On January 11, 1944, Roosevelt delivered his Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union. In it, he not only reaffirmed his determination to pursue the Four Freedoms for both America and the world. He also articulated the Freedoms anew, especially freedom from want and fear, in the form of an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans. He knew full well that the current Congress would never endorse it. And yet he had good reason to believe that most of his fellow citizens would. He knew from polling data that a majority of Americans, at home and in uniform, saw the war in terms of the Four Freedoms, and understood the struggles of not just the past three years but the past twelve years in terms of extending and deepening freedom, equality, and democracy in America.
Suffering from the flu and unable to go up to Capitol Hill to speak in person, the President sent the text of his message to Congress at midday and then presented it to the American people in a radio broadcast from the White House that evening. As ill as he was, he spoke vigorously and his remarks were reminiscent of a younger man.1
The President began by discussing his recent meetings with Churchill and Stalin at Tehran and the need to translate the wartime alliance into a permanent system of international security. But he soon turned to the subject of the American home front.
After warmly praising the majority of Americans for their labors and sacrifices, Roosevelt tore into the “noisy minority” whose representatives “swarm” around the nation’s capital in selfish pursuit of “profits in money or in terms of political or social preferment.” Warning of the dangers of “such selfish agitation,” he also warned against “Over-confidence and complacency,” for, he said, such an “attitude . . . can kill American boys.” And yet he did more than admonish. To speed victory, but “maintain a fair and stable economy at home,” he recommended five legislative measures to Congress, the first four clearly targeting corporate greed, the fifth evidently directed at labor. Specifically, he called on Congress to: pass a “realistic” revenue act to increase taxes on profits; maintain the law allowing government to renegotiate war contracts to “prevent exorbitant profits and assure fair prices”; approve a law enabling government to more effectively control food prices; renew the Economic Stabilization Act; and enact “a national service law—which, for the duration of the war, will prevent strikes, and . . . make available for war production or for any other essential services every able-bodied adult in this Nation.”2
Strangely, having rejected a “labor draft” when first discussed in 1942, Roosevelt was now advancing it, apparently in response not only to pressure from the War Department to act against the increasing threat of wildcat walkouts and union-sanctioned strikes, but also out of a deepening personal belief that, in light of the sacrifices GIs were making overseas, it was fair and would help war workers secure postwar benefits along with military veterans.
Critically, while Americans generally supported the idea of such a draft, as they always had, labor leaders did not; indeed, they felt betrayed, seeing it as an assault on workers. And yet Roosevelt had said not only that he believed the “five measures together form a just and equitable whole,” but also that “I would not recommend a national service law unless the other laws were passed to keep down the cost of living, to share equitably the burdens of taxation, to hold the stabilization line, and to prevent undue profits.”3
Given his reasonable expectations that the current Congress was not likely to comply, it would seem the whole exercise was simply that, an exercise. But it was not. Getting at just what the President intended, the editors of Time explained it best. Asking why the need for a labor draft now, as opposed to three years earlier, they guessed that the President had “sent his message to Congress and the nation, but another address was written on it in invisible ink: ‘To the Soldiers.’ ” Others should have reached the same conclusion, for FDR immediately went on to chastise Congress for failing to enact legislation guaranteeing “soldiers and sailors and marines . . . the right to vote.”4
The President then looked ahead: “It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known.” And in favor of that he proposed the recognition and adoption of a Second Bill of Rights.5
Recalling the arguments of his 1932 Commonwealth Club speech, Roosevelt said: “This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights . . . They were our rights to life and liberty. As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.” But he continued: “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ ” And evoking Jefferson, the Founders, and Lincoln, he contended that “In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident,” and “We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.” This Second Bill of Rights included:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
In sum, he stated: “All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.”6
An audacious declaration, but Roosevelt did not leave it there. Distinguishing “clear-thinking businessmen” from the rest, he alerted his fellow citizens to “the grave dangers of rightist reaction.” Then, putting Congress itself on the spot, he said: “I ask Congress to explore the means for implementing this economic bill of rights—for it is definitely the responsibility of Congress to do so.” And finally, linking the question of addressing the needs of the veterans to that of “implementing” the new bill of rights in a universal program of economic and social security, he declared: “Our fighting men abroad—and their families at home—expect such a program and have the right to insist upon it.”7
• • •
Congress was not moved, at least not in the direction in which the President had pointed. It not only passed a Revenue Act, which he would dub in his veto message a “tax relief bill providing relief not for the needy but for the greedy.” It overrode his veto. Moreover, Congress once again rejected the Green-Lucas soldier-vote bill and instead approved a “states-rights” bill that became law without the president’s signature.8
The alliance of narrow interests—Republican conservatives, southern segregationists, and corporate elites—continued to exercise a unique capacity to bend, if not deny, the national will. In fact, Congress might also have turned its back on any major initiative for veterans had not, ironically enough, the ultraconservative American Legion made that cause its own.
