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Myth and the Greatest Generation
Myth and the Greatest Generation calls into question the glowing paradigm of the World War II generation set up by such books as The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw. Including analysis of news reports, memoirs, novels, films and other cultural artefacts Ken Rose shows the war was much more disruptive to the lives of Americans in the military and on the home front during World War II than is generally acknowledged. Issues of racial, labor unrest, juvenile delinquency, and marital infidelity were rampant, and the black market flourished. This book delves into both personal and national issues, calling into questions the dominant view of World War II as ‘The Good War’.
384 pages, Paperback
First published October 8, 2007
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About the author
Kenneth D. Rose
10 books2 followersKenneth D. Rose teaches history at California State University, Chico.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 16, 2015
whoa. it's always good to try to see both sides of the coin. I am reading brokaws GREATEST GENERATION simultaneously. brokaws book is shallow as it simply highlights individuals who he has chosen arbitrarily. this book however made a fairly thorough inquest into general statistics with copious notes and bibliography. things like strikes during the war, racial riots during the war, spike in std during the war, 50000 condoms a day shipped to the front lines during the war, foolish marriages and high divorce rate during the war, and on and on it goes. while I do not want to minimize the sacrifice made by those who went, the cold hard stubborn facts do not paint the idyllic picture that brokaw does. war is hell on earth and Hollywood and the media's take on it is usually pure fiction. one story in the book has John Wayne showing up at a veteran hospital to encourage the troops during the war. he obviously played in many of the fictional Hollywood propaganda movies of the time. he was met with cold silence and then a smattering of boos.
the book became monotonous at some points due to an excess of thoroughness. not all points were valid, but this book dwarfs brokaws GREATEST GENERATION as a literary work. while brokaws stories are certainly true, they are superficial. this book takes you below the surface into maybe the saddest generation.
the book became monotonous at some points due to an excess of thoroughness. not all points were valid, but this book dwarfs brokaws GREATEST GENERATION as a literary work. while brokaws stories are certainly true, they are superficial. this book takes you below the surface into maybe the saddest generation.
February 1, 2016
Although it is an easy argument to make, this book demolishes the "Greatest Generation" meme and restores humanity to the World War II generation by pointing out strengths and weaknesses. A good work of social history.
May 24, 2018
Tom Brokaw’s books on the Greatest Generation have greatly influenced how Americans look back upon the “Good War.” Brokaw depicts the Greatest Generation as selfless patriots who willingly sacrificed and worked together to defeat the Axis powers.
Kenneth Rose is a revisionist who challenges the “false nostalgia,” writing that “the best way to honor this generation is not to falsify it but to humanize it. The only way this can be done is to follow the truth where it leads, and to include the blemished as well as the valorous.”
Draft dodging and a vigorous black market were parts of the truth. So was maintenance of Jim Crow segregation, in the armed forces as well as in many defense industries. In 1946, the Greatest Generation set a record for divorces, as well as for marriages. The divorce rate in 1946 was not as high again until 1972.
Rose does a credible job of reminding readers of inconvenient truths that conflict with Brokaw’s romanticized view of WWII. In American propaganda, for instance, Japanese were subject to subhuman caricatures far more so than Germans. “Japs” were depicted as rats, monkeys, cockroaches, snakes, dogs and bats. Japanese propaganda also embraced race hatred and assumed Japanese racial superiority. A popular song reflected the contrasting views of the enemy: “There’ll Be No Adolph Hitler nor Yellow Japs to Fear.”
“It’s no exaggeration to say that America became a nation of smokers during WWII.” Servicemen received free cigarettes with their rations, and smoking was ubiquitous. By 1944, 71 percent of men smoked. After the war, cigarette sales dwarfed the pre-war production.
Americans who fought in the Great War to make the world safe for democracy had been greatly disillusioned in the aftermath. Consequently, with American entry into WWII, there were markedly fewer parades and patriotic displays. Most soldiers lacked a crusading zeal, and weren’t clear what they were fighting for, beyond loyalty to their platoon. S.L.A. Marshall wrote shortly after the war that three out of four soldiers in combat were not firing their weapons. He claims that only five infantry units were effective on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and that only one in five men in these companies fired their weapons that day.
