America During World War II

Saturday June 6, 2009 marked the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion that stormed the beaches in Normandy, France. There were numerous American casualties in that battle. As I was thinking of that momentous event, I was thinking how different of a society America was during that day in contrast to America today. Everything was geared toward the war effort during the 1940's. President Roosevelt, all our elected officials, as well as the media knew what type of enemy America was facing when we fought against the Japanese and the forces against Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. Americans knew they had to band together to win that war.

Everything that the America media promoted was for winning the war. I heard radio talk show host Michael Savage say a few years ago if the America media then were like the American media today, we'd all be speaking German. He is correct. We couldn't afford to have a media sympathetic to Adolf Hitler and his cronies. It was that perilous. Americans were encouraged to sacrifice on their part for this war effort. Americans were encouraged to purchase war bonds to help finance the war. There was rationing taking place on all kinds of goods such as rubber and metal for example. We had to use it to build up our war machine. Industries such as General Electric, General Motors, and Ford for example had to convert their industries to a wartime industry. Instead of producing domestic goods that Americans liked to use for themselves, they were making products such as airplanes, guns, etc. to use in our fight for freedom around the world.

We also had a government that believed in winning wars. World War II was actually the last war that we fought that we won. We supplied our troops with the weapons they need to defeat the government. Our government didn't court-martial our soldiers for supposedly murdering a German or Japanese civilian, like we've done in today's Iraq War. Our media didn't question the type of interrogations methods that were used to prosecute war criminals. Also we didn't give war criminals a U.S. attorney to represent them in a war crimes trial. Also, we didn't establish some type of prison camp such as Gitmo in Guatanamo Bay, Cuba and leave them there for several years before we tried them in military tribunals. Following World War II, our government quickly established a tribunal to prosecute the German and Japanese War criminals in the Nuremberg Trials, for example. We didn't allow those types of prosecutions to linger around in one administration and pass it on to another presidential administration.

There were also many war movies made during World War II in support of the war effort. It seemed mainstream America as well as our American institutions had a keen sense of patriotism that's missing in our institutions today. Today with the wars we fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have not had the support we've needed from the media to fight and win those wars. It takes a united war effort on all fronts in America to be successful. Abraham Lincoln made a famous quote that we need to heed today: "United we stand, divided we fall."