a peculiar blend of profits and patriotism, of sacrifice amid unprecedented prosperity, gave a distinctive cast to American wartime life.
In subsequent American civic mythology, the public-spirited wartime commu- nity of World War II holds a cherished place. It is nostalgically recalled as our "finest hour," when Americans freely sacrificed selfish desires, did without, went all out, and "pulled together" in common purpose and spirit with "only one thing on their minds—winning the war."^ The allure of this golden age of home front sacrifice is not merely retrospective. During World War II, Americans gloried in the feeling that they were participating in a noble and successful cause by making "sacrifices." In common parlance sacrifice did not require the suffering of terrible loss. It instead comprehended a range of activities—running the gamut from donating waste paper to donating lives—in which narrow, immediate self-interest was subordinated to the needs of the war effort.
Despite, or even because of, its variegated usage, sacrifice decisively shaped the discourse of wartime politics. But polychromatic concepts can raise unsettling ques- tions. Most Americans conceded that they had not made any "real sacrifices," a freighted expression largely reserved for our boys at the front. While it was more apparent in the war years than it is in retrospect that not everyone was going all out, the consecration of sacrifice inspired declarations of willingness to shoulder new burdens. Admittedly no specific additional sacrifice jumped readily to mind, but Americans in public opinion polls pledged their support—at least in principle—to
Mark H. Leff is associate professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Acknowledging that various versions of this article have exacted their own inequalities of sacrifice, he wishes to thank Susan Armeny, Walter Arnstein, James Barrett, Rowland Berthoff, Alan Brinkley, Richard Fox, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Susan Hart- mann, Frederic Jaher, John Jeffries, Carol Skalnik Leff, Cristy Lenski, Nelson Lichtenstein, Robert McColley, and Robert Ubriaco for their shocked objections, lavish assistance, and astute criticisms.
' Mark Jonathan Harris, Franklin D. Mitchell, and Steven J. Schecter. comps.. The Homefront: America during World War ¡1 (New York, 1984), 240, 162; David Craig, "Back Home Everybody Was Gung Ho to Inspire the GIs," Life, 8 (Spring-Summer 1985), 85.
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The Politics of Sacrifice in World War II 1297
an imposing list of wartime activities and restrictions, inciuding wage and price freezes, no-strike piedges, rationing, and higher taxes. Amid these affirmations of unstinting patriotism, one contemporary commentator on wartime moraie ex- piained that the war had "subordinated or sheived" the previous "aims and values of individuai citizens and speciai groups," as Americans "generally respond whole- heartediy to a major demand made of them when its essential necessity to the win- ning of the war is made ciear."^
The mystique of unconditionai sacrifice, forged in the war itseif and ceiebrated in collective memory, has not fared weii as an interpretive guide to wartime politics and mobilization. Even at the time, staffers of American mobiiization agencies com- moniy despaired of the difficuities of transforming "wiiiingness into action" and cracking "the sheiî of pubiic apathy," given "desuitory, haif-hearted" citizen invoive- ment and "reiuctance to forego the ordinary pieasures and comforts of 'life as usual.'" Americans, they noted, were often able to compartmentaiize their advocacy ofthe principle of sacrifice, to excuse faiiures of civic responsibiiity by claiming that their sacrifices wouid not really have heiped the war anjTvay, that someone else was receiving favored treatment, or that some blockheaded bureaucrat was bungiing the whoie thing. In the quest for alibis, standards of proof couid be convenientiy iow. "Each of us," a top mobiiization officiai conceded, "is iikeiy to be siightiy more eager to hoid down the other feiiow's prices, wages or profits, and to raise the other feiiow's taxes. . . . each of us wiii be iooking for the moat in the other feiiow's eye." President Franklin D. Rooseveit himself, despite warnings from polisters that his "scoiding ap- proach" toward the shortcomings of American sacrifice might oniy impede coopera- tion, voiced his disgust at "the whining demands of seifish pressure groups who seek to feather their nests whiie young Americans are dying."*
As recent historians who expand upon this indictment remind us, what Americans caiied sacrifice often invoived iimits on substantiai gains rather than the horrific deprivations and destruction suffered by the citizens of other belligerents. Such reassessments can lead to a Manichaean dialogue as to whether Americans on the home front in World War II were saints or sinners—a singuiariy unpromising question in which assessments of virtue depend on the assessors' original inclina- tions and seiectiveiy appiied standards. More productive chaiienges await; not to gauge the extent of American cooperation in the war effort, but to examine how that cooperation was achieved, to ciarify the principies by which poiicy makers decided that certain groups wouid have to give up something or forgo gains for the
= Hadley Cantril, ed.. Public Opinion, Í95J-J946 (Princeton, 1951), 1178, 112-13, 1003, 822, 729, 1172; Her- berr Blumer, "Morale," in American Society in Wärtime, ed. William F. Ogburn (Chicago, 1943), 229, 226.
' Bureau of Motion Pictures, Office of War Information, Fact Sheet #13, Appendix to "Government Informarion Manual for the Motion Picture Industry," 1942, General File ofthe Chief of Newsreel Liaison, Records ofthe Office of War Information, RG 208 (National Archives, Suitland, Md.); Fred M. Vinson, "The Quesrion of Inflation," in "An Appeal to Business from the Country's Wat Leaders," July 14, 1943, "War Adverrising Council: Reports and Results of Campaigns, 1942-1944" folder, series 13/2/304, Advertising Council Papers (University of Illinois Archives, Urbana); Hadley Cantril, The Human Dimension: Experiences in Policy Research (New Brunswick, 1967), 58; Samuel 1. Rosenman, comp.. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (13 vols.. New York 1938-1950), XIII, 42.
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good of the whole, and to understand how the ubiquitous ethos of wartime sacrifice set the terms of wartime political discourse, shaping the public actions and mani- pulatory strategies of potentially affected groups.*
What were the boundaries of sacrifice in a global war that disrupted customary patterns of limited government? What could be required and of whom? Sacrifice was clearly a subject for negotiation across a broad range of issues encompassing both public and private choices. In public forums—in the speeches and press confer- ences of political leaders, in the public opinion polls commissioned by government departments, in the internal correspondence of mobilization officials—concern cen- tered on what might be termed the calculus of political obligation. This article ex- amines the public choices made there, the politics.
The wartime recasting of political obligation touched many facets of American political life, but this article focuses on two case studies. The first treats a celebrated but surprisingly insubstantial and ultimately abortive effort: Franklin Roosevelt's ex- ecutive order capping all wartime salaries. This startling assault on the ethos of boundless individual achievement demonstrates both the apparently open-ended possibility for renegotiating symbolic values (was the ethic of sacrifice powerful enough to neutralize the American Dream?) and, in its quick and cmshing repeal by Congress, the actual limits to the wartime revaluation of values. Interwoven in the seeming challenge to traditional marketplace values was a politics in which the level of comparative sacrifice —the degree of sacrifice relative to other g r o u p s - became a standard of justice.
The second case study offers a marked contrast: the successful merchandising of sacrifice through the formation of the War Advertising Council to coordinate a vast private advertising campaign supporting wartime programs and propaganda themes. The unique and consequential American arrangement whereby privately donated advertising carried the brunt of the domestic propaganda effort not only shows the adaptability of the imagery of sacrifice; it also raises provocative questions about the interplay of political forces in the United States that allowed certain groups to domesticate and delimit the meaning of sacrifice — to define it in terms that rein- forced the validity of their own political interests and claims. What ultimately stands out in the calculus of home front obligation in World War II is a political process in which claimed sacrifices and contributions could be parlayed into political advantage or into efforts to shift war burdens to others. That process, which I have labeled the politics of sacrifice, established a dynamic that mobilizers and interest groups alike took into account. Since the process stands out most clearly in a com- parative framework, I conclude by considering the starkly different political context of sacrifice in Great Britain.
