“The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II

“Unlike Vietnam, it wasn’t just working-class kids doing the fighting. You go to college faculty clubs today and on the walls are long lists of graduates who died in the Second World War. It was the last time that most Americans thought they were innocent and good, without qualifications.” 

This is one of several instances when an interviewee compares World War II with the Vietnam War. Robert Lekachman makes one important point about how the Vietnam War differed from the American experience of World War II. While the US military during World War II had personnel drawn from various classes, the working class were more likely to be drafted into the Vietnam War.

“People in America do not know what war is. I do, and anybody that was in the service. The Russians know. The Polish know. The Jewish know. But the American people have no idea what all-out war is. We never tasted it. I hope we never do.” 

The American experience of World War II was different from that of other countries on both sides of the conflict. Aside from the Pearl Harbor attack, there was no devastation caused by the war on the home front. This enabled the United States to thrive economically after the war ended, while Europe and East Asia were still recovering. Perhaps more importantly, though, it meant that the American experience of war was fundamentally different from that of the rest of the world, arguably making Americans more willing to tolerate wars in the future.

“I think of how little we knew of human rights, union rights. We knew Daddy had been a hell-raiser in the mine workers’ union, but at that point it hadn’t rubbed off on any of us women. Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper were allowed in every building, but not a drop of water. You could only get a drink of water if you went to the cafeteria, which was about two city blocks away. Of course you couldn’t leave your machine long enough to go get a drink. I drank Coke and Dr. Pepper and I hated ’em. I hate ’em today. We had to buy it, of course. We couldn’t leave to go to the bathroom, ’cause it was way the heck over there.” 

The existence of unjust systems in Allied countries also complicates the narrative of the “good war.” Although the Great Depression and the New Deal saw some strides in labor rights, there were still abusive practices like the kind Peggy Terry describes in ammunitions factories that received federal government funds.

“I met my future husband. I really didn’t care that much for him, but the pressure was so great. My brother said, ‘What do you mean, you don’t like Glenn? You’re going to marry him, aren’t you?’ The first time it would occur to me that I would marry anybody. The pressure to marry a soldier was so great that after a while I didn’t question it. I have to marry sometime and I might as well marry him.” 

The 1950s suburban housewife is a well-known stereotype, but even during World War II there was intense social pressure on women to marry and not to engage in extramarital sex. What Dellie Hahne describes is additional pressure put on women during and immediately after the war to marry soldiers and help them gain a home life, regardless of the woman’s own feelings.

“The good war? That infuriates me. Yeah, the idea of World War Two being called a good war is a horrible thing. I think of all the atrocities. I think of a madman who had all this power. I think of the destruction of the Jews, the misery, the horrendous suffering in the concentration camps.” 

Dellie Hahne emphasizes the innocence of the World War II era and how easily that innocence was lost. One of the reasons for this was the news of atrocities like the Holocaust. While we take knowledge of genocide for granted in the present day, and while wartime atrocities and genocides had certainly occurred prior to the Holocaust, it still shocked the world that Germany, one of the most socially progressive nations before the Nazis came to power, was capable of such horror.

“My husband had been in the South Pacific. You could never get the father of my four children to talk about the war. It was like we put blinders on the past. When we won, we believed it. It was the end. That’s the way we lived in suburbia, raising our children, not telling them about war. I don’t think it was just me. It was everybody. You wouldn’t fill your children full of those horror stories, would you?” 

Alongside awareness of the Holocaust, there was a sense of optimism that World War II represented the ultimate victory of democratic values over authoritarianism. Nonetheless, there was a general silence about the war and its impacts on the individuals who fought in it. This is in great contrast to the Vietnam War, which inspired a much more open national conversation about wartime horrors and post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers.

