V-E DAY. V-E Day stood for Victory in Europe Day, which came following the German surrender on 6 May 1945. V-E Day was officially celebrated following the cessation of all hostilities in Europe on 8 May 1945.
V-J DAY. V-J Day was Victory in Japan Day and came with the surrender of Japan on 15 August 1945.
V-MAIL. V-mail was the mail of U.S. military personnel during World War II that was written on special V-mail letter sheets and then microfilmed and developed once it had reached the mainland. It reduced the space that traditional mail would have otherwise occupied and freed up valuable cargo space on ships.
VALLEE, RUDY (1901–1986). Born Hubert Prior Vallee in Vermont, the singer and musician grew up in Maine, where he learned to play the saxophone and was named “Rudy” after another saxophonist. Vallee enlisted in the navy and served 41 days before it was discovered he was only 16 years old and was discharged. From 1922 to 1923, he was a student at Yale University, but his studies were interrupted by his career as a musician, and he played in an orchestra in London, England, from 1924 to 1925, resuming his studies in 1925 and graduating in 1927. He had already adopted one of his trademark symbols—a raccoon coat—and he also started to use a megaphone to give his voice more depth. Vallee was one of the first of the “crooners”—a style that also influenced Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra—and he attracted rapturous audiences. He was enormously popular on the radio throughout the 1930s and 1940s with hits like “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.” Vallee appeared in his first film, The Vagabond Lover, in 1926. Among his other film successes were The Palm Beach Story (1942) and Gentlemen Prefer Brunettes (1955). During the war, he played with the Coastguard band. His popularity as a singer declined afterward, but he appeared on television and in a number of film roles. Although Vallee was still appearing in films as late as the 1980s, his last major film was How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying in 1967. See also CINEMA; MUSIC.
VAN DEVANTER, WILLIS (1859–1941). Willis Van Devanter was born in Marion, Indiana. He graduated from Cincinnati Law School in 1881 and moved to Wyoming, where he established a legal practice and rose as an important member of the Republican Party in state politics. He was a member of the Territorial Legislature, chair of the Judiciary Committee, and in 1889 was appointed chief justice of the Territorial Supreme Court. When Wyoming achieved statehood, Van Devanter became the first chief justice of the state Supreme Court but resigned to pursue his private practice.
In 1897, Van Devanter was appointed assistant U.S. attorney general in the Department of the Interior and also taught law at George Washington Law School. In 1910, President William Howard Taft appointed Van Devanter to the Supreme Court, where he became a strong defender of business interests and upholder of laissez faire principles. He was one of the conservatives who consistently ruled against progressive welfare measures in the 1920s. However, he did contribute to the 1925 Judiciary Act improving the efficiency of the court.
During the 1930s, Van Devanter was, with James McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Pierce Butler, one of the “Four Horsemen” who consistently ruled against President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal measures. He continued to express dissent even after Roosevelt’s “court packing” attempt had failed and even though the court began reversing previous anti-New Deal decisions. In 1937, Van Devanter retired and became a judge on the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.
VANDENBERG, ARTHUR HENDRICK (1884–1951). Arthur H. Vandenberg was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and after a year at the University of Michigan Law School in 1901, he became a reporter for the Grand Rapids Herald. In 1906, he became editor and continued in that role until 1928. Having made a name for himself with his moderate progressive Republican views, in 1928 he was appointed to fill the seat in the U.S. Senate for Michigan vacated by Woodbridge N. Ferris upon his death. Vandenberg held the seat until his death. Although he supported some New Deal measures, like the Banking Acts and public housing legislation, he opposed many of the other measures, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, Agricultural Adjustment Act, Works Progress Administration and 1935 Revenue Act. He was also a leading isolationist and active member of the Nye Committee.
After Pearl Harbor and U.S. entry into World War II, Vandenberg modified his position, supporting the war effort, and in 1945 publicly abandoning isolationism in favor of world leadership by the United States. He was a delegate to the San Francisco Conference in 1945 and the United Nations General Assembly in 1946. Beginning in 1947, Vandenberg chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and worked closely with the Truman administration to reach agreement on such major foreign policy such as the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan. The Vandenberg Resolution, passed by the Senate in June 1948, accepted the necessity of U.S. participation in regional and other collective agreements and paved the way for Senate approval of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Highly respected in the party, Vandenberg was a possible candidate for the presidential nomination in 1940 and 1944, but he would never campaign openly and so was passed by. Nonetheless, he was an influential figure during this period.
VANDENBERG RESOLUTION, 1948. Introduced in May 1948 by Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, the Vandenberg Resolution was passed in the Senate on 11 June 1948. It approved of action to maintain world security by U.S. participation in the United Nations and also through mutual defense treaties or agreements with other nations. It enabled President Harry S. Truman to enter into negotiations leading to the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949.
VINSON, FREDERICK MOORE (1890–1953). Born in Louisa, Kentucky, Fred Vinson graduated from Center College, Danville, in 1911 and became a lawyer and city attorney in his hometown. After briefly serving in the army during World War I, he returned to law but was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1924. Although he lost the election in 1928, he was reelected in 1930 and served until 1937. While in Congress, Vinson became a close friend and associate of Harry S. Truman. In 1937, he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals on the Washington, D.C., circuit.
Vinson held a number of positions during World War II, including director of the Office of Economic Stabilization in 1943 and director of War Mobilization and Reconversion in 1945. After the war, President Truman appointed him secretary of the treasury, where he was responsible for supervising the repayment of lend-lease loans, and took part in the meetings at the Bretton Woods Conference that led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund. In 1946, Truman made him chief justice on the Supreme Court as a compromise between choosing either Robert Jackson or Hugo Black. As a result, Vinson had the task of trying to bring together opposing factions in the court, and he was not very successful. His court was associated with upholding various internal security measures, including the Smith Act in Dennis v. United States in 1951, and failing to hear the appeal of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. None of his decisions were particularly memorable, but he was sympathetic toward civil rights issues relating to African Americans and wrote the opinion in Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948. Vinson died while in office.
VOICE OF AMERICA. The “Voice of America” was created as a radio broadcasting service during World War II by the Office of War Information to transmit to populations under the control of Nazi Germany. After the war, an international shortwave radio station was established by the State Department in 1948 to broadcast to countries behind the Iron Curtain. Broadcasts were made in 46 languages. This service expanded to reach other parts of the world and eventually included television transmissions. Today it also includes Internet broadcasts.