“It seems clear that much of the flag-and-country patriotic fervor that supposedly engulfed American society during the war years has been imposed on that era in hindsight. Indeed, the hyperbolic language of patriotism was especially suspect to those who knew what war was.” The great war novels written by WWII veterans uniformly rejected patriotism as justification for the war. Instead, the novels expressed lack of idealism and despair.
Tom Brokaw praises Americans on the home-front for being “fully immersed in the war effort. They worked long shifts, rationed gasoline, and ate less meat.” The reality was less black-and-white. There was widespread black marketing to evade rationing, record absenteeism on the job, draft dodging, and sharp increases in child neglect and juvenile delinquency.
The FBI investigated close to half a million cases of draft evasion. More common were legal ways to evade by fathering a baby or working in a protected industry. Children suffered when fathers were in the armed forces and mothers worked in defense plants. High school enrollment dropped 17 percent, as teens flocked into the labor market. The black market diverted so much meat that “meatlegging” caused a national meat shortage in 1945. The rate of worker absenteeism doubled in the tight labor market. The feds imposed a midnight curfew on nightclubs in an attempt to curb absenteeism. Well before war ended, workers in defense industries left their jobs in anticipation of layoffs after the war.
In the armed forces, Hispanics but not blacks were permitted to serve in white units. German POWs were able to eat with white soldiers, while black soldiers ate in separate accommodations. Black facilities on army bases were greatly inferior to white facilities. When Lena Horne performed for troops in Arkansas, she was taken aback when she saw that German POWs had better seats than black troops. The Red Cross segregated blood by race, a decision supported by the Surgeon General. Inevitable racial conflicts between black and white troops were blamed on the blacks. By the end of the war, 11 percent of white soldiers were officers, compared to less than 1 percent among black soldiers.
American racism inflicted the greatest suffering on Japanese Americans. Anti-Asian prejudice had a long history on the west coast. Federal law had banned Chinese immigration in 1882 and Japanese immigration in 1924. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a strong popular outcry to treat Japanese Americans as the enemy. FDR acceded to political pressure and issued an executive order to round up Japanese-Americans, whether they were citizens or not. Even American citizens with as little as one-quarter Japanese ancestry were caught in the roundup. The same treatment was not imposed on the more numerous German and Italian Americans. The relocation centers, aka concentration camps, were extremely Spartan, with no running water and not much food. In 1943 the Army began drafting Japanese Americans, though the Navy refused to accept them as sailors.
Rose focuses more on life on the home front than on what another historian called “military romanticism.” One disagreement I have with Rose is his defense of using nuclear bombs on Japan. He repeats the familiar either/or fallacy espoused by Truman. According to historian Christian Appy, “six of the seven five-star generals and admirals of that time believed that there was no reason to use them, that the Japanese were already defeated, knew it, and were likely to surrender before any American invasion could be launched. Several, like Admiral William Leahy and General Dwight Eisenhower, also had moral objections to the weapon. Leahy considered the atomic bombing of Japan ‘barbarous’ and a violation of ‘every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war.’
Rose also ignores the fact that “some key presidential advisers had urged Truman to drop his demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ and allow Japan to keep the emperor on his throne, an alteration in peace terms that might have led to an almost immediate surrender. Truman rejected that advice, only to grant the same concession after the nuclear attacks.”
By the end of the twentieth century, the mere mortals who fought the war had been elevated into the Greatest Generation. This informative book tells the rest of the story. ###
.
Kenneth Rose is a revisionist who challenges the “false nostalgia,” writing that “the best way to honor this generation is not to falsify it but to humanize it. The only way this can be done is to follow the truth where it leads, and to include the blemished as well as the valorous.”
Draft dodging and a vigorous black market were parts of the truth. So was maintenance of Jim Crow segregation, in the armed forces as well as in many defense industries. In 1946, the Greatest Generation set a record for divorces, as well as for marriages. The divorce rate in 1946 was not as high again until 1972.
