Peter Karsten – Encyclopedia of War and American Society

Автор: Peter Karsten
Название книги: Encyclopedia of War and American Society
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Военная история
Страницы: 1333
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

The impact of war on American society has been extensive throughout our nation's history. War has transformed economic patterns, government policy, public sentiments, social trends and cultural expression.

SAGE Reference is proud to announce the Encyclopedia of War and American Society. This Encyclopedia is a comprehensive, highly-credentialed multidisciplinary historical work that examines the numerous ways wars affect societies. The three volumes cover a wide range of general thematic categories, issues, and topics that address not only the geopolitical effects of war, but also show how the U.S. engagement in national and international conflicts has affected the social and cultural arena.

Key Features
Explores and analyzes three types of effects of war―direct effects, interactive relationships, and indirect effects―to illustrate the range of connections between war and American society
Probes the correlations between our wartime expeditions and the experiences of the greater American society not limited to just the war years but also demonstrates how the wartime event impacted society after the conflicts ended
Offers readers a host of documents including passages from letters, diaries, autobiographies, official documents, novels, poems, songs, and cartoons, as well as images, graphs, and a number of tables of relevant data, surveys, and public opinion polls to extend their research capabilities
Concentrates mostly on the last 100 years to give more coverage on this often neglected wartime era
Key Themes

Arts and Culture
Civil-Military Relations
Economy and Labor
Education (both military and civilian)
Environment and Health
Journalism and Media
Law and Justice
Military Leaders and Figures
Planning, Command and Control
Race, Gender, and Ethnicity
Religion
Science and Technology
Veterans' Issues and Experiences
The Wars themselves and their civilian and military leaders
The Encyclopedia of War and American Society is a must-have reference for all academic libraries as well as a welcome addition to any social science reference collection

This encyclopedia includes substantial essays on the wars
Americans have fought, their civilian and military leaders, and
their major military institutions. It goes well beyond those
subjects, however, in two significant ways. First, it probes the
connections between our wartime expeditions and the experiences
of the larger American society. This exploration is not
limited to years of war; it also includes discussions of those
aspects of society that bear the marks of wartime experience
after the conflicts end. Second, in the third volume, the encyclopedia
offers the user a host of documents (in a set of
appendices that also includes a detailed chronology and extensive
bibliography) linked to the entries that precede the
appendixes. These documents include passages from letters,
diaries, autobiographies, official documents, novels, poems,
songs, and cartoons, as well as a number of tables of data, surveys,
and public opinion polls. All are intended to extend the
research capabilities of the user and serve as illustrations and
evidence of the points made by the authors of the articles in
the body of the encyclopedia.
My four associate editors and I have written several of
the entries that fall within our own fields of expertise. Many
experts in other fields have responded to our call, contributing
the balance of the articles. In this way, we believe that we
have produced a comprehensive, highly credentialed multidisciplinary
historical work covering a wide range of general
thematic categories, issues, and topics. They are, in alphabetical
order:
Arts and Culture
Civil–Military Relations
Economy and Labor
Education (both military and civilian)
Environment and Health
Journalism and Media
Law and Justice
Planning, Command and Control
Race, Gender, and Ethnicity
Religion
Science and Technology
Veterans’ Issues and Experiences
The Wars themselves and their civilian
and military leaders
The articles in these areas range from the general to the
specific. Some, for instance, are overviews—for example,
those on the conflicts Americans engaged in from the colonial
era to the present, and those relating war to the economy,
religion, civil–military relations, film, music, art,
literature, theater, the media, and the environment. The
later articles are meant to be guideposts for researchers
interested in the various subject areas addressed in the encyclopedia.
Others, shorter and more focused—such as those
on specific individuals, novels, celebrations, or films (like
Ethan Allen Hitchcock, The Red Badge of Courage,
Memorial Day, and The Deer Hunter)—serve to provide
greater depth and detail on these themes and subjects.
