V Was For Victory Book

Fairly informative but consistently infuriating. According to Blum, what was wrong with American culture during the Second World War was that it wasn't socialist enough or as enlightened as a college professor would have liked it to be. Any references to movies, comic books, or literature produced during the war are accompanied with the adjectives "banal" and "trite", unless they advocated a new one-world government or a cooperative republic, in which case they were "insightful." Politicians who he disagrees with are "simple-minded" or "craven", but he praises the "efficient" Soviet Union (this book was written in 1976), and celebrates the efforts of the communists under Mao (as did former Republican Presidential Candidate Wendell Willkie, oddly enough, in his 1944 bestseller "One World"). In the Epilogue, as if in peroration, he sporadically inserts the lyrics to "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds (what could be more banal than that already tired trope!).

The title refers to Blum's contention that the nation's only goal during the war, as articulated by Roosevelt, was to win, and not to reshape the postwar order in Blum's vision. This is unarguably true.

So, ignoring the mini-aneurysms this book constantly sparked in my head, what did I learn? I learned about the extensive battles surrounding the Office of War Information (OWI), which disseminated propaganda at home and abroad (at least until Congress cut off its domestic funding in 1943). Blum critiques former newspaperman Elmer Davis, its director, for relying too much on private ad-men and not enough on its own, governmental copy, but mentions off-hand that the Domestic Branch once had 12 separate regional headquarters and received millions in funds. That sounds like an extensive operation. (Blum also reviews each press release as if it was an attempted European art-film, and declares them uniformly "simple-minded.") I also learned about some interesting attempts by businesses to profit from the war. Gimbel's department stores, for instance, borrowed $21 million to buy up nylon and silk hose in 1942 before they were rationed, then sold them off for two years in a market bereft of competitors. Coca-Cola and Wrigley's Gum got their products listed as "war essentials," so they could be sold directly to soldiers and not be subject to materials limits.

Overall though, unless you're a college professor from the 1970s, I imagine this book will be more agitating than stimulating.