When the Great Depression began in 1929, Blacks were in a poor position to counteract the growing assaults on their jobs and living conditions. In the 1920s millions of Black Americans had responded to one degree or another to the Black nationalist appeals of Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association. But by the depression, the government had indicted and imprisoned Garvey, and his movement had dwindled into a small sect, incapable of providing leadership. Nor was there any other Black or civil rights organization on the scene that was capable of organizing the Black masses. They lost a disproportionate share of the jobs in the country and suffered even deeper cuts in their living standards than the millions of white unemployed. Blacks now were systematically driven out of what the racists called "nigger work" so that those previously unwanted jobs could be occupied by whites....

In March 1942, a full two years after rearmament began, Blacks were only 2.5 to 3 percent of all workers in war production. But as the wartime boom continued, this began to change. By November 1944, this figure had risen to over 8 percent. Between April 1940 and April 1944, the total number of Black workers increased by one-third, from 4.4 million to 5.9 million. However, four-fifths remained at unskilled jobs, and there was widespread discrimination on the job.

The same pattern was seen in the armed forces. At first, the army and navy were reluctant to accept Black enlistees or draftees even on a segregated basis. In 1940, there were less than 5,000 Blacks and only 2 Black officers in an army of 230,000 - that is, a little more than 2 percent. By September 1944, however, there were 702,000 in the army, 165,000 in the navy, 17,000 in the marines, and 5,000 in the coast guard. All together, around one million Black men and women served in the armed forces during the war, half of them overseas. However, they were segregated into all- Black units, usually under white officers, or were assigned to be cooks, porters, laborers, or servants. They also faced racist harassment by white military police. It was not until 1948 that the armed forces were officially desegregated.

It is not at all surprising, therefore, that Blacks were less enthusiastic about the war than most of the American population. Patriotism was fueled by government rhetoric about democracy and the "four freedoms,"* but among Blacks this rhetoric often had a result unexpected by its proponents - it had a politicizing, even a radicalizing, effect. Blacks began to demand some freedom for themselves....

Many Blacks were aware that America's allies, Britain and France, were the chief oppressors of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Moreover, the U.S. itself was supporting repressive regimes throughout Latin America and the rest of the colonial world so as to better economically exploit these countries.

The U.S. had several direct colonies -among them Puerto Rico, the Philippines, the Virgin Islands, and Hawaii - and had intervened militarily dozens of times in other countries to impose its policies.

The true aims of the U.S. and its allies were reflected not only in their fight to continue exploiting colonial peoples, but also in their response to the rise of fascism in Europe. When fascist governments were formed in Italy, Spain, and Germany, rather than opposing these regimes, the rulers of the imperialist democracies made fortunes selling them war materiel. And after the Germany army defeated its French counterpart, the French capitalists collaborated with the occupation and used it to drive down wages and attack the workers' movement.

The rulers of the capitalist democracies knew that German fascism was not simply the product of Hitler the individual; it grew out of methods used to defeat the working class when it rebelled in the face of the capitalist economic crisis. Unable to make concessions to stop a powerful workers' movement, the German capitalists had backed Hitler in order to retain their power and to regiment the country in preparation for a war of colonial conquest. The French, British, and American capitalists would themselves not have been opposed to turning to fascist forces in their own countries if this was needed against a challenge by the working class.

The Allied war effort was accompanied by nationalist and racist calls to kill "Krauts" and "Japs." Deliberately hidden was the fact that the German workers were victims of Nazism and were a force that could overthrow Hitler along with the capitalists who supported him. The Allies would countenance no effort to aid the German workers to rise up against Hitler. On the contrary, they took measures calculated to have the opposite effect. Saturation bombing against German cities by the Allies was directed against the German workers. Above all, the democratic imperialists wanted to ensure the survival of capitalism after the war, even though that meant keeping in power the German capitalists who backed Hitler.

Another aspect of the war was the hostility of all the capitalist powers to the Soviet Union. The U.S. rulers hoped that the war between Germany and the USSR would weaken both countries and make it easier to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union at some point in the future. It was the Soviet Union that absorbed the brunt of the German attack, and the U.S. government did everything it could to keep it that way. Even at the height of the U.S. war effort in Europe, over 80 percent of the German forces were directed against the Soviets. The USSR lost over 20 million people in the war. The U.S. military effort was focused not in Europe but in the colonial world - especially in Asia, where Japan was blocking U.S. economic expansion.

* Roosevelt proclaimed the "Four Freedoms" as a goal of American foreign policy in an address to Congress in January 1941. They were: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.  
 
 
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