Rose does a credible job of reminding readers of inconvenient truths that conflict with Brokaw’s romanticized view of WWII. In American propaganda, for instance, Japanese were subject to subhuman caricatures far more so than Germans. “Japs” were depicted as rats, monkeys, cockroaches, snakes, dogs and bats. Japanese propaganda also embraced race hatred and assumed Japanese racial superiority. A popular song reflected the contrasting views of the enemy: “There’ll Be No Adolph Hitler nor Yellow Japs to Fear.”
“It’s no exaggeration to say that America became a nation of smokers during WWII.” Servicemen received free cigarettes with their rations, and smoking was ubiquitous. By 1944, 71 percent of men smoked. After the war, cigarette sales dwarfed the pre-war production.
Americans who fought in the Great War to make the world safe for democracy had been greatly disillusioned in the aftermath. Consequently, with American entry into WWII, there were markedly fewer parades and patriotic displays. Most soldiers lacked a crusading zeal, and weren’t clear what they were fighting for, beyond loyalty to their platoon. S.L.A. Marshall wrote shortly after the war that three out of four soldiers in combat were not firing their weapons. He claims that only five infantry units were effective on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and that only one in five men in these companies fired their weapons that day.
“It seems clear that much of the flag-and-country patriotic fervor that supposedly engulfed American society during the war years has been imposed on that era in hindsight. Indeed, the hyperbolic language of patriotism was especially suspect to those who knew what war was.” The great war novels written by WWII veterans uniformly rejected patriotism as justification for the war. Instead, the novels expressed lack of idealism and despair.
Tom Brokaw praises Americans on the home-front for being “fully immersed in the war effort. They worked long shifts, rationed gasoline, and ate less meat.” The reality was less black-and-white. There was widespread black marketing to evade rationing, record absenteeism on the job, draft dodging, and sharp increases in child neglect and juvenile delinquency.
The FBI investigated close to half a million cases of draft evasion. More common were legal ways to evade by fathering a baby or working in a protected industry. Children suffered when fathers were in the armed forces and mothers worked in defense plants. High school enrollment dropped 17 percent, as teens flocked into the labor market. The black market diverted so much meat that “meatlegging” caused a national meat shortage in 1945. The rate of worker absenteeism doubled in the tight labor market. The feds imposed a midnight curfew on nightclubs in an attempt to curb absenteeism. Well before war ended, workers in defense industries left their jobs in anticipation of layoffs after the war.
In the armed forces, Hispanics but not blacks were permitted to serve in white units. German POWs were able to eat with white soldiers, while black soldiers ate in separate accommodations. Black facilities on army bases were greatly inferior to white facilities. When Lena Horne performed for troops in Arkansas, she was taken aback when she saw that German POWs had better seats than black troops. The Red Cross segregated blood by race, a decision supported by the Surgeon General. Inevitable racial conflicts between black and white troops were blamed on the blacks. By the end of the war, 11 percent of white soldiers were officers, compared to less than 1 percent among black soldiers.
American racism inflicted the greatest suffering on Japanese Americans. Anti-Asian prejudice had a long history on the west coast. Federal law had banned Chinese immigration in 1882 and Japanese immigration in 1924. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a strong popular outcry to treat Japanese Americans as the enemy. FDR acceded to political pressure and issued an executive order to round up Japanese-Americans, whether they were citizens or not. Even American citizens with as little as one-quarter Japanese ancestry were caught in the roundup. The same treatment was not imposed on the more numerous German and Italian Americans. The relocation centers, aka concentration camps, were extremely Spartan, with no running water and not much food. In 1943 the Army began drafting Japanese Americans, though the Navy refused to accept them as sailors.
Rose focuses more on life on the home front than on what another historian called “military romanticism.” One disagreement I have with Rose is his defense of using nuclear bombs on Japan. He repeats the familiar either/or fallacy espoused by Truman. According to historian Christian Appy, “six of the seven five-star generals and admirals of that time believed that there was no reason to use them, that the Japanese were already defeated, knew it, and were likely to surrender before any American invasion could be launched. Several, like Admiral William Leahy and General Dwight Eisenhower, also had moral objections to the weapon. Leahy considered the atomic bombing of Japan ‘barbarous’ and a violation of ‘every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war.’