Though sounding radical by current standards. President Roosevelt's salary limi- tation proposal emerged in stages throughout 1942, rather prosaically, as part of a
•• See, for example, John Morton Blum, V ]Vas for Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War //(New York, 1976); David Brinkley, Wasbington Goes to JiSr (New York, 1988); and Richard R. Lingeman,/3o«ï You Know There's a War On? Tbe American Home Front, 1941-1945 (New York, 1970).
The Politics of Sacrifice in World War II 1299
coordinated effort to control inflationary pressures. In April FDR announced that price stabilization could only be effective if pursued on all fronts; thus he sup- plemented proposals for across-the-board price ceilings, wage controls, and ra- tioning with a proposed 100 percent "super-tax" that would draw off any "excess" income over $25,000 ($50,000 for families) once the federal income tax had been paid. This income limitation proposal garnered popular approval as "a symbol of the idea of equality of sacrifice," but editorialists soon buried it as a "Rooseveltian pleasantry." Just as deadly was the congressional response: utter dismissal —one con- temporary comparison was to "a burp in church, something to be overlooked and forgotten as quickiy as possibie." But in October Rooseveit used a broadly phrased authorization for price stabilization that he had just forced through Congress as the pretext for an executive order clamping an after-tax limit of $25,000 (equivalent to $200,000 in 1990 dollars) on aii salaries. The order did not apply to total incomes or profits, partly because no interpretation of existing law sanctioned such use of independent executive action.'
From today's vantage point, one can easily predict the ferocious response from some quarters to this apparently daring initiative. Labeling it a product of com- munistic philosophy and class hatred, attackers called it an un-American assault on free enterprise that threatened the producdon necessary for an effective war effort. When the 1942 elections the next month buoyed the congressional conservative bloc with substantial Republican gains, the salary ceiling was doomed, despite FDR's efforts to save it. In March 1943 most House Democrats joined the Republicans to repeal it by attaching a rider to a veto-proof debt limit bili; the bill then passed the Senate by a 74-to-3 vote. Less than six months after FDR released his executive order and before it had really gone into effect, salary limitation had been beaten back.6
Why did the administration open itself to damagingly reproachful defenses of private property and free enterprise? Did the logic of sacrifice extend so quickly to the core of capitalism? A number of less extreme answers come to mind. Scape- goating campaigns against the abuses of "economic royalists" had long been a staple of Rooseveitian politics. In part, they can be traced to the president's patrician dis- taste for ostentatious wealth. Before the war, lessons embedded in the political cul- ture about profiteering "merchants of death"—the unresolved public resentment over issues of sacrifice in World War I —spurred Rooseveit to proclaim that the "burdens of possible war" should be equalized to prevent "war millionaires" from enriching themselves from the sufferings of others. Once Worid War II began, Roosevelt's acute awareness of the privileged position of the United States also made him indignant at what lie saw as selfish bickering and maneuvering for partisan or
' Bureau oflntelligence. Office of War Information, "Survey oflntelligence Materials No. 32," July 16, 1942, p. 8, "Oifice of War Information" folder. President's Secretary's File 173, Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers (Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.); "Survey oflntelligence Materials No. 24," May 20, 1942, p. 6, ibid.\ "FDR's Program Punched Full of Holes," United Automobiie Worker, }u\y 15, 1942, p. 1; Exec. Order No. 9,250, 3 C.F.R. 1214 (1938-1943).
' Thomas R. Amlie, Let's Look at the Record (Madison, 1950), 56-57.
1300 Thejournai of American History March 1991
monetary gain at home. His sense of equitable and active war participation as a paramount morai obligation also shaped such politically divergent Rooseveltian lost causes as his national war service "labor draft" proposal and his veto of a loophoie- ridden tax bill as "not for the needy but for the greedy."^
This ideoiogicai component had a firm practicai political base. In 1940 and 1941, Roosevelt repeatedly fretted that the economic concessions needed to entice busi- nesses into war contracts could clash with the pubiic's antiprofiteering sentiments. His fears were well founded. Despite the bad press and the congressional criticism that FDR's proposals received, commentaries on the $25,000 salary order commonly assumed that the public would be receptive to limiting incomes. Public opinion polls, including surveys solicited by the administration itself, bore out those as- sumptions, registering majorities of more than two to one —and well above that among farmers and industrial workers—for a $25,000 ceiling.^
The salary limitation proposal had one other attraction: its potential victims were few and far between. The proposed ceiling applied to afier-vxa. salaries. Given un- precedentedly high wartime tax rates, a salary earner needed to receive at least $67,200 (weii over half a miiiion in 1990 dollars) to fali under its provisions —a fate confined to roughly one in fifty thousand Americans. It is no wonder that one con- gressman was unsure if the salary order applied to any of his constituents. Roosevelt must have been aware ofthe advantages of his order's delimited impact in narrowing the potential base of opposition and in sidestepping any truly systemic chaiienge to economics as usual. In 1941, when batting around the idea of applying a 99V2 percent tax rate to income above $100,000, he jokingly dismissed doubts by asking, "Why not? None of us is ever going to make $100,000 a year. How many people report on that much income?"^
So why bother? The salary order would have had no significant direct effect either in slowing inflation or in narrowing the budget deficit. The key lies in the order's symbolic value, in the messages it was intended to send, particuiariy to the labor movement. As Neison Lichtenstein reports in Labor's War at Home, leaders of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the ClO-affiliated United Automo- bile Workers (UAW) in 1942 urged a $25,000 income limit. In March 1942 CIO leaders capitulated to corporate and government demands to extend factory schedules and thus speed production by relinquishing a major union objective and achievement: "premium pay" for weekend and holiday work. To forestall a revoit and to show that its weekend pay concession shouid not be read as a sign that it
' Rosenman, comp.. Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, VII, 67; Franklin D. Roosevelt, Com- plete Presidential Press Conferences of Franklin D. Roosevelt (25 vols.. New York, 1972), XV, 356; James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York. 1970), 437, 433-34.
^ "Memorandum of Conference at the W'hite House," July 8, 1940, p. 2, "Excess Profits Tax" folder. Records of Assistant Secretary John L. Sullivan, Records ofthe Department of the Treasury, RG 56 (National Atchives); Ferdinand Kuhn to Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Nov. 4, 1942, "The Secretary: Memos to and from" folder, box 196, ibid.; Cantril, ed.. Public Opinion, 313; Office of War Information, Report No. 27,"War Time Labor Problems," July 7, 1942, table 46, appendix I, in Office of War Information, "American Attitudes: World War II," vol. IX: "Labor and Industry, 1" (Widener Libtar>^ Har\'ard University, Cambridge, Mass.).
9 Congressional Record, 78 Cong., 1 sess., March 12, 1943, p. 1955; John Sulliran to Morgenthau, July 30, 1941, "Sullivan, Daily Record July 1, 1941-Aug. 30, 1941" folder, box 200, Records of Assistant Secretary Sullivan.
The Politics of Sacrifice in World War II 1301
had gone soft, the UAW executive board simultaneously publicized a broad "Victory through Equality of Sacrifice Program" that included a call for a $25,000 limit on incomes. The logic was clear: By prescribing "what other groups in the nation should give up to correspond to labor's sacrifice," UAW leaders sought to anticipate and quiet rank-and-file resentment about shouldering a disproportionate share of the war's burdens.'"
FDR's ill-fated plan to impose a "super-tax" on individual incomes above $25,000 represented a direct response to the challenge from labor. In accounting for the in- come limitation proposal, the undersecretary of the treasury explained that it "clarified the whole situation as far as labor was concerned in the Detroit area." The secretary of the treasury himself, referring to the antiprofiteering proposals of other mobilization officials, put it less kindly: "These stupid asses . . . in order to satisfy labor . . . want to go after the rich people.""
