Illinois in the Second World War: Operation home front PDF Download

Author: Mary Watters
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Illinois
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Author: Lisa L. Ossian
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826272010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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As Americans geared up for World War II, each state responded according to its economy and circumstances—as well as the disposition of its citizens. This book considers the war years in Iowa by looking at activity on different home fronts and analyzing the resilience of Iowans in answering the call to support the war effort. With its location in the center of the country, far from potentially threatened coasts, Iowa was also the center of American isolationism—historically Republican and resistant to involvement in another European war. Yet Iowans were quick to step up, and Lisa Ossian draws on historical archives as well as on artifacts of popular culture to record the rhetoric and emotion of their support. Ossian shows how Iowans quickly moved from skepticism to overwhelming enthusiasm for the war and answered the call on four fronts: farms, factories, communities, and kitchens. Iowa’s farmers faced labor and machinery shortages, yet produced record amounts of crops and animals—even at the expense of valuable topsoil. Ordnance plants turned out bombs and machine gun bullets. Meanwhile, communities supported war bond and scrap drives, while housewives coped with rationing, raised Victory gardens, and turned to home canning. The Home Fronts of Iowa, 1939–1945 depicts real people and their concerns, showing the price paid in physical and mental exhaustion and notes the heavy toll exacted on Iowa’s sons who fell in battle. Ossian also considers the relevance of such issues as race, class, and gender—particularly the role of women on the home front and the recruitment of both women and blacks for factory work—taking into account a prevalent suspicion of ethnic groups by the state’s largely homogeneous population. The fact that Iowans could become loyal citizen soldiers—forming an Industrial and Defense Commission even before Pearl Harbor—speaks not only to the patriotism of these sturdy midwesterners but also to the overall resilience of Americans. In unraveling how Iowans could so overwhelmingly support the war, Ossian digs deep into history to show us the power of emotion—and to help us better understand why World War II is consistently remembered as “the Good War.”

Author: John F. Zwicky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Illinois
Languages : en
Pages : 854

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Author: Daniel Nelson
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253328830
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Farm and Factory illuminates the importance of the Midwest in U.S. labor history. America's heartland - often overlooked in studies focusing on other regions, or particular cities or industries - has a distinctive labor history characterized by the sustained, simultaneous growth of both agriculture and industry. Since the transfer of labor from farm to factory did not occur in the Midwest until after World War II, industrialists recruited workers elsewhere, especially from Europe and the American South. The region's relatively underdeveloped service sector - shaped by the presumption that goods were more desirable than service - ultimately led to agonizing problems of adjustment as agriculture and industry evolved in the late twentieth century.

Author: H. Byron Earhart
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809370077
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Illinois State Historical Society Certificate of Excellence Winner, 2021 When H. Byron Earhart’s father enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1942, young Byron and his family moved into his grandparents' old-fashioned home with a coal-fired range and potbelly stove, and his mother took charge of the family business, a frozen food locker. Grandma was the undisputed head of the family. While his father served on the battleship USS Missouri, his grandparents and mother held the family and the business together. At Grandma’s House is a tribute to everyday Americans who provided the social glue for a country at war as they balanced fear and anxiety for loved ones with the challenges and pleasures of daily life. The experiences of the Earhart family and this Midwestern community, supplemented by contemporary documents, family photos, and professional illustrations, recount with vivid local color the drama that played out on the national and international stage.

Author: Bryan J. Ogg
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1439665761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Since Naperville sprang from the northern Illinois prairie, it has maintained an unmistakably fascinating heritage. The settlers who followed the Napers to the DuPage River had to endure the hardships of felling trees and plowing prairies to make a place to call home. The campuses of the Research and Technology corridor might seem far removed from the travails of those early years, but both are part of the same community. That shared tradition holds surprises such as the location of the Stenger Brewery or the legacy of Peter Kroehler, furniture tycoon, mayor and philanthropist. Bryan Ogg takes stock of the people and events that shaped Naperville from its founding through its current state.

