As the bombs fell on Guernica, the Blitz terrorized Britons, and
atrocities were reported from Nanking-even before Pearl
Harbor-Americans watched and worried about attacks on their
homeland. In 1941, US mayors urged President Franklin D. Roosevelt
to form a federal agency to focus on mobilization and citizen
protection. In May of that year, FDR established an Office of
Civilian Defense to protect Americans from foreign and domestic
threats. As its head, he appointed New York Mayor Fiorello
LaGuardia, elected leader of America's most vulnerable city. As the
assistant director, he appointed First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt In
this book, Matthew Dallek, historian, journalist, and speechwriter,
narrates the history of the Office of Civilian Defense. He uses the
development of the precursor of "homeland security" as a way of
examining constitutional questions about civil liberties; the role
of government in propagandizing to its own citizens; competing
visions among liberals and conservatives for establishing a plan to
defend America; and federal, state, and local responsibilities for
citizen protection. Much of the dramatic tension lies in the
preparation of communities against attack and their fears of
Japanese invasion along the Pacific Coast and Nazi invasion. So too
there was a clash of visions between LaGuardia and Eleanor
Roosevelt. The mayor argued that the OCD's focus had to be on
preparing the country against German and Japanese attack, including
conducting blackout drills, preparing evacuation plans,
coordinating emergency medical teams, and protecting industrial
plants and transportation centers. The First Lady believed the OCD
should also promote social justice for African Americans and women
and raise civilian morale through the building of nursery schools,
old-age homes, housing projects, and physical fitness centers.
Their clashes frustrated FDR, who pressured them both to resign in
1942, and led to the appointment of James Landis, commissioner of
the SEC, who created a semi-military operation that involved
grassroots citizen mobilization, including dimming house-lights to
prevent German subs from spotting American ships on the Atlantic,
planting Victory Gardens, and building the Civil Air Patrol. Over
twelve million volunteers joined civil defense under his
leadership, making it the largest volunteer program in World War II
America. This dramatic story of the wartime homefront will interest
readers attracted to New Deal and wartime domestic history, those
who read about both Roosevelts and Fiorello LaGuardia, and those
interested in the history of civil defense and Homeland Security.
General
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