The Militant Pacifists of World War II.

• Author: Longley, Max

IN 1940, DURING the twilight between peace and war, a divided Congress passed a law to conscript young men into the Army--the first federal "peacetime" draft, which lasted throughout American participation in World War II. Congress accommodated young pacifist men whose consciences wouldn't let them take part in the fighting: If they could convince the government that their pacifism was sincere, conscientious objectors would be assigned to either noncombatant military service or noncombatant civilian service.

Noncombatant military service generally meant being a medic, getting shot at without doing any shooting oneself. If a young man thought wearing a military uniform was too much of a concession to the war machine, he would be assigned to civilian service on the home front--usually working in rural work camps, doing difficult forestry work, or fighting fires. Other civilian service options included working in mental asylums or serving as human guinea pigs for dangerous scientific and medical experiments. Those in military service were paid; those in civilian service received no pay. Refusing to cooperate with this system meant a prison sentence.

In War by Other Means, journalist Daniel Akst does discuss young pacifists who cooperated with the government. But Akst is more interested in militant draft resistance--in those conscientious objectors who did not cooperate (or did not fully cooperate) with the government's alternative-service schemes. Some refused any kind of alternative service, which led to prison, where they staged protests when they saw injustice. Some initially accepted civilian work assignments but walked off the job--and into prison--when they were convinced they were collaborating too closely with an unjust system. Others stayed in the work camps while engaging in strikes and protests.

All these groups, which often kept in touch with and supported each other, used nonviolent protest techniques such as work strikes, hunger strikes, and sit-ins at segregated businesses and prison cafeterias. Akst argues that the nonviolent tactics and principles learned in these protests informed the civil rights, anti-war, feminist, gay liberation, and other movements of the 1960s and later. He describes David Dellinger and others who defied the draft at the Union Theological Seminary as "exemplars of the type [of draft resisters] who mattered most to history: the radical pacifists who would go on to play important roles in political and...