My assigned blog was on Hollywood's role during WWII and the Office of Price Administration:
Hollywood played an extreme role in WWII for spreading the word about the glory, and the ugliness, of war times. Whether it be the commercials for the war and for people to enlist, or a cartoon of Bugs Bunny that says "Nip the Nips". Then for the feature presentation, the movie would be a war-scene movie, whether that be Casablanca, or John Wayne fighting off his enemies. Whichever way you put it, Hollywood expressed the importance of the war and how we should help, or even how to enlist.
WWII movies and commercials differed greatly in comparison to WWI movies and commercials. WWI productions and cartoons would be based on all the negativity of the enemies and how we need to stop them and fight them. For example, there would be a cartoon of a German soldier that would be harrassing an innocent Belgian woman. But for WWII productions, they focused on the Allies that were fighting along side us and tried to promote the help for them because they were helping our country to be a better place. Just to name a few movies that came out during the war and had a "war feel" to them, they are Destination Tokyo, Flying Tigers, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, and Wake Island.
Most of the war movies would involve a small group of men fighting strongly for their cause against an enemy that had the odds all in their favor to defeat the US/Ally soldiers, but the "good" soldiers would win and be the awesome heroes that fought as valiantly as they could. The movie would either express a victorious or happy feeling, to make viewers want to help support the war cause.
Office of Price Administration:
The Office of Price Administration was the first to introduce rationing during the war. Rationing was very important during the war because, even if someone could afford stuff like groceries and gasoline, they would only be able to purchase a certain amount because the supply of each resource was low from military use.
After Pearl Harbor, the US debate on the possibility of entering the war was over basically overnight. America turned into a war machine. As the economy changed to war production, all consuming took the back burner for military production. Once again, people had to not buy the amount that was possibly needed for their family because of the rationing. The OPA froze prices on almost all goods that were used on a daily basis, and the first goods that the price froze for were coffee and sugar.
Every American family during WWII received a ration book, and the ration books had a specific amount of money in it, and it dictated how and what money should be spent on, such as clothing, food, gas, tires, and other (only important) goods. Catalogs for different department and grocery stores had lists of all the rationed items and products that they sold. There were so many everyday items rationed, that even chicken wire and other types of fencing were rationed out. The OPA was very strict about how America spent their money so that the military would be able to spend as much as they could to win the war.
I think that the rationing was a good idea, but the only problem was that the US spent more on WWII then all of the collective government spending before that since George Washington [America: The Story of Us]. But the extra money did provide the resources to help us to win the war, such as tanks, planes, and infantry weapons. The Hollywood roles were cool too in showing the influence of war in everyday life and how it got people to help to support the soldiers and the other people fighting and working to make our country free of war. I think that these two topics were fairly major in helping us with the upper hand in the war.
Here are some pics from these two topics:
Comments
Great job!!