Author: Amanda I. Seligman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022638599X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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What do you do if your alley is strewn with garbage after the sanitation truck comes through? Or if you’re tired of the rowdy teenagers next door keeping you up all night? Is there a vacant lot on your block accumulating weeds, needles, and litter? For a century, Chicagoans have joined block clubs to address problems like these that make daily life in the city a nuisance. When neighbors work together in block clubs, playgrounds get built, local crime is monitored, streets are cleaned up, and every summer is marked by the festivities of day-long block parties. In Chicago’s Block Clubs, Amanda I. Seligman uncovers the history of the block club in Chicago—from its origins in the Urban League in the early 1900s through to the Chicago Police Department’s twenty-first-century community policing program. Recognizing that many neighborhood problems are too big for one resident to handle—but too small for the city to keep up with—city residents have for more than a century created clubs to establish and maintain their neighborhood’s particular social dynamics, quality of life, and appearance. Omnipresent yet evanescent, block clubs are sometimes the major outlets for community organizing in the city—especially in neighborhoods otherwise lacking in political strength and clout. Drawing on the stories of hundreds of these groups from across the city, Seligman vividly illustrates what neighbors can—and cannot—accomplish when they work together.

Author: V. R. Cardozier
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313388423
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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V. R. Cardozier provides a comprehensive and engaging look at the role played by colleges and universities in World War II, the contributions they made to the war effort, and the impact of the war on higher education institutions. He captures the wartime mood and spirit of the American people, something that is not easy to convey to younger readers who did not directly experience these times. During the war, American colleges and universities were dedicated to serving the needs of the military and all agencies of the government through training, research, and service. The Army, Navy, and Army Air Forces College Training Programs are discussed in separate chapters. Cardozier examines many adjustments colleges made: accelerating their calendars, adapting to losses in enrollment, and changing the curriculum. Military training programs on campuses and how they differed from college training programs are described, as well as the impact of the war on faculty: depletion of the teaching ranks, wartime research on campus, and faculty in the military and government service, especially in OSRD and OSS. The final chapter examines the overall impact of the war on higher education, such as financial problems due to loss of enrollment, issues of academic freedom, academic credit for military service, the GI Bill, and changes in curricula, teaching tools, and campus cultures.

Author: Lois Carrier
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252068089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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With a major port on the Great Lakes, an extensive network of railroads and canals, and a river system including the Mississippi, the Illinois, and the Ohio, Illinois has long played a critical role in linking East Coast industrial cities, the agricultural heartland, and the Gulf Coast. Writing in a fast-paced, down-to-earth style, Lois Carrier introduces a host of innovations and innovators associated with Illinois: Jane Addams and Louis Armstrong, Frank Lloyd Wright and Walt Disney, Cracker Jack and the Ferris wheel. From the Cahokia Mounds to Chicago, Illinois: Crossroads of a Continent provides a panoramic history for students and general readers.

Author: Robert D. Lewis
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820350133
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Combining theories of calculation and property relations and using an array of archival sources, this book focuses on the building and decommissioning of state-owned defense factories in World War II-era Chicago. Robert Lewis's rich trove of material--drawn from research on more than six hundred federally funded wartime industrial sites in metropolitan Chicago--supports three major conclusions. First, the relationship of the key institutions of the military-industrial complex was refashioned by their calculative actions on industrial property. The imperatives of war forced the federal state and the military to become involved in industrial matters in an entirely new manner. Second, federal and military investment in defense factories had an enormous effect on the industrial geography of metropolitan Chicago. The channeling of huge lumps of industrial capital into sprawling plants on the urban fringe had a decisive impact on the metropolitan geographies of manufacturing. Third, the success of industrial mobilization was made possible through the multi-scale relations of national and locational interaction. National policy could only be realized by the placing of these relations at the local level. Throughout, Lewis shows how the interests of developers, factory engineers, corporate executives, politicians, unions, and the working class were intimately bound up with industrial space. Offering a local perspective on a city permanently shaped by national events, this book provides a richer understanding of the dynamics of wartime mobilization, the calculative actions of political and business leaders, the social relations of property, the working of state-industry relations, and the making of industrial space.