During World War II, the home front offered unprecedented levels 
of moral, financial, and labor support for the war effort. This was 
no accident. Through the U.S. Treasury Department's war bond 
drives, Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration strategically 
cultivated national morale by creating the largest single domestic 
propaganda campaign known to that time.

    Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny joined Judy Garland, Dorothy 
Lamour, and Lana Turner to urge Americans to buy war bonds, 
helping to create a virtual army of home front soldiers. Dr. Seuss 
drew cartoons, Irving Berlin wrote songs, and Norman Rockwell 
designed posters to help raise over $185 billion for the struggle, 
most of it coming from average citizens who well remembered the 
poverty of the Depression.

    In Mobilizing the Home Front, James J. Kimble marshals 
archival documents, public appeals, and a wealth of internal 
memoranda, reports, and surveys to offer a new understanding of 
the government's eight war bond drives and the psyche of the nation 
at war.

    With roots in propaganda studies, military history, rhetorical 
criticism, and peace studies, this book adds new dimensions to our 
understanding of the waging of war by the "Greatest Generation."

_________________________________________________________

JAMES J. KIMBLE, an assistant professor of communication at 
Seton Hall University, received his Ph.D. from the University of 
Maryland. He is also a Distinguished Honor Graduate of the U.S. 
Army Chaplain Center and School.


Number Fifteen: Presidential Rhetoric Series


What people are saying about this book

"Kimble provides an informative and instructive account of a 
neglected but important aspect of war finance and domestic 
morale."—John Morton Blum, Yale University, author of V was 
for Victory

"That Kimble has managed to say something new and interesting 
and consequential in such a massive scholarly field is highly 
commendable. . . . [He] has seemingly left no stone unturned in his 
quest to get 'the whole story.' . . . Kimble has shown us the value 
of looking at the Treasury's rhetorical move."—Davis Houck, 
Florida State University, author of FDR and Fear Itself