World War I had led to the creation of a new concept - total war. It had gradually taken shape after the initial dreams of speedy victory had died in the face of the reality of a prolonged and bloody conflict. Total war involved a close interrelationship between a nation's economy, its technology, and the mobilization of its civilian population for the purpose of winning the war. Although many aspects of total war had been present in earlier conflicts, World War I was the first instance in which governments attempted to integrate them all completely and in a most determined manner. The degree to which the various warring powers succeeded in securing the total mobilization of their economic and human resources varied considerably. World War II witnessed a similar attempt by the belligerents to harness their resources totally in the interest of victory. Again, the extent of their efforts and their achievements differed markedly.
GERMANY: FROM LIMITED LIABILITY TO TOTAL WAR
One might think that Nazi Germany, as a totalitarian state, would have been the most ambitious and the most successful in preparing its economy and people for total war. But the bureaucratic confusion that characterized the Third Reich, coupled with Hitler's dream of waging a war of limited liability, retarded its progress for years. In keeping with Hitler's long-standing fear of a breakdown of civilian morale similar to that which had occurred in Germany during World War I, he insisted that much of German industry concentrate on the production of consumer goods. By the time that something approaching an all-out effort was underway, it was too late. The war was already lost.
Goebbels propaganda ministry did quickly mobilize the press, radio, and film to foster support for the war, but the results were disappointing at first. Goebbels as well as Hitler and other Nazi leaders were disturbed by reports of Germans glumly watching their troops as they marched through Berlin soon after the invasion of Poland. Their reaction contrasted sharply with the almost ecstatic response to the outbreak of World War I.
It was not until the Wehrmacht won its early victories and especially the spectacular Blitzkrieg triumph over France in the spring of 1940 that German confidence flourished. The failure to knock Britain out of the war and, most notably, the invasion of the Soviet Union the following year, however, brought the return of doubt and fear. Once again, the early German successes on the eastern front, trumpeted so bombastically by Goebbels, only made the setback before Moscow more discouraging. A sudden increase in the number of wounded soldiers on the streets of German cities provided an especially sobering reminder that all was not well at the front.
With the resumption of German offensive activity during the summer of 1942, to propaganda barrage picked up in intensity, rekindling dreams of victory. But even Goebbels could not disguise the loss of the 6th Army at Stalingrad. The advent of British bombing raids on German cities added an even greater blow to civilian morale, particularly the horrors of the firestorm that engulfed Hamburg in 1943. Goebbels took advantage of the Allied unconditional surrender proclamation on January of that year to try to stiffen civilian resolve to fight to the bitter end. The extent to which this propaganda windfall actually changed popular devotion to the war effort is by no means certain, however.
The German economy, geared to Hitler's rearmament "in breadth" approach, did not come close to total mobilization until 1942. By then, the growing difficulties on the eastern front gave Germany little option but to move in that direction. At this point Dr. Fritz Todt, minister of armaments since 1940, gained greater authority to deal with the overall economy, but he had only begun the process of converting industry to total war when he died in a plane crash early in 1942. Albert Speer succeeded him and immediately took up the task with exceptional energy and great success.
Speer loomed as a curious exception to most of the Nazi leaders who surrounded Hitler and basked in his reflected glory while seeking their own aggrandizement. By contrast, Speer viewed himself as an artist and technician operating beyond the realm of politics. While clearly aware of the monstrous nature of Nazism and Hitler's policies, he considered them irrelevant to the sphere in which he worked and attempted to isolate himself from them. Speer had joined the Nazi party as a young architect in 1931 and soon came to the attention of the Fuhrer. His flair for organization and innovation prompted Hitler to choose him as Todt's successor at the age of 36. Speer quickly set out to increase production dramatically, develop new and better weapons, improve transportation, and eliminate waste. By 1943, he had placed the Reich's economy on what approached a full wartime level.
Despite Speer's efforts, much of German industry was still producing consumer goods. Speer also faced competition and obstruction from the many governmental and party organizations that played roles in the economy. His most notable adversary was Fritz Sauckel, who controlled industrial manpower in his capacity as plenipotentiary for labor mobilization. Sauckel successfully resisted Speer's attempt to take charge of all labor in Germany as well as in occupied countries in the interest of greater efficiency and a more thorough mobilization of resources.
GERMAN UTILIZATION OF LABOR
By this time the Wehrmacht's incessant demands for manpower had created an acute shortage of German males available for the production of war materiel. Two sources could be tapped to help alleviate this problem - foreign slave laborers and German women. Although Speer had no qualms about slave labor, he disagreed with Sauckel on how this resource should be utilized. In Speer's view, it would be more effective to develop industries in occupied countries, thus creating a more contented work force by allowing foreign laborers to remain in their homelands. Sauckel insisted on rounding up foreign workers and shipping them to Germany as slave laborers, a practice that provided little incentive for the workers and instilled in them an intense hatred of their Nazi masters. By 1944, over 5 million slave laborers toiled in wretched conditions, Polish and Russian women making up the majority of them. Another 2 million prisoners of war, the largest portion from the Red Army, also were mobilized.
As early as April 1942, Speer urged that women be recruited for industrial jobs. But Hitler and Sauckel both resisted, holding steadfastly to their belief that a woman's place was in the home. This was in keeping with German tradition. It had long been held that women's role could be summed up in three words - "children, church, kitchen." It was not until 1943, when it was obvious that the war was not going well, that women, 17 to 45 years of age, were required to register for compulsory labor. Although the initial response from women, who tended to remain faithful to traditional gender roles, was far from enthusiastic, they gradually answered the call. They became increasingly prominent in war industries and were eventually more numerous than male workers, but their number never rose above 50 percent of the female population. Their wages also hovered more than 25 percent below those of men.
It was not only in war industries that women moved into jobs formerly reserved for men. Hannah Reitsch, a devoted Nazi, gained renown as a test pilot and became a favorite of Hitler. She was so dedicated to the Fuhrer and the Nazi cause that in February 1944, she allegedly urged the use of suicide pilots, who would crash rockets into their targets, and even volunteered to fly the first mission. As the war went from bad to worse for Germany, and the Wehrmacht became even more desperate for manpower, women began to take over air defense tasks, serving in the detection and charting of approaching Allied planes as well as members of searchlight crews. By 1945, they had graduated to operating antiaircraft guns. Many died while trying to repel enemy bombers.
