Rationing for Victory: Americans Conserve, Protect Secrets, and are hidden from little known Facts

While American forces were fighting overseas or training at US military camps, families at home were also fully engaged in the war effort. From selling War Bonds to saving bacon fat, Americans did all they could at home to support the troops and their mission.

WAR BONDS: The sale of War Bonds and War Stamps from 1942-1945, by everyone from children going door-to-door to movie stars Abbott and Costello and Irene Dunne, helped the country stage a rapid economic recovery after the post-depression years. Bond booths were set up at schools, in local movie theaters and food stores. Posters and billboards throughout America promoted bond drives with slogans like "Join the Fight. Back the Invasion," and "Help Avenge Pearl Harbor"  The country was just coming out of the Great Depression when it entered WWII. As inspiring as the war effort was, it cost vast amounts of money to make it go and keep it going. Bond-buying (loaning money to the government) was portrayed as a patriotic duty. Bonds were also seen as a safe place to park ��surplus�� money and control inflation.

"Hasten the Homecoming: Buy Victory Bonds!"

This poster is very typical of early war posters, because it attempts to convince the viewer that the Nazi threat is closer than they think. The imagery is also very common; a dark Nazi swastika looms over a group of small innocent and apparently patriotic children. The viewer is instructed that he can save these children the fate that would befall them from the Nazis by purchasing war bonds and contributing to the war effort. This poster is also typical in that it urges the viewer to buy war bonds. The United States government, which had just recently emerged from the depression, did not have the amount of funds necessary to wage war on multiple fronts. Posters like this tapered off during the end of the war when financial support through war bonds was no longer necessary and it was becoming clear that America would eliminate the Nazi threat. However, posters such as this were extremely important during the early years of the war.

RATIONING: 'Making do with less' was the rallying cry on the American Homefront. Following the example of its British cousins, America soon began the rationing of critical goods. The Office of Price Administration (OPA) was set up in 1941 to set rationing regulations. With the military getting first claim on products such as steel, aluminum, coal, wood, rubber, gasoline, items like cigarettes and foods such as coffee and sugar, American families began feeling the pinch. Within a short period of time, ration books had been issued to every family member in the country. For those who disobeyed ration rules, punishment was strict. "Punishments ranging as high as Ten Years' Imprisonment or $10,000 Fine or Both, may be imposed under United States Statutes for violations thereof arising out of infractions of Ration Orders and Regulations." (from United States of American, War Ration Book One). With rationing came a thriving black market for the scarcer products.

Click here or continue on and read the following for a personal perspective: �What does the 'A' mean?� someone will ask, pointing to the paper sticker in the window of my 1938 Buick sedan. �Gasoline rationing during World War II,� I respond, but there's more to the story. Indeed, the main idea was to conserve rubber, not gasoline. The interior side of the sticker (shown) instructs the driver on this point. In May of 1942, the U.S. Office of Price Administration (OPA) froze prices on practically all everyday goods, starting with sugar and coffee. War Ration Books were issued to each American family, dictating how much any one person could buy. The first nonfood item rationed was rubber. The Japanese had seized plantations in the Dutch East Indies that produced 90% of America's raw rubber. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called on citizens to contribute scrap rubber, �old tires, old rubber raincoats, garden hose, rubber shoes, bathing caps��. The OPA established the Idle Tire Purchase Plan, and could deny Mileage Rations to anyone owning passenger tires not in use. The national maximum �Victory Speed� was 35 miles an hour. �Driving clubs� or carpools were encouraged. A magazine ad declared, �Your Car is a War Car Now.� Gasoline was rationed on May 15, 1942 on the east coast, and nationwide that December. The OPA issued various stickers to be affixed to the car's windshield, depending on need. To get your classification and ration stamps, you had to certify to a local board that you needed gas and owned no more than five tires. The 'A' sticker was issued to owners whose use of their cars was nonessential. Hand the pump jockey your Mileage Ration Book coupons and cash, and she (yes, female service station attendants) could sell you three or four gallons a week, no more. For nearly a year, A-stickered cars were not to be driven for pleasure at all. The green 'B' sticker was for driving deemed essential to the war effort; industrial war workers, for example, could purchase eight gallons a week. Red 'C' stickers indicated physicians, ministers, mail carriers and railroad workers, and incidentally were the most counterfeited type. 'T' was for truckers, and the rare 'X' sticker went to Members of Congress and other VIPs. Apparently there was some cheating, but this was socially unacceptable as well as illegal. The Mileage Ration folder warns drivers to write their car's license number on each coupon, �Endorsement Protects You and Helps Lick the Black Market.� Dr. Cecil L. Betz of Los Angeles has done so on his C stamps shown. I wonder if Dr. Betz or his '36 Oldsmobile are still around? And, in the words of the day, �There's a war on, you know.� Every citizen, military or civilian, was to do their part. Even in the popular Warner Brothers cartoons, Daffy Duck exhorts the audience to �Keep it under 40!�, and Bugs Bunny's plunging airplane halts just before impact, out of gas as a consequence of the `A' sticker on its windshield. Did rationing work? Generally it did. Consider that in the 1940s the automobile really wasn't the universal appliance it is now, so fuel restriction was probably less onerous to the average civilian than the rationing of other goods. For many who served on the Home Front, rationing may be the most remembered daily aspect of the war.

