Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government

James T. Sparrow's Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government will challenge the reader on what they think they know about the premier global conflict of the 20th Century. Sparrow's thesis is that it was the war, not the New Deal programs of the 1930s, which introduced Americans to a pervasive federal government. This book is extremely detailed and is not suited for the casual reader interested in broad outlines. Students of World War II will find their assumptions challenged by data that reveals the rift between the "combat soldier" and the "soldier of production". Other interesting topics include home front race relations, anti-Semitism, and the rumors generated by social mobility as a result of war industry employment. Warfare State is not easy to read but it is an important look beyond the accepted mythology of "the last good war".

Professor Sparrow has delivered an insightful account of how our twentieth-century national government -- for good or ill -- came to play such a pervasive role in the lives of its citizenry. With twenty-first-century American political discourse now dominated by talk of top-down initiatives (e.g., federal stimuli and out-of-whole-cloth job creation), "Warfare State" provides invaluable context for understanding our country's current trajectory.

While I'd highly recommend Sparrow's "Warfare State," I would encourage all academics to order this book in hard copy. The Kindle Edition lacks page numbers, citations, and a bibliography. For professional historians and serious students of history, this is simply unacceptable.

Love this book and recommend it strongy.

Excellent incite by an excellent scholar and writer.Awaiting more from this astute educator and author. His first of a trilogy!

This book has a simple, but elegant, thesis: The author challenges the longstanding belief that FDR’s New Deal, an effort to mitigate the suffering of the Great Depression, ushered in the age of “big government” in the United States. Instead, James T. Sparrow asserts, that the New Deal was a modest effort with confined results that lasted only a short time. What truly refocused the America nation was the effort to win the Second World War, setting in place a massive government apparatus ten times the size of the New Deal’s welfare programs.This seemingly permanent transformation of the United States discussed in Warfare State not only demonstrates the how and why of FDR’s vast expansion of the federal government during World War II; its most important contribution is an exploration of how Americans came to accept this expansion of authority as a permanent—or at least semi-permanent—aspect of national life. Sparrow writes that virtually universal American participation in military service or some other type of war work, as well the hardships of rationing, price control, sacrifice, income taxes, war bond drives, and associated actions associated with civic virtue created an environment where everyone came to accept the “warfare state.”Through this process the American public was encouraged to see itself as part of a larger body politick; Americans were personally connected to both soldiers on the front as well as tied to the larger war effort. Patriotism served as glue that held these ideas together. Civilian actions at home translated explicitly to support for soldiers on the battlefield. This patriotism led to a linkage between citizens, soldiers, the nation, and the government.In essence, Sparrow argues that the crisis of World War II brought to the fore a sense of duty and unity toward the state as never before. He also emphasizes the rise of income taxes as a way of life, internationalism as a national priority, and business, mass production, and consumerism as a normal aspect of American life. The modern activist state, therefore, emerged first in the confines of the New Deal, but it was fleeting at best. It took on permanence in World War II. A large activist government was no longer an anomaly, but a continuing reality.

Author Sparrow contends that WWII brought big government to the U.S., not FDR's 'New Deal' welfare state. The number of people affected, as well as the breadth of government involvement dwarfed anything under the New Deal; besides, Sparrow contends the New Deal was winding down when WWII activities began.Sparrow first notes that the sense of unity, bolstered by the draft, instilled a sense of equality and entitlement to full citizenship that government would have to respond to in future years. Another heritage was our historic break with more than a century of international aloofness, starting with Lend-Lease programs in 1941. Mass income taxation and vast structural deficits were both undertaken for the first time during WWII, and it also served to rebuild respect for business after the Great Depression. Basic goals of the government were widely accepted as valid and necessary, with the idealized figure of the combat soldier, and the millions he stood for, providing a unifying symbol through which diverse groups of civilians could be exhorted to meet their obligations to the nation. Big Government did not simply prevail, it became the prevailing common sense.