Some articles are more overtly related to American society
in wartime, for instance, the entry on Victory Gardens,
the public program established by the government to
encourage individuals on the home front to plant vegetable
gardens to supplement the nation’s food supply. The articles
more closely related to military history—such as those on
the wars themselves or on specific phenomena within the
services—include the Racial Integration of the Armed
Forces, the role of Women in the Military, and the development
of triage and emergency surgical care in MASH
Units; these entries all address the social context and effects
of the specific subject on the military and the American pub-
lic. Thus, the article on the Cold War examines such topics
as the public concern and hysteria over the superpowers’
nuclear buildup and the censorship crusades instituted during
this time, as well as the economic, ideological, and cultural
elements of Cold War “containment” strategy
(including the Marshall Plan, Radio Free Europe, and
the Fulbright Program), and specific events, reactions,
and measures taken (e.g., the Korean War and Vietnam
War). Subjects and events only touched upon in the Cold
War entry—the Military–Industrial Complex and
American Field Service, for example—are explored in
other articles (indicated at the end of each article under
Related Entries). Those links lead users to societal connections
not covered in detail in the larger articles, providing a
network of cross-referenced content that will illuminate the
larger historical context for each topic.
• • •
Wars affect societies in a number of ways. Direct effects can be
traced as straightforward, tangible, or causal connections
between military engagement and people, places, institutions,
and societal attitudes. Interactive relationships occur when
the social, political, and cultural contexts affect how a war is
waged, which, in turn, may create subsequent changes in both
the military and the society at large. Indirect (unintended or
“second-effect”) consequences result from less straightforward
connections, such as demographic changes resulting from
wartime conscription or new trends in film or literature resulting
from protest movements; these changes frequently occur
some time after the war has ended. The analysis below
explores these types of effects in more detail, offering examples
from the encyclopedia’s entries (titles of which are indicated
in boldface at their first mention) to illustrate the range
of connections between war and American society.
Direct Effects
One of the more obvious and direct ways wars affect society
is the potential for the devastation of private property, public
infrastructure, and lives inherent in the act of waging war.
Territory rich in resources and inhabitants can be absorbed
into an enemy’s borders or into one’s own. The human casualties
are not limited to the death of a loved one in combat—
American combatants have suffered from diseases contracted
during their days in the service, with appalling death
rates (at least until World War II). Moreover, Prisoners of
War (POWs) can return home maimed with physical or psychological
injuries (such as post-traumatic stress disorder
and combat fatigue, discussed in the article on Psychiatric
Disorders, Combat Related), or with both.
Less pernicious alteration can occur, such as those in the
mentalities of those who served during the Revolutionary
War: those whose units operated for significant periods outside
of their own states, be they from state militias or states’
regimental line units of the Continental Congress, underwent
a rapid change in their outlook, quickly adopting a
more cosmopolitan view of the world. They became more
conscious of the value of a more powerful federal union than
did locally deployed veterans. The more widely deployed
veterans also were the prime movers in the creation of the
highly federalist Society of the Cincinnati immediately
after the war, and were also far more supportive of the adoption
of the proposed federal Constitution in the late 1780s
than the militia that stayed close to home.
Two caveats should be noted about these types of direct
effects. First, although many who served experienced
changes in their physical or psychological well-being as a consequence
of their service, other changes attributed solely to
being in the military during wartime have more complex
causes—partly rooted deep in the experiences of childhood,
adolescence, or young adulthood. A number of studies
demonstrate this: that some individuals undergoing changes
during wartime military service do possess “predispositions,”
which can lead to such mental or emotional transformations
during wartime as increased sexual promiscuity during and
after war, a propensity to desert or go absent-without-leave,
to abuse drugs and alcohol, to be susceptible to neuro-psychiatric
illness, and to commit crimes after leaving the service.
A second caveat relates to temporary changes that are
often represented as being more permanent than they really
are. One of these effects relates to the rise in the percentage
of women in the work force during wartime. The “Rosie the
Riveter” phenomenon during World War II was real
enough, but it was not the primary cause of the continuing
rise in the percentage of American women entering the work
force after the war. That trend had been under way for more
than half a century before the war, and the unprecedented
increase of women working outside the home—caused by
the drafting of millions of men for the war—reversed itself
almost completely once the war ended and men returned to
their homes and jobs. Furthermore, social psychologists and
sociologists (as well as GI cartoonist Bill Mauldin) noted
declines among GIs in their levels of “authoritarianism”
(respect for authority) during World War II. Many did not
care for the “hurry-up-and-wait” practices of the services or
for the orders and treatment they got from many of the “90-
day wonders” who served as their superior officers. Similarly,
race relations after the racial integration of the armed services
clearly were better in the foxholes than they had been in
civilian life or the barracks. But these and several other combat-
zone changes in attitude declined, according to social
scientists, once the men were no longer in the combat zone
or had been discharged into civilian life.
