862 ★ CHAPTER 22 Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II
Emancipation Proclamation. They embodied, Roosevelt declared in a 1942
radio address, the “rights of men of every creed and every race, wherever they
live,” and made clear “the crucial difference between ourselves and the enemies
we face today.”
Rockwell’s paintings succeeded in linking the Four Freedoms with the
defense of traditional American values. “Words like freedom or liberty,” declared
one wartime advertisement, “draw close to us only when we break them
down into the homely fragments of daily life.” This insight helps to explain
Rockwell’s astonishing popularity. Born in New York City in 1894, Rockwell
had lived in the New York area until 1939, when he and his family moved to
Arlington, Vermont, where they could enjoy, as he put it, “the clean, simple
country life, as opposed to the complicated world of the city.” Drawing on
the lives of his Vermont neighbors, Rockwell translated the Four Freedoms
into images of real people situated in small-town America. Each of the paint-
ings focuses on an instantly recognizable situation. An ordinary citizen rises
to speak at a town meeting; members of different religious groups are seen at
prayer; a family enjoys a Thanksgiving dinner; a mother and father stand over
a sleeping child.
The Four Freedoms paintings first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post
early in 1943. Letters of praise poured in to the magazine’s editors. The govern-
ment produced and sold millions of reprints. The paintings toured the country
as the centerpiece of the Four Freedoms Show, which included theatrical pre-
sentations, parades, and other events aimed at persuading Americans to pur-
chase war bonds. By the end of its tour, the Four Freedoms Show had raised
$133 million.
Even as Rockwell invoked images of small-town life to rally Americans
to the war effort, however, the country experienced changes as deep as at
any time in its history. Many of the economic trends and social movements
that we associate with the last half of the twentieth century had their roots
in the war years. As during World War I, but on a far larger scale, wartime
mobilization expanded the size and scope of government and energized the
economy. The gross national product more than doubled and unemploy-
ment disappeared as war production finally conquered the Depression. The
demand for labor drew millions of women into the workforce and sent a tide
of migrants from rural America to the industrial cities of the North and West,
permanently altering the nation’s social geography. Some 30 million Ameri-
cans moved during the war, half going into military service and half taking
up new jobs.
World War II gave the country a new and lasting international role and
greatly strengthened the idea that American security was global in scope and
could only be protected by the worldwide triumph of core American values.