Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government.

AuthorZakaib, Charles
PositionBook review

Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government James T. Sparrow New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, 344 pp.

In 2008, many Americans feared another Great Depression had begun. Amidst "all the gloom and doom, however, Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's incoming chief of staff, sounded more hopeful: "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before.'" There is no greater example of that mantra in American history than World War II, a time of unprecedented government spending and unsurpassed government control over daily life. In Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government, James T. Sparrow demonstrates how, in a crisis, the government can increase its reach into Americans' lives by promising an ever-expanding set of rights and benefits.

Sparrow, an associate professor of U.S. history at the University of Chicago, begins by describing how Franklin D. Roosevelt transposed his language of freedom and rights from the New Deal to the war effort. In Herbert Hoover's wake, the Roosevelt administration promised economic security through government action. The "'financial titans" and "princes of property" had brought ruin to the country, according to Roosevelt, and it was up to government to protect individuals" rights from the oligarchs' thievery. Such programs as Social Security, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Works Progress Administration, and many others gave citizens tangible personal benefits. As the likelihood of war grew (and his New Deal programs came under increasing scrutiny), Roosevelt substituted the villains of industry and business with the international "gangsters" of Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, and fascist Italy, Their rise, Roosevelt intoned, indicated that the entire world needed a New Deal; the United States would have to fight not only for its own security but also to ensure the spread of freedom to "all peoples. Roosevelt reminded Americans that during the forthcoming struggle, the federal government would provide for their needs and would "ask no one to defend a democracy which in turn would not defend everyone in the nation against want and privation." With such rhetoric, writes Sparrow, Roosevelt helped to create the expectation that government would indeed provide 'all that the people wanted.

The ideological basis for that expectation is unclear, however. The substantial quantity of polling and surveys that...

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