In February 1943, soon after the Stalingrad debacle, Goebbels proclaimed a campaign of total war in an address to a crowd of Nazi enthusiasts in Berlin's Sportpalast. During his speech, he shouted, "Do you want total war?" His audience, carefully selected for its loyalty and zeal, thundered back, "Yes!" But the results of this attempt at total mobilization proved highly disappointing. Despite the ringing support expressed at the Sportpalast, party functionaries did not flock to the factories. Indeed, Martin Bormann, Hitler's deputy, refused to allow party workers to be recruited for work in war industries. Party leaders also saw to it that their wives were appointed to positions that did not actually exist. In the crowning act of folly, the Nazis also continued to use thousands of able-bodied members of the SS to round up and transport Jews to death camps.
Goebbels tried again to mobilize Germany in a total war effort in July 1944. Now that it was much too late, he enjoyed more success. Stringent measures went into effect in an eleventh-hour attempt to cheat fate. The age limit for compulsory labor for women rose to 50, and all males, ages 16 to 65, were required to register, while younger children found themselves liable for agriculture work. But although Speer managed to eliminate many of the restrictions that had formerly hampered his efforts, he could not accomplish the impossible, and when Allied air power began to concentrate on attacking oil and communications targets, the increasing fuel shortage made attempts to increase production meaningless.
Another Nazi stratagem that failed to fulfill the hopes placed in it was the Volkssturm (People's Storm), a paramilitary defense force. Made up of boys as young as 16 and men as old as 60, it was viewed by Hitler as a last-ditch effort to stem the Allied tide. Created in November 1944, the few units that came into existence were poorly equipped and barely trained. Those that saw action usually disintegrated quickly.
THE DECLINE OF LIVING STANDARDS
While Germany's leaders bickered and did what they could do to bolster the war effort, life for the civilian population declined. Although shortages of such things as meat, fish, fruit, and heating coal arose quickly in cities, they were kept within bounds by Germany's ability to exploit the countries that fell under its control. Foodstuffs especially were diverted from the occupied nations, while the native populations suffered from hunger, and slave laborers and inmates of the concentration and death camps were starved. With the gradual loss of conquered areas and the deterioration and eventual paralysis of the transportation network, shortages of virtually everything became the norm.
As the tempo of Allied air raids accelerated, more and more civilians experienced the ordeal of the British during the Blitz of 1940-41, but on a much greater scale. They crowded into bomb shelters, which offered little protection from direct hits and often became crematoriums during incendiary raids. In 1943, the government began to resort to large-scale evacuations of nonessential civilians from cities, but this influx of hungry urbanites did not please many in the rural population. When the Red Army penetrated into the Reich in the last months of the war, many Germans fled in terror, fearing Soviet reprisals for the atrocities inflicted on their people. Many of those who remained behind were killed, while thousands of women and young girls were raped and often murdered. Clearly Hitler's early promises of a glorious future for the German people had grown hollow.
RESISTANCE IN GERMANY
Not everyone in Germany was in favor of the Nazi regime of the continuation of the war. In fact, an anti-Nazi, antiwar opposition movement had developed in Germany well before the war. It began with civilian opponents on the left of the political spectrum. But both Social Democrats and Communists were so weakened by early Nazi moves against them that they accomplished nothing. A number of conservatives also opposed Hitler from an early date. These people disliked democracy and favored a traditional authoritarian government, but they detested the Nazi regime and Hitler's reckless foreign policy. Carl Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig, became the chief link between them and disaffected members of the army officer corps. Despite their opposition to Hitler, these conservatives believed that Germany had a right to its pre-World War I borders as well as Austria and the Sudetenland. They clung to their desire to retain these territories long after it should have been apparent that the Allies would never allow such gains, even if the resistance succeeded in ridding Germany of Hitler.
Another opposition group, the Kreisau Circle, consisted chiefly of members of the aristocracy. Named after the estate of one of its leaders, it originally disavowed German territorial gains and hoped to improve relations with both France and Poland. As time passed, however, some of its members also expressed a desire to retain the German-populated areas that Hitler had taken. Military involvement in the opposition waxed and waned according to the fortunes of war in the early years of the conflict but blossomed anew when the invasion of the Soviet Union soured. Starting in 1942, various plots to assassinate Hitler developed and led to an actual attempt on the Fuhrer's life in July 1944.
Less violent sources of opposition developed within the churches. Although they had originally rallied to the support of the Nazi regime, relations between the church and state remained tenuous. The Nazis were fundamentally opposed to the Christian moral code, but, Hitler was reluctant to push this hostility to the point of alienating Christians. Once the war began, he hoped to maintain both Protestant and Catholic support and ordered an end to anti-Christian activity, but tension mounted nevertheless. Religious opposition to the regime eventually focused on the Nazi policy of extermination of the mentally ill and retarded. Clemens von Galen, the Catholic archbishop of Munster, delivered a sermon in 1941 that somewhat belatedly denounced the Nazi practice of euthanasia. Hitler was so concerned about antagonizing the Catholics that he terminated the program shortly afterward. Unfortunately, the church refrained from making similar attacks against the policy of exterminating Jews.
Soon after coming to power, the Nazis attempted to unite all Protestant churches under a pro-Nazi group called the German Christians, which gained a dominant position and pushed through a number of reforms, including the purging of non-Aryan clergy. A group of pastors, led by Martin Niemoller, who had been a U-boat commander in World War I, and including the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, refused to accept these changes and protested secular interference in church affairs. Out of this dissent, a new Confessional church came into being, but the Gestapo moved against some of its leaders. Niemoller was to languish for years in a number of concentration camps. Bonhoeffer became an active conspirator against Hitler and lost his life in this cause. Hitler eventually curbed the German Christians in hope of gaining greater unity among the Protestants. Henceforth, the Protestant churches offered no more than passive resistance. The Jehovah's Witnesses were the most consistently anti-Nazi religious group. They steadfastly refused to cooperate with the regime and suffered severe persecution.
A small resistance movement also developed among some students at the University of Munich, who formed the White Rose group in the spring of 1942. Led by Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie, and Christoph Probst, the members of the White Rose printed and distributed pamphlets denouncing the Nazis and the war they had launched. Although characterized by perhaps the purest motives of any of the opposition groups, their efforts had no real effect. Their short history came to an especially poignant end when the Gestapo arrested the Scholls in the winter of 1943. They lost their heads to the guillotine soon afterward.