“In a way, World War Two had a positive impact on me as an individual. I can say I matured in those three years. I certainly did want to obtain an education. I wanted to better myself rather than, say, hitting a local factory. I didn’t want to be a blue-collar worker. This was basically all we had in our area. Fortunately, I was educated on the GI Bill. I obtained a nice position in the company, have a nice family. Everything in my lifetime since the war has been positive. I don’t mean that war is positive. They’re all negative as far as I am concerned. The war changed our whole idea of how we wanted to live when we came back. We set our sights pretty high. If we didn’t have the war, in Poughkeepsie, the furthest you’d travel would be maybe New York or Albany. But once people started to travel—people wanted better levels of living, all people.” 

One way World War II was a “good war” was that it opened up economic and social opportunities for the Great Depression generation. However, that was not the only change. After World War II, people had higher expectations for their quality of life.

“What about Hitler? He was one person. They were all doing what Hitler said. What do all prisoners do? They do what the warden says. The only power Hitler had was the power the people gave him. I felt the whole world had gone absolutely mad, crazy. They were in love with war. After the Vietnam War, people are a lot more sympathetic to noncompliance. They’ve mellowed. They really saw what war was like in Vietnam, went along for ten years and were just absolutely sick of it. It didn’t make any sense. To me, neither did World War One or World War Two or any other war.” 

This is the answer of John H. Abbott, a nonreligious conscientious objector, to Terkel’s question, “What about Hitler?” Abbott’s answer illustrates the change in mindset from World War II to Vietnam. Most people, Abbott excluded, believed there was a rationale for World War II and accepted it. The reasons for war in Vietnam, however, were not nearly as well understood by the general public.

“We’ve institutionalized militarism. This came out of World War Two. In 1947, we passed the National Security Act. You can’t find that term—national security—in any literature before that year. It created the Department of Defense. Up till that time, when you appropriated money for the War Department, you knew it was for war and you could see it clearly. Now it’s for the Department of Defense. Everybody’s for defense. Otherwise you’re considered unpatriotic. So there’s absolutely no limit to the money you must give to it. So they’ve captured all the Christians: the right of self-defense. Even the ‘just war’ thing can be wrapped into it. […] Before World War Two, this never happened. You had a War Department, you had a Navy Department. Only if there was a war did they step up front. The ultimate control was civilian. World War Two changed all this.” 

This quote from Admiral Larocque describes how World War II changed the political and military history of the United States. In addition to the Department of Defense, he also touches upon the creation of other institutions, like the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, and the CIA, none of which existed prior to the war. Larocque is essentially arguing that the United States never demilitarized after World War II and that it became the most powerful nation in both the postwar era and human history.

“It’s taken a lot of maybes and pleasures from me, but I began to see people and events in a certain light. I’m always looking for the economic reason why people do this or why a government does this. It’s not always nice to know. […] Maybe I’m pessimistic. Maybe we’ll see a lovely new era to come. I’m so worried now for my grandchildren. I feel so sorry for them. But then, maybe somebody should have felt sorry for me, growing up in World War Two. (Laughs.) Yet with all its horrors, it made people behave better toward each other than they thought they could.” 

Even with the downfall of the fascist governments in Europe, the Cold War sparked new anxieties about the potential of nuclear weapons to destroy civilization, if not all life on the planet. Alongside this fear, there was a growing skepticism of politics that was not typical of World War II.

“‘By this time, Tokyo and all the major cities were being bombed. The capital of the next prefecture, Toyama, was bombed completely flat. Our family was in this shelter in the mountain. We looked out and saw the whole sky over Toyama was bright red, burning, burning bright. American planes were flying all over. We heard all kinds of stories about American planes flying very low, shooting down people and you could see the pilots smiling.’

‘Funny. That’s precisely what we heard about Japanese pilots.’” 

A theme throughout “The Good War” is the idea that war is a shared experience with common elements that span across geopolitical and cultural boundaries. One of these common elements is how war dehumanizes both sides of the conflict, as this exchange between Yasuko and Terkel illustrates.