This poster which urges viewers to conserve gasoline by joining a car-sharing club, also belonged to a common type of wartime poster. Since materials and supplies for the war effort were scarce, conservation was encouraged by propaganda. Gasoline, especially, was important because it was necessary to fuel tanks and aircraft. This poster is a fairly typical example of this type, with the common suggestion that waste will aid the enemy. Hitler is often mentioned by name instead of referring to the Nazis or the Reich, because propaganda tended to personify the evil of the Nazis in Hitler. Interestingly enough, this is almost exactly the opposite of what occurred in Germany, where Hitler embodied everything good about the Reich. Also, in this poster, the stereotypical image of Hitler is used, in uniform with an exaggerated moustache and iron cross. The American is shown to be unaware that he is aiding the enemy, which implies that those who drive alone are also uninformed. The poster claims to correct that by urging the average viewer to quickly join a car-sharing club to conserve gasoline. Posters such as this were extremely common after America entered the war.

Spies in WW2:  Posters such as this one which implies that a man is dying because "someone talked," were also very common. They implied that enemy spies were everywhere and that, in the words of a similar poster, "loose lips can sink ships." Although spies were no great threat to America during World War II, it was said that even small amounts of information would help the Germans. This posters and others like it also served to bring home the reality of war to many of the citizens of America. When viewers realized that there was a danger of spies around them and that people, like the man on the poster, were actually dying, they began to realize that actual warfare was going on in the world around them and that America was at threat. This was probably the reason why this poster uses such dark colors and frightening imagery. Posters such as this warn viewers of the dangers of frivolous talk and help serve to demonstrate the actual proximity of warfare.  In reality, the story of Nazi's spies int eh U.S. reads like an improbable Hollywood thriller: German spies were delivered to the East Coast via U-boat and there infiltrate wartime New York City, looking for atomic secrets. Yet this is exactly what happened in December 1944 as related by Erich Gimpel, himself one of the spies. Captured and sentenced to hang by a U.S. military court, he was spared at the last moment by FDR's death and spent the next ten years in the Fort Leavenworth and Alcatraz prisons. Gimpel was eventually released on parole and repatriated to Germany, where he wrote this memoir (originally published in Great Britain in 1957 but never before published in America). With an air of a disillusioned realist, he still manages to play up the dramatic details of his unique spying career.

Japanese Balloons: Offically; in the waning days of the Pacific War Japan tried a last ditch ploy to hit the United States with a terror weapon. That weapon was the Balloon Bomb. It was supposted to set fire to the West Coast and drop anti-personel bombs randomly on the U.S. In research after the war it was found that the Japanese built 15,000 of them but only launched 9,300. A little over 300 Balloon Bomb incedents occured in the U.S. and Canada. The only casualties were a woman and five kids in Bly, Oregon on a church picnic, who found and moved one. It expoded, killing them all.  The balloon bombs were released from Japan in the winter months when the jet stream is the strongest. They popped up to altitude (20,000 to 40,000 ft.) and if they were lucky into the stream. They traveled along in an easterly direction crossing the Pacific at around 200 mph in the jet stream. In daytime they would ride at the maximum altitude but as time wore on they would sink. At night they would collect dew and become heavy. Below a set height the altimeter would cause a set of blow plugs (charges that released the ballast) to fire releasing the sand bag ballast. The loss of weight would cause the balloon to pop back up to altitude. This continued till all the sand bags were gone. The last ballast was the armament. Thermite bombs were armed and dropped in the last positions on the ring. Anti-personnel bombs were also used. After all the ballast was gone a picric acid block blew up destroying the gondola. A fuse was lit that was connected to a charge on the balloon itself. The hydrogen and air mixture burned the balloon envelope up as a large orange fireball.  The intent of the bombs was to create massive forest fires and force American manpower to combat the environmental disaster.