BRITAIN: TOWARD TOTAL MOBILIZATION
The responses of Britain and the United States to the challenge of total war posed a dramatic contrast to the confused and uneven German approach to the same task. Despite Hitler's accusation that they were soft and decadent, the Western democracies proved able to mobilize their resources far more completely, in a much more rational manner, and with exceptional dedication.
At first, however, Britain approached the conflict with less than an all-out effort. To be sure, Parliament passed an Emergency Powers Act in September 1939 that gave the government authority to control the economy in the interest of winning the war. But, in keeping with Chamberlain's vision of a war of limited liability, the British hoped to keep their military commitment to a minimum, placing their faith instead in the naval blockade, the strength of the French army, and the Maginot line. British war industries did not operate at full capacity for many months. In fact, much of British industry remained devoted to the production of consumer goods, and automobile dealers proudly displayed their new models for 1940. As late as the spring of that year, unemployment still hovered at 1 million, while the government had done little to stockpile food and raw materials. The strange atmosphere of the "phony war" did not stimulate a sense of urgency.
The greatest concern in Britain, as it had been during the interwar years, focused on the threat of aerial attack. Accordingly, the government adopted measures to strengthen British air defenses and to deal with damage caused by bombing and fires. It also launched a program of the evacuation of mothers and their children from the cities. Over 3 million of them quickly found refuge in rural areas and small towns, but most returned home when weeks and then months passed without air raids. The government also established new ministries for economic warfare, food, shipping, and information.
The real change in Great Britain came as a result of the debacle in France in 1940 and the looming threat of bombardment and invasion. The first step occurred with Churchill's ascent to power and his formation of a coalition cabinet as well as a war cabinet similar to those of World War I. One of Churchill's most important appointments was his selection of Lord Beaverbrook for the new post of minister of aircraft production. Beaverbrook, of course, greatly accelerated the production of Spitfire and Hurricane fighters during the Battle of Britain. His efforts also contributed significantly to the vast increase in bomber production.
Under the direction of the famous economist John Maynard Keynes, the government embarked on a massive program to harness the entire economy to the formidable task of winning the war. It began with an ambitious survey of all the economic and human resources of the country. When completed in April 1941, this study enabled the government to make the most efficient use of national resources. Virtually the entire economy came under government direction, while railroads and ports were subject to actual government management. A nationwide system soon went into effect to provide for the allocation of all kinds of resources, price controls, and the rationing of a large variety of commodities, including food.
In late 1941, Parliament empowered the government to conscript all men, 18 to 50, for either the armed forces or industrial and other types of essential service. In March 1941, the government required women, ages 19 to 40, to register for war work and raised the upper limit to 45 in the fall of 1942. In Britain, too, few men were enthusiastic about interfering with what were considered to be the proper roles for women, especially those who were married. Not all women were keen about this either. When the age limit was extended to 50 in 1945, there were protests over the "conscription of grandmothers." At first, the influx of women into war industries proceeded on a voluntary basis. Actual conscription of women progressed slowly, but by mid-1943, all women, 19-30, were liable for service, and a million and a half women were employed in "essential industries." Women met discrimination from male-dominated trade unions and often worked only part-time and in unskilled jobs. Their wages also lagged behind those of male workers, and at their peak were only 53 percent of those for men. Despite these impediments, women did enjoy greater financial independence because of their wartime employment. Nevertheless, the cause of women's rights made little progress during the war, although their wartime experience may have increased the self-confidence of women and may have provided some impetus to the flowering of the women's movement in later years. Approximately 500,000 other women served in auxiliary military roles - in the Women's Land Army, Women's Royal Naval Service, Women's Auxiliary Air Force, and Auxiliary Territorial Service.
A vast expansion of war industries took place, and from 1940 to 1942 Britain produced more tanks and aircraft than Germany. Only with the beginning of the transformation of the Nazi economy in 1942 did this situation start to change. The amount of British land under cultivation also increased impressively, as every available patch of ground was soon transformed into a garden plot.
In keeping with the coalition nature of the government, Ernest Bevin, a Labour party and trade union leader, received the post of minister of labor. Bevin acted as a virtual dictator over labor allocation and regulation. But, despite stringent controls over the work force, Britain experienced little unrest among its workers. Patriotism, satisfaction over the end of unemployment, widespread respect for Bevin, overtime pay, price controls, and a general improvement in the standard of living all contributed to relative tranquility.
Britain's massive investment in the war placed a serious strain on the country's financial resources. Half the national output of goods and services went into the war effort, while exports dropped dramatically and imports of food and other commodities accelerated sharply. In an effort to control inflation and avoid borrowing, the government sought to pay for as much as possible through increased taxation. By 1941, the basic tax rate reached 50 percent of earnings, and corporate excess profits were taxed at 100 percent. But this was not nearly enough. Britain had borrowed heavily from Commonwealth countries and the United States as its gold reserves dwindled alarmingly to pay for imports. The introduction of American lend-lease aid in 1941 did help to ease this problem but at a price.
The United States drove a hard bargain, gaining an end to restrictions on American trade with Commonwealth members, the acquisition of most of Britain's investments in foreign countries, and limitations on British exports. In 1942, the United States also obtained Britain's acceptance of a Reciprocal Aid Agreement, which established "reverse lend-lease." This required the British to provide material aid of various kinds to American forces stationed in Britain, ultimately amounting to $6 billion. In proportion to the British national income, this represented as high a figure as lend-lease did to the American national wealth.
LIFE IN WARTIME BRITAIN
The British civilian population suffered far less from bombing than did the Germans and was able to avoid the horrors of land warfare altogether. But it did sustain 300,000 casualties, including 65,000 dead, as well as destruction from bombing and the later V weapons. British civilians also had to put up with wartime austerity - shortages, rationing, and queuing to obtain items in short supply. Mutual experiences, such as waiting out air raids in crowded shelters, and shared responsibilities, such as serving as air raid wardens and fire spotters, helped bring people from various walks of life together and break down class divisions. For example, lower-class refugees from large cities often took up lodgings with middle-class families in small towns.
The recognition that all classes were sharing in the great crusade to defeat Hitler also led to a new interest among political leaders in social reform. The tremendous growth in the scope of state activities in running the war and mobilizing the economy opened the prospect of a greater role for the government in regard to social problems after the conflict. Churchill's Conservative party as well as the Labour and Liberal parties shared this interest in the welfare of society, although Labour was the most vocal.