“For one thing, we invented the bomb. There will never be a good war after that. My kids think we could win it. When we dropped the bomb, they said there was gonna be peace. There was marching in the streets and everybody’s rushing out of their businesses and shouting and waving and celebrating. We ignored the whole consequences of the bomb. The communal spirit was breaking down. Everybody was tired of sacrifices and beginning to nag and gripe. Although Life magazine showed those pictures plain as day of all those people that suffered the effects of the atomic bomb, my father was saying how beautiful the mushroom cloud was, how majestic. We were just turned off. It was like a curtain rang down.” 

Although the Cold War was notorious for stoking fears about the end of the world because of the threat of a nuclear engagement between the Soviet Union and the United States, when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, few questioned it because it was seen as the act that ended World War II. However, this lack of concern around nuclear weapons would not last.

“Americans have never known what war really is. No matter how much they saw it on television or pictures or magazines. Because there is one feature they never appreciated: the smell. When you go through a village and you suddenly get this horrible smell. Everybody’s walking around with masks on their faces, ’cause it’s just intolerable. You look out and see those bloated bodies. You no longer see humans, because they’ve been pretty well cleaned up by now. You see bloated horses and cows and the smell of death. It’s not discriminating, they all smell the same. Maybe if Americans had known even that, they’d be more concerned about peace.” 

Without discounting the loss of life from American soldiers who fought in the war, it is true that most American civilians did not experience the same devastation that much of the world endured during World War II. Here Dr. Alex Shulman suggests that this lack of direct experience of war may explain the United States’s aggressive foreign policy in the years after World War II.

“There was a time of good feeling. The country felt it had done something worthwhile. The guys came back feeling they had accomplished something. Then they moved into a highly competitive society and immediately they had to go back to living routine lives. When I came back, I felt like there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. The sky was the limit. The only thing is the brass ring, is the big buck. That calls for dedication, a singleness of purpose: making money of cost or who you damage.” 

Alongside the prosperity and anti-communism that followed the war, there was a surge in materialism in American culture. Not only was big business more tolerated and less criticized in the postwar landscape, but business success became more emphasized as part of the American ideal.

“There came this great burst after the war, a very prosperous time. The working man got his own house, his car, his refrigerator, and became middle-class. These damn Republicans win elections these days because the New Deal picked up the working man and gave him a chance. He’s now conservative.” 

“The first casualty of the cold war was debate on foreign policy. It was eliminated. It was simply assumed that the Soviet Union is the enemy. Let’s go from there, why debate it? We knew all the answers. We knew how Third World countries could develop best. We were the papa. We were in charge. It’s seeped all through our society.” 

There was extensive opposition to World War II and hostility toward FDR from isolationists who opposed any American intervention in Europe. After the war, the Cold War era saw more of a consensus around opposition to the Soviet Union and communism. This was partly because the American victory in World War II increased the power of the US military and confidence in the American mission around the world.

“It was in World War Two—because it was so clear, it was against Hitler—that the blacks began to measure the rights they had as against the rights that the whites were given. Now I tell you, this measuring will never end. Not until they have the rights others have.” 

Although the civil rights movement did not fully take shape until the 1960s, historians agree that much groundwork was laid over the course of World War II. Dickerson’s comment here suggests that one reason for this was the contradiction inherent in fighting against a regime like Nazi Germany, which was built on eugenics and racism, while maintaining segregation and other racist policies at home.

“The war brought some changes for the good: jobs in defense industries, training they might not otherwise have received. Social gains. We’ve come a long way. But racism is just as alive today, maybe even more virulent. It was the war to end fascism, okay? Do you realize that most blacks don’t believe the atom bomb would have been dropped on Hiroshima had it been a white city?” 

Although some of Terkel’s black interviewees agree that World War II had a positive impact on the civil rights movement, Alfred Duckett admits that the effect on racism in American society was limited. African Americans were still able to share in the economic benefits of the war and opportunities like the GI Bill. However, while laws changed and activism for equal rights grew, racism remained entrenched.

