On the Political Beliefs and Demographics of Americans during World War II

Was World War II a moral crusade?

Tonight, Americans across the country are mourning and celebrating the D-Day Invasions of Normandy. It is probably the most famous battle in World War II that Americans were involved in. Politicians like Joe Biden are quick to suggest that these men were fighting for the principles which would only become politically realized decades later. Freedom, equality, democracy, and above all, anti-Racism. For the Nazis, in our modern mythos, are the embodiment of the greatest evil — prejudice. Furthermore, there is an idea that the U.S. Army was something of a diverse fighting force. Both of these ideas, for all of the importance they hold in our culture, are lacking severely in evidence. In fact, there’s a great deal of evidence to suggest the contrary. That America’s active combat units during WWII were potentially even whiter than the French and English armies, and that these soldiers would likely be lambasted as being Nazis by our current standards of what a “Nazi” is.

One of the most eye-opening stats of World War II (there are a lot) is that of some 400,000 Americans who died in World War II, only 780 of them were Black. This isn’t terribly surprising — 98.7% of our enlistees were White, and 87% of those joining the military in general. Those Blacks who did join were generally not assigned combat roles for various reasons. Often, they were not seen as up to par. However, the issue of the U.S. Army still being segregated also played a role. African Americans also account for a disproportionately high number of military executions during the war. Obviously having a criminal element in your army is bad, but at a time where your enemy could use it as propaganda is even worse. The long history of generals discussing how bad Black soldiers are is really worth a post in its own right, but it is clear that Black units in active combat opened a whole can of worms. So black people were mostly missing on the front lines. The presence of other minority groups was negligible, as you can read in the linked statistics above. Not surprising when America at this time was around 90% White.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, of these White GIs, Southerners were overrepresented, putting salt in the wound. But, I can’t find any hard evidence for this, so I’ll let it be. For now, let’s talk about what these soldiers believed. About race, and about the war itself.

It should come to no one’s surprise that Americans in 1944 were more racist than they are today, but a lot of people think it was mostly a southern phenomenon. It was more prevalent in the South, but even Yankees were very open racists. 85% of Southern GIs and 75% of Northern GIs were opposed to desegregation of the military. And Americans did not immediately realize the errors of their ways after World War II. Even by 1958, almost one and a half decades after D-Day, 96% of White Americans were opposed to miscegenation.

Furthermore, American immigration policy during the war still did not allow non-whites to become naturalized. It wouldn’t be until 1952 that this would be removed, and it wouldn’t be until the infamous Hart-Celler Immigration Act passed in 1965 that quotas favoring European, particularly Northwestern European immigrants, would be abolished. It should be perfectly clear that the experience of World War II was not what changed these people’s opinions. There’s no denying that during the 1940s certain academics and political figures began to privately pivot away from racial politics, but as far as mass politics went it was really more of a Cold War phenomenon.

As far as views on the war go, American GIs did not view World War II very differently from World War I. It was a conventional war. Hitler’s main offense was being a “warmonger” like the “Mad Kaiser”, it had little to do with Fascism. In fact, only around 15% of American GIs interpreted the war in moral terms such as defeating Fascism or securing Franklin Delano’s “Four Freedoms”¹. Certainly, it is unlikely any soldiers other than ethnic Jews were fighting to “Save the Jews”, as the Holocaust was mostly just a hazy rumor before the latest stages of the war. Even FDR was skeptical of it, dismissing the claims coming out of Europe as "Jewish wailing" and "sob stuff". In fact, FDR, for all of his flaws, was probably more antisemitic than Americans commonly accused of being “Nazis” like Charles Lindbergh. Truman also had some negative things to say about Jews, that they were selfish. He had negative opinions on Blacks too, but they seem to have remedied during the late 40s.