But it was Lord Beveridge, a Liberal, who was the driving force behind a famous report that appeared in 1942 calling for a system of insurance that would guarantee at least a subsistence level of income for all citizens as well as medical care and what amounted to "cradle to the grave" security. The government endorsed many of the Beveridge Report's findings the following year.
In keeping with the precedent of World War I, the British postponed parliamentary elections until the end of the European war, although one should have been held as early as 1940. In the meantime, the coalition government provided a role for all parties in directing the country.
While the German invasion, so feared by the British people in 1940, never came to pass, another invasion of sorts left its mark on Britain. This was the great influx of American GIs during the buildup for the Allied invasion of Western Europe. As welcome as the U.S. alliance was, the British found it difficult to cope with the sheer numbers of Yanks in their midst, not to mention the brash behavior of many of them as well as their enormous interest in British females. As one Cockney comedian joked, there were only three things wrong with the Yanks, they were "overpaid, oversexed, and over here." Many British women welcomed the attention that they received from the American visitors, however, and no fewer than 70,000 of them eventually became war brides. As for the GIs, they tended to find their British hosts a bit too reserved for their taste, British wartime food without taste, and British beer much too warm. Despite these and other sources of irritation, the GIs and their British hosts got along much better than the leaders of their respective armies and governments had feared.
THE AMERICAN GIANT AWAKENS
While Britain's mobilization for total war was remarkable as well as far more extensive and efficient than that of Nazi Germany, the British clearly did not have the huge economic resources or the vast population of the United States. Of all the belligerent powers, America was to perform the most prodigious feats in producing implements of war. Of key importance in this exceptional transformation was the fact that when the war began its industrial facilities were not being utilized to anything close to their full potential due to the lingering effects of the Great Depression. Despite the fact that it produced more steel than any other country on the eve of the outbreak of the European conflict, it was only using one-third of its capacity. Ten million men were still unemployed in 1939. But U.S. industry had become more efficient during the 1930s with the introduction of new techniques and equipment. The government had also approved measures that set the stage for a great expansion in output by authorizing the doubling of the navy's strength in 1940 and planning to increase vastly the size of the air force. All of this meant that, once the United States entered the conflict, it could accelerate production without creating an undue strain on industry. At the same time, it would finally end the severe unemployment that had persisted for more than a decade.
Along with this immense industrial potential, the country became a full participant in the war with a totally united people. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had seen to that. It ended the conflict between isolationists and interventionists that had grown increasingly heated during 1940 and 1941. Large numbers of men rushed to the recruiting offices to volunteer for the armed forces. Before long, new patriotic songs such as "Remember Pearl Harbor" gained popularity. Somewhat later, "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" became a big hit.
MEASURES AGAINST JAPANESE-AMERICANS
Unfortunately, as part f this rush to unity, paranoia blossomed in the form of an irrational fear of the Japanese living in the United States. Soon after Pearl Harbor, this hysteria reached a crescendo in West Coast states. Fear of invasion and sabotage by an enemy "fifth column" led to demands that Japanese-Americans be interned in camps for the duration of the war. Few people argued against this shameful violation of the civil rights of U.S. citizens. President Roosevelt bowed to this pressure and in February 1942 approved an army order providing for the removal of 112,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry and resident Japanese aliens from their homes. These unfortunate victims had no choice but to abandon their jobs, businesses, and farms and submit to internment in ten relocation centers, such as Topaz and Manzanar, in seven Western states. Although starting in 1943 the government allowed 35,000 Japanese-Americans to leave the camps in return for loyalty oaths and agreements not to settle on the West Coast, the camps remained in operation until January 1945. Some Nisei (those born in the United States and of immigrant Japanese parents) did join the American army and, as the 442nd Regimental Combat Team fighting in Italy, became the most decorated U.S. unit in the war.
The government did not take any measures against Germans and Italians who were American citizens except those charged with specific acts of disloyalty. But it did require enemy aliens to register, and those who were considered to be dangerous were also interned. Only 1,228 Germans and 232 Italians found themselves subjected to this kind of treatment, however. Most Italians gained their release within a few months of Italy's surrender, while the Germans remained confined until the end of the conflict.
The great sense of unity that the attack on Pearl Harbor had instilled in the American people soon manifested itself in various other forms of patriotic expression. It was present in the war bond drives and civil defense preparations for the unlikely possibility of enemy air attacks and in scrap metal drives, which proved more useful for providing a sense of participation in the war effort than for any real material advantage.
The number of men and women in the armed forces rose dramatically, eventually totaling 15 million. The draft had already increased the army's strength to 1.6 million by the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. This number climbed to 8.3 million by the end of hostilities in 1945. The navy also grew from 325,000 to 3.4 million.
MOBILIZATION OF U.S. INDUSTRY
American industry saw to it that these vastly increased armed forces were equipped with enormous amounts of weapons and other materiel. Automobile plants soon converted their facilities to produce tanks, trucks, jeeps, and aircraft. Shipyards turned out staggering numbers of vessels of all kinds, from aircraft carriers and battleships to transports and merchantmen. The efforts of Henry J. Kaiser, a California industrialist who earned the nickname "Sir Launchalot," were especially notable. Kaiser built vast shipyards on the West Coast and greatly reduced the amount of time needed to construct ships. By 1945, tonnage had increased by 42 percent. Among the vessels produced was the Liberty ship, a new type of merchantman that could be built in 10 days with prefabricated sections. Later, the larger and swifter Victory ships appeared. Also important were landing craft, such as the LSI (landing ship infantry) and LST (landing ship tank), which came into service in abundance. Aircraft production rose from less than 6,000 in 1939 to over 96,000 in 1944. Not only did the United States satisfy the voracious demands of its own armed forces, but it also supplied its allies with war materiel of all kinds and in huge quantities. It was an achievement of truly epic proportions.
Such a gigantic transformation of the economy required centralized direction on a significant scale, although the American system did not come close to matching that of Britain. The vast scope of the war effort, coupled with Roosevelt's managerial style, led to a proliferation of agencies dealing with various aspects of mobilization. This resulted in considerable confusion and problems of divided authority. Soon after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt appointed Donald Nelson, a Sears, Roebuck executive, to head the War Production Board (WPB). Subject only to the president's supervision, Nelson possessed the power to allocate resources and regulate production. Unfortunately, he proved so easygoing that he could not prevent the army and navy from bypassing the WPB and dealing directly with large corporations. Nevertheless, Nelson did ban the production of many items he considered nonessential, including automobiles for civilian use, refrigerators, and most other electric appliances. In addition, he halted housing construction except for homes for defense workers.