Determined to secure a veterans bill that would enable returning GIs to reclaim their former lives, but eager not to get one that might reinvigorate the New Deal, Legion leaders latched on to the Roosevelt administration’s diverse plans and drafted their own omnibus bill, one even more generous in its provisions for unemployment, educational assistance, and “farm, home, and business loans.” And to get Congress to pass it, they mobilized their “12,000 posts and 9,500 auxiliary units” in a massive national grassroots lobbying campaign.9
Unable to resist the pressure building “from below,” congressional conservatives worked hard to at least limit the bill’s size and to make sure it would not enhance the authorities or responsibilities of any “New Deal” agencies. Still—testifying to how popular democratic pressures for a fair measure of economic security and opportunity proved hard to contain—what Congress went on to enact would be nothing less than history-making.
Signed into law by FDR in June 1944, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act or “G.I. Bill of Rights” would in the next decade provide 12.4 million veterans with one or more sorts of benefits: 8.3 million collected “readjustment allowances”; 7.8 million received education grants; and 4 million secured “VA-guaranteed loans to finance a home, farm, or business.” It was historic, however, not only because of who and what it covered. One of the most progressive, indeed, transparently social-democratic achievements in American history—a measure beloved, trumpeted, and subsequently lauded by Left and Right—the G.I. Bill was a high-water mark in fulfilling the nation’s purpose and realizing the Four Freedoms. The most democratic war this nation has ever fought produced one of the most democratic initiatives ever—an initiative that would enable a generation to radically transform themselves and their country for the better.10
• • •
In his 1944 State of the Union message, Roosevelt had sounded something like the political warrior he had been in the 1930s. And yet this time he did not come out fighting, apparently physically incapable of doing so. Diagnosed with congestive heart failure that March (a fact kept secret from the American people), he left Washington for an urgently needed monthlong rest. But even after that he guarded his energies for the battles that lay immediately ahead.11
Meanwhile, inspired and encouraged all the more by FDR’s words, liberals and leftists renewed their quest for the Four Freedoms. And the CIO-PAC led the way. Headed by Sidney Hillman, the “PAC” mobilized the political resources of the labor congress and its allies around a broad progressive agenda that it laid out in The People’s Program for 1944. While the “People’s Program” did not call for expanding industrial democracy in the workplace along the lines of either Philip Murray’s or Walter Reuther’s war-industry plans, it clearly proclaimed the CIO’s unwavering support not only for the war effort and the Roosevelt administration, but also for the “full realization of the Four Freedoms” both overseas and at home—the latter by creating a “Full Employment” economy, adopting the “New Bill of Rights,” and guaranteeing the equal rights of women and minorities and overseas GIs.12
Hillman himself worked strenuously to build the PAC. In addition to creating departments for public relations, art work, and a speakers’ bureau, and for black, women’s, and youth affairs, he traveled the country setting up fourteen regional offices, launching voter-registration drives, and organizing conferences, meetings, and rallies. Moreover, he not only arranged an alliance with the progressive National Farmers Union, but also put together an “auxiliary” National Citizens Political Action Committee that enlisted the energies of a vast host of “celebrity” liberals and progressives such as the former U.S. senator George Norris, The Nation editor Freda Kirchwey, The New Republic editor Bruce Bliven, PM columnist Max Lerner, the actor-producer Orson Welles, the black New Dealer Mary McLeod Bethune, the performing artist Paul Robeson, and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Plus, Hillman published a stream of well-written and smartly illustrated pamphlets, guides, and posters (several of the last created by the artist and OWI-veteran Ben Shahn).13
Filled with references to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the Four Freedoms and Economic Bill of Rights, PAC literature highlighted the nation’s postwar prospects and possibilities and professed an “Americanism” that—while acknowledging the country’s record of denying equal rights, especially to blacks—was both welcoming and compelling. Replete with photographs capturing the country’s rural and industrial landscapes and working people’s economic and political energies, the PAC pamphlet This Is Your America celebrated the nation’s diversity. In answer to the question “How, then, can you tell an American?” it replied: “He or she is an American who lives in the United States or any of its possessions, and who believes in our way of life, our Democratic Way”—that is, “He believes that all men are created equal . . . He believes in freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom from fear and freedom from want—for all our people . . . He believes in freedom of opportunity for all men and women . . . He believes in a government of the people, by the people, and most important of all, for the people.” Furthermore, it emphasized that Americans have duties as well. These included defending the rights of all, turning out to vote, and striving “to create a more perfect union.” And in that spirit, true Americans were called on “to destroy prejudice against the foreign-born and the hatred of Negroes and other peoples . . . protect the rights of labor . . . And [create] a lasting peace in which all our people will have jobs at fair wages.”14
