The December 1941 Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the United States officially into World War Two, but as "On Our Way: U. S. A. (1939-1942)" makes clear, Americans were deeply, often bitterly, divided over the issue of involvement in another world war begun in Europe as memories of U. S. involvement in the First World War still lingered.
Writer-producer Peter Batty helms this seventh installment of the landmark British documentary series "The World at War" with its wealth of archival footage, some in color and assuredly assembled by editor Beryl Wilkins, and an array of overwhelmingly American interviewees, including former members of President Franklin Roosevelt's administration, augmenting Batty's narrative delivered by Laurence Olivier.
Roosevelt opens "On Our Way" with a September 1939 pledge to keep America out of the new war as isolationism is prevalent across the nation. Indeed, Wendell Wilkie, the Republican presidential candidate opposing Roosevelt in the 1940 election, staunchly opposes both entering the war and FDR's New Deal policies while both houses of Congress feature many prominent isolationists (including Senators Rush Holt, Gerald Nye, and Burton Wheeler).
Also opposed to U. S. intervention is the America First Committee, featuring celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh as a high-profile spokesman; notes interviewee Norman Corwin, himself a radio legend who wrote many landmark programs and specials, celebrities such as Lindbergh gave groups like America First widespread visibility.
More troubling archival footage depicts what Olivier describes as a rally by the "American Nazi Party," more likely the German-American Bund's 1938 rally in New York's Madison Square Garden, marked by a scuffle between protesters and Bund storm troopers, as some Americans of German extraction indeed supported Nazi Germany.
Soundly defeating Wilkie in 1940 gave Roosevelt an unprecedented third presidential term along with a pro-war mandate. The fall of France in May 1940 left Britain alone to face Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, which had boosted American sentiment toward Britain. Proclaiming that America must become "the great arsenal of democracy," Roosevelt institutes the March 1941 Lend-Lease Act to supply war materiel to Britain.
American naval vessels began escorting convoys across the Atlantic; after a U. S. freighter was attacked in June 1941, American forces occupied Iceland, relieving the British garrison stationed there. By September 1941, the U. S. had unofficially entered the Battle of the Atlantic as German U-boats attacked American destroyers including the USS Reuben James, sunk with the loss of 100 lives, as Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy notes the similarities to German attacks on American ships prior to the U. S. entering the First World War.
While Americans did give their full support once the United States is at war, isolationism wasn't the only domestic resistance the Roosevelt Administration had faced. Emerging from the Great Depression, labor unions engaged in four times as many strikes in 1941 than in the previous year while, in an almost unnoticed but telling observation, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who served in the wartime Office of Price Administration, discloses that big business was reluctant to recalibrate for war production because it might not be profitable.
Soon after the U. S. declared war on Japan, the Roosevelt Administration ordered the internment of 100,000 Japanese-Americans, many of whom were forced to sell or abandon their possessions. Civil rights activist Edison Uno describes how Japanese-Americans quickly felt like "prisoners in our own country" as architect and artist Isamu Noguchi adds that while German- and Italian-Americans had their spokespersons, Japanese-Americans did not.
As for fighting the Japanese, America suffered the May 1942 Japanese victory in the Philippines that forced the surrender of 80,000 American and Filipino troops, one-eighth of whom died during the "Bataan Death March" en route to prisoner of war camps--more than were killed during combat. A ray of hope comes with an audacious bombing raid of Tokyo led by Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle that was primarily a morale-booster.
Although "On Our Way: U. S. A." omits any mention of the crucial and historic May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, it does spotlight the June 1942 Battle of Midway, which Richard Tregaskis, journalist and author of "Guadalcanal Diary," labels as the turning point in the Pacific War while Japanese Pearl Harbor veteran Mitsuo Fuchida concedes that, "Midway doomed Japan." (Archival color footage here may be from John Ford's 1942 documentary "The Battle of Midway" as the legendary director had been present and even wounded during the attacks.)
Having stemmed the Japanese tide, the U. S. went on the offensive, invading Japanese-held Guadalcanal Island in the South Pacific, although as Tregaskis and others including Lend-Lease official George Ball, Roosevelt advisor Vannevar Bush, and McCloy all report, the American priority, driven by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, focused on defeating Hitler's Nazi Germany before defeating Japan.
"On Our Way: U. S. A." also boasts rich archival footage of the American home front. Hollywood stars Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Frank Sinatra pitched war bonds as Tyrone Power delivered a motivational speech. Economist Paul Samuelson relates how Americans accepted the rationing of many goods--although Galbraith notes wryly how resistance to gasoline rationing was a conspicuous exception.
Packing a wealth of insights into American civilian and military life before and during World War Two, "On Our Way: U. S. A." contains enough for two episodes and is thus both diffuse and scattershot. Nevertheless, as an introduction to the last great power of the war, it evocatively portrays the sleeping giant poised to enter the fray.
