Myth and the Greatest Generation

Tom Brokaw’s books on the Greatest Generation have greatly influenced how Americans look back upon the “Good War.” Brokaw depicts the Greatest Generation as selfless patriots who willingly sacrificed and worked together to defeat the Axis powers.Kenneth Rose is a revisionist who challenges the “false nostalgia,” writing that “the best way to honor this generation is not to falsify it but to humanize it. The only way this can be done is to follow the truth where it leads, and to include the blemished as well as the valorous.”Draft dodging and a vigorous black market were parts of the truth. So was maintenance of Jim Crow segregation, in the armed forces as well as in many defense industries. In 1946, the Greatest Generation set a record for divorces, as well as for marriages. The divorce rate in 1946 was not as high again until 1972.Rose does a credible job of reminding readers of various facts that conflict with Brokaw’s romanticized view of WWII. In American propaganda, for instance, Japanese were subject to subhuman caricatures far more so than Germans. “Japs” were depicted as rats, monkeys, cockroaches, snakes, dogs and bats. Japanese propaganda also embraced race hatred and assumed Japanese racial superiority. A popular song reflected the contrasting views of the enemy: “There’ll Be No Adolph Hitler nor Yellow Japs to Fear.”“It’s no exaggeration to say that America became a nation of smokers during WWII.” Servicemen received free cigarettes with their rations, and smoking was ubiquitous. By 1944, 71 percent of men smoked. After the war, cigarette sales dwarfed the pre-war production.Americans who fought in the Great War to make the world safe for democracy had been greatly disillusioned in the aftermath. Consequently, with American entry into WWII, there were markedly fewer parades and patriotic displays. Most soldiers lacked a crusading zeal, and weren’t clear what they were fighting for, beyond loyalty to their platoon. S.L.A. Marshall wrote shortly after the war that three out of four soldiers in combat were not firing their weapons. He claims that only five infantry units were effective on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and that only one in five men in these companies fired their weapons that day.“It seems clear that much of the flag-and-country patriotic fervor that supposedly engulfed American society during the war years has been imposed on that era in hindsight. Indeed, the hyperbolic language of patriotism was especially suspect to those who knew what war was.” The great war novels written by WWII veterans uniformly rejected patriotism as justification for the war. Instead, the novels expressed lack of idealism and despair.Tom Brokaw praises Americans on the home-front for being “fully immersed in the war effort. They worked long shifts, rationed gasoline, and ate less meat.” The reality was less black-and-white. There was widespread black marketing to evade rationing, record absenteeism on the job, draft dodging, and sharp increases in child neglect and juvenile delinquency.The FBI investigated close to half a million cases of draft evasion. More common were legal ways to evade by fathering a baby or working in a protected industry. Children suffered when fathers were in the armed forces and mothers worked in defense plants. High school enrollment dropped 17 percent, as teens flocked into the labor market. The black market diverted so much meat that “meatlegging” caused a national meat shortage in 1945. The rate of worker absenteeism doubled in the tight labor market. The feds imposed a midnight curfew on nightclubs in an attempt to curb absenteeism. Well before war ended, workers in defense industries left their jobs in anticipation of layoffs after the war.In the armed forces, Hispanics but not blacks were permitted to serve in white units. German POWs were able to eat with white soldiers, while black soldiers ate in separate accommodations. Black facilities on army bases were greatly inferior to white facilities. When Lena Horne performed for troops in Arkansas, she was taken aback when she saw that German POWs had better seats than black troops. The Red Cross segregated blood by race, a decision supported by the Surgeon General. Inevitable racial conflicts between black and white troops were blamed on the blacks. By the end of the war, 11 percent of white soldiers were officers, compared to less than 1 percent among black soldiers.American racism inflicted the greatest suffering on Japanese Americans. Anti-Asian prejudice had a long history on the west coast. Federal law had banned Chinese immigration in 1882 and Japanese immigration in 1924. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a strong popular outcry to treat Japanese Americans as the enemy. FDR acceded to political pressure and issued an executive order to round up Japanese-Americans, whether they were citizens or not. Even American citizens with as little as one-quarter Japanese ancestry were caught in the roundup. The same treatment was not imposed on the more numerous German and Italian Americans. The relocation centers, aka concentration camps, were extremely Spartan, with no running water and not much food. In 1943 the Army began drafting Japanese Americans, though the Navy refused to accept them as sailors.Rose focuses more on life on the home front than on what another historian called “military romanticism.” One disagreement I have with Rose is his defense of using nuclear bombs on Japan. He repeats the familiar either/or fallacy espoused by Truman. According to historian Christian Appy, “six of the seven five-star generals and admirals of that time believed that there was no reason to use them, that the Japanese were already defeated, knew it, and were likely to surrender before any American invasion could be launched. Several, like Admiral William Leahy and General Dwight Eisenhower, also had moral objections to the weapon. Leahy considered the atomic bombing of Japan ‘barbarous’ and a violation of ‘every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war.’Rose also ignores the fact that “some key presidential advisers had urged Truman to drop his demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ and allow Japan to keep the emperor on his throne, an alteration in peace terms that might have led to an almost immediate surrender. Truman rejected that advice, only to grant the same concession after the nuclear attacks.”By the end of the twentieth century, the mere mortals who fought the war had been elevated into the Greatest Generation. This informative book tells the rest of the story. ###.