While some AFL local councils worked directly with the PAC, the national AFL did not. However, it actively backed FDR’s reelection and its own Post-War Program closely paralleled the CIO’s People’s Program. Reiterating the Federation’s commitment to “the struggle of workers for economic and social democracy” and the “Four Freedoms,” the AFL program called not only for “equal opportunity” and “civil liberties” for all, but also for “1) the establishment of full employment, 2) the expansion of social security, and 3) the creation of a nationwide housing redevelopment program.”15
Working people themselves acted ever more forcefully, staging a record number of walkouts in 1944—though, notably, time lost that year was “the lowest proportionally since the 1920s.” As one worker explained: “Corporations were showing no sense of patriotism or loyalty . . . All the sacrifices were on the part of the workers. When real and pressing grievances arose and there was no solution and management hid behind the no-strike pledge, the people felt that they were justified . . . in forcing a settlement.”16
Moreover, encouraged in their actions by groups ranging from the left-wing League of Women Shoppers to those such as the “General Federation of Women’s Clubs, League of Women Voters, American Association of University Women, Parent-Teachers Association . . . and American Legion Auxiliary,” hundreds of thousands of homemakers were now voluntarily serving as OPA’s “eyes and ears” in helping to enforce price controls.17
Roosevelt acted, too, and in a telling moment showed his solidarity with labor by ordering armed U.S. soldiers to take over the Montgomery Ward Corporation that spring. The reactionary chairman, Sewell Avery, who refused to recognize his workers’ union and repeatedly ignored National War Labor Board settlements, was forcibly removed from his office and the secretary of war was tasked with seizing company plants and facilities in six states. When Sewell sued the government in federal court, he lost.18
Continuing to promote the Four Freedoms and now, too, FDR’s proposed Economic Bill of Rights, liberals and progressives planned specific initiatives to realize them. At New York’s “I Am An American Day” festivities in Central Park that May, Senator Wagner told a “record city crowd” of 1.4 million that the nation’s postwar objectives must include a new “world concert of nations,” the “expansion of social security,” the “promotion of a higher standard of health,” the building of “decent housing,” the provision of “opportunities in education,” “equal opportunity for all . . . regardless of race, creed, or color,” and the “preservation and extension of the great freedoms to think, to speak, to write and to worship without molestation.” And in a four-part National Council of Catholic Men radio series on the Four Freedoms that August, Reverend Brendan Larnen stated that in order to avoid what happened in the wake of the First World War “we must guarantee those freedoms,” and that in view of what Americans were accomplishing in the war effort “Freedom from want is perhaps the easiest to achieve.” He also called for public action to assure that “every man who is willing to earn his economic security be allowed to do so” and that “vested interests and economic royalists” not be permitted to “exploit and victimize us.”19
Prominent African Americans called for initiatives as well. A January 1944 conference of black leaders that included A. Philip Randolph, Walter White, and Mary McLeod Bethune issued a “Declaration by Negro Voters” that, along with reiterating their support for the war effort and insisting that “Victory must crush Hitlerism both at home and abroad,” demanded “Full Citizenship” for “the Negro people.” Furthermore, it declared that “the party or candidate who refuses to help control prices, or fails to support the extension of social security, or refuses to support a progressive program for post war employment, or opposes an enlarged and unsegregated program of government-financed housing, or seeks to destroy organized labor, is as much an enemy of the Negro as is he who would prevent the Negro from voting.”20