Interactive Relationships
The relationship between war and American society is also, at
times, interactive; that is, the very way that we wage war has
been affected by American society (differing, of course, in
characteristics from one wartime experience to the next).
This is clearly the case in the raising of America’s military
forces when hostilities were imminent. The general entry on
Conscription and Volunteerism and the more focused
entries on the Colonial Militia Systems, the Preparedness
Movement, Draft Evasion and Resistance, the Selective
Service System, and the Doctor Draft during the Korean
War, and the modern All Volunteer Force together reveal
the different perspectives and tensions between and among
various groups: between those individuals supportive of conscription
(who have claimed that those enjoying the benefits
of life in the United States owe a civic obligation of military
service in times of crisis); those who have preferred to join
only with men of their own sort and community (the volunteer
tradition); and those who have resisted calls for voluntary
action as well as for compulsory measures (as in United
States v. Seeger and Welsh v. United States). In some
wars such resistance has blossomed into massive individual
and collective action. Thus on March 31, 1917, John
Simpson, head of the Farmer’s Union of Oklahoma, wrote to
his senator of the anger that “nine out of ten farmers” felt
toward the federal government’s recent draft legislation; soon
the “Green Corn Rebellion” of tenant farmers in that state
bore out his claim. Others in 1917, and again during the
Vietnam War, urged young draftees to refuse to report for
service, and tens of thousands responded to these calls (evidence
summarized in the Antiwar Movements and
Pacifism entries). Still others have pressed for “national service,”
asking of young men (and conceivably women) that they
fulfill their civic obligations either in the military or in some
comparable nonmilitary public service organization like the
Peace Corps, Vista, or Americorps. It may sound like a truism,
but if so, it is an “interactive” one: The ability of the U.S.
government to raise armies in times of war has always
depended in a large measure on the extent to which
American society supports the war.
The government has responded generally to such indifference
or opposition with efforts to inspire the populace
with Propaganda Posters or films, and to instill enthusiasm
for the war effort (using public speakers to urge
Americans, as the government did during the Cold War, to
respond to the calls of the preachers of Militant Liberty).
The critics have responded with Political Cartoons disparaging
measures taken (or not taken) by the administration
in power. Indeed, active government suppression of
dissent in World War I was the primary inspiration for the
creation of the American Civil Liberties Union.
When large numbers of men have been successfully
compelled to serve, other obvious interactions with society
result. For instance, when the 1940 federal draft law was
enacted, tens of thousands of couples moved to secure
marriage licenses at a faster rate than ever before, clearly
inspired by the law’s exemption of married men. And
when Congress changed this within the year to read “married
men with children,” the birth rate rose sharply nine
months later. The families of those who were drafted had
to adjust to new circumstances. This led many women to
enter the work force during World War II (a larger-scale
case of what had transpired in World War I and the Civil
War as well).
The Military Bases that these personnel were sent to
within the United States, as well as their surrounding communities,
ballooned in size, with both social and economic
consequences. Those on the home front had to cope with
shortages of food and other essentials, with hoarding,
inflated prices, and, eventually, with the Rationing of essentials.
Those returning from their military duties after the
wars sometimes brought War Brides who may not have
been greeted with enthusiasm by their spouses’ families and
hometowns. Those returning to families they had left at the
outset of the war sometimes faced a host of problems in their
marriages, in readjusting to civilian life, and in making a living.
Some marriages ended in divorce. Other reunited couples
responded to the good fortune of the veteran’s survival
and rekindled their love by conceiving a child, which often
produced distinct rises in the birth rate—after the Civil War,
for instance, and especially following World War II, with the
much discussed Baby Boom.
Another example of the interaction of wars and
American society relates to the location and the character of
the war. Those wars fought in our own backyard (the
Colonial Wars, Revolutionary War, War of 1812,
Indian Wars, Mexican War, Campaign against the
Mormons [found under Mormons, Campaign against the],
and, most notably, the Civil War and the decade of
Reconstruction thereafter) were certainly interactive. They
affected noncombatants on the home front in social, physical,
and environmental ways that were more immediate than
the effects of foreign campaigns, and they influenced the
social landscape in clear and specific ways. These wars produced
internment camps for suspected enemy nationals.