“This is human. It happened before. The Spanish, in the Inquisition, under God, destroyed an entire population. What about the Albigenses? It can happen again. We are all good people, but if we are led a little too far, we are going to believe everything we are told. We are ordinary people, who can also be weapons for evil Hitlers.” 

Jacques Raboud is referring to the Albigenses, a “heretical” Christian sect in Southern France during the 13th century that was persecuted and massacred. His point is that people are fundamentally capable of empathy with each other, but they can be manipulated through propaganda. This fits with the theme reiterated by many of the interviewees, namely that propaganda drives hatred and bigotry in war, but its effect can be negated by lived experience with the so-called “enemy.”

“Sometimes, I ask myself, Any regrets about working on the atomic bomb? The answer is no. Under the circumstances, I felt that our survival as a nation, as a democracy, was really at stake. I was not so worried about the Japanese as about the Nazi threat…I still regret how it was done. I realize that a threat was not enough. It had to be dropped somewhere. But there were other places they could have dropped it without such a terrible loss of life.” 

The necessity of dropping atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima is still an intensely debated topic that encompasses both history and ethics. John H. Grove’s response, though, represents the widespread view among Americans at the time the bombs were dropped: It was tragic but necessary. This also reflects how many Americans viewed World War II itself.

“‘This little kid ran upstairs and brought his father down. A very nice Japanese gentleman. He could speak English. He bowed and said, “We would be honored if you would come upstairs and have some tea with us.” I went upstairs in this strange Japanese house. I noticed on the mantel a picture of a young Japanese soldier. I asked him, “Is this your son?” He said, “That is my daughter’s husband. We don’t know if he’s alive. We haven’t heard.” The minute he said that, it dawned on me that they suffered the same as we did. They lost sons and daughters and relatives, and they hurt too.’

‘Until that moment…?’

‘I had nothing but contempt for the Japanese. I used to hear all the horror stories. I was trained to kill them. They’re our enemy. Look what they did in Pearl Harbor. They asked for it and now we’re gonna give it to ‘em. That’s how I felt until I met this young boy and his family.’ 

This is a poignant moment in which a rank-and-file soldier learned to view the Japanese as human beings. As elsewhere, this exchange implies that the dehumanizing view of enemy civilians and soldiers deliberately promoted by warring governments is best combatted through personal experience.

“While the rest of the world came out bruised and scarred and nearly destroyed, we came out with the most unbelievable machinery, tools, manpower, money. The war was fun for America—if you’ll pardon my bitterness. I’m not talking about the poor souls who lost sons and daughters in the war. But for the rest of us, the war was a hell of a good time. Farmers in South Dakota that I administered relief to, and gave ’em bully beef and four dollars a week to feed their families, when I came home were worth a quarter-million dollars, right? What was true there was true all over America. New gratifications they’d never known in their lives. Mass travel, mass vacations, everything else came out of it. And the rest of the world was bleeding and in pain. But it’s forgotten now. World War Two? It’s a war I still would go to.”

Paul Edwards agrees with other interviewees that the United States experienced a postwar prosperity so profound that it transformed people’s standards of living and their expectations about their lifestyles and leisure time. However, he implies that this also caused Americans to forget the struggles of the past, like the Great Depression.

“I have had a very good teacher who told us about Hitler times. It is not enough to say Hitler was bad and forget it and don’t do it anymore. I think we must find out why Hitler was accepted by the German people. I have had other teachers who said all the Hitler time was bad and now is a good time. They say all people who lived under Hitler were bad because they fought the war with him. That is wrong. We can’t say all people were bad. We must find out why they were with him. If you want to make something better, you must know the reasons why it was wrong and what has happened.” 

Another of Terkel’s interviewees urges empathy and recalling a common humanity, but from a German perspective. To prevent the rise of authoritarian leaders and atrocities committed by governments, it is important not to blame the people, but to examine why they were susceptible to an authoritarian and divisive message.