I bought this book because I was looking for a correction of Brokaw's book about the 'greatest generation". This book is mis-titled because it has nothing to do with Brokaw's book, but is, instead, carefully selected material from secondary sources by a person who was not there and who did not interview, as best I can tell, a single veteran. The book does not in any way address the merits of the members of the generation who fought WW2. It selects information that casts a negative or "war is hell" interpretation. No heroism, no meaning, no value. Every hero, Audie Murphy as an example, is portrayed as disillusioned. Murphy was not that way. He suffered from the war, and candidly and honestly admitted it, but stayed active in U.S. military issues and was exceptionally proud of his service. Why doesn't Rose comment on Dick Winters, or Joe Toy, or Bill Guarnere, or the others of Band of Brothers. In personal interviews they told the other side, but they knew what they were getting into and yet they did it. Why didn't author quote them? Worth reading for sources used, but don't drink the koolaid. There was no "greatest generation". What there was was a generation of Americans who, along with the U.S.S.R. and the British, pretty well saved free countries.

Good look at the lives of ordinary Americans and the challenges they faced before, during, and after the war. Does not so much dispel the "myth" of the greatest generation as it adds nuance and context. The author holds truth supreme rather than legend-- wartime atrocities, racial and gender inequality, domestic troubles, and psychiatric issues are all discussed, but the books greatest triumph is allowing the viewer a more in depth look at the lives of people of the era. Because she regards them as ordinary people, rather than stoic, superhuman characters, I came away both relating more to the greatest generation and having a profound respect and reverence for them and the unimaginable challenges they faced.

Kenneth Rose bases his book upon snubbing Tom Brokaw's 1998 publication, "The Greatest Generation," as looking at the people who prevailed through the Depression and World War II through rose-tinted glasses and ignoring the realities. There is no question that the generation of our parents and grandparents were not faultless, but Rose takes it to the extreme by denouncing them as riddled with selfishness, racism, adultery,larceny and butchery. "The Myth of the the Greatest Generation" is a fascinating read with pages of anecdotal evidence to support his claim but few official sources to give it substance. As a book of historical fact it fails to compare America with other nations' behaviour to see if they behaved in the same way, better or worse. A wonderfully entertaining, well constructed and engaging read but tinged with revisionist bile and bitterness born out of the sixties. Ultimately the book falls flat in the thesis that "the generation that succeeded so that we wouldn't have to try, wasn't the best to date" because it is impossible to name a better one. That generation certainly wasn't as pure as the driven snow, but who says it still wasn't the greatest?

This book showed me what hardship the Korea war was all about. All the sorrow for these men and what they went through.This war less talked about, was one our men suffered so much to win and the credit they did not get for the loss of their lives. And the wounded.The only humor in this book, was when they found a berry tree and made their own wine. These were great soldiers.

Excellent exposition on the life and times of the World War II generation. So much information packed into this book. It was educational and moving all at once, an eye opener for the rose colored glasses that we often see this era of history through. Well written, well documented, well done.

This is one of the best books I've read about World War II and the U.S. Extremely interesting, and well written. Highly recommend.

This was a great book which covered nearly every aspect of the war. There is so much information about the experience of war