And, as the existence of these camps demonstrates, the
dividing line between “the enemy” and “us” sometimes can
be relative or nonexistent. Native Americans, British
Americans, Hispanic Americans, Japanese Americans,
Italian Americans, and German Americans have, at various
times, been regarded as both enemies and Americans. The
Japanese American (and the lesser-known Italian and
German American) internment camps of World War II are
the most familiar to the modern reader, but many suspected
Loyalists were interned during the Revolutionary War.
Moreover, POWs taken during these backyard wars were
often held under deplorable conditions, notably during the
colonial wars, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the
Indian Wars, and the Civil War.
Indirect, “Unanticipated,” or “Second-Effect”
Consequences
Wars have had less obvious but no less significant “secondeffect”
consequences for American society in a host of ways,
some of which are not evident until the aftermath of a given
war. We have already noted the Baby Boom and greater divorce
rates after World War II, but the encyclopedia offers numerous
other examples of these second-effect consequences.
Cultural Effects. A host of cultural changes have flowed
indirectly from our wartime experiences. For instance, an
increased attention to martial tonsorial fashion after major
wars sometimes occurs in the general public, such as the
interest in sporting “sideburns” after the Civil War, and crew
cuts after World War II. The same connection might be
drawn about attire (khakis and dungarees, now known as
jeans). A clear increase in the popularity of Pinups developed
after World War II, culminating in the magazine
Playboy and its imitators. During each amassing of young
men for war, as in the Civil War and the two world wars, the
military encouraged such sports as baseball, boxing, and
football. This appears to have helped boost interest after
these wars in organized sports (see Sport and War), as well
as Wargaming and Military Reenactments (under
Reenactments, Military). With each war, the interest and
demand for toy guns and uniformed toy soldiers have developed.
The same may be said of “GI Joe” action figures and
Captain Marvel Comic Books, as well as comic strips like
The Sad Sack, Beetle Bailey, Steve Canyon, and
Doonesbury.
Both during and after wartime, considerable attention
has been given to war-related themes in music (see Music
and War), theater (see Theater and War and Musical
Theater and War), and literature, including poetry (see
Literature and War). In general, all of these artistic fields
evolved from a patriotic and celebratory form in the nation’s
first 125 years to works that had a more skeptical, indeed,
cynical tone by World War I and thereafter. The manner in
which war has been reported to the public has also changed,
from the earliest representations in popularly displayed
paintings, prints, and lithographs (see Visual Arts and War)
until being mostly replaced by Radio (in World War II),
News Reels, and Photography, which in turn yielded, at
least in part, to film (see Film and War) and Television (see
Television and War). The media (see Media and War)
that provide American society with its information about
warfare now include the older ABC, CBS, and NBC broadcast
companies, and the newer round-the-clock coverage
produced by firms such as CNN, as well as Internet sites and
blogs. Our wars later reappear on television as dramatic or
comic series such as Combat!, M*A*S*H, China Beach, and
historical documentaries, such as Ken Burns’s “The Civil
War” and the products of The History Channel.
Even our everyday language (Language and War) has
been affected. We have been borrowing from and incorporating
military terms and jargon into our lexicon, including
such words and phrases as blitzing, outflank, snafu, and
under siege. The same may be said for the use of war-related
rhetoric by public speakers. A well-known example of this is
when Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt used military
metaphors to evoke steadfast determination against the difficulties
of the Depression in his first inaugural address in
March 1933: “We must move as a trained and loyal army . . .
with a unit of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed
strife . . . I assume . . . the leadership of this great army of our
people . . . to wage a war against the emergency. . . .” Indeed,
Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, administered by
the Army, had some of these qualities.
Veterans Affairs and Experiences. Indirect effects of war
can be seen in many veterans’ organizations themselves,
among them the Society of the Cincinnati, Aztec Club,
Grand Army of the Republic, Veterans of Foreign
Wars, American Legion, Military Order of the World War
(I), American Veterans Committee, AMVETS, the
Disabled American Veterans, Jewish War Veterans,
Vietnam Veterans of America, Vietnam Veterans
against the War, and American GI Forum. Most of these
organizations have engaged in lobbying efforts to secure
veterans’ benefit programs, including the Veterans
Administration and the GI Bills, the construction of
Memorials and Monuments to honor the fallen—among
them Arlington National Cemetery, the World War II and
Korean War memorials, and the Vietnam War Memorial—
and the formal ceremonies of Memorial Day and
Armistice Day.
