Rough draft essay of world war 211/27/2023 With Western Europe under Nazi control and Britain suffering a devastating air campaign, these ships were required to support American allies during the war. Georgia’s largest civilian contribution to the war effort came from the coastal region, where laborers constructed nearly 200 “Liberty ships” to transport troops and goods to the European and Pacific theaters. Camp Gordon in Augusta and Camp Stewart in Hinesville both housed German and Italian prisoners of war, and in both towns local farmers recruited the POWs during harvest season to offset American labor shortages. Moreover, many farmers had to sell their farms and land to defense manufacturers, further accelerating the migration of Georgians into urban centers. Agricultural workers were not permitted draft deferments until August 1942, and many voluntarily left their farms for defense factories in urban centers, where the pay was much better. On the other hand, the supply of farm labor was decreased by the war effort. The net income of the average American farmer increased from $700 to more than $2,000 between 19. American grain exports, for example, decreased 30 percent between September 1939 and September 1940, and the average caloric intake in Europe was decreasing. Agriculture had been disrupted on the European continent due to the war, and the German blockade of Great Britain had sunk many American supply ships. On the one hand, demand and prices were up. All American farmers were strained by the war effort. The growth of the manufacturing sector in Georgia had consequences for the state’s traditional economic engine, agriculture. Macon and Milledgeville also welcomed the arrival of new ordnance plants. Marietta’s Bell Aircraft plant (also known as Bell Bomber), for example, at its peak put some 28,000 Georgians to work building B-29 bombers, causing the town’s population to swell from a modest 8,667 residents in 1940 to 20,687 by the end of the decade. Navy trained 2,000 combat pilots at the University of Georgia in Athens and Hunter Field and Camp Gordon (later Fort Gordon) welcomed hundreds of thousands of enlisted men to the Savannah and Augusta areas respectively.Ĭourtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Divisionĭefense contractors meanwhile relocated throughout Georgia, providing employment, aiding the state’s economic recovery, and allowing civilians to make valuable contributions to the war effort. Fort Benning in Columbus, for instance, was the largest infantry training school in the world Robins Field outside Macon employed some 13,000 civilians at its peak the U.S. Nowhere was this more the case than in Georgia, where every major city could boast a military installation of some variety. As the nation mobilized for war abroad, federal defense dollars flooded southern states in the form of military installations and defense contractors. As historian Morton Sosna concludes, prior to World War II, the “South was considerably poorer, blacker, and more rural than any other part of the United States.”Īlthough they failed to improve southern economic conditions significantly, Roosevelt’s New Deal programs nevertheless established a federal commitment to the region’s welfare that continued through World War II. Incomes lagged well behind national norms, and poverty was a common and enduring feature of southern life, as was the distinctive system of racial segregation that limited the freedoms of the region’s large Black population. A majority of southerners lived and worked on farms, and agricultural employment in the region exceeded national averages by 73 percent. Whereas other regions experienced high rates of urbanization during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the South remained predominantly rural. Indeed, the South that Roosevelt encountered on his frequent trips to Warm Springs was fundamentally at odds with the rest of the nation, even before the depression. Roosevelt called the South “the nation’s number one economic problem” and thereafter devoted generous New Deal spending to improving conditions in the region. Because it occurred when important shifts in the state’s politics, race relations, and economy were already under way, the war accelerated Georgia’s modernization, lifting it out of the Great Depression and ushering it into the mainstream of American life. Their experiences were pivotal in determining the state’s future development, and the war itself marked a watershed in Georgia’s history. Armed Forces during World War II, and countless others found employment in burgeoning wartime industries. Some 320,000 Georgians served in the U.S. Southern states were critical to the war effort during World War II (1941-45) and none more so than Georgia.
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