Rose also ignores the fact that “some key presidential advisers had urged Truman to drop his demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ and allow Japan to keep the emperor on his throne, an alteration in peace terms that might have led to an almost immediate surrender. Truman rejected that advice, only to grant the same concession after the nuclear attacks.”
By the end of the twentieth century, the mere mortals who fought the war had been elevated into the Greatest Generation. This informative book tells the rest of the story. ###
.
November 13, 2024
Pulling the curtain back
This book shed a new light on what is referred to as "The Greatest Generation". The cruelty and brutality of war can never be minimized by Tom Brokaw's depictions of soldiers' camaraderie and " fighting for the cause". War news was rendered palatable for the civilians at home. The horrors of war were well hidden from everyone. It was not difficult to do as no battles or aerial combat occurred on U.S. soil except for its territories. Other than the Pearl Harbor attack, the worst Americans had to endure was rationing. That wasn't so for most of Europe and East Asia. The war casualties there numbered in the millions, and property damage was all but uncountable. It's all too easy to romanticize WWII from the American perspective.
This book shed a new light on what is referred to as "The Greatest Generation". The cruelty and brutality of war can never be minimized by Tom Brokaw's depictions of soldiers' camaraderie and " fighting for the cause". War news was rendered palatable for the civilians at home. The horrors of war were well hidden from everyone. It was not difficult to do as no battles or aerial combat occurred on U.S. soil except for its territories. Other than the Pearl Harbor attack, the worst Americans had to endure was rationing. That wasn't so for most of Europe and East Asia. The war casualties there numbered in the millions, and property damage was all but uncountable. It's all too easy to romanticize WWII from the American perspective.
December 13, 2019
Excellent scholarly work that is highly readable to the lay person. An essential book for understanding the America home front of WW2.
January 31, 2021
The greatest generation wasn't great. They were human. To say otherwise demeans what they experienced, and totally slaps in the face of what they were trying to prevent. Which Rose states at the end of the book: "Indeed, contemporary politicians cynically pay lip service to the sacrifices of this generation while aggressively pursuing policies guaranteed to create what this generation fought against: more wars." Rose debunks the myths surrounding the ear, and does it with an authoritative beat down of how Americans glorified this war. War is hell, and no American should experience or glorify what these men and women went through.
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January 29, 2025I read this on a recommendation from keds_economist (Kathryn Anne Edwards, economist and opinion writer for Bloomberg). I think we as a nation definitely romanticize and idealize the greatest generation and this book rips off those blinders. It gave me an understanding of American opinion on the Japanese and how it was so easy for people to let Japanese Americans be put into internment camps. It gives realistic information that is often idealized - many men did not want to go to war, the divorce rate was high, infidelity happened, there was racism and segregation on all levels, and 55 million people died worldwide.
December 3, 2018
A necessary book for the WWII library (especially in terms of the war's experiences for Americans). While some may feel it is overly negative the point of the book is to round off the edges of the "good war" and "greatest generation" claims for WWII Americans. There is some fault to be found with over-reliance on literature and film at times to stand-in for American perspectives, but there is enough use of primary sources and examples from the time to help give more nuance to American experiences of WWII with a focus on minorities, economic conditions and the black market as examples.
April 21, 2025
Very much reads like a history book, struggled with motivation to get through certain parts, but there’s no depiction of WWII that I’ve come across that paints humanity in such a way that Myth does. The detail is second to none, and it makes me want to read some of the books authored by those like Vonnegut as I will certainly interpret them with the learnings from Myth in mind. Recommend to anyone who enjoys WWII history
July 5, 2025
The thesis of the book is that the "Greatest Generation" is more invention than truth. I have not read any of Brokaw's books (or similar ones) and don't know on what basis he founded the term the "Greatest Generation." I can say that Mr. Rose provides a great deal of authority to support characterizing the term as a myth.
October 27, 2019
Does a good job of covering various sides of the war and what it was like to live through
February 11, 2011
Interesting look at the real ww2, which should be remembered for it's horribleness and not it's glory.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews