Before Pearl Harbor: World War I, the Depression, the New Deal and the Home Front

When the United States entered World War II, it already knew how to fight a war at home. Twenty-five years earlier, in World War I, civilian industry had switched to war production, children had collected scrap, families had planted War Gardens and hung service flags, and the government had sold bonds. The Depression and the New Deal that followed left the country with roads, power grids and a government able to act at scale. The home front of World War II was built in those years.

World War I, 1917–1918

The United States stayed neutral until April 6, 1917, when Congress declared war on Germany.

• Mobilization. Twenty-four million men registered for the draft, and almost 2.1 million Americans went to war in uniform or as spies. People planted War Gardens and canned their harvest, many voluntarily ate less meat, and the government sold Liberty Bonds and Thrift Stamps. The Committee on Public Information "advertised" the war through posters, records, silent films, sheet music and newspapers.
• Service flags. Families hung flags with a blue star for each member serving, replaced by gold for each one lost — a symbol revived in World War II and still used.
• Dissent. Thousands declared themselves conscientious objectors; the government cracked down on dissenters, and some objectors went to prison or special camps.
• Attacks at home. From April 1917 to November 1918, German U-boats sank 200 merchant and naval vessels off the East Coast, shelled Nauset Beach on Cape Cod and carried out a gas attack on a Coast Guard station at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. German agents bombed the U.S. Capitol, blew up a munitions depot in New Jersey and infected horses and mules bound for the front with anthrax and other diseases.

By November 11, 1918, almost 117,000 Americans had died and 204,000 had been wounded, and many more came home with shell shock — what would now be called post-traumatic stress.

The Great Migration and racial violence

Black Americans moved from the agricultural South to Northern industrial cities to fill wartime jobs and escape Jim Crow — the First Great Migration. The North was better, but still hard. Racial violence increased during the war, including thousands of lynchings and a revived Ku Klux Klan; in 1917, deadly riots broke out in East St. Louis, Illinois, and Houston, Texas. Black soldiers came home expecting the respect they had earned and met instead the Red Summer of 1919.

The Roaring Twenties

The United States emerged as a military power and the world's largest economy. Americans spent: on cars that filled a growing road network, on homes in new suburbs, on movies from a Hollywood that now led the world, on radios carrying jazz and news. In Harlem and other places where Black Americans had moved, Black arts, communities and thought flowered. The unregulated stock market rose sixfold between 1921 and 1929. It was also the peak of the Ku Klux Klan, with up to five million members, and of violence against Black communities, including the Tulsa Massacre.

The Great Depression

The stock market crashed in late October 1929. By June 1933, stocks had lost as much as 89 percent of their value and about 7,000 banks — almost a third — had failed; by 1933, unemployment was almost 25 percent. The Dust Bowl drought from 1930 devastated Midwestern farms. Hundreds of thousands became homeless, living in "Hoovervilles" or riding the rails in search of work; World War I veterans marched on Washington for a promised bonus; children went hungry.

A breadline at a soup kitchen in New York City, about 1932. Credit: National Archives and Records Administration.

The New Deal

Franklin D. Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, and spoke directly to Americans through his radio Fireside Chats. The New Deal poured federal money into the economy. The Works Progress Administration, Public Works Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps provided over 10 million jobs, building hundreds of thousands of miles of roads and bridges and thousands of miles of water systems and power grids — improvements that also strengthened national security. By 1936 unemployment had fallen from 25 to 11 percent; after a 1937 downturn, the economy was on solid footing by 1938, though white Americans benefited more than Americans of color. Much of it endures: the minimum wage, the right to unionize, the SEC, the FDIC, Social Security, unemployment insurance, overtime pay and food assistance.

The war did not alone end the Depression, but it sped recovery as Americans found work supplying the Allies and then the U.S. military — and it ended many New Deal programs as their workers left for war jobs and the armed forces.

Sources

Based on "The American Home Front Before World War II: World War I, The Great Depression, and The New Deal," by Megan E. Springate, University of Maryland, for the National Park Service Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education, part of the series The American Home Front and World War II; a work of the United States government in the public domain.