Here's Where It Gets Interesting - How Women Won WWII: A New Era Unfolds

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Before we wrap up our series on how Women Won World War II, we need to talk about what happened next. It was the question on everyone’s mind in the summer of 1945. The Axis Powers had been defeated, soldiers were on their way home, and the destruction from the war had devastated countless cities across Europe. In America, citizens wondered, “What happens now?” Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Sharon McMahon, Valerie Hoback, and Amy Watkin Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome. Glad to have you here for the final episode in our series on how women won World War II. Before we wrap up, we need to talk about what happened next. It was the question on everyone's mind at the end of 1945. The Axis powers had been defeated, soldiers were on their way home, and the destruction from the war had devastated cities in Europe. In America, citizens wondered, what happens now? I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. where it gets interesting. On a chilly October evening in 1946, former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt dined with the board of the Poughkeepsie Chapter of the Young Women's Christian Association. Her presence lent an extra layer of credibility to the YWCA's new national campaign. After she retired for the evening, Eleanor wrote to the readers of

her My Day column. She said, the National YWCA is just starting a campaign for a round-the-world YWCA reconstruction fund. They find that there is universal need and desire among women overseas for American help and leadership. Women in many countries are finding responsibilities thrust upon them to a greater extent even than in our own country because they have lost the finest of their young and older men. This means that more and more women abroad will be taking part in public affairs, trying to solve the problems of health and education, and giving the spiritual leadership and moral guidance, which under ordinary circumstances would be expected of the men. The YWCA and many women's

organizations like it were spearheading efforts to send aid to European communities as they began to rebuild their infrastructure. And the American YWCA leaders recognized that the roles of European women would be shifting once again. Eleanor wrapped up her newsletter by saying, in numbers there is strength, and we in America must help the women of the world. But apart from dusting the war off their skirts and opening their pocketbooks for charitable causes, what did American women who had been so vital in our nation's workforce do when World War II ended? when World War II ended. Let's use my favorite subject as a way to frame the evolving expectations for American women during and after the war. Sports. Y'all know I love a good sports ball story. 80 years before Eleanor Roosevelt championed the YWCA's campaign in Poughkeepsie,

the city was home to one of the very first all-women baseball teams, the Vassar College Resolutes. And although similar small teams popped up around the country here and there, women in baseball remained an oddity. The game, most people believed, was too strenuous for women. But the popularity of baseball itself grew, so that by the mid-20th century, it was most definitely America's favorite pastime. Major league players like Joe DiMaggio became instant celebrities in the late 1930s, and Black players like Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella broke league barriers by 1947. But in between that, the stadiums were subdued, almost eerily quiet,

as major leaguers enlisted or were drafted into the war. And who stepped in to fill their positions and provide Americans at home with sports entertainment? There's no crying! There's no crying. There's no crying in baseball. Why don't you leave her alone, Jimmy? Oh, you zip it, Doris. The first Women's Professional Baseball League, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League,

or AAGPBL. Such a short acronym. It's almost worse than saying saying the complete phrase wanting to fill wriggly field spectator seats once again the chicago cubs owner philip rokeley of the chewing gum fortune considered creating a women's league he said the need for additional recreation in towns busy with war defense work prompted the idea. And when he held tryouts in Chicago in 1943, over 300 women showed up. Five years later, in 1948, the Professional Women's League had 10 teams playing in the Midwest and over a million fans watched from the stands. But a few years after that, in 1954, it just no longer

existed. Years later, Dottie Collins, the former pitcher for the Fort Wayne Daisies, said, when we were playing, we didn't realize what we had. We were just a bunch of young kids doing what we liked best. But most of us recognize now that those were the most meaningful days of our lives. Please note that Dottie didn't say the most meaningful days of her life were the ones in which she did the laundry. But that was the big social push in 1946. The men were home, and the women were expected to happily return to their domestic duties. During the war, women across all home front industries stepped in and filled roles that were vacated when men left to serve overseas. These women did their jobs well, so well, in fact, that the U.S.

outproduced all other nations in war supplies. They enjoyed their purpose, their successes, and their salaries, and then the country stopped needing them. Women were literally fired from their jobs and told to go home. Don't get me wrong, many, many women left voluntarily. They were eager to have their husbands or boyfriends back, or in the case of some of the younger women, ready to find a husband among the returned veterans and start their families. But the point is more about opportunity and choice, right? Most women were no longer given the opportunity to choose to work

outside the home. This is what Rosemary McMahon, a woman who worked in the U.S. Navy WAVES program during the war, and then married and raised her family at home afterwards said. When the war was over, when the men came home, all the women got fired, and they had to go back home into their kitchens again. But most didn't mind it at first, after they got over the shock of not being useful anymore. Because the men who came home wanted to start families. And they did. But some of the former working women didn't settle so easily into domestic work. They'd had a taste of what working within a trade or

skill could offer them. It bolstered their finances and their freedom. It challenged them and gave them purpose, and they didn't want to leave any of that behind. In 1944, before the war ended, the U.S. Women's Bureau took a survey of women in different war production centers around the country and found that three quarters of them wanted to keep working after the war ended. There were a couple of barriers in the way. First, with the war over, the demand for defense production significantly decreased, so women were let go because their jobs were no longer necessary. decreased, so women were let go because their jobs were no longer necessary. The Calyutron girls at Oak Ridge didn't need to monitor the Calyutron machines after the Manhattan Project was completed. Factories that made munitions or warplane parts closed their doors. The need was gone. Second, the men who had come home from the war wanted their jobs back.

