Mobilizing the Home Front 715Thus when planes from Japanese aircraft carriers
swooped down upon Pearl Harbor on the morning of
December 7, they found easy targets. In less than two
hours they reduced the Pacific fleet to a smoking
ruin: two battleships destroyed, six others heavily bat-
tered, nearly a dozen lesser vessels put out of action.
More than 150 planes were wrecked; over 2,400 sol-
diers and sailors were killed and 1,100 wounded.
Never had American armed forces suffered a
more devastating or shameful defeat. The official
blame was placed chiefly on Admiral Kimmel and
General Short. They might well have been more alert,
but responsibility for the disaster was widespread.
Military and civilian officials in Washington had failed
to pass on all that they knew to Hawaii or even to one
another. On the other hand, the crucial intelligence
about the coming attack that the code breakers pro-
vided was mixed with masses of other information
and was extremely difficult to evaluate.
On December 8 Congress declared war on Japan.
Formal war with Germany and Italy was still not
inevitable—isolationists were far more ready to resist the
“yellow peril” in Asia than to fight in Europe. The Axis
Powers, however, honored their treaty obligations to
Japan and on December 11 declared war on the United
States. America was now fully engaged in another great
war, World War II. (The Great War fought by the previ-
ous generation was now identified as World War I.)
Mobilizing the Home Front
World War II placed immense strains on the American
economy and produced immense results. About 15 mil-
lion men and women entered the armed services; they,
and in part the millions more in Allied uniforms, had to
be fed, clothed, housed, and supplied with equipment
ranging from typewriters and paper clips to rifles,
grenades, tanks, and airplanes. Congress granted wide
emergency powers to the president. It refrained from
excessive meddling in administrative problems and in
military strategy. However, while the Democrats
retained control of both houses throughout the war,
their margins were relatively narrow. A coalition of con-
servatives in both parties frequently prevented the presi-
dent from having his way and exercised close control
over expenditures.
Roosevelt was an inspiring war leader but not a
very good administrator. Any honest account of the
war on the home front must reveal glaring examples
of confusion, inefficiency, and pointless bickering.
The squabbling and waste characteristic of the early
New Deal period made relatively little difference—
what mattered then was raising the nation’s spirits
and keeping people occupied; efficiency was less
than essential, however desirable. But in wartime,
the nation’s fate, perhaps that of the entire free
world, depended on delivering weapons and supplies
to the battlefronts.
The confusion attending economic mobilization
can easily be overstressed. Nearly all of Roosevelt’s
basic decisions were sensible and humane: to pay a
large part of the cost of the war by collecting taxes
rather than by borrowing and to base taxation on
ability to pay; to ration scarce raw materials and con-
sumer goods; to regulate prices and wages. If these
decisions were not always translated into action with
perfect effectiveness, they operated in the direction of
efficiency and the public good.
Roosevelt’s greatest accomplishment was his
inspiring of industrialists, workers, and farmers with a
sense of national purpose. In this respect his function
duplicated his earlier role in fighting the Depression,
and he performed it with even greater success.
The tremendous economic expansion can be seen
in the official production statistics. In 1939 the United
States was still mired in the Great Depression. The
gross national product amounted to about $91.3 bil-
lion. In 1945, after allowing for changes in the price
level, it was $166.6 billion. More specifically, manufac-
turing output nearly doubled and agricultural output
rose 22 percent. In 1939 the United States turned outA poster encourages women to work in munitions to support the
war effort.