The stupid asses had a point. Fighting a losing battle against inflation in the first three-quarters of 1942, they felt it necessary to clamp down hard on wage increases. One analyst after another recognized that wage earners could most readily be swayed, not by a simple appeal to patriotism, but by a politics of comparative sacrifice in which others too could be shown as "sacrificing," rather than gaining at the wage earners' expense!
War sharpens and reframes domestic internal conflict by disrupting customary standards of comparison. Peacetime inequalities are often taken for granted as "neu- tral" results of an impersonal market. But in wartime these same inequalities could rank—and rankle —as inequities, both because of a common code of modern war- time societies that delegitimized "profiteering" from a collective effort in which many would give their lives, and because a planned wartime economy lends an ele- ment of purpose to every economic exchange, making it easy to blame inequities on conscious government decisions or on lobbyists' maneuverings. It is not coin- cidental that the term "relative deprivation" was coined during World War II, for war forges a sense of common aspirations and responsibilities. That sense broadens the range of others that individuals and groups consider in gauging their position and demanding equal treatment. As John Kenneth Galbraith recollected, "no fea- ture of World War II or more recent mobilization experience has been more striking than the scrutiny which each of the several economic groups brings to bear upon what the others are getting."'^
The importance of this comparative framework did not escape the Roosevelt ad- ministration. As early as 1940, "labor trouble" was very much on the president's
'° Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II (New York, 1982), 99; "Equality of Sacrifice D e m a n d e d by UAW-CIO," United Automobile Worker, April 15, 1942, p. 1.
" Morgenthau Diaries, J u n e 2, 1942, book 535, p . 131, Henry A. Morgenthau, Jr., Papers (Franklin D. Roosevelt Library); Morgenthau Diaries, April 10, 1942, book 515, p. 89, ibid.
'^ The logic of comparative sacrifice is ably developed and applied in Paul Addison, The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World Wir {London, 1977), 131; and Mary Heaton Vorse, "And the Workers Say . . . ," Public Opinion Quarterly, 1 (Fall 1943), 443-45. W. G. Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice: A Study of Attitudes to Social Inequality in Twentieth-Century England (Betke\ey, 1966), 10, 24; John Kenneth Ga!- hraith, A Theory of Price Control (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), 44.
1302 The Journal of American History March 1991
mind. It is "a damn sight simpler," he expiained, "for aii of us to appeai to [worker] patriotism if we say we are using exactly the same principle for the owners of industry as we are with the workers in industry." In a closed-door meeting with his Business Advisory Council, Rooseveit urged a measure of restraint: "I can hoid iabor to the present ievei if I can say to them, 'You [industry] won't profiteer.'" The Treasury Department highiighted the strategy, noting that "if we are to expect aii ciasses of society, inciuding iaborers and farmers, to accept the sacrifices of the emergency period and not to press for every possibie doiiar of advantage, they must be con- vinced that sacrifices are being distributed according to abiiity and that no one is making unreasonably large profits."^*
Such statements betokened no speciai insight; they mereiy mirrored the conven- tionai wisdom. In pubiic speeches and internai memoranda, Rooseveit's advisers highiighted this notion of contingent sacrifice. Americans, they noted, not oniy worded that more might be asked of them than of other groups but aiso demanded proof that their sacrifices would further the war effort and not fatten someone else's waliet. Fieid reports by the Office of War Information isolated such concerns as the criticai barrier to mobiiization. "Each group," the reports expiained, "thinks the others are using the emergency to win seifish advantage. At the same time, each fears that it, aione, wiii be siighted." interest group ieaders in particuiar, the reports warned, simuitaneousiy insisted "that there must be no favored group" whiie ex- pecting "speciai recognition for their own particuiar interests." Each jockeyed "for the best bargaining position" and "tended to ciaim unequai sacrifices" as an excuse for postponing "the program most directiy affecting his group." The finai report of FDR's interdepartmentai anti-inflation committee in Aprii 1942 thus endorsed an income ceiiing as a way of "dramatizing the equaiity of sacrifice impiicit in the pro- posed over-aii [price stabiiization] program." The chairman of the Nationai War Labor Board, speaking of the difficuity of gaining iabor acquiescence to concessions on overtime pay, graphicaiiy made this point:
If you say to the boys, "Why don't you make a sacrifice for your country?" they are going to say, "That is fine. I am making a sacrifice for my country, but I am not going to make it to increase the profits of General Motors." Weil, that profit thing comes in all the time.**
" "Meeting with the Business Advisory Council," May 23, 1940, p. 24, "Subject File: Hopkins, Harry L" folder. President's Secretary's File 152, Roosevelt Papers; Roosevelt, Complete Presidential Press Conferences of Franklin D. Roosevelt, XV, 370; Morgenthau to Franklin D. Roosevelt, July 14, 1941, "Taxes" folder. President's Secretary's File 186, Roosevelt Papets.
'* Special Services Division, Bureau of Intelligence, Office of War Information, Special Services Report No. 21 (revised). "Attitudes Obstructing the War Effort," Sept. 1,1942, box 1843, entry 4l, Records ofthe Office of Goi.'ern- ment Reports, RG 44 (National Archives, Suitland, Md.); Special Services Division, Bureau of Intelligence, Office of War Information, "Inflation Control Program," July 31, 1942, "Sp. Serv. Rep. No. 22" folder, box 1843, entry 41, ibid.; Special Services Division, Bureau of Intelligence, Office of War Information, Special Services Report No. 22, "How Leaders of Organized Groups React to President's Anti-Inflation Program," Aug. U, 1942, ibid.; Claude Wickard et al., "Memorandum for the President Urging an Anti-Inflarion Program," April 18, 1942, p. 5, Official File 327, Roosevelt Papers. William Davis's comments can be found in Transcript of the Executive Session of Na- tional '*X%r Labor Board, Feb. 6, 1942, pp. 1-2, Records of National Wat Labor Board, RG 202 (National Atchives).
The Politics of Sacrifice in World War II 1303
HÙ^S:.?\. 1
i^'-'-^'-v'^'SS^- '••• .ir^^^ : ..í'-
"Our Double Standard of Values" by cartoonist Dormán Smith. Washington Daily News, January 3, 1944, p. 18.
Union leaders made the most of such resentments, publishing the salaries of in- dustry executives and punctuating their speeches with reminders that "if labor is going to make these sacrifices. . . then labor certainly ought to ask the industrialists . . . to make a contribution somewhat equivalent to that contribution that you and I as workers must make." Polls of union members showed that they shared this quid- pro-quo "fair share" mentality. As one survey of industrial workers concluded, they "are willing to work overtime, they are willing to give up the right to strike, they are ready to make sacrifices for the war effort—z/the other fellow will do the same, if the bosses don't reap new profits out of all proportion." But if the government did not respond to "labor's discontent with what it feels is an inequality of sacrifice," an Office of War Information report cautioned in the summer of 1942, union leaders would continue to experience "difficulty in managing the discontent of the rank and
1304 The Journal of American Historj' March 1991
Labor Sinmld KeîïJ Fui TLf.s«; FÍ>11ÜW.S to
United Automobile Worker, October 15, 1942, p. 5. Courtesy UAW.
file," and "restlessness may be expected to increase and to manifest itself as small slow-downs, delays and walk-outs.""
In a wartime economy, other groups besides iabor manifested this mind-set. If the anti-infiation effort was to succeed, everyone had to shouider new burdens: price ceilings for farmers, frustrating shortages and rationing for newly flush consumers, ballooning tax bills for the millions of Americans of average income previously ex- empt from income tax. Getting each group to accept its burden was no easy tricic; Roosevelt's budget director despaired of what he termed "you-go-first" arguments in which "each group tries to shift the sacrifices to others." Rooseveit himself openly recognized the politics of sacrifice. In a fireside chat he explained that some were perfectly willing to endorse his entire anti-inflation pacicage "except the one point
" George Addes, in United Automobile, Aircraft, and Agricultural Implemem Workers of America, Minutes of Proceedings of War Emergency Conference (Detroit, 1942), 13; "The Fortune Survey," Fortune. 27 (Feb. 1943), 9; Special Services Division, Bureau of Intelligence, Office of War Information, Report No. 20, "Effect of Little Steel Case on Labor Morale," hox 1843, entry 41, Records of the Office of Government Reports.
