Life on the Home Fronts

The Causes and Consequences of World War II HIST 1301 | History Life on the Home Fronts During World War II, the distance between the home front and the battlefield was sometimes relatively small or nonexistent for European nations. Millions of people were killed in total war, which was waged with all available resources and no limitations on the type of weaponry or targets. Houses, farms, and industries turned into makeshift battlegrounds as a result of the takeover of land and the resistance activities that followed. Traditional home fronts were found in regions of Africa and the Americas that were remote from real conflict. There was an explosion of partisan resistance organisations, with the Dutch, French, Polish, Soviet, and Yugoslavian groups being the biggest. Hitler issued his "Night and Fog Decree" on December 7, 1941, in response to this opposition, ordering everyone posing a threat to German security to vanish into the darkness and fog. Consequently, the surrounding populace suffered hundreds of vicious retaliations for their resistance. In October 1941, German forces massacred 2,700 Serbians in Kragujevac as reprisal for a partisan attack that claimed the lives of 10 German troops and injured another twenty-six. Sometimes, such cruelty attracted additional opponents. For instance, Josip Broz Tito was able to organise and command 650,000 people against the Germans in Yugoslavia, sever 35 German divisions, and destroy 18,000 supply trains as a result of the Germans' brutality. The Germans in the Soviet Union had to contend with some 150,000 partisans. When railway workers in the Netherlands went on strike in the winter of 1944 in support of Allied offensives, the Germans responded by cutting off their food supply, which resulted in thirty thousand fatalities from famine. Depending on their ethnicity, social class, and area of residence (rural vs. urban), as well as the status of the national economy, Europeans' experiences under German occupation differed widely. Food shortages, rationing, and illicit markets plagued much of Europe as resources were directed towards the Germans and away from local inhabitants. German strategy aimed to mainly preserve the economies of the more industrialised nations while directing them towards German requirements. For instance, in Norway, German civilian administrator Josef Terboven held the position of minister president under Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling. The nation's economy shifted entirely in favour of Germany, and it lost all of its trading partners outside. Rationing became necessary as a result, leaving just roughly 40% of Norwegian production available for consumption by Norwegians. In nations with less developed economies, raising output was challenging. Workers were lost as a result of being sent to labour in Germany or dying. Production of civilian products was further hindered by the fact that up to twelve million forced labourers from twenty various nations, primarily in eastern and central Europe, came under German rule. Despite German expectations, only 800,000 tonnes of bread were shipped from eastern Europe to Germany throughout the war, and the local populace frequently experienced famine and hunger. A famine that killed a quarter of a million people in Greece in the winter of 1941–1942 as a result of the confiscation of food killed ninety percent of the newborns. Food and other goods vital to the war effort were rationed, which had an impact on people's quality of life at home around the world. In 1936, the Germans implemented a four-year economic plan; rationing started in August 1939. Their level of living did not significantly change during the first several years of the war, but by early 1945, rationing had become uncomfortable. The Italians also had to get used to rationing, which started in 1939 and gradually reduced living standards. Large-scale protests by Italian workers against these policies occurred in 1943, including in businesses connected to the war effort. Strict rationing was required in the Soviet Union due to the loss of Ukraine and other grain-producing regions. The Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s had seriously damaged the country's agricultural sector, and the war did nothing to reverse the damage. Japan experienced acute food shortages; by 1944, the average person was getting by on eight ounces of rice per day. In the Allies as well, rationing was a reality. Foods including bacon, butter, beef, cheese and eggs were rationed a year after oil and petrol were initially restricted in Britain in 1939. To supply food and control its distribution, the Ministry of Food opened canteens in enterprises and schools across the nation in 1940. August 1941 saw the establishment of the Office of Price Administration in the United States. Three weeks after Pearl Harbour, it started rationing canned commodities, meat, sugar, butter, tyres and petrol. Many countries transferred their kids to safer places overseas. A million British children were evacuated to the countryside or Canada during the bombing of London. Hundreds of thousands of children—and occasionally their civilian parents as well—had been evacuated from major cities by the Germans, the Soviets, and the Japanese by 1942. Eventually, the governments of almost every belligerent took control of their economy, utilising labour and resources to support their military endeavours. The Italian government started intervening directly in the economy in the middle of the 1920s, and by 1939, the country had the secondhighest share of state-owned firms worldwide, behind only the Soviet Union. In 1928, the Soviets imposed central planning and state control over the economy in an effort to quickly industrialise. Approximately one-third of the country's western region, along with the majority of the Soviet industrial base, was captured by the Germans during their invasion. The Soviets had started setting up industrial strongholds east of the Ural Mountains, bracing for war with capitalist countries. In an attempt to preserve their industrial hubs during World War II, they relocated 2.5 million people and 250 industries east of the Urals, beyond the Wehrmacht's grasp. The Soviet Union's production capability steadily recovered its equilibrium and started to produce remarkable outcomes. Germany's 1936–1937 four-year plan saw them through the early war years, with the economy reaching a high gear in 1942. In 1939, the Luftwaffe received 8,300 aircraft; by 1944, that number had skyrocketed to 39,800. In same fashion, British companies started producing tens of thousands of planes during the last stages of the conflict. The Japanese stopped building battleships and cruisers entirely and instead focused on producing planes to protect the country from air strikes. In several countries, government initiatives to boost output have resulted in almost full employment. With the creation of seventeen million new civilian jobs, the unemployment rate in the United States decreased from fifteen percent in 1939 to one percent in 1943. The productivity and production of workers increased by over 100%. As workers from all across the country, including more and more women and African Americans from the south, entered