Bolstering African-American campaigns for equality and integration, the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal published An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy that same winter. A highly regarded 1,500-page report on race relations commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation before the war and carried out by a biracial research team under Myrdal’s direction, the work not only added scholarly heft to black arguments and demands, but also challenged Americans to live up to their own ideals. Appreciating their widely and deeply shared belief in the “American Creed of liberty, equality, justice, and fair opportunity for everybody,” Myrdal called on Americans to make their nation “the America” they publicly prized, both for their sake and the world’s: “America feels itself to be humanity in miniature. When in this crucial time the international leadership passes to America, the great reason for hope is that this country has a national experience of uniting racial and cultural diversities—and a national theory, if not a consistent practice, of freedom and equality for all.” The “Negro problem,” he concluded, “is not only America’s greatest failure but also America’s incomparably great opportunity for the future.”21
No doubt rattling white southern sensibilities even more, the Supreme Court decided in 1944 in Smith v. Allwright that “all-white primaries” were unconstitutional. And that same year middle-class blacks in South Carolina, joined by some progressive whites, bravely challenged the state’s white power structure by not only organizing the South Carolina Progressive Democratic Party, but also running their own gubernatorial candidate, Osceola McKaine, a black World War I veteran who regularly referred to World War II in his speeches as “the Four Freedoms war.” Plus, if all that were not enough to unsettle Dixie, Roosevelt himself appointed a new Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, who proceeded to order the full integration of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and the crews of twenty-five navy ships.22
Roosevelt did disappoint many on the left that summer when he allowed Democratic Party leaders to talk him into replacing his increasingly progressive Vice President, Henry Wallace, on the presidential ticket with Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri. But FDR was not moving to the right. Truman was a loyal New Deal Democrat who—despite his political origins in Kansas City’s “Pendergast political machine”—had garnered a reputation as a solid figure for his chairing of the “Truman Committee,” the Senate committee that investigated defense contracts. Moreover, Roosevelt made sure that the party’s platform reflected the 1944 Annual Message, and in fact went beyond it.23
• • •
The Democratic Party platform of 1944 declared, with only a bit of exaggeration, “We believe that mankind believes in the Four Freedoms.” And the ensuing campaign would reveal just how compelling the promise of the Four Freedoms and Economic Bill of Rights had become. With little to offer but fear, conservatives went after the President and his supporters with false accusations and vile rumors. Targeting Sidney Hillman in particular, and lacing their remarks with anti-Semitism, Republicans, reactionary southern Democrats, and other right-wingers began to conjure up a new “Red Scare” by charging that the CIO-PAC was dominated by Communists who were out to create a “Soviet America.” Moreover, the Right not only fed public anxieties about FDR’s health, but also spread anew the nasty fiction that the President had known Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor but kept quiet to allow it to force the United States into the war.24
For all its fearmongering, the Republican Party platform actually testified to the popular appeal of FDR’s vision for America by formally embracing central elements of the New Deal—even as it promised to shrink the bureaucracy and reduce taxes. While Republicans accorded state and local governments a greater role in administering them, they called for expanding Social Security, protecting labor’s right to bargain collectively, providing federal aid for medical care and housing, and underwriting a new round of public-works projects. In fact, the Republican presidential nominee, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, not only announced he was in favor of making full employment a “first objective of national policy” but also nearly embraced a national health care system: “We must help to develop a means of assurance of medical service for those of our citizens who need it and cannot otherwise obtain it.”25
• • •
Despite declining health, FDR came out fighting that fall. In speeches, radio talks, and press conferences, he not only responded directly to the red-baiters, whom he rightly portrayed as bigots. He also called for reconversion assistance for “war workers”; insisted that the “right to vote must be open to our citizens irrespective of race, color or creed—without tax or artificial restriction of any kind”; recommended that the FEPC become a permanent government agency; and proposed a TVA-style program of public works for the Missouri Valley. Addressing 125,000 supporters at Soldiers’ Field in Chicago on October 28, he declared: “the American people are resolved that when our men and women return home from this war, they shall come back to the best possible place on the face of the earth—they shall come back to a place where all persons, regardless of race, and color, or creed or place of birth can live in peace and honor and human dignity—free to speak, free to pray as they wish—free from want—and free from fear.” And after repeating the Economic Bill of Rights exactly as he had presented it in January, he said:
Some people . . . have sneered at these ideals, as well as at . . . the ideals of the Four Freedoms. They have said that they were the dreams of starry-eyed New Dealers—that it is silly to talk of them because we cannot attain these ideals tomorrow or the next day. The American people have greater faith than that. I know that they agree with these objectives—that they demand them—that they are determined to get them—and that they are going to get them.26
From Chicago, Roosevelt headed east to Boston. And there, on November 4 at Fenway Park, he spoke proudly of American diversity, as he had before in this city sorely marked by racism and anti-Semitism: “Today, in this war, our fine boys are fighting magnificently all over the world and among those boys are the Murphys and the Kellys, the Smiths and the Joneses, the Cohens, the Carusos, the Kowalskis, the Schultzes, the Olsens, the Swobodas, and—right in with all the rest of them—the Cabots and the Lowells,” adding that “All of these people, and others like them, are the life-blood of America. They are the hope of the world. It is our duty to them to make sure that, big as this country is, there is no room in it for racial or religious intolerance—and that there is no room for snobbery.”27
Three days later Roosevelt won reelection with 25,611,939 votes to Dewey’s 22,013,371. His 53.5 percent of the total vote represented his lowest margin of victory in four presidential contests. And yet it was a solid win. He not only picked up 432 electoral votes to Dewey’s 99, but the Democratic Party, though it lost a seat in the Senate, gained twenty in the House. Moreover, several million GIs had applied for state absentee ballots and 3.2 million of them actually voted—nearly 60 percent of them for FDR.28
• • •
On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt, just three months into his new term and only sixty-three years old, passed away in Warm Springs, Georgia. Asked to provide a short eulogy for nationwide broadcast, the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Robert Sherwood, who had joined FDR’s White House team in 1940 and directed the Overseas Division of the OWI in 1942–44, wrote: “To those of us who knew and loved the President . . . the greatest memory we hold today is the memory of his indomitable good humor—his indomitable courage—his love for our country, his faith in our country . . .” It was that love and that faith, Sherwood stated, that not only enabled Roosevelt to confront the crises of economic depression and war without fear or hesitation, but also made him “one with every man who has fought for our country.” Indeed, Sherwood said: “There wasn’t a moment . . . when he wasn’t spiritually on the front line with the men who were fighting for freedom.” And finally, after urging Americans to honor their fallen President by “pledging renewed and increased devotion to the country and cause which he served so valiantly and for which he gave his life,” Sherwood declared: “We do not surrender to Death, as we would not surrender to the Nazis or Japanese. We continue to stand up and fight for our country and our cause. We continue to fight for Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear.”29
FDR’s death shocked Americans. One Detroit woman exclaimed: “It doesn’t seem possible. It seems to me that he will be back on the radio tomorrow, reassuring us all that it was just a mistake.” And Private First Class Lester Rebuck, a medic with the 104th Infantry Division, told a journalist in Paris: “It was just like somebody socked me in the stomach when I wasn’t looking. I just couldn’t get it through my head he was really dead.”30
The nation grieved. But the people Roosevelt had led for twelve years were not about to fall to pieces. His presidential legacy was not simply a personal one. It was also a democratic one. Sounding every bit the American that FDR himself had so admired, Private Rebuck quickly went on to say: “For my money, that guy was one of the greatest guys that ever lived. You can put him next to Lincoln or Washington or anybody.” Noting the diversity of the mourners who lined the funeral procession’s route through Washington, The Nation columnist I. F. Stone reflected: “Somehow we pulled through before, and somehow we’ll pull through again. In part it was luck. In part it was Mr. Roosevelt’s leadership. In part it was the quality of the country and its people. I don’t know about the rest of the four freedoms, but one thing Mr. Roosevelt gave the United States in one crisis after another . . . was freedom from fear.” And the GI editors of Yank wrote, “If Franklin Roosevelt’s hopes and dreams are deep enough in the hearts and minds of the people, the people will make them come true.”31
• • •
Just weeks after FDR’s passing, Hitler committed suicide and Nazi Germany surrendered. The struggle continued in Asia and the Pacific. But on May 8, Americans and their allies celebrated V-E Day. That same night, CBS broadcast On a Note of Triumph, a play Norman Corwin had prepared specifically for that long-awaited and hard-fought-for moment. Its opening lines clearly voiced the popular exultation:
So they’ve given up.