The Politics of Sacrifice in World War II 1305
which steps on their individual toes," whiie others "seem very wiiiing to approve self-denial—on the part of their neighbors." The Roosevelt administration thus sought some sensational demonstration to show each group that it did not face eco- nomicaiiy painful restrictions alone. A proposed ceiling on incomes was an attractive vehicle for this drama: The absolute limit demonstrated the urgency of the situa- tion, but the targeting of a reiativeiy small number of rich salaried corporate execu- tives (rather than, say, profits) personalized the demanded sacrifices without really threatening production. It was, as the president of the National Farmers' Union reminded Roosevelt, "most important as a symbol and token.''̂ "^
Many union leaders embraced the salary limitation effort as a way to take full advantage of the politics of comparative sacrifice. They challenged empioyers to "match us in corresponding sacrifices," explaining that workers were "sore" not "be- cause they are being asked to sacrifice" but "because they are being asked to tighten their belts when other people are outgrowing theirs because they are too damned small to go around their fat bellies." The articles and cartoons in union newspapers and pamphlets were no iess hard-hitting. "What sacrifices are these fat cats making?" the American Federationist asked. "Wiii someone tell us, please?" One much-reprinted CIO cartoon depicted a "War Sacrifice Blood Bank." Two donors— "iabor" and "farmer"—were laid out on hospitai beds with their arms hooked up to a container iabeled "war sacrifice." In the foreground were two typical capitaiist caricatures, compiete with top hats and buiging vests upon which were embiazoned "corporate profits" and "big incomes." As they casually waved off the idea of donat- ing their blood, a no-nonsense Dr. FDR, with tubing in hand, pointed insistently to the empty beds. The cartoon was entitied "Labor Shouid Heip Put These Feiiows to Bed." 17
On this battieground of corporate saiaries and profits, defenders of business were at a ciear psychoiogicai disadvantage. Some gave it their best shot, however. The New York World-Telegram puiled its readers' heartstrings by reporting that a utility holding company magnate and his wife "closed four of their five homes, put eight cars in storage, reduced the number of their household servants from twenty-five to ten, and shut off all except two floors ofthe thirty-room pink colonial brick man- sion at 1130 Fifth Avenue where they now live." "Miliionaires," it concluded, "are on the skids." The Wall Street Journal ivci an eight-part series called "The New Poor" about the prospective plight of illustrious corporate executives under salary limita- tion. The forecast included dwindling country ciub memberships, imperiied vaca- tion homes, and the forced dismissai of faithful servants. Other newspapers inter-
''^ Harold D. Smith, "A Call for Action," Vitai Speeches, Aug. 1, 1942, p. 639; Richard Polenberg, War and Society: The United States, ¡941-1945 (Philadelphia, 1972), 24; Rosenman. comp.. Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, XI, 232; James Patton to Roosevelt, Sept. 3, 1942, "Price Fixing Jan.-May 1942" folder, box 2, Official File 327, Roosevelt Papers.
" R. J. Thomas to Roosevelt, April 9, 1942, in United Automobile, Aircraft, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, Minutes ofProceedings of War Emergency Conference, 61; Walter Reuther in United Automo- bile, Aircraft, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, Proceedings ofthe Seventh Convention (Chicago, 1942), 93; "Labor Highlights," American Federationist, 49 (July 1942), inside cover; United Automobile Worker, Oct. 15, 1942, p. 5.
1306 The Journal of American History March 1991
viewed prominent society women about the prospective damage to their clothing budgets.'^
Such articles were deliciously easy to parody (the National Farmers' Union spon- sored a satirical essay contest on "How to Live on $25,000 a year") and only played to the strength of salary limitation supporters. The issue itself, after all, was fun- damentally symbolic; not only was the ceiling pegged at a stratospheric level but the salary order also specifically exempted investment income, the most important source of great wealth. Yet, to win cooperation with mobilization efforts, precisely measured equivalency—real "equality of sacrifice"—was scarcely the point. Merely targeting luxurious "excess income" promised to soothe resentments over new burdens and perceived inequalities.'^
The politics of sacrifice moved the explosive issue of salary limitation from the periphery to the center of political debate. Yet Congress overwhelmingly bucked public opinion polls to repeal Roosevelt's salary order in March 1943. One might be tempted to attribute the administration defeat to shady manipulations by the media or special interests, to the limited political clout of a divided union move- ment, or to the unrepresentativeness of Congress or the American party system. But the explanation for repeal proves more revealing of the peculiar dynamics of wartime politics. Of undeniable importance was public exasperation with war restrictions, shortages, government bureaucrats, and other tangible barriers to the much- deferred "good life"—an irritation intense enough to overv/helm pledges of alle- giance to ever greater sacrifice. After the 1942 elections, this attitude fueled the rise to dominance of a congressional conservative coalition that pounced on salary limi- tation to attack executive power grabbing and the remnants of New Deal reform. But, just as critically, the public image of business sacrifice itself was changing by 1943, giving way to a vision of United States war aims that eased the removal of salary ceilings. When combined with pubhc resentment at wartime government regulations, the rise of business in popular estimation signaled a growing privatiza- tion of aspirations as the war progressed.^"
The second case study, the formation of the War Advertising Council, illuminates and verifies this transition. Under the tutelage of this private organization, corporate executive targets of the call to sacrifice broadcast that call. Defensive recitations of "the truth about advertising" and attacks on the New Deal gave way to the merchan- dising of the industry's contributions to the war effort. This new politics of sacrifice, adopted with uncanny precision at the moment of Pearl Harbor, proved a brilliant strategic political shift, as advertisers seized the rhetoric and imagery of sacrifice to validate prewar goals of self-defense and expansion.
's "In the Wind," Nation, Oct. 31, 1942, p. 451; Wall Street Journal, Nov. II, 1942, pp. I, 7; ibid., Nov. 14, 1942, p. 1; ibid., Nov. 16, 1942, p. 8; ibid., Nov. 21, 1942, p. 1; "Upper Crust Will Carry On Despite $25,000 Limit on Income," United Automobile Worker, May 15, 1942, p. 2; "Weep for the New Poor," Labor, Nov. 24,1942, p. 4.
" "Farmers Union Opens Contest to Help $25,000-Year Men," United Automobile Worker, Oct. 1, 1942, p. 3. 2° John W. Jeffries, Testing the Roosevelt Coalition: Connecticut Society and Politics in the Era of World War
11 (Knoxville, 1979), 138-39.
The Politics of Sacrifice in Worid War II 1307
On the face of it, the saga ofthe War Advertising Councii seems quite straightfor- ward. According to a radio propaganda show sponsored by Wdgley's chewing gum in November 1945, it was a standard story of selfless sacrifice in which businessmen whoieheartediy ient their skiiis and high reputation to the war:
Narrator. There was advertising . . . winning a big place for itseif in our national
iife . . . and rhere was American business . . . just as anxious as you were to use
all its resources, ali its knowledge and experience, to heîp 'win the war. . . .
Businessman. Then, our piace in the effort is clear. We, 'who have by our adver-
rising earned the confidence of the public, can use that advertising as a vehicle
for the messages of the government ro the people.
Voices-. Right. That's the way to do it . . .
Businessman: . . . Now—let's prove we are worthy ofthe faith and trust given
us. I say—ask the government to tell us what is needed—and we'll t^kc the infor-
mation to the public—/» our own way!
