Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s

1992 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Higgs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Performance Measures ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Macroeconomic Performance ◽  
Command Economy ◽  
First Time ◽  
The U.S

Relying on standard measures of macroeconomic performance, historians and economists believe that “war prosperity” prevailed in the United States during World War II. This belief is ill-founded, because it does not recognize that the United States had a command economy during the war. From 1942 to 1946 some macroeconomic performance measures are statistically inaccurate; others are conceptually inappropriate. A better grounded interpretation is that during the war the economy was a huge arsenal in which the well-being of consumers deteriorated. After the war genuine prosperity returned for the first time since 1929.

From American Exceptionalism to the Great Compression

2021 ◽  
pp. 323-350
Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
First Time

The United States was an anomaly, beginning without clear class distinctions and with substantial egalitarian sentiment. Inexpensive land meant workers who were not enslaved were relatively free. However, as the frontier closed and industrialization took off after the Civil War, inequality soared and workers increasingly lost control over their workplaces. Worker agitation led to improved living standards, but gains were limited by the persuasiveness of the elite’s ideology. The hardships of the Great Depression, however, significantly delegitimated the elite’s ideology, resulting in substantially decreased inequality between the 1930s and 1970s. Robust economic growth following World War II and workers’ greater political power permitted unparalleled improvements in working-class living standards. By the 1960s, for the first time in history, a generation came of age without fear of dire material privation, generating among many of the young a dramatic change in values and attitudes, privileging social justice and self-realization over material concerns.

Arabic Language Instruction

1971 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter F. Abboud
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The U.S

The last fifteen years have witnessed rapid growth in the number of students studying Arabic and of programs concerned with the teaching of the language. This is directly attributable to the awakened interest in the United States in the Middle East in general, and the Arab world in particular, as a result of the entry of the U.S. in World War II and its emergence as a global power with strategic, economical, and political interests in the area. This is not to say that the teaching of Arabic is a new phenomenon in the U.S. As an indespensible tool of Orientalistic scholarship, Arabic was taught for many years in a few institutions which offered programs in Oriental and Semitic Studies.

A Skeptical View of World War II

Worldview ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 56-59
Author(s):  
Jorge I. Domínguez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Clear And Present Danger ◽  
The U.S

To understand history we must first unlearn it. Or, more accurately, we must unlearn canonized history. That is certainly the case if we are to understand U.S. entry into World War II—the last “good war” the United States fought; perhaps the only war not yet subjected fully to the revision of opinion that has been the lot of other contemporary wars. Bruce Russett's No Clear and present Danger. A Skeptical View of the U.S. Entry Into World War II takes us a long way in examining critically whether U.S. entry into that war was justified, yet it received much less attention than it deserved when it appeared in 1972.

George Taylor and the War Labor Board, 1942–45

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-49
Author(s):  
Ronald W. Schatz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Labor Management ◽  
Vice Chairman ◽  
The U.S

During World War II, the National War Labor Board served as the industrial equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court, issuing edicts of highly contentious labor-management disputes, and the Regional War Labor Boards and the board’s national staff resolved thousands of disputes at the local level and in specific industries. This chapter explains how the national and regional boards succeeded. It focuses on George W. Taylor, the NWLB’s vice chairman and mentor of the Labor Board staff, and Regional War Labor Board III headquartered in Philadelphia and chaired by Sylvester Garrett. It challenges earlier interpretations by Lichtenstein, Stone, Lynd, and others that the NWLB undermined unions and hurt workers. The opposite is more accurate. The board prevented Congress from passing draconian anti-union legislation, protected unions, helped the unions acquire many more members, and helped the United States produce the arms and other materiel needed to defeat the Axis powers.

From Honor to Dignity: Criminal Libel, Press Freedom, and Racist Speech in Brazil and the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Hoffman French
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
Press Freedom ◽  
World War ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
The U.S

Reports on violence against journalists in Brazil have captured the concern of international human rights organizations. This article discusses a case involving another such concern: the use of criminal defamation laws in Brazil to punish journalists for criticizing public officials. At the same time, Brazilian media sources regularly report on crimes of racism, which most often involve derogatory name-calling and hate speech. By examining the intersection of these apparently contradictory concerns, this article sheds new light on speech rights in Brazil and the United States and argues that a comparative perspective is crucial to contextualizing and harmonizing free speech and its limitations under modern democratic constitutions. By considering the infusion of traditional notions of honor and status with post-World War II views of dignity, this article argues for a comparative consideration of how best to combat racism and whether hate speech regulation in the U.S. should be reconsidered. As such, the type of law often used to protect the powerful in Brazil could come to be used to protect the vulnerable in the United States and opens the possibility that the irony of free speech could become more than just a scholarly debate.