Roosevelt also created the Office of Economic Stabilization (OES), headed by his friend James Byrnes, a former senator from South Carolina. Byrnes received the authority to control prices, wages, profits, and rents. In May 1943, Roosevelt elevated Byrnes to direct the newly formed Office of War Mobilization (OWM), which had vast powers over the entire home front. Despite the mushrooming agencies, overlapping jurisdictions, and bickering that marked the American war effort, remarkable progress came with astonishing speed. During 1942, U.S. production equaled that of all Axis powers. In 1943, it was one and a half times as great and, in 1944, twice the output of Germany and Japan combined.
AMERICAN MINORITIES IN THE WAR
The sudden and spectacular expansion of industrial activity led to an urgent need for labor. This ignited a great increase in population mobility, including the shift of 1.2 million people to the West Coast states, a trend that continued after the war. About three-fourths of those on the move came from the South. With so many men going into the armed forces, opportunity beckoned for numerous people who had been previously unemployed or engaged in menial labor. Among them were large numbers of black people. They migrated from the South to seek jobs in the industrial cities of the North and on the West Coast. Unfortunately, they also encountered discrimination. Roosevelt issued an executive order establishing a Fair Employment Practices Committee, but the committee suffered from poor funding and a meager staff. Although some progress was made, especially in government employment, discrimination on the part of both management and labor unions persisted. Nevertheless, by the end of the war, blacks filled 8 percent of the jobs in war industries, up from only 3 percent in 1942 and approaching the proportion of blacks in the national population - 10 percent.
Blacks also served in the armed forces, but the army and navy both segregated them in all-black units and, for the most part, assigned them to menial tasks. They faced discrimination, not only on military installations but also from residents of nearby communities. Some cafes in the South refused to allow them to sit at lunch counters but admitted German prisoners of war without protest. Army and naval leaders were reluctant to send blacks into combat, in part because many of them were illiterate, a deficiency due primarily to the abysmal state of educational opportunities for blacks in the South. But they also questioned the ability of blacks to perform under fire. Only two black infantry divisions were activated - the 92nd and the 93rd, although a few smaller tank and artillery units were also created. At first, they served only under white officers, but recruitment and training of black officers progressed during the war. Nevertheless, black officers could command only black soldiers. The two black divisions did not see combat until 1944, the 92nd in Italy and regiments of the 93rd in the Pacific. The navy relegated most black sailors to shore duty, especially as stevedores loading ships. In August 1944, it began to assign some blacks to auxiliary ships in a move toward integration. Blacks also served in the air force, most of them in support units or as manual laborers. But some became pilots and were later referred to as the "Tuskegee Airmen" because they trained at Tuskegee, Alabama. The first unit to be activated was the 99th Pursuit Squadron. Three others followed (the 100th, 301st, and 302nd), and all eventually comprised the 332nd Fighter Group. They proved their skill and courage while escorting bombers from Italian bases.
American Indians, as Native Americans were called at the time, served in all branches of the armed forces. When the war ended, their number had reached 25,000, almost 22,000 of them in the army. Unlike the blacks, they were not members of segregated units. Over 400 men from the Navaho tribe volunteered for duty in the marine signal corps and served as "code talkers" in the Pacific. In this capacity, they transmitted messages in their own native Navaho language, which was totally unknown to the Japanese, reducing the time to encode and decode signals by half. Another Indian marine, Corporal Ira Hayes, was one of the six men immortalized in the famous photograph of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima.
THE ROLE OF AMERICAN WOMEN
The United States never resorted to conscripting women into the wartime labor force, but roughly 2 million women did move into jobs in defense industries. Although government propaganda immortalized "Rosie the Riveter" in wartime posters as the symbol of the American woman's role in the war effort, only a few actually performed this type of specialized work. As in Britain, most women carried out unskilled tasks, such as welding. Again, as in Britain, their wages remained lower than those of male workers, and they often encountered hostility when they moved into positions previously reserved for men. Despite these problems, many women enjoyed their newly found independence. Others harbored no desire to join them in such poorly paid, unskilled jobs. In a poll conducted in 1943, a majority of women expressed no interest in working in a war industry. The overall increase in female employment was not as great as might be expected, only rising from 25 percent to 36 percent of the work force. During 1942, the government formed what became the Women's Army Corps (WAC), as well as equivalents in the navy (WAVES), coast guard, (SPARS), and marines. The latter contingent never received a nickname, and the marine corps reacted with hostility to the suggestion that they be called "marinettes." A total of 215,000 women eventually enlisted in the four branches of the military. They served in a variety of noncombatant positions, although 38 WASPs (Women's Air Service Pilots) died while ferrying planes and towing targets.
FEEDING THE NATION AND MORE
With the help of unusually good weather during much of the war, farmers harvested the largest crops in history and achieved equally impressive results in meat production. It was vital that they did, because they had to provide food, not only for the armed forces and civilians of the United States but for America's allies as well. Once Allied forces landed in Europe, they also assumed the obligation of feeding the liberated peoples. To accomplish all this was an enormous achievement, comparable to that in the realm of industrial production. Although farmers urged that prices for agricultural commodities be allowed to rise to their natural levels, Roosevelt warned that this would lead to runaway inflation. He insisted on price controls coupled with government subsidies to farmers instead. Farm income doubled between 1940 and 1943. Despite the upsurge in farm production, the prodigious demand for food led to the imposition of rationing. The government limited the distribution of such items as meat, butter, sugar, coffee, and canned goods, as well as nonfood products including gasoline and tires. The combination of price controls and rationing retarded inflation and facilitated a more equitable distribution of scarce commodities. Such measures could not overcome human nature and the desire for profit, however, and as in all other belligerent countries, some people sold rationed items on the black market for significantly higher prices. Shortages also developed in many unrationed commodities.
It was one thing to boost production to unprecedented levels, it was another to pay for it. World War II cost the government more than $300 billion, compared to only $32 billion for World War I. Roosevelt hoped to finance much of this through increased taxation but encountered opposition in Congress. Nevertheless, Congress did raise income and excise taxes. It also provided for a graduated percentage tax increase according to personal income, sharply higher corporation taxes, and a 95 percent tax on profits in excess of prewar expectations. In all, taxes paid for 40 percent of the war's cost. The government attempted to cover as much as possible of the remainder through the sale of war bonds to American citizens. A series of eight war bond drives ultimately accounted for about three-fifths of the total expenditures. Despite all of these measures, the federal deficit rose from $49 billion in 1941 to $259 billion in 1945.