Narrator. That's the way it happened,—that's how the War Advertising Council
came into b
Truth has never been the essence of the propagandist's skill. In fact, in 1941 Madison Avenue was running scared. Mobilization demands were increasingly al- lowing manufacturers to sell effortlessly whatever they produced, removing the main rationale for big advertising budgets. Advertising representatives were also painfully aware that their reputation had taken a beating in the depression decade. They found it very easy to spook themselves by compiling long lists of "anti-advertising New Dealers" who had attacked "the accuracy and truth of advertising," branded it an economic waste, or warned of its contribution to inflation. A "pessimistic mi- asma" descended on much of Madison Avenue at the prospect of such figures making do-or-die decisions on the fate of the advertising industry. As the "growing alarm" indicated, the war itself posed special threats that advertising was "going to be throt- tled." Foremost among advertisers' concerns was the question of whether the govern- ment would consider advertising a legitimate business expense for the purpose of corporate taxes and war contracts.̂ ^
On the eve of Pearl Harbor, advertising trade journals overflowed with evidence of a siege mentality. One warned that "advertising is threatened today as it has never been threatened before." Another conciuded that "aii of American industry is in a mentai state iike anticipating a trip to the dentist." Sounding the aiarm on the "imminence of the danger to aii," the president of the Association of Nationai Ad-
" Wm. Wrigleyjr. Company, "The First Line," episode no. 191, Nov. 1,1945, transcript, 5-6, "Radio — General, 1945" folder, box 5, series 13/2/305, Advertising Council Papers.
" "The Impact of Defense on Adverrising," Advertising & Selling, 34 (Dec. 1941), 24; American Newspaper Publishers Association, Advertising Bulletin No. 13 (New 'Vbrk, 1941), 45-52, "Public Rel. Publications" folder, box 111, series lOOMM, National Association of Manufactuters Papers (Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, Wil- mington, Del); "No Anti-Ad Plot," Editor & Publisher, May 30, 1942, p. 18; Paul West, memo, Aug. 28, 1941, quoted in Harold B. Thomas, "The Background and Beginning ofthe Advertising Council," April 1952, p. 3, "The Background and Beginning of the Advertising Council" folder, series 13/2/304, Advertising Councii Papers. On this advertising crisis and Madison Avenue's somerimes hysterical response, see Frank W. Fox, Madison Avenue Goes to War: The Strange Military Career of American Advertising, 1941-1945 (Provo, 1975), 17-41.
1308 The Journal of American History March 1991
: AàvcTtiasBïoal CoQlributed lo FUIÜÍDI ^.mericc's All-Cut V/a: EÍIojt bv Üi« Following Ccncoins;
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This War Advertising Council advertisement, sponsored by local firms listed at the hotiom, offers a haunting example of the motivational uses of sacrifice. Woonsocket Call.
June 30, 1944, p. 7. Courtesy New England Micrographics, Inc.
The Politics of Sacrifice in World War II 1309
vertisers called on the industry to create "a united front." Raliying to the cail that "the common cause . . . is survival" (the pervasive martial imagery is all the more striking since the issue was not the narion's survival, but the industry's), the nation's two main advertising associations summoned a joint meeting of 630 advertising, industry, and national media executives for November 1941. In that meeting one speaker after another stridently denounced the unfair and uninformed attacks on the industry. An influential group of "moderate" voices at this meeting talked of adverrising's potential social contributions in wartime. Those moderates brought in government speakers who took the edge off the meering's belligerent mood by an- nouncing their desire to work with advertisers in furthering the war effort. Yet even the moderates compared advertisers to "His Majesty's Loyal Opposition" and urged a commitment to winning "the war of business" by defending free enterprise and preparing "the Case for Advertising."^^
The result of the conference was thus mixed. A consensus supported the need for advertisers to present a common front and to defend the advertising industry and the virtues of free enterprise. Yet some advertising executives feared that "a con- certed campaign to preach the gospel of advertising at this juncture would fall on deaf or unfriendly ears" and advised that one essential part of the case for adver- tising was to "activeiy cooperate in solving national problems." in the immediate aftermath of the conference, its key organizers began to plan a new "governing group of the new Advertising Council or whatever it is to be called" to make that case.̂ ^
Then came Pearl Harbor. From a strategic point of view, it was a godsend, a ticket to respectability for a battered industry. As one advertising executive later recaüed, "we were iosing" but "we were saved by the bell." "Now advertising has a chance to redeem itseif . . . to prove it has a right to exist," a leading advertising journai rejoiced. The war provided "the greatest, the most goiden, the most challenging opportunity ever to face American advertising," adman Walter Weir proclaimed. "If we make advertising fight today, we'll never again have to defend its place in our economy." Government mobilization officials encouraged advertisers' urge to serve, portraying it as a patriotic duty (though Donald Nelson, the "production czar," rather menacingly added in an off-the-record meeting that advertisers might ulti- mately need to choose between closing down —in which case "your future chances of coming back are something less than doubtftii"—or converting to war-related ad- vertising, which would preserve skiiis and facilities for postwar survival).^'
" "Foes of Advertising Are GwgingUpy Printer's Ink, Oct. 3, 1941, p. 9; "Impact ofDefense on Advertising," 26; Paul West, memo, Aug. 28, 1941, in Thomas, "Background and Beginning of the Advertising Council," 4; Maurice Mandell, "A History of the Advertising Council" (Doctor of Commercial Science dissertation, Indiana UniversitJ^ 1953), 47; J. A. R. Pimlott, "Public Service Advertising: The Advertising Council," Public Opinion Quarterly, 12 (Summer 1948), 210; Theodore S. Repplier, "Advertising and 'The Forces of Righteousness,' " in The Promise of Advertising, ed. C. H. Sandage (Homewood, 1961), 59; Leon Henderson, "Advertising's Crisis Is Every- body's Crisis," Advertising & Seiiing, 34 (Dec. 1941), 100; James Webb Young, Piilsfor the Angeis (Coapa, 1952), in "James Webb Young Christmas Books" folder, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives (Manuscript Department, Duke University Library, Durham, N.C.).
" Thomas, "Background and Beginning of the Advertising Council," 10, 13-14; "Should Advertising Defend Itself—or the U.S.?" Advertising & Seiiing. 34 (Dec. 1941), 36.
^' "Fred Smith Tells How Ads Routed Washington Foe," Editor & Publisher. June 2, 1945, p. 34; "The Impact
1310 The Journal of American History March 1991
Thus the advertising industry formed what became the War Advertising Council, a private organization—currently called the Ad Council—that has dominated American "pubiic service" advertising ever since. Composed of voiunteer represen- tatives from major advertising agencies, large corporate advertisers, and the media, the War Advertising Council worked with such government agencies as the Office of War Information to piot out pubiic information campaigns. By the war's end, it had supervised well over a hundred campaigns, using donated space to push war bonds, blood drives, food conservation, iabor recruitment, and other mobiiization demands deemed worthy of advertising support—with a value in space and per- sonnel estimated (by the advertisers themselves, admittedly no strangers to exagger- ation) at over a billion dollars.^*
One wouid be iii advised to dismiss those donations as mere artifice and caicuia- tion. In urging advertisers to sponsor public service messages under the company name or to inject official war messages into their product pitches, the War Adver- tising Council drew upon strong strains of patriotism. Win-the-war appeals an- chored the council's efforts to gain industry cooperation.
