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

Warfare State: World War II Americans and 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 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 Age of Big Government, James T. Sparrow demonstrates how, in a crisis, 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 University of Chicago, begins by describing how Franklin D. Roosevelt transposed his language of freedom and rights from New Deal to war effort. In Herbert Hoover's wake, Roosevelt administration promised economic security through government action. The 'financial titans and princes of property had brought ruin to country, according to Roosevelt, and it was up to government to protect rights from oligarchs' thievery. Such programs as Social Security, Agricultural Adjustment Act, Works Progress Administration, and many others gave citizens tangible personal benefits. As likelihood of war grew (and his New Deal programs came under increasing scrutiny), Roosevelt substituted villains of industry and business with international gangsters of Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, and fascist Italy, Their rise, Roosevelt intoned, indicated that entire world needed a New Deal; United States would have to fight not only for its own security but also to ensure spread of freedom to all peoples. Roosevelt reminded Americans that during forthcoming struggle, federal government would provide for their needs and would ask no one to defend a democracy which in turn would not defend everyone in nation against want and privation. With such rhetoric, writes Sparrow, Roosevelt helped to create expectation that government would indeed provide 'all that people wanted. The ideological basis for that expectation is unclear, however. The substantial quantity of polling and surveys that Sparrow draws upon belies his contention of public support for Roosevelt's agenda. For example, of individuals polled in July 1942, only 35 percent had ever heard of Four Freedoms articulated by Roosevelt in his 1941 State of Union address despite fact that two of those freedoms are coincident with First Amendment. Only .5 percent had heard of other two, freedom from fear and want. Sparrow excuses that ignorance as a labeling issue and claims that Americans were nevertheless familiar with substance of Roosevelt's ideas. His evidence for that assertion is a quote from a report by Roosevelt compatriot Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish, who reported that his study of public opinion showed that the Four Freedoms . …