I would strongly recommend reading the rest of that article to get the full picture on FDR’s racial views. The complaints the Germans had against Jews? “Specific and understandable”. Pridefully boasting about his lack of Jewish blood. Asians? Non-assimilable due to their racial alienness (albeit, this was 1920s FDR, not 1940s FDR, but I think he had some race realist private statements during the war as well). And the Jews always complain about the Jewish quotas Roosevelt helped instill at Harvard. Because god forbid you don’t want your university to be 75% Jewish. They’re the same way talking about Wall Street. Like, all of these “WASPy” investment firms Jews like Jordan Belfort talk about, they were not WASPy at all. They had huge numbers of Jews, they just didn’t want to be 80% Jewish. Because Jews have a thing about hiring each other. All of those stories about “WASP country clubs” rejecting Jews? Hmm, maybe sometimes they were true, but sometimes it was literally German Jewish country clubs rejecting Eastern European Jews. They’re rather “Cluster A” if you catch my drift. But I digress…

The crown jewel of “WWII GI statistics” is probably this: That 90% of White Americans in 1943 would rather lose the war than give full equality to the Negro. This seems to contradict everything we see on TV about World War II. Both that Americans were “past racism” (outside of the South), but also that Americans cared deeply about winning a war they really did not have to worry nearly as much about as people in the actual regions where fighting was going on and where German invasion was remotely possible.

And don’t forget, a lot of Americans viewed the war itself as racial. The Japanese were the ones who got Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese were a great whirlwind of the east which looked to uproot the colonial European powers. African Americans even looked at Japan with admiration for this. Du Bois was a retarded socialist who turned Maoist, but Garvey is a BASED BLACK MAN!!! On a side note, do you guys remember when people used to constantly post that picture on iFunny of the White guy reading a Robert E. Lee biography in bed with a Black girl reading a Marcus Garvey biography? I wish we still got to see quality content like that, but it has the ‘federate flag in it so it’d get banned these dark days. Let’s get back to our main topic!

Oh yeah, also, internment was pretty justified in my opinion. It was a response to the Niihau Incident, wherein three Japanese-Hawaiians violently collaborated with a crashed Japanese pilot during Pearl Harbor. Japanese-Americans, and especially Japanese Hawaiians, did not have much reason to be loyal to America. Most of them were not citizens and would never be capable of gaining citizenship. While those born here were granted citizenship, they were hardly viewed as “Americans” by surrounding Whites. A lot of them lived in Hawaii, which was barely Americanized in the first place.

American propaganda even seems to negatively racialize Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler is usually depicted with black hair and black eyes, while in real life he had brown hair and blue eyes. A lot of people I meet today don’t even know that Hitler had blue eyes, and assume that he was brown-eyed and thus a hypocrite. Mussolini, as you can see up here, looks very swarthy and with big lips. Quite Italophobic if you ask me…

And if any of you are vintage cartoon-maxxers like me, you’d know that the racist caricatures did not extend exclusively to our wartime enemies. They were always making fun of the local Melanesians and whatnot in those cartoons. Then again, it’s not really “making fun of” when it’s just straight up true.

Remember that during World War I, what we today view as a “conventional war”, there was constant propaganda about how Germany was an “enemy to democracy”, so don’t get fooled by anti-German propaganda seemingly agreeing with the idea that the war was a moral crusade. Propaganda *always* depicts war as a moral crusade, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the common view.

Yes… Civilization is truly in danger of the “Mad Kaiser”. Civilization will fall if we let Germany invade Pola— I mean… Belgium… I meant Belgium…

So why has this myth been so effective? World War II veterans don’t seem very outspoken against it. The reason is simple. People’s memories are poor, and biased. You probably like to forget political beliefs you had in the past which you disagree with now. You probably don’t often think about your “libertarian phase”, and that was maybe only a decade or a decade and a half ago at most. For some of you, only a few years ago. A 50 year old man isn’t gonna dwell a lot on political views he had when he was 20, views which are now “not cool”. Especially when, at the time, his views were not out of the ordinary. If you were Liberal a long time ago and you are still a Liberal, you will probably imagine yourself younger as having the same views you do now, even if you don’t. Even if Liberals back then would be considered radical conservatives or racists in the present day.

The role of Hollywood propaganda has also drilled this idea into people’s heads. Soldiers were probably not opposed to the idea that they had fought to “save the world” which was in every movie and book. So they accepted it. Why would they think critically about this? All is good. They know about the Holocaust now, even if they most certainly didn’t back as a soldier, and they know that the Holocaust was happening (?) when they were a soldier. So they map that onto their real experiences as a soldier.

Talk to old people today and a lot of them will not remember ever having been racist, even though as you saw before they probably were. All of this is obviously doubly effective for people who have no memory of World War II. They have no memory other than a false memory. The memory of putting themselves in the shoes of soldiers, peasants, and camp prisoners that endless movies, books, and school assignments have coerced them into doing.

Goodnight, guys.

1. McDougall, Walter. The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America's Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. 224-225