This process of remembering, like many other warrelated
trends, was contested. Thus, Malcolm Cowley, a
“Lost Generation” veteran of World War I, proposed in 1933
that it was “time to inscribe at the entrance to every veterans’
graveyard and over the tombs of the unknown soldiers,
‘They died bravely, they died in vain.’” Otherwise, celebration
of “the useless deaths of the last war” would mislead
other “generous and loyal men” to relive “the happy illusions”
of the past. He was answered 12 years later by Dixon
Wecter, who wrote of those veterans beginning to return
from the combat zones of World War II: “When the war is
over, he does not want to be called a fool. . . . Whatever the
cost to him personally in this war . . . he wants to know that it
has all been to some purpose.” Related to this subject is the
suggestion that politics frequently favors veterans, a proposition
explored in the entry on Veteran Status and
Electability.
Trends in the physical and socioeconomic mobility of veteran
(and nonveteran “home front”) populations can also be
traced to wartime experiences. A popular song during World
War I began with the line “How ’ya gonna keep ’em down on
the farm, after they’ve seen Paree,” and that held for both
world wars. More than a quarter of all veterans of these wars
moved out of their home counties for work or educational
opportunities upon returning to the United States. Older
inhabitants who had not secured their first jobs during the wars
tended to remain; however, younger men and women who had
not served in the armed services also moved to different counties
(often where the job opportunities they had discovered
during the war existed) in very nearly the same percentages as
their veteran peers. The presence (or absence) in a community
of significant war-related contracts for local businesses significantly
affected the mobility of community’s residents. During
World War II, for example, the correlation between defense
contracting and population decline was striking in the South.
The state with the highest per capita contract dollars granted in
that region was Virginia, which experienced a 4.8 percent
increase in population between early 1940, when such contracts
became abundant nationwide, and late 1943. The lowest
four states in terms of per capita contract dollar rates in those
years—less than half those of Virginia—were North Carolina,
Mississippi, South Carolina, and Arkansas, which all lost an
average of 8 percent of their population
One study found that by 1971, and even 10 years after
the Korean War, the earning ability of white veterans of the
two world wars and the Korean War had slipped slightly
behind their nonveteran peers who had the same levels of
education and entered the same sectors of the workforce.
This was not the case with returning African American veterans,
who had slightly higher earnings than their nonveteran
peers. A greater increase in earning ability can be seen
among Mexican American veterans, whose advancement
was considerably greater than their nonvet peers. The cause
of this greater upward mobility, compared with their nonveteran
peers, seems to have been the training received in service
in both English-language skills—lacking in many
Mexican-American vets before their service—and the regimentation
of military life, which transferred to the civilian
world of trade, business, and the professions (see Latinos in
the Military and African Americans in the Military).
Military Institutions and Affairs. The changes in the
structure of military institutions are among the less obvious
long-term results of our military engagements. The various
service academies and important military postgraduate
schools, such as the Army Industrial College, were created
in response to the experience of the military during various
wars. Likewise, two administrative oversight
boards—the War Labor Board and War Industries
Board—were created during World War I and World War II
to address problems that had been identified in prior conflicts.
Certain changes in the character or structure of
civil–military relations also resulted from indirect effects of
our wartime experience. These types of long-term effects
can be seen in the steady rise (and ultimate control) of
Frontline Reporting, for instance, and the creation of the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA), charged with granting contracts to Think Tanks
and to scientists to help conceptualize and design the warfighting
systems of the next generation. One offshoot of the
research at DARPA, it is worth noting, is the development of
key innovations that led to the Internet. Other long-term
changes in civil–military relations that also can be traced to
such indirect effects are the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878,
which helped to limit how federal forces could be used in
domestic disturbances; the Civil Defense program, which
addressed the increased interest—elevated during the Cold
War—in protecting the civilian population; the War Powers
Resolution of 1973, which sought to limit the power of the
president to commit troops to conflicts and undeclared wars;
the 1986 Goldwater–Nichols Act, aimed at improving
communications and accountability within the armed services
and between the services and civilian leaders; and the
more recent establishment of the Homeland Security
Department, intended to implement and strengthen security
within domestic borders in the aftermath of the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001.