884 ★ CHAPTER 22 Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II
socialism, and the New Deal and by identifying economic planning with a loss
of freedom, he helped lay the foundation for the rise of modern conservatism
and a revival of laissez-faire economic thought. As the war drew to a close, the
stage was set for a renewed battle over the government’s proper role in society
and the economy, and the social conditions of American freedom.
THE AMERICAN DILEMMA
The unprecedented attention to freedom as the defining characteristic of
American life had implications that went far beyond wartime mobilization.
World War II reshaped Americans’ understanding of themselves as a people.
The struggle against Nazi tyranny and its theory of a master race discred-
ited ethnic and racial inequality. Originally promoted by religious and eth-
nic minorities in the 1920s and the Popular Front in the 1930s, a pluralist
vision of American society now became part of official rhetoric. What set
the United States apart from its wartime foes, the government insisted, was
not only dedication to the ideals of the Four Freedoms but also the principle
that Americans of all races, religions, and national origins could enjoy those
freedoms equally. Racism was the enemy’s philosophy; Americanism rested
on toleration of diversity and equality for all. By the end of the war, the new
immigrant groups had been fully accepted as loyal ethnic Americans, rather
than members of distinct and inferior “races.” And the contradiction between
the principle of equal freedom and the actual status of blacks had come to the
forefront of national life.
Patriotic Assimilation
Among other things, World War II created a vast melting pot, especially for
European immigrants and their children. Millions of Americans moved out
of urban ethnic neighborhoods and isolated rural enclaves into the army and
industrial plants where they came into contact with people of very different
backgrounds. What one historian has called their “patriotic assimilation”
differed sharply from the forced Americanization of World War I. While the
Wilson administration had established Anglo-Saxon culture as a national
norm, Roosevelt promoted pluralism as the only source of harmony in a
diverse society. The American way of life, wrote the novelist Pearl Buck in an
OWI pamphlet, rested on brotherhood—the principle that “persons of many
lands can live together... and if they believe in freedom they can become a
united people.”