In this study, Thomas Bruscino examines how white veterans embedded ethnic and religious pluralism brought home from World War II in the American Cold War consensus. Bruscino builds his thesis on a mix of sources, including letters, memoirs, government documents, and the GI Roundtable pamphlet series produced during the war by the American Historical Association. His well‐written, accessible narrative will interest both scholars of war and society and the general public.
The book’s strength is the effective manner in which it efficiently describes the social and political events, and the statistical data supporting the various vignettes, all designed to capture the reader analytically and emotionally.... Growing up as the child of a second-generation American and World War II veteran from a Catholic Hungarian neighborhood in a diverse ethnic and religious Pennsylvania city, this allowed the reviewer to connect with many of the author’s revelations. If this book is any indication of the quality of the Legacies of War series, look forward to the upcoming releases.The webpage for the publication is here, the pdf with the book review is here.
Bruscino is obviously right when he contrasts the tolerance of servicemen and civilians, but the war also increased patriotism and cooperation on the home front. For example, women in defense factories developed friendly social and working in relations with people who didn't share their religious beliefs or ethnic loyalties. While there was a contrast between open-minded servicemen and the folks back home, in non-combat situations the former tended to hang out more with their own kind and those they considered strangers. In combat and other wartime risks everyone was your own kind whether on land, sea, or in the air.
A Nation Forged In War is an important and highly readable book; it is also a valuable contribution to ethnic and World War II historiographies. Bruscino makes good use of primary and secondary sources and writes excellent prose.
Bruscino leads off his story by recalling the Four Chaplains—Methodist, Dutch Reform, Catholic, Jewish—who in February 1943, when their ship was torpedoed, handed off their life jackets to sailors and then locked arms in prayer as their ship plunged into the North Atlantic. It's impossible to read this without tearing up, and without reflecting, as Bruscino urges us to do, on how their example helped to make this a better country. A better country in many ways, but one that now is past, and the past is always, in L.P. Hartley's phrase, another country. We are the lucky inheritors, three generations later, of a country strengthened rather than weakened by an experience of total war, strengthened materially, geopolitically and, as Bruscino tells us, culturally. But our duty is to take our country in different directions from those in which the wartime experience took postwar America.Barone's review has been discussed by Arnold Kling at EconLog and Tim Kowal at Notes from Babel.
Prior to 1945, the United States was still largely a collection of different ethnic and racial communities, living alongside each other in neighborhoods, villages, and towns. There was only a faint “American identity.” In his new book A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along (University of Tennessee Press, 2010), Thomas Bruscino argues that the act of military service in the Second World War changed created such a unified identity. As individual men from thousands of small homogenous communities across America entered the military in wartime, they were compelled to work together, sleep together, train together, and if need be, fight together against a common foe. Over the course of the war these representatives of their own unique ethnic enclaves came together to create a new American identity – a mutually accepted unilateral form of whiteness transcending existing racial hierarchies that were a legacy of the nineteenth century. Yet while this new consensus went on after the war to promote a new sense of tolerance that created post-war prosperity and stability, sadly it also remained tied to the color line, as African-Americans and other non-whites learned as they sought equal access to the fruits of American democracy. Bruscino’s book is a valuable and insightful study of how tightly intertwined war, society, and identity are in the American experience.The interview and podcast can be found here.
Bruscino, Thomas. A nation forged in war: how World War II taught Americans to get along. Tennessee, 2010. 348p bibl index ISBN 1-57233-695-1, $39.95; ISBN 9781572336957, $39.95. Reviewed in 2011jan CHOICE.On Choice's Facebook page, they made it Today's Top Review for January 10, 2011.
In contrast to the German practice of forming military units from soldiers of the same city or region, the US melds together groups of men from diverse geographic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. Bruscino (US Army School of Advanced Military Studies) finds this to be one of the more important legacies of WW II. The forced intimacy of training and warfare eroded many prejudicial barriers and, in the postwar world, served as the grassroots basis for a newly enlarged sense of tolerance. The sense of sharing a common identity first emerged among troops stationed in England and Ireland. Ethno-religious differences faded as men found greater unity in terms of social values they deemed distinctly "American." Once on the continent, these differences emerged with ever-greater clarity and consistency. Bruscino notes that the size of the WW II mobilization (around 15 million men and women) and the duration of the commitment (1941-1946) were decisive factors in shaping long-term outcomes. In combat, the key motivation remained mutual protection and defense, not ideology. Unit cohesion spelled survival without regard to any other factor, and out of this foxhole experience grew a greater sense of respect for cultural differences. A well-written, highly accessible account of emergent pluralism in US culture. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. -- J. Kleiman, University of Wisconsin Colleges
A Nation Forged in WarPlease pass on the word.
Author Signing
Military history buffs are in for a real treat. Author and history professor Thomas Bruscino will be here discussing and signing A Nation Forged in War. This groundbreaking work outlines the social and cultural impact of the World War II years.
Sunday June 13, 2010 2:00 PM
Zona Rosa
8625 Northwest Prairie View Rd Spac, Kansas City, MO 64153, 816-505-3355
So imagine my delight at applying the Page 99 Test and finding a full page about vomit and toilet facilities. Among the lovely phrases found on my page 99 are "sick to our stomachs," "nauseating stench," "residue of caustic GI soap lather," "a not too peaceful crap," "vomit covered the floors and fixtures," and "cold sea-water douche." Well.
It could be worse—page 99 might have been one of those blank pages in between chapters. Then I would have had to ramble about the irony of the meaninglessness of war, since my book was an attempt to find a larger meaning in World War II. Instead, I got “a not too peaceful crap.” So let’s talk about what that means.