the defence sector, all these developments changed the face of humanity. The United States produced half of the weapons used in global conflicts. Forty Allied countries, ranging from Brazil and Belgium to Iran and Uruguay, received supplies and food items under the Lend-Lease programme. The primary recipients of these supplies were the Soviet Union and Britain. The enemy's producing capacities were fair game for destruction in a total war. At first, the Allies tried a programme of strategic bombardment of Axis installations in Europe, even if the air strikes on Britain sometimes targeted residential areas. Disrupting industrial output was the intended outcome, although this was not always achieved in practice. Bombs either failed to destroy a plant to the required extent or struck only civilian targets instead of their intended objectives. Between 1940 and 1944, there were about two hundred assaults against Naples. Similar to Germany's nocturnal bombing attacks against England, the Royal Air Force also carried out these operations over German cities. Over a thousand British and American bombers attacked Dresden over many days in February 1945, dropping firebombs and high explosives on the city's centre, destroying much of it and killing over twenty-five thousand people. A portion of these bombing raids were intentionally directed on civilian objectives. It was obvious that air attacks were dangerous for people. During the Battle of Britain, airstrikes caused 86,000 injuries and 60,000 deaths among British citizens. In all, Germany suffered 800,000 injuries and 305,000 fatalities throughout the war, leaving five million people without a house. Japan was heavily bombed by the Allies as well. Sixty-nine Japanese cities were devastated by the US Air Force. Between 80,000 and 100,000 people were murdered and a million more had their homes destroyed during the raid on Tokyo in March 1945 alone. Japan was on the brink of economic disaster by 1945. However, life was not limited to rationing and labouring in military factories. Through amusement and diversions, people attempted to preserve some semblance of a normal existence everywhere. They were amused and enlightened by radio broadcasts. The most well-known wartime song in England, "We'll Meet Again," was released in 1939. Jazz was outlawed by the Germans, but American soldiers, or GIs, brought jazz and the jitterbug—a popular dance back home—to the people they encountered wherever they went. Everywhere, films were made as diversion and propaganda. Propaganda was a major theme in Soviet, Japanese, Italian, and German cinema. The majority of German films had heroic themes and were pro-war, with heavy doses of antiSemitic propaganda. The Japanese generally avoided diverting attention from the war effort. The hours of bars were shortened to discourage pointless activities, while movie theatres stayed open. Propagandistic and pro-war Japanese films first appeared in 1937, with Marching Song, a film about the conflict in China. Many Japanese films, starting in 1941 and continuing often afterward, highlighted Korean volunteers who valiantly aided Japan's larger goal. In 1944 and 1945, attendance at movie theatres rose by 50% in Britain and to all-time highs in the United States. Racist presumptions about Japanese people had been sparked by the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbour, and there was widespread concern that Japanese Americans in the US may be involved in sabotage or espionage. President Roosevelt gave military commanders on the West Coast the authority to bar anybody judged a threat to national security from entering regions designated for military use by Executive Order 9066, which was issued in February 1942. As a result, from 1942 until 1946, tens of thousands of Japanese and Japanese American families were forcibly relocated into 10 camps run by the War Relocation Authority. Many of the American residents who were detained in these camps were compelled to leave behind their homes and places of business, and the majority of them never got them back. The camps' circumstances were dire. Men were frequently transported to other areas for questioning and inquiry, and families were split apart. The majority of internees obeyed because they wanted to demonstrate their allegiance to the US. Some even signed up to volunteer for the army, which they later joined. Some, on the other hand, felt deceived and condemned the US. During and after the war, a smaller group was sent back to Japan because they were considered uncooperative. The federal court system gave the relocation's constitutionality another look in the early 1980s, notwithstanding the U.S. Supreme Court's 1944 ruling to the contrary. The convictions of many Japanese Americans who had been imprisoned in the 1940s for disobeying the executive order were reversed, and in one instance, they were vacated. The United States citizen Fred Korematsu battled for forty years against the violation of his civil rights after being detained in 1942 for disobeying the exclusion order. In the 1980s, his conviction was among many that were ultimately reversed. The United States government issued an official apology to those who had been detained in 1988, and each survivor received $20,000 in compensation. Korematsu stated, "I'll never forget my government treating me like this," during a 2000 interview. And if anyone else appears to be the enemy of our nation, I really hope that this will never happen to them. Though Brazil was an exception, the majority of Latin American nations were forced to deal with the terrible effects of the war. Everyone was increasingly reliant on commerce with the US and experienced price restrictions, rationing, and shortages as a result of the lack of necessities on the home front. Certain regions saw heightened economic prospects domestically, like Panama, where the canal experienced significant surges in traffic during the war due to the movement of products across seas. When Africans joined the army opposing Nazism, Africa not only became a theatre of war in its northern territories but was also dragged into World War II. During the conflict, over a million Africans served as labourers for colonial armies or as combatants in Europe, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Most received significantly less pay than troops from White Europe and were forced into the military. The resources of Africa could be used for the war effort since European nations had colonised the whole continent. For example, the production of critical commodities like coal, tin, rubber, and food depended heavily on African labour. Colonial governments were compelled to cope with dissatisfaction over price increases, tax increases, inflation, and economic control due to the mobilisation of African communities for support. The continent's growing urbanisation also gave people more freedom to express themselves and criticise colonialism. Under Charles de Gaulle, Brazzaville served as the capital of Free France, the nation's gathered colonial lands, where racism and oppression were clearly visible problems. Many Africans believed that their devoted service to the Allies served as a prerequisite for greater freedom and self-determination following the war.