Unlike Britain, which faced a much more direct threat, elections continued as usual in the United States. A congressional election in 1942 resulted in substantial Republican gains in both the House and the Senate. In 1944, Roosevelt, although weary and suffering from heart disease and high blood pressure, ran for a fourth term. He defeated Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican governor of New York, but the margin of victory, 3.6 million votes, was his smallest.
THE SOVIETS REBOUND FROM DISASTER
The Soviet Union shared some of the same weaknesses that plagued Germany in meeting the challenge of total war. Like the Nazi regime, the Soviet dictatorship in theory exercised total control over all aspects of life, but unlike Germany, this domination extended to the economy. Yet in reality, it too suffered from divided authority, inefficiency, and confusion. Although the state directed a centralized economy, the sheer size of the country and extensive bureaucratic procedures necessitated that many decisions be made on the local level. In the process, local officials often circumvented the cumbersome formal system. The Soviets had also failed to devise a detailed strategic plan for dealing with a possible German invasion or mobilizing the economy for total war. When Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941, these weaknesses played a major role in the early Soviet disasters.
Just as Hitler often bore responsibility for German mistakes and defeats, Stalin contributed in no small way to the catastrophic setbacks of 1941-42. The Soviet dictator's disregard for human life in his ruthless pursuit of victory was perhaps the most important factor in the appalling losses suffered by the Red Army not only in the early months but in the later triumphant phases of the war as well. Stalin's refusal to heed the many warnings of a German attack, along with his insistence on maintaining so many troops close to the border, his obsession with reckless counterattacks, and his refusal to authorize evacuations from untenable positions, repeatedly placed Soviet troops in jeopardy. During the prewar period, he had also failed to provide for any kind of overall coordination of Soviet forces. This oversight created confusion and an almost total absence of centralized control during the first days of the invasion. It was not until the establishment of the GKO as a war cabinet and Stavka as a general military headquarters that coordination began to take the place of chaos.
Even then, Stalin dominated both bodies and played the major role in the deployment of troops that led to the disastrous encirclements at Kiev in 1941 and Kharkov in 1942. "But for Stalin," two authorities on the Soviet war effort have charged, "it may well be argued, the Germans would never have reached Moscow or Leningrad, the Caucasus or Stalingrad."
Stalin and the Soviet government also made serious mistakes in their failure to provide plans to mobilize the Soviet economy for war. To be sure, much of the country's industrial resources were already producing war materiel, but no master plan existed for the coordination of the entire economy, and Soviet leaders had failed to disperse industries to areas in the deep interior. As a result, well over half of the Soviet Union's industrial capacity lay in regions that fell to the enemy by the fall of 1941. Naively trusting in the Red Army's ability to stop an invasion quickly, the Soviets also did not devise a plan to evacuate industry from the threatened areas. They finally had to improvise such measures in the most unfavorable conditions and in many cases were unable to carry out the task before the arrival of the Germans. Nevertheless, the Soviets did achieve notable results from their evacuation program.
While the evacuation of industry played a significant role, it was certainly not the only factor in the process of placing the economy on a total war basis. The conversion of nonmilitary industry to war production was of key importance. This task also required speed and took place largely through local improvisation with relatively little centralized direction. Although this approach provided badly needed war materiel in the short run, the lack of overall planning led to excessive concentration on this kind of production. It had the unfortunate by-product of dangerously restricting the output of steel, fuel, and other resources necessary for continuing production of war materiel in the future. As a result, the economy fell into a serious crisis during the first half of 1942.
A severe shortage of labor also developed when many skilled workers entered the army. It grew even worse as the terrible losses in military personnel mounted, necessitating wholesale replacements, while many workers were trapped in enemy-occupied areas. It became necessary to recruit unskilled laborers to replace skilled workers, with a corresponding decline in quality and efficiency. This supply of labor came largely from teenage boys, men over 50, and women. A similar shortage of workers afflicted agriculture. The peasantry had provided by far the largest proportion of recruits for the army even before 1941. To fill the resulting void in farm workers, women became the major source of labor in the production of food. By 1944, they provided almost 75 percent of the rural work force and three-fifths of the industrial workers. But their tradition-minded male superiors denied them access to most administrative and managerial positions.
Although estimates vary, perhaps a million women also served in the Red Army or in partisan units. At first, they filled noncombatant roles, but by the summer of 1942, they began to appear at the front, many as members of air defense crews. But some saw action in the infantry and armored forces as well. Women also served in the air force, and many saw combat. Lilya Litvak won fame as a fighter ace by shooting down 12 German planes before being killed in 1943. When the war ended, most women were quickly demobilized and their contribution to victory largely ignored by Soviet officials, despite the fact that 86 women had won the Hero of the Soviet Union medal.
Prisoners also constituted a large portion of the labor force. These included both political prisoners and actual criminals, who worked as slave laborers in industry, construction, mining, and farming. Perhaps more than 250,000 of them labored in appalling conditions, and many died because of hunger and other privations as well as savage discipline. The Soviets used other prisoners in the penal battalions attached to the Red Army. These unfortunate men performed especially dangerous duties and suffered the heaviest casualties of any Soviet military units.
HUNGER STALKS THE LAND
The Soviets also faced an enormous food crisis. They contributed to this themselves by failing to provide adequate food supplies for cities, such as Leningrad and Moscow, and by burning crops in an effort to impede the German advance. But, while this scorched earth policy had little impact on the enemy, it deprived the Soviet people of much needed food. The German conquest of the country's best agricultural land, especially in the Ukraine, severely aggravated the crisis, as did the labor shortage. Hunger and even death by starvation stalked much of the country. Soviet officials resorted to drastic measures to combat the problem, such as restricting ration cards to only those involved in some way with the war effort. Citizens without cards had to rely on the kindness of family members or friends if they were going to eat. The Soviets also appealed to the United States for aid, and America responded by sending large-scale shipments of food as well as trucks and railroad rolling stock to transport precious cargo. Soviet food production continued to lag far below prewar levels throughout the conflict. This decline reached bottom in 1943, as the Red Army recovered more and more territory formerly occupied by the Germans. For the time being, however, much of this land, devastated by either combat or the retreating enemy, could not be cultivated, while many more people had to be fed in the liberated areas.
During 1942, it became obvious that the economy was so badly disrupted that the government had to adopt a more centralized system to coordinate all areas of production. The chief mechanism for this transformation was a subcommittee of the GKO called the Operations Bureau. Even at this point, much of the old, informal network of improvisation continued to function but with much closer supervision and a new system of priorities.
THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
The magnitude of the danger created by the German invasion and the early disasters led to a change in policy regarding the role of the Communist party. During the prewar period, the government had identified the achievements of the regime with the party and downplayed nationalism. But soon after the outbreak of war, Soviet leaders portrayed the struggle in patriotic rather than ideological terms. They referred to the conflict as the Great Patriotic War and warned of the danger to Holy Mother Russia. Stalin addressed the country in stirring patriotic speeches and even cited the heroic deeds of heroes from the wars of the tsarist period.
Stalin also sought a reconciliation with the Orthodox Church, which had been subjected to persecution and had been sinking more and more into oblivion since the revolution. In return for assurances of total allegiance to the state, the church gained the right to conduct services on a reasonably free basis. This had the effect of rallying devout citizens to the support of the regime and the war effort, but it also kindled a religious revival that survived even the postwar years, when Stalin watered down some of the wartime concessions that had been granted to the church.
During the early months of defeat, Stalin tended to identify the war effort with the government as a whole rather than with himself. But when the Soviets began to gain the initiative and staged their increasingly successful offensives, he saw to it that he gained the lion's share of credit. Propaganda soon reverted to its prewar portrayal of Stalin as the personification of the Soviet Union, but this time it created a variation on the theme - Stalin as a larger-than-life war leader and the symbol of victory. In the eyes of many Soviet citizens, he emerged as a popular hero for the first time. Indeed, despite his early catastrophic failures and continuing disregard for human life, Stalin did contribute significantly to the ultimate triumph. He learned from his mistakes and provided increasingly intelligent and undeniably firm leadership.
But Soviet citizens played an even greater role in winning the final victory in supplying millions of people for both the armed forces and for industry and agriculture, where they produced the weapons and food that were essential for success. Most of them suffered from hunger and other privations as the standard of living plummeted. Many others, who languished for years under German occupation in prison camps, fared far worse. Those unfortunate Soviet soldiers who fell captive to the Germans and survived this terrible ordeal found themselves treated as traitors after their liberation, because Stalin had decreed that surrender was tantamount to treason. During World War II, no country suffered as severely from start to finish as did the Soviet Union. While not all of its inhabitants rallied to the unconditional support of the regime, they all faced one glaring truth: the terrible fate that awaited them if the Germans won the war. This helped unite them in an effort that often took the form of a genuine crusade against the hated invader.
Not all Soviet citizens viewed the war as a patriotic crusade, however. This was especially true of the members of the many national minorities. Large numbers of Ukrainians, Belorussians, and inhabitants of the former Baltic states initially welcomed the Germans as liberators. The brutal reality of Nazi racial policy soon turn many of them against the invaders, but some continued to collaborate, including substantial numbers who served in military units formed by the Germans. Among these armed formations was the Russian Liberation Army, led by the disillusioned former Soviet general Andrei Vlasov. But most of its soldiers were Russian prisoners of war who preferred the prospect of serving the Germans over dying from starvation or exposure in Nazi prison camps. Despite its lofty name, Vlasov's army accomplished nothing, and Vlasov himself eventually fell into Soviet hands and was executed.
The most notable example of cooperation between non-Russians and Germans took place in the Caucasus during its relatively brief period of occupation in 1942. Here the German army remained in control of administration because of the area's proximity to the front and ruled with moderation, while keeping the SS and other Nazi agencies at bay. This enlightened approach led to close relations between the invaders and various small ethnic groups. When the Germans withdrew, however, the Soviets instituted a reign of terror, executing prominent collaborators and deporting the remainder of these minorities to Central Asia. Deportation to Central Asia or Siberia was also the fate of the Volga German minority of eastern Russia as well as the Tartars of the Crimea. Most of these unfortunate people were the victims of guilt by association rather than actual collaboration.
JAPAN: CONFLICT OF INTEREST
If Germany and the Soviet Union suffered from the problems of lack of coordination, bureaucratic inefficiency and confusion, Japan was plagued even more by such difficulties. Its army and navy engaged in an extreme case of interservice rivalry at the expense of the overall war effort. Thus, while attempting with considerable success to press the entire population into total war, Japan ironically found its progress toward full mobilization stymied by those who were most determined to fight the war to a victorious conclusion. It also faced a number of limitations on what it could accomplish under any circumstances. Japanese industrial resources, while considerable, paled by comparison to those of the United States. This was the case when the war began and continued to accelerate as it progressed. In 1941, the United States possessed a population almost twice as large as Japan's, an industrial potential at least seven times greater, and raw materials perhaps 78 times more plentiful. And while America enjoyed immense productivity in agriculture, Japan still featured small plot cultivation, making it at least as dependent on food imports as Britain.
Although people in the United States and Britain looked upon Japan as a dictatorship in which Tojo's authority was as great as that of Hitler, in reality the Japanese premier probably wielded less direct power than did either Churchill or Roosevelt. While he also served as war minister and at times as foreign minister as well as minister of commerce and industry, he always had to compete with a number of influential former premiers and aristocrats close to the emperor. Most important, the army general staff continued to exercise its traditional independence. In his new roles, Tojo was only a political leader, and real authority in Japan still lay with the army hierarchy. When Tojo finally attempted to bridge the gap by assuming the post of chief of staff of the army in February 1944, it was far too late to prevent Japan from spiraling ever closer to defeat. But it was not only the army that followed an independent course, for the navy also operated as a law unto itself.
The most critical factor in weakening Japan's war effort was the ongoing feud between the army and the navy, which resulted in an almost total lack of coordination between them. The officer corps of each had utter contempt for the other, and hatred between the families of military and naval leaders in many cases dated back for generations. The two branches of service were more interested in competing with each other than in joining forces against the common enemy. The results were catastrophic. This vicious rivalry had an especially baneful effect on attempts to mobilize industry for the maximum and most efficient production of war materiel.
Officially, the ministry of commerce and a cabinet planning board were to work with industrial leaders to develop policy for the production and distribution of supplies to the army and navy. Their efforts came to nothing, however, because neither service would cooperate. Each withheld information and dealt directly with industrial firms to fulfill its needs without any consideration of the overall conduct of the war. Soon after the conflict started, the government established civilian agencies for each industry in an effort to control and coordinate production, but they also failed to prevent the army and navy from going their separate ways. Later a new munitions ministry, headed by Tojo himself, tried to bring order to this chaos, but to no avail.