Patriotic exhortation was of course paired with reminders that "public service ad- vertising is shrewd business," since hook-ins to the war enhanced the ad and the firm's reputation. Shrewdness here was aii-important; ciients with no consumer goods to sell or no need to use advertising to seii their goods faced the "evaporation" of buyer and deaier ioyalty. Advertising strategies shifted accordingly. One dis- arming solicitation for advertising explained, "Advertisers have but one thought in mind: post war 'prestige.' Not just 'prestige,'—but 'dollars and cents prestige,' the kind that will reflect itself in actual sales in the future." But how to maintain brand visibility without clashing with the wartime ethic of sacrifice and without creating unfuifiilabie product demands? Combining the company name with public service messages offered an answer, providing "momentum" to secure future sales and influence.^'
In the advertising industry, as in other sectors of American life, patriotism and public relations, sacrifice and self-interest intertwined. As one board member ofthe War Advertising Council put it, "Not for one minute is it necessary to say to an advertiser that he should try to win the war with his copy for the sake of winning the war." Instead, the advertiser was urged "that he can best serve his own selfish interests" by sensitivity to public demands, including the demand for information on how to contribute to the war. The War Advertising Council, its ieaders repeatedly
of War on Advertisingr Advertising & Selling, 35 (May 1942), 20; W.J. Weir, "Opportunity!" Printer's Ink, April 10, 1942, p. 14; "Minutes of Meeting of Advertising Council," Feb. 5, 1942, p. 4, "Minutes, Jan.-Feb. 1942" folder, box 1, series 13/2/201, Advertising Council Papers.
=s Robert Griffith, "The Selling of America: The Advertising Council and American Politics, 1942-1960," Busi- ness History Review, 57 (Autumn 1983), 411-12; [War Advertising Council], News, Sept. 4, 1945, in "War Adver- tising Council-News Releases, 1945" folder, box 6, series 13/2/305, Advertising Council Papers.
" Theodore S. Repplier to Frank Braucher, Nov. 16, 1945, "War Advertising Council-Publicit>^ 1945" folder, box 6, series 13/2/305, Advertising Council Papers; R. M. Dobie, "Hovv- Agencies Influence Clients to Contitiue Ads," Editor & Publisher, March 7, 1942, p. 9; Advertisement for Long Island Daily Press et al., "Who Is Going to Buy Your Refrigerator after This War Is Over?" Sates Management, Nov. 10, 1943, p. 70; "The Word Is Mightier than the Sword," 1944, "Institutional-Production" folder, box 4, series 13/2/305, Advertising Council Papers.
The Politics of Sacrifice in World War II 1311
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1312 The Journal of American History March 1991
boasted, had combined "sensibie ideaiism with the profit motive" in a show of sociai responsibiiity "which brings rich returns to those who act on it." That promise was an enduring part ofthe ethos ofthe Ad Councii. As its president expiained in 1947, "True, you are casting your bread upon the waters—but it wili return to you weil bd
With advertisers' show of sacrifice, the feared government barriers to the growth of the advertising industry crumbied. Soon advertisers couid display an honor roli of giowing commendations, emanating from Franklin Rooseveit on down, ofthe in- spiring example advertisers had set in their support of the war effort. In May 1942 the Treasury Department, reliant on the War Adverdsing Council and private dona- tions to promote its war bond campaigns, granted Madison Avenue what one trade journal iater caiied "advertising's Magna Charta under the tax iaws." This ruiing's generous interpretation of necessary and iegitimate business expenses aiiowed fuii deduction of advertising costs from taxabie incomes, even when firms had next to nothing to seii to ordinary consumers. With high excess-profits tax rates, that meant that the government was footing more than 80 percent of some companies' adver- tising biiis. Especially at these cut rates, goodwili advertising directed toward postwar sales, the continued allegiance of distributors, employee productivity, or po- litical aims became a highly attractive investment.^5
Thus the predicted wartime freefall in adverdsing budgets never took place. Even in the face of vanished consumer markets and supply shortages, expenditures on advertising—especiaiiy advertising in nationwide media—rose substantiaiiy, much to the reiief of the industry itseif. Favorabie government decisions aiiowing certain advertising expenses to be factored into war contract prices and protecting adver- tised brands by inciuding advertising in reguiators' caicuiation of maximum aiiow- abie prices only bolstered the industry's assurance that the once-feared government was "friendiys" "cooperative," and "heipfui." "The important thing," admen exuited, "is that peopie do give us credit for doing the job." The councii predicted aii aiong that its show of sacrifice wouid reverse the antiprofiteedng and antiadvertising atti- tudes that the industry had faced before Pearl Harbor, and the war indeed sharply raised the prestige of advertisers in particular and business in general.3°
2» John C. Sterling, "What Happens When the Shooting Stops," Nov. 18, 1943, p. 5, Association of National Adverrisers file, box 1, series 13/2/305, Advertising Council Papers; Theodore S. Repplier, "Advertising Dons Long Pants," Public Opinion Quarterly, 9 (Fall 1945), 276; Pimlott, "Public Service Advertising," 213.
^' U.S. Department of Commerce, Advertising and Its Role in War and Peace (Washington, 1943), 3, 5, 8; Stanley E. Cohen, "Re\'iew of Ad Status under War Conditions," Advertising Age, Sept. 4, 1950, p. 21.
3° Esrimates of the increase vary, mainly in their appraisals of national radio advertising. Compare U.S. Depart- ment of Commerce, Bureau ofthe Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, 1975), 856, and "Total Advertising Volume Esrimate—1867 through 1953—with Basis of Estimates," Printer's Ink, Oct. 29, 1954, pt. 2, pp. 58-59, to the record-setring warrime advertising figures in "U.S. Ad Volume Gains 700% in Past 30 Years," Advertising Age, April 16, 1945, p. 2, and Howard Henderson to W. L. Rubin, May 25, 1945, "Correspon- dence 1940, 1942-46" folder, box 9, General Reference: Inactive Account Files, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives. For advertisers' wartime assessment of government policy, see "Advertising As Government Sees It; An Interpretation," i'r(«/£r'.r/»¿, Oct. 9, 1942, pp. 13, 30; "Henderson on Advertising," ibid., Sept. 11, 1942, p. 78; and James D. Scott, "Advertising When Consumers Cannot Buy," Harvard Business Review, 21 (Wintet 1943), 207-29. "Fred Smith Tells How Ads Routed Washington Foe," 34; Howell John Harris, The Right to Manage: In- dustrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s (Madison, 1982), 116-17; Griffith, "Selling of America," 391.
The Politics of Sacrifice in World War II 1313
One would be well advised to take with a grain of sait any inferences (some taste- fully "planted" by the council in the trade and general press) of War Advertising Council credit for this shift. Broader economic and political trends virtually assured a rise in business prestige even as the war began. As a leading pollster who con- tributed to the wartime boom in industrial public relations proclaimed in February 1942, the "dramatic theme" of the American production miracle "calls forth the deepest and sincerest praise the people can bestow," so that "out of this war should and can come renewed faith in individual enterprise and a lasting acclaim of the men who run the economic machine." Given the extent to which the government actually underwrote this expansion, this arrogation of credit to business (so much in contrast to the declining public stock of union leaders, whose involvement in strikes allowed them to be cast in that most unforgivable of roles: subverters of war production) was a tribute to careful and effective wartime public relations. John Blum and others have pointed to the administration's failure to forge a clear sense of the public purposes for which Americans were fighting and sacrificing, which left a vacuum that would be filled by private desires and conservative trends. Advertisers, newly legitimized by their "sacrifices" and empowered by their role as the chief mes- sengers bearing government propaganda messages to the public, could thus press their own vision of war aims. As Frank Fox vividly demonstrates in his study of̂ war advertisers, their depiction of American war aims in terms of an "American Way of Life" that encompassed abundant consumption and an absence of labor conflict reinforced other factors that cemented the postwar reputation and influence of "free enterprise" and the advertisers who celebrated it.''
