3/30/2020
In Fighting Covid-19, Remember That America’s WWII Mobilization Was Hardly Flawless
Rounduptags: World War II, FDR, Donald Trump, coronavirus, defense production act
Richard B. Frank is the author of Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War, Volume I: July 1937-May 1942 and presidential counselor at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.
President Trump on Friday invoked the Defense Production Act, ordering General Motors to manufacture ventilators for the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, though the company says the project was already underway. The president’s move came after weeks of debate over whether the government should impress private industry into producing health-care supplies in the emergency.
Though the Defense Production Act is a Korean War-era statute allowing the government to compel companies to aid the country in time of crisis, the law is rooted in America’s mobilization during World War II. Much of the recent discussion about directing industry to join the coronavirus fight seems to have been driven by a hazy, golden-hued memory of that wartime mobilization. The subject deserves to be considered instead in all its complex reality.
Certainly, the dominant portrait of leaders and people working together to produce America’s stunning accomplishments is valid, but accompanying this central reality was a counterpoint of fumbles, failures and even an occasional fiasco that can inform and temper our current perceptions. How Americans surmounted those stumbles is as much a part of the honor they are due as their amazing achievements.
When the thunderclap of war burst on the United States in December 1941, Americans were staring into an abyss of world domination by Germany, Japan and Italy, not stepping out to march in a certain victory parade. As historian Richard Overy captured the moment: “On the face of things, no rational man in early 1942 would have guessed at the eventual outcome of the war.”
comments powered by Disqus
News
- The Debt Ceiling Law is now a Tool of Partisan Political Power; Abolish It
- Amitai Etzioni, Theorist of Communitarianism, Dies at 94
- Kagan, Sotomayor Join SCOTUS Cons in Sticking it to Unions
- New Evidence: Rehnquist Pretty Much OK with Plessy v. Ferguson
- Ohio Unions Link Academic Freedom and the Freedom to Strike
- First Round of Obama Administration Oral Histories Focus on Political Fault Lines and Policy Tradeoffs
- The Tulsa Race Massacre was an Attack on Black People; Rebuilding Policies were an Attack on Black Wealth
- British Universities are Researching Ties to Slavery. Conservative Alumni Say "Enough"
- Martha Hodes Reconstructs Her Memory of a 1970 Hijacking
- Jeremi Suri: Texas Higher Ed Conflict "Doesn't Have to Be This Way"
Trending Now
- New transcript of Ayn Rand at West Point in 1974 shows she claimed “savage" Indians had no right to live here just because they were born here
- The Mexican War Suggests Ukraine May End Up Conceding Crimea. World War I Suggests the Price May Be Tragic if it Doesn't
- The Vietnam War Crimes You Never Heard Of