They’re finally done in, and the rat is dead in an alley back of the Wilhelmstrasse.
Take a bow, G.I.,
Take a bow, little guy.
The superman of tomorrow lies dead at the feet of you common men of this afternoon.
This is It, kid, this is The Day, all the way from Newburyport to Vladivostok.
You had what it took and you gave it, and each of you has a hunk of rainbow ’round your helmet.
Seems like free men have done it again.32
Many more Americans were still to die in liberating the Philippines and in taking Okinawa, and it looked like the struggle might go on for many months to come. But suddenly, on August 14, after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Imperial Japan, too, finally gave up. And on September 2, 1945, the war was officially over.
Soon—though not soon enough for all concerned—the troops started returning to America, and they were welcomed home as heroes. But they themselves knew otherwise.
Every son of a World War II combat veteran remembers the silence they met when, years later, they asked their fathers about “the war.” We all got the same response: “The real heroes never came home.”33
• • •
Americans had sailed on every kind of warship from destroyers and aircraft carriers to submarines and minesweepers; they had flown bombers, fighters, and gliders; and they had driven tanks, trucks, and jeeps. They had built roads, bridges, buildings, and docks, hauled men and goods, and landed on and battled their way on foot, and many times on their bellies, through every imaginable—for many, previously unimaginable—landscape and climate. And they had tended the wounded and buried the dead. Not all saw combat, but many did, and the sacrifices were great—more than 400,000 never made it home and of those who did 800,000 had been wounded or injured. Many millions more had labored in factories, fields, shipyards, offices, and every mode of transport to produce and deliver the weapons and supplies to make victory possible. Here, too, the costs were tremendous—300,000 lost their lives on the job and 1,000,000 suffered some permanent disability.
Yes, the world needed radical reconstructing. Yes, the powers and profits of capital had grown. Yes, racism and segregation persisted. And yes, there were those both in and out of Congress who were eager not just to “file away the Four Freedoms with the Ten Commandments,” but also to erase any and all references to the idea of an Economic Bill of Rights and to halt, if not reverse, the democratic advances of the past twelve years.34
Nevertheless, Americans had transcended the Great Depression, destroyed their enemies, and liberated millions. Moreover, they had done it all, contrary to the dire predictions of conservatives and isolationists, without turning their own democracy into a dictatorship. Indeed, against the ambitions and efforts of so many of the former, Americans had not only sustained the nation’s democratic life, but also continued to make the United States freer, more equal, and more democratic in the process. Regulating capital and the economy, they had made the commonwealth richer, and progressively transformed the “We” in “We the People.” Working people were better off, better organized, and all the more conscious of what they could accomplish. Blacks and Latinos, too, were better off, better organized, and more determined to lay claim to their rights as citizens. And women had stepped into every realm of public life and proved themselves indispensable to both winning the war and improving the state of the nation.
Our fathers and mothers and their generation have come down to us over time as the Greatest Generation and surely their achievement was as great as any generation of Americans. Nonetheless, the superlative justly attaches to them not because of the clarity of the evil they confronted, but because of the purpose with which they fought, bled, and died. An overwhelming percentage of adult Americans were swept up not just in four years of war, but in twelve years of struggle across fronts both foreign and domestic. Measuring their accomplishments in beachheads and battles won has become the easier work of later generations. However, the generation that actually engaged those struggles so successfully kept a different yardstick.
The Americans of the New Deal and Second World War had fought, labored, and sacrificed in the name of democracy and the Four Freedoms. Those who died in the struggle could not speak. But their fellow citizens—especially the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who had fought alongside them—surely heard them. Given just one night to prepare a program for nationwide broadcast on the evening of the Japanese surrender, Corwin composed a “message of victory” titled simply “14 August.” And he closed it with these words: “Remember them when July comes round . . . Remember them in the fall of the year . . . Remember them in the sleeting months . . .
They’re dead as clay for the rights of men,
For people the likes of you,
And they ask that we do not fail them again
Tomorrow, tomorrow.”35