The contrast to the humiliation of Roosevelt's salary limitation order is instruc- tive. In a political discourse in which the war came to be interpreted as a precursor of abundance and a protector of a harmonious "Americanism," associations with rampant New Deal reformism and a class-tinged rhetoric of conflict could be deadly. Charges that salary limitation undermined economic incentive or smacked of com- munism and a capitulation to unions thus hit home. Despite the popularity of Roosevelt's executive order, the ideological legitimacy of the arguments against it allowed congressmen to repeal a still-popular measure without fear of effective polit- ical retribution. The limited and discredited union influence on public opinion only clinched the defeat of salary limitation. Though workers might seek evidence that their sacrifices were matched by management's, their power to extract this equiv- alency through the political process had diminished.^^
The importance of this broader context for the politics of sacrifice emerges clearly
" A. E. Winget to Hatold Thomas, Aug. 1944, "MinutesJuly-Aug. 1944" foldet, box 1, seties 13/2/201, Advet- tising Council Papers; Opinion Research Corporation, "A Nation at War Looks at Auto Conversion," Feb. 1942, p. 2, box 100, series lOOJJ, National Association of Manufacturers Papers; B!um, V Was for Victory, 8, 19-21; Fox, Madison Avenue Goes to War. But see also the more encompassing discussion of the limited prospects for American liberal reform in John W. Jeffries, "Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 'America of Tomorrow,'" in Power and Responsi- bility: Case Studies in American Leadership, ed. David M. Kennedy and Michael E. Partish (Ne\\' Yjrk, 1986J, 29-66.
" Gary Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960 (New York, 1989). 301.
1314 The Journal of American Histor>' March 1991
in the contrast between American deveiopments and home front poiitics in Great Britain. One could make a persuasive logical case that a country under fire, as Britain was then, does not have the luxury of the "you first" mentality or the political posi- tioning associated with the politics of sacrifice in the United States. In terms of sacrifice, after aii, Britons made a virtue out of a necessity, whiie Americans could afford to make a necessity out of a virtue. Though British casualties and disruptions of life as usual paled beside tiiose of such combatants as the Soviet Union and Ger- many, the war's toii on Britain's home front—the Victory coffee made of ground acorns, the scarcity of everything from soap to saucepans, "the duii dismai drudgery" of everyday life, on top of the bombings that killed sixty-one thousand civilians, damaged one-third of the nation's homes, and forced mass evacuations of London—stands in emphatic contrast to American conditions. Throughout the war, many Britons defined their essential strength as a peopie by these mutual sacrifices; the mind-set was expressed in Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill's pronounce- ment that "I iiave nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." The character- istic understatement and humor in British propaganda, which seemingly took for granted an indomitable British spirit of sacrifice amid menacing peril, differs markedly from the tone of American propaganda, full of bluster, high emotion, guilt over the greater sacrifices of soldiers, and other techniques appropriate to a country virtually compelled to fight the war "on imagination alone." Given the lesser sense of urgency in the United States (which ^'as geographicaiiy, economically, and even psychologically an ocean away from the battlefront), it is no wonder—the argu- ment could continue—that Americans found poiiticai maneuvering room to mani- pulate images of sacrifice and to bargain over mobilization demands.^^
That iine of reasoning is consistent, but it is wrong. A more careful comparison between Britain and the United States shatters the assumption that only the United States experienced political jockeying, while casting a revealing light on the con- trasting balances of forces in the two countries. One fact criticai to understanding the British home front is that Churchill felt compeiled to make concessions to attach the minority Labour party—which, though few wouid have predicted its end-of-the- war landslide victory, was clearly on the rise—to his governing coalition. The impli- cations of that situation for the poiitics of sacrifice were profound. Labour forces seized the initiative in the all-important battle that advertisers waged so well in the United States: sculpting the poiiticai agenda by defining the purposes for which people were sacrificing. While Americans fought for the "American way of life," the British spoke of a "people's war" for a postwar world offering expanded social pro- grams, security, and equity.'^
A significant effect of the British "people's war" mentality is that the phrase
" Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (New York, 1989), 200-209; Alfred F. Havighurst, Britain in Transition: The Twentieth Century (Chicago, 1979), 365. For Winston Churchill's speech, see U. K., Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 360 (1940), col. 1502; Blum, V Was for Victory, 45; David Koval, "The Proximity of the Enemy: American and British Propaganda Posters during World War II," May 1988 (in Mark H. Leff's possession).
" Addison, Road to 1945. 17-18.
The Politics of Sacrifice in World War II 1315
"equality of sacrifice," which vras at the core of arguments for salary limitation in the United States, cropped up more commonly in British debates, particularly in the speeches ofthe Labour party members. The effective use of comparative sacrifice themes emerges clearly in the debate in iate May and June 1940 over the new coaii- tion government's imposition of a 100 percent tax rate on corporate excess profits.
As a pure economic proposition, confiscatory tax rates make little sense, since they minimize incentive to produce while maximizing the temptation to avoid tax. But as with Roosevelt's saiary ceiiing proposai, the law's rationale was political, rather than financial. Early in the war, alarming reports recorded "a feeling among certain sections ofthe pubiic that 'everything is not fair and equal and that therefore our sacrifices are not worth while'"; such sentiments piaced a premium on dramatizing the equitabie distribution of wartime burdens. Commenting ruefuiiy on pubiic sensitivity to what even he considered "unseemly" business profiteering, a leading Tory mobilization official worried that the public's wiiiingness to "accept hardship," so essentiai to the successfui prosecution of the war, would be under- mined by the "sociai grievance" that "the oniy reason of it is to iine the pockets of some individua!." Fearing iow worker moraie, many warned of an "outburst of indus- trial unrest" if domestic problems were ignored. If people were compelied to "suffer these reductions in their standards of living, they must be convinced that they are doing it" with a goal of economic democracy that could justify their sacrifices.^'
These concerns reached a fever pitch in May 1940, on the eve of the Dunkirk evacuation. Recognizing the desperate need for Labour party help in realiocating iahor to weapons production, the neM'ly appointed prime minister Churchiii had eniisted Ernest Bevin, Britain's top union leader, as his minister of iabor. Bevin ai- most immediateiy received an unprecedented pariiamentary authorization to direct workers to war empioyment. But he subordinated compulsion to a "grand design . . . to carry the assent of 'labour.' " The excess-profits tax fit neatly into this strategy. By seeming to confirm that "wealth as well as labour" was being placed "at the ser- vice ofthe nation," the levy on aii profits in excess of 6 percent of capitai was deemed "a most wholesome clearing of the air . . . to make labour throw itself heart and soul into the war effort." It thus facilitated a poiiticai "compromise": Labour party legitimization of sometimes unpalatabie mobiiization measures, paired with en- hanced Labour influence in guiding mobiiization and shaping home front goais.'*
The long-standing class consciousness of British workers posed a dual threat: the
" Ian McLaine, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II (London, 1979), 176-78; R. S. Sayers, Financial Policy, 1939-45 (London, 1956), 85-86; Rachel Maines, "Wartime Allocation of Textile and Apparel Resources: Emergency Policy in the Twentieth Century," Public Historian, 7 (Winter 1985), 36-37; U.K., Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 352 (1939), cols. 1110-12; ibid., vol. 355 (1939), col. 117; ibid., vol. 367 (1940), col. }6.
" Keith Middlemas, Power, Competition, and the State: Britain in Search of Balance, 1940-61 (London, 1986), 20-21; Alan Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin (3 vols., London, 1960-1983), il, 20-23; London Times, May 23, 1940, p. 7; "Wages and the Workers," Economist, june 15, 1940, p. 1035; London Observer, Jutie 2, 1940, p. 6. On the Labour party's strategic position as a minority coalition partner, see Edwin Amenta and Theda Skocpol, "Redefining the New Deal: World War II and the Development of Social Provision in the United States," in The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, ed. Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol (Princeton, 1988), 113-19.