8. The Two-Ocean Navy

2018 ◽  
pp. 80-96
Author(s):  
Craig L. Symonds
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Central Pacific ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The U.S

Europe went back to war in 1939 and on July 19 1940, the U.S. Congress passed the Two-Ocean Navy Act, the largest naval appropriation in American history, which expanded the U.S. Navy by more than seventy per cent in preparation for the United States entry into the war. ‘The two-ocean navy: the U.S. Navy in World War II (1939–1945)’ outlines the key battles fought by the U.S. Navy: in the Pacific from 1941–43, in the Mediterranean from 1943–44, the Central Pacific drive from 1943–44, the D-Day landings in 1944, and the ferocious battles with the Japanese at Iwo Jima and Okinawa that ended the war.

Art Loans and Immunity from Seizure in the United States and the United Kingdom

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Kaye
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
World War ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The U.S

AbstractSome countries' laws favoring good-faith purchasers over the victims of theft make it difficult to recover stolen artworks. Nonetheless, the loan of such artworks for exhibition abroad may create opportunities to utilize the host country's legal system for recovery. This article examines representative cases illustrating legal options available to plaintiffs in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the United States, laws at the federal and state level may prevent the seizure of artworks loaned for temporary exhibition, but recent cases show that immunity is not absolute and that such artworks may be subject to suit in the United States. The United Kingdom recently enacted a similar law. That law, however, has been criticized, and future interpretations by U.K. courts will be needed before its true affect can be seen. The article also discusses the backgrounds against which the U.S. and U.K. laws were enacted, illustrating the link between the laws and Russian concerns about protecting cultural artifacts that were nationalized after the Russian Revolution or taken by Soviet troops during World War II.

Sweden, the United States, and Raoul Wallenberg's Mission to Hungary in 1944

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Matz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Face ◽  
The U.S

This article provides an in-depth examination of the U.S. government's role in the case of Raoul Wallenberg, the courageous Swedish envoy who died mysteriously in the Soviet Union after being arrested by Soviet occupation forces at the end of World War II for unknown reasons. The article recounts how U.S. officials, particularly the diplomat Herschel V. Johnson, tried to alleviate the plight of Hungarian Jews after German forces occupied Hungary in 1944. A key part of this policy was their effort to work with Sweden in enlisting Wallenberg's help. The U.S.-Swedish relationship was never particularly close, and the mistrust that officials in each country felt toward the other side impeded any coordinated action. The article discusses the bureaucratic impediments on the U.S. side and highlights some of the obstacles that Johnson strove to overcome. The article builds on the report produced by the Eliasson Commission documenting the Swedish government's handling of the Wallenberg case. Although the Swedish authorities bore by far the greatest amount of blame for doing nothing in the face of Soviet stonewalling, Matz argues that U.S. officials also made significant misjudgments that may have exacerbated the situation.

scholarly journals The Rise of New Eurasianism: China’s “Belt and Road” Initiative and Its Implications for Euro-Atlanticism

2016 ◽  
Vol 02 (03) ◽  
pp. 401-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serafettin Yilmaz ◽  
Liu Changming
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Inclusive Development ◽  
New Governance ◽  
World War ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Strategic Context ◽  
The U.S

This article attempts to cast an analytic light on China’s “One Belt and One Road” (OBOR) initiative and investigates the prospects for a new China-led Eurasian integration discourse as an alternative to the U.S.-led Euro-Atlanticism. To this end, it compares China’s development-oriented strategy in Europe with the security-driven Atlanticist model and examines how the new governance framework relates to present-day international relations. It holds that the Eurasia-centered OBOR signifies a paradigm that is fundamentally different from the Atlanticist strategy that has come to define the European geopolitical landscape since the end of World War II. The OBOR aims to de-emphasize security arrangements and ensure sustainable development and prosperity by introducing an omnidirectional connectivity and cooperation agenda in the Eurasian strategic context. It is recognized, however, that although the new Eurasian discourse of inclusive development does not aim to directly challenge the United States’ highly-institutionalized security presence in Europe, mindful of its larger paradigmatic implications, the United States is likely to view the OBOR unfavorably and seek to reinforce material and ideational fundamentals of the Atlantic alliance.

scholarly journals Trieste and Louis Adamic’s Transnational Identities

Two Homelands ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Paul Enyeart
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Transnational Identities ◽  
Identity Claim ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Single Cross ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Cross Border Movement

By examining Slovene immigrant to the United States and world-renowned author Louis Adamic’s effort to mediate between his Yugoslav and American identities, this article helps us to think what having a transnational identity means. By focusing on Adamic’s writings about Trieste and Italy in general, the article shows how he transitioned from being a disaporic leader during World War II to an anti-colonialist from 1946–1951. Examining Adamic’s activist stances regarding Trieste helps us to think about transnationalism beyond a single cross-border movement or an individual’s identity claim at a specific moment. Adamic’s effort to convince the U.S. government that Yugoslavia should control Trieste allows us to see how transnationalism operated as an identity in flux.

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