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
Writer-producer Peter Batty helms this seventh installment of the landmark British documentary series "The World at War" with its wealth of archival footage, some in color and assuredly assembled by editor Beryl Wilkins, and an array of overwhelmingly American interviewees, including former members of President Franklin Roosevelt's administration, augmenting Batty's narrative delivered by Laurence Olivier.
Roosevelt opens "On Our Way" with a September 1939 pledge to keep America out of the new war as isolationism is prevalent across the nation. Indeed, Wendell Wilkie, the Republican presidential candidate opposing Roosevelt in the 1940 election, staunchly opposes both entering the war and FDR's New Deal policies while both houses of Congress feature many prominent isolationists (including Senators Rush Holt, Gerald Nye, and Burton Wheeler).
Also opposed to U. S. intervention is the America First Committee, featuring celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh as a high-profile spokesman; notes interviewee Norman Corwin, himself a radio legend who wrote many landmark programs and specials, celebrities such as Lindbergh gave groups like America First widespread visibility.
More troubling archival footage depicts what Olivier describes as a rally by the "American Nazi Party," more likely the German-American Bund's 1938 rally in New York's Madison Square Garden, marked by a scuffle between protesters and Bund storm troopers, as some Americans of German extraction indeed supported Nazi Germany.
Soundly defeating Wilkie in 1940 gave Roosevelt an unprecedented third presidential term along with a pro-war mandate. The fall of France in May 1940 left Britain alone to face Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, which had boosted American sentiment toward Britain. Proclaiming that America must become "the great arsenal of democracy," Roosevelt institutes the March 1941 Lend-Lease Act to supply war materiel to Britain.
American naval vessels began escorting convoys across the Atlantic; after a U. S. freighter was attacked in June 1941, American forces occupied Iceland, relieving the British garrison stationed there. By September 1941, the U. S. had unofficially entered the Battle of the Atlantic as German U-boats attacked American destroyers including the USS Reuben James, sunk with the loss of 100 lives, as Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy notes the similarities to German attacks on American ships prior to the U. S. entering the First World War.
While Americans did give their full support once the United States is at war, isolationism wasn't the only domestic resistance the Roosevelt Administration had faced. Emerging from the Great Depression, labor unions engaged in four times as many strikes in 1941 than in the previous year while, in an almost unnoticed but telling observation, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who served in the wartime Office of Price Administration, discloses that big business was reluctant to recalibrate for war production because it might not be profitable.
Soon after the U. S. declared war on Japan, the Roosevelt Administration ordered the internment of 100,000 Japanese-Americans, many of whom were forced to sell or abandon their possessions. Civil rights activist Edison Uno describes how Japanese-Americans quickly felt like "prisoners in our own country" as architect and artist Isamu Noguchi adds that while German- and Italian-Americans had their spokespersons, Japanese-Americans did not.
As for fighting the Japanese, America suffered the May 1942 Japanese victory in the Philippines that forced the surrender of 80,000 American and Filipino troops, one-eighth of whom died during the "Bataan Death March" en route to prisoner of war camps--more than were killed during combat. A ray of hope comes with an audacious bombing raid of Tokyo led by Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle that was primarily a morale-booster.
Although "On Our Way: U. S. A." omits any mention of the crucial and historic May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, it does spotlight the June 1942 Battle of Midway, which Richard Tregaskis, journalist and author of "Guadalcanal Diary," labels as the turning point in the Pacific War while Japanese Pearl Harbor veteran Mitsuo Fuchida concedes that, "Midway doomed Japan." (Archival color footage here may be from John Ford's 1942 documentary "The Battle of Midway" as the legendary director had been present and even wounded during the attacks.)
Having stemmed the Japanese tide, the U. S. went on the offensive, invading Japanese-held Guadalcanal Island in the South Pacific, although as Tregaskis and others including Lend-Lease official George Ball, Roosevelt advisor Vannevar Bush, and McCloy all report, the American priority, driven by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, focused on defeating Hitler's Nazi Germany before defeating Japan.
"On Our Way: U. S. A." also boasts rich archival footage of the American home front. Hollywood stars Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Frank Sinatra pitched war bonds as Tyrone Power delivered a motivational speech. Economist Paul Samuelson relates how Americans accepted the rationing of many goods--although Galbraith notes wryly how resistance to gasoline rationing was a conspicuous exception.
Packing a wealth of insights into American civilian and military life before and during World War Two, "On Our Way: U. S. A." contains enough for two episodes and is thus both diffuse and scattershot. Nevertheless, as an introduction to the last great power of the war, it evocatively portrays the sleeping giant poised to enter the fray.
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
