America Since 1940

Advertisement of the 1940 U.S. Census

The 1940's was a tumultuous time in United States history. It was a time of war and industrial expansion for the young and growing nation. In late 1939, the United States declared neutrality in the European war effort after Germany invaded Poland, however after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 the United States effectively joined the World War II effort. While Europe was suffering at the hands of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi regime, the United States government began to supplement various allied forces such as Great Britain with surplus war materials. The Lend-Lease Act is approved, which provided $7 billion in military credits for American manufactured war supplies to Great Britain and other allies; in the fall, a similar Lend-Lease pact would be approved for the USSR with $1 billion loan. 

Lend-Lease Act flier of the early 1940s

Additionally, the United States under leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Naval Expansion Act which increased the U.S. Navy capacity by 11%. According to the United States narrative it was the attack on Pearl Harbor late fall of 1941 that surprised and shocked the nation into full-fledged war. The Pearl Harbor attack which took the lives of 1,177 sailors and marines also caused loss and or damage to twenty-one naval vessels and a couple days later the United States would also declare was on Germany and Italy. 

Japanese American Internment

During this emotional time in U.S. history one of the most racially charged executive orders is signed into law by then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Executive order 9066 confined more than 110,000 Japanese Americans to relocation camps during the war effort. All of the detainees were stripped of property and economic means to afford a sustainable future in the United States. 

A newspaper clipping of the culture of the Military Industrial Complex

The war culture of the United States began to strengthen into the war/defense industrial complex that we see today with the investment of massive amounts of money being laundered through top secret projects which would make the United States the leader in defense spending. The same war culture that had disenfranchised many Japanese Americans allowed many of their counter-parts to finally attain the status of "middle class."

Comic on "Fighting Communism"

This semester I will attempt to investigate the culture of America since the 1940's paying particular attention to advent of the atomic bomb, the subsequent bombings of Japan, the military/defense industrial complex, the cold war and its effects on Americans, and the information released by governments on the various crisis that effect the aforementioned time in U.S. history.

Citations:

Alan O. Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek: A Biography. (2003). University of Chicago Press.

John Scott and Gordon Marshall. Communism" A Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford University Press 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.