f reedom of a ction 197war and fi xated on the inconveniences caused by the lack of certain
goods and by wartime regulations. After shielding the public from
visual images of American casualties, the administration finally
approved the publication of photographs of dead GIs in Life magazine
in late 1943. Th ose sobering reminders of the cost of victory rein-
forced public resolve and steeled Americans for the heavier casualties of
the later battles in both Europe and the Pacifi c.
With Americans at home spared serious deprivations and actually
living better than they had during the Depression, the burden of the
war fell almost entirely upon those called to serve in uniform. Th eir
sacrifi ce in turn led to the one signifi cant piece of social legislation
enacted during the war period. In June 1944 the president signed into
law the GI Bill of Rights, which off ered veterans generous benefi ts for
vocational training and higher education, plus low-interest housing
loans. Social provision was earned through military service, a well-
established American principle, rather than by citizenship alone. And
the gains would take the form of individual social mobility, rather than,
as with earlier New Deal legislation to promote unions or establish a
federal minimum wage, assuring the advance of an entire economic
class. In Great Britain, by comparison, the war led to much broader
social legislation, including comprehensive national health insurance—
but, then, the British people as a whole had suff ered far more during six
years of war, with thousands of civilians killed by German bombs,
many more left homeless, and all suffering privations from severe
wartime rationing.
One other key element helped in the eff ort to keep up home front
morale in the United States—the timing of military operations. Roos-
evelt understood the domestic impact of battlefi eld success. Th us the
Doolittle Raid in April 1942 was staged when the Americans had suf-
fered a string of defeats in the Pacifi c and was intended to demonstrate
that the United States would soon begin to strike back. Operation
TORCH in North Africa aimed to get U.S. forces into combat against
a German enemy toward whom most Americans harbored less ani-
mosity than they did toward the Japanese, thereby forestalling pressure
to shift the balance of eff ort to the Pacifi c. Especially in the fi rst year of
the war, the president took military risks for morale-building reasons, a
necessary part of wartime political leadership in a democratic society.