1316 The Journal of American Historj' Match 1991
social and economic threat of a work force inclined to define its interest as separate from the government's and the focused political threat of the Labour party, which could vent workers' grievances. This challenge helps explain the British concern with social service schemes, such as the Beveridge report, that "in a sense, sanctified the nation's wartime sacrifices" hy catering to aspirations for a postwar society in which a certain "equality of sacrifice" would continue. The "rhetoric of association between war sacrifice and peace-time reward" bolstered efforts to stave off class resentments and buck up public morale. Richard M. Titmuss went so far as to generalize from this British experience that the demands of mass cooperation, participation, and sacrifice in modern total wars necessitate social policy actions to reduce inequal-
The pinched wartime and immediate postwar expansion of the American welfare state presents an obvious exception to this "Titmuss thesis," an exception that impels greater attention to differing levels of "sacrifice" and to the contrasting political con- texts of British and American war aims. Yet these differences should not obscure intriguing parallels in the symbolic and strategic elements of the politics of sacrifice. These parallel strategic considerations emerge, for example, in the report of a Labour party M.P. and former coal miners' union president on a June 1940 miners' conference. The miners' representatives had pledged themselves to sacrifice for the war effort. But they demanded a 100 percent excess-profits tax as an essential coun- terpart to that commitment to assure that their efforts would not redound to the mineowners' profit. "In the interests of the nation we have asked the miners to give everything for the nation, and they will do so," he declared, "but if it goes out from this House that we are giving the mineowners more profits, that will undermine anything that we are doing."^^
The close correspondence to American arguments for income limitation is un- mistakable. There is one telling distinction, however: Such arguments won in Britain and lost in the United States. Members of Parliament fell over themselves in endorsing the principie of taxing away all excess profits and of subordinating profits to patriotism. Amendments to soften the effects of the 100 percent race through administrative adjustments and postwar credits were challenged and tem- porarily withdrawn, for fear of compromising the intended message of universal sacrifice. (The adjustments and credits were reinserted in succeeding laws while leaving the "principle" of a 100 percent rate intact-—underlining the tax's symbolic function.) The results shocked some American conservatives. The financial editor of the New York Sun found it "difficult for many Americans to understand how Britain can expect anyone to make the tremendous extra productive effort required
" McLaine, Ministry of Morde, 182; J. M. Lee, The Churchill Coalition, 1940-1945 (Hamden, 1980), 118-19; Richard M. Titmuss, Essays on 'the Welfare State' (London, 1963), 83-86.
M William De Maria, "Combat and Concern: The Warfare-Welfare Nexus," War & Society, 7 (May 1989), 75-77, 79; David Brody, "The New Deal and World War II," in The New Deal, ed. John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner, and David Brody (2 vols., Columbus, 1975), 1, 268-69; Amenta and Skocpol, "Redefining the New Deal," 99-100; U.K., Parliamentary Déliâtes (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 362 (1940), cols. 179-81.
The Politics of Sacrifice in World War II 1317
by war without some stimulus other than the vague one that it is necessary to save the country.''^»
A similar difference in poiiticai context is apparent in British advertising. The British and American cases are not strictly comparable, partly because government restrictions and shortages of newsprint forced drasdc cutbacics in advertising space in Britain. The government became Britain's iargest adverdser, paying for its own ads; filtering government propaganda messages through private business sponsors seemed dubious indeed in the context of a "people's war" ("I shouldn't need to be toid what I am fighting for . . . by a group of individuals who by so doing hope to line their pockets," one scandaiized Briton observed in expiaining why American advertising "wouid not succeed over here"). Much more than admen in the United States, British advertisers feit besieged. Their ranks depieted by the war's impact on this "most depressed of industries," British advertisers at times found themselves locked out of positions of government influence and reduced to the status of "social 'unfortunates'" for whom the mere mention of their occupation might "rais[e] a frown or arous[e] an exclamation of piteous surprise." Characterized as "vested in- terests" from a profit-obsessed "bad old world" and faced with pressure from Parlia- ment and government offices to curb wasteful advertising, they looked iongingiy at the cozy reiations with government secured by their prospering Amedcan counter- parts. Feeiing desperate, aggrieved, and unappreciated, British advertisers com- bined iimited efforts to gain goodwiii through pubiic service campaigns with a dogged commitment to "carry on" with ads that maintained trade names and pro- tected postwar markets. Yet such efforts betrayed a defensive, even apologetic, mind- set. Advertising that exploited associations with the war without serving a clear war information function might weii be "open to criticism" as "a pubiic scandai." The trade journal of che Bridsh gas industry, for exampie, conceded that "adverdsing which has no higher motive than to raise the prestige of the industry it serves cer- tainiy cannot justify its existence in time of war," since this wouid constitute an "un- warranted waste of money, labour, and raw materials, aii treasonabie offences."'*°
American advertisers wouid have found such use ofthe term "treasonabie" impo- iitic and unnecessary. They recognized the delicacy of the task of manipulating images of sacrifice and war contributions. They operated, however, in an environ- ment where the "miracle" of production and promised consumption couid take center stage, whereas in Britain the scene was set by speciai demands for coaiitionai
'5 U.K., Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th set., vol 362 (1940), cols. 197, 210-11. For the enactment in 1941 of a 20% postwar rrfund of the excess-profits tax. see Sayers, Financial Policy. 86-90. 1. F. Stone, Business As Usual: The First Year of Defense (New York, 1941), 162.
"James Playsted Wood, The Story of Advertising (New York, 1958), 445; Pattick Rivers, "Comparison of U.S. with British Advertising," Advertiser's Weekly, Jan. 25, 1945, p. 113; "Goebbels Knows Whv Ad. Men Do Not
. . Government Boosts Advertising," ibid., Nov. 18,1943, p. 150; Davis M. DeBard, "Urilitj- Advertising in War Time," Edison Electric institute Bulletin, 10 (July 1942), 269; U.K., Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 377 (1942), col. 1047; "War-Time Pub- licity," Gas World, Nov. 28, 1942, p. 589.
1318 The Journal of American History March 1991
concessions to Labour party forces and back-to-the-wall displays of solidarity to avert chaos and defeat. Hence, in the United States, the interest of the "free enterprise system" and the "American way of life" increasingly pushed aside demands for "equality of sacrifice" and a "people's war." American advertisers were in a better position to master the politics of sacrifice.
The mystique of home front sacrifice did indeed permeate American life and pol- itics in World War. II. But changes in the vocabulary of political obligation did not imply automatic or open-ended commitment to the exercise of civic responsibility. The central role of sacrifice in wartime political discourse might have threatened "free enterprise" values, as the push for "equality of sacrifice" through income limi- tation seemed to suggest. But in the struggle over the meaning of sacrifice, at least as judged from the foregoing case studies, ascendant political forces were positioned to curb its subversive potential and channel it in more established political direc- tions, so that much of the political topography could survive in recognizable form. Sacrifice proved symbolicaiiy malleable. It could justifv' mobilization programs or policy positions, revitalize deep-rooted political and economic values, mask privi- leged status or shield it from political challenge, or project war aims that helped reshape the contours of American political culture. The long-term consequences of this manipulation of symbolic content were not negligible; the privatizing of the wartime propaganda apparatus and war aims through the advertising industry, for example, resonated in the postwar consumer culture long after the war's end.
Recognition of the politics of sacrifice penetrates the surface of American home front conflict. Further studies —both comparative and domestic in focus—are needed to trace the shifting and contested meanings of sacrifice over the course of the war and to pinpoint the specific appeals used to solicit citizen cooperation in such intrusive mobilization programs as rationing, the mass income tax, or wage and price freezes. Broader comprehension of the political meanings of home front sacrifice should sharpen the historical definition of the American sense of obligation to community and nation, and of the standards of equity required to activate that civic responsibility. But the course of American economic mobilization, and the al- location of its blessings and burdens, depended less on underlying conceptions of civic responsibility than on continuing negotiation and manipulation. On the home front as on the battlefront, victory came not only to the tactically sophisticated, but to those with power and vital positions that allowed them to determine the arena of conflict. In the home front war, the politics of sacrifice prevailed.
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