The most lamentable examples of this destructive rivalry developed in the aircraft industry and in regard to oil supplies. Bickering over the design and production of planes as well as duplication of effort led to the underutilization of available industrial facilities. In 1943, Japan produced only 10,000 aircraft despite having the potential to turn out more than 50,000. The army managed to gain control over 85 percent of the oil supply from the East Indies, even though its needs were limited. This confronted the navy, which was dependent on oil to fuel its ships, with a critical shortage that seriously hampered its operations. The army even built its own tankers and later started to construct submarines, allegedly for the purpose of supplying its far-flung garrisons, a decision that accomplished nothing.
JAPAN'S LABOR POLICIES
As in other belligerent countries, labor shortages plagued Japanese industry. The army's insistence on drafting skilled workers, especially from industries producing materiel for the navy, did nothing to improve the situation. Students and women as well as Korean and Chinese slave laborers and Allied prisoners of war replaced these vital workers. Women were pressed into service despite the strongly held view that women should be restricted to producing children and caring for their families. In 1942, government leaders, including Tojo, expressed emphatic opposition to employing women in war work, but in 1943, they had no choice but to make women liable for labor service. In 1944, over 14 million women were employed in various occupations and played important roles in factories and mines, working in some cases as much as 16 hours a day. Although clearly intended as a temporary expedient, the release of women from their traditional role helped to instill in them a new attitude that prepared them for important changes in their position in the postwar era.
Over 800,000 Koreans and 38,000 Chinese "contract" workers were also conscripted for labor in factories and mines. Despite bombastic propaganda about Japan's plans to create a new order in which all the peoples of East Asia would enjoy a far better life free from Western oppression, the Japanese treated the Koreans and Chinese with extreme brutality and often worked them to death. An estimated 60,000 Koreans and 7,000 Chinese died under their tender care. On one occasion, police crushed a revolt of Chinese workers, who rose up in desperation against their savage treatment, and killed 418. Most of the victims were literally flogged to death. Approximately 20,000 Allied prisoners of war suffered similar mistreatment while performing forced labor in the Japanese home islands. At least 60,000 other Allied prisoners, half of them British, were forced to work on the construction of a notorious railroad linking Burma with Thailand. They were joined in this monumental task by 300,000 civilian slave laborers imported from Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, and China. In addition to suffering from the usual Japanese brutality, these workers contended with intense heat, monsoon rains, a variety of virulent tropical diseases, and a host of often lethal jungle creatures. An estimated 60,000 men died while working on this infamous project. The construction of one of the bridges along the 260-mile route inspired Pierre Boulle's less than factual novel The Bridge on the River Kwai, which was later made into an Academy Award-winning film. When the surviving Allied prisoners and slave laborers were finally liberated from their prison camps in various parts of the Japanese Empire, most of them were little more than living skeletons. In recent years, hundreds of these victims have sued the Japanese government as well as privately owned industrial and mining firms in an attempt to gain some measure of compensation for the suffering they endured.
Despite the interservice rivalry, the lack of overall coordination of economic planning, and the shortage of labor, Japan built up its heavy industry. It also reduced the number of small and medium-sized firms, which strengthened the big industrialists. In the process, the Japanese increased their total industrial production by one-fourth between 1940 and 1944. Unfortunately for them, this did not begin to approach the massive rise in American industrial output. Between 1941 and 1944, for example, the Japanese turned out almost 59,000 aircraft, while the United States produced 262,000. Japan's per capita productivity actually dropped significantly as a result of the loss of skilled workers to the services.
The shortage of labor also took its toll in agriculture. Again, women along with old men and young boys and girls stepped into the breach. They managed to prevent a decline in domestic rice production until 1945, but imports fell off alarmingly due to crop failures in Korea and the growing impact of American submarine and air attacks on shipping. Fish, another important element in the Japanese diet, also became increasingly scarce as fishermen entered the service and fishing became more dangerous as American forces moved ever closer to the Japanese home islands. Hunger rose accordingly, as did the prevalence of disease associated with malnutrition. To encourage greater food production, the government reduced the rents of tenant farmers, who improved their position relative to landlords, a change that helped prepare the way for postwar land reform. The Japanese also used every available bit of land to grow food, much as the British were doing. Rationing, which was a major factor throughout the war, increased in stringency with the worsening of shortages of virtually everything. As in other warring countries, the black market flourished, and those in charge of its operations were able to obtain scarce commodities and sell them for huge profits.
THE "VALLEY OF DARKNESS"
The final death blows to Japan's economy came in the form of the massive fire bombing of the country's major cities in 1945 and the escalation of the American submarine campaign, which strangled the Japanese supply line to Southeast Asia. By the summer of 1945, many thousands of Japanese civilians had paid the ultimate price for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and millions of others were homeless and suffered from mounting privations and bleak prospects. The fire bombing raids clearly weakened civilian morale and shattered faith in a victorious conclusion to the conflict. Nevertheless, egged on by propaganda, the people persisted in their willingness to resist the enemy to the death. To this end, the government organized civilian volunteer groups during the last few months of the conflict to prepare for the expected invasion of the sacred home islands. These units prepared defensive positions and were to participate in the actual fighting once the enemy was ashore. Their armament for this task was unlikely to have much impact, consisting of bamboo spears and carpenter's awls. Because raw materials were in such short supply due to the U.S. submarine attacks, some industrial workers were released from their jobs and also joined the volunteer units.
While Japan did not utilize concentration camps such as those of Nazi Germany or forced labor camps such as those of the Soviet Union, various types of civilian as well as military police maintained close surveillance of the activities of people. Paranoia over dissent and possible espionage also increased, although almost no overt resistance to the war existed. The government subjected newspapers and other publications to rigid censorship and engaged in an ambitious propaganda effort to glorify Japan's early victories, while either ignoring or distorting the rising number of defeats. For example, survivors of Japanese ships sunk in the Battle of Midway found themselves placed in seclusion upon their return to Japan to prevent dissemination of the news of the disaster. For years the people received a steady diet of bombastic proclamations insisting that ultimate success was assured. Eventually, however, it became impossible to disguise the scope of the debacle that was befalling Japan. As city after city fell victim to destruction from fire bombs, the Japanese people needed no confirmation from the government that the end was near. Japan had descended into the "Valley of Darkness" long before the atomic bombs devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.