In the industries that outlasted the war, the women who filled in were viewed as temporary replacements. In 1946, a movie short was produced called Women After the War. Its intention was to provoke debate and discussion about the evolving role of women in the workforce. It opens with a gathering of ladies, all of them white, who sit around a table in sharp suits, balancing slim cigarettes between their fingers. A woman stands at the head of the table and addresses them. And in my opinion, women can do it. Women want a new world. Women want new ideas, and women intend to get them. Women have shown what they could do in war, and now that the fighting is over,

women intend to show the world what they can do in peace. The scene cuts to a gathering of white men as a portly bald gentleman says to the room, And now that the fighting is over and the war is won, the little dears can get back to their pots and pans. And now, gentlemen, I ask you to be upstanding and drink to the health of the ladies. God bless them. The cheeky but philosophical short film is a great window into the debate of women's work outside the home during the late 1940s. During the war, women who got married were allowed to remain on in jobs from which they would automatically have been sacked in peacetime, such as teaching and the civil service. Do you think that married women should continue to work for pocket money while there are men

unemployed? What about the childless woman? She gossips and plays bridge because she's got nothing better to do. What a waste of time. If her domestic responsibilities are small, surely she's needed to help with the thousands of civic and national jobs to be done outside the home. There's nothing new after all about women working for money. The farmer's wife does it and her grandmother did it too. It's different now. War showed women what they can do. Well, there's the problem. And what's the solution?

Home and industry. Can they be combined? Women managed it during the war. But what are they going to do now? Should they stay at home? Or if they go out to work, what sort of jobs should they do? What sort of pay should they get? This is a man's worry too. It affects everybody. What do you think about it? about it. Despite the tug of war about a woman's proper place, there was no doubt that women had shown they were capable of working public jobs. Not only that, those working and middle-class women exited wartime with something else they had little of before the war, extra money. The war years were lean. Americans stretched meals, mended old items, and got

creative. Rationing meant there were limits to foods and goods like gasoline and tires, sugar, meat, and butter. And while women were often making high wages, they were pinching their pennies and saving what they could. Those saved wages helped families afford new homes and the latest appliances like refrigerators with ice makers and window unit air conditioners. It was women's earned income that helped propel American families to prosperity in the 1950s. And while the 50s are often touted as a time of convertible cars and sock hops and domestic bliss, it's not true for everybody, right? The push to reestablish the status quo where white men worked,

white women stayed at home, and Black Americans stayed segregated was already being met with resistance. In 1939, the U.S., while not officially at war yet, ramped up their defense productions and factories to supply other countries with ammunition they needed in the conflict against the Axis powers. Factories around the country were desperate to hire more workers to fill their quotas, but their need for workers didn't stop them from discriminating. Some began to hire women, but most turned away Black Americans. Jobs were posted. Black Americans would apply for them and then crickets. Black Americans were ready to work for the war effort, but white-run companies refused to hire them. By the spring of 1941, leaders from the Black

American Workers Union began to plan a march on Washington. They'd had enough. They wanted to be given the opportunity to work and make money. The threat of a march on Washington helped push President Roosevelt to sit down with the Black American Workers Union leader in a summit mediated by the one and only Anna Rosenberg. Anna Rosenberg. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs.

Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's Steve Care girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode.

Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. The summit produced Executive Order 8802, which banned discriminatory employment practices by federal agencies and all unions and companies engaged in war-related work. But just because the president signed an order, it didn't mean that all businesses immediately complied. Workers started to leave the Jim Crow South, where state governments were slow to implement the order. They headed to the North and West for factory work. But even still, they faced racism and job discrimination.

Black workers, men and women, were given lower-paying jobs and were paid less than white workers. The War Department ran a propaganda campaign encouraging all citizens to come together no matter what, quote, race or creed. United We Win was the slogan on posters and advertising inserts that accompanied a photo of black and white workers sitting side by side. But black workers were not so easily led. They knew that they gave their all to the war effort, while their working conditions, positions, and pay were significantly worse than that of their white counterparts. Many black newspapers printed the motto and creed of a new campaign called the Double V Campaign that spread through Black communities. African Americans called for a double victory. The first, a victory against the fascist Axis powers, and the second, a victory against racism and discrimination in

America. Around one million Black Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II. As one Library of Congress historian shares, despite being in segregated units, they responded with exceptional valor and service to the nation's call for patriotism, courage, and ingenuity. One such unit was the famed Tuskegee Airmen, the very first Black war pilot unit, which we've talked about on this podcast before. A lesser known unit was the 6,888th, which was nicknamed the 6888, a service unit made up of mostly Black Women's Army Corps members who were deployed overseas. The primary duty of the battalion was to sort out the massive two to three year long backlog of undelivered mail sitting in airplane hangars and warehouses

in England and France. They arrived in early 1945. Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams was the commander of the 6888, the highest ranking black woman in the military at the time, and she recounted that, despite my rank, salutes from other units were slow in coming and frequently returned with great reluctance. She remembered a woman when a general barked at her, I'm going to send a white first lieutenant down here to show you how to run this unit. white first lieutenant down here to show you how to run this unit. Charity's gutsy reply, over my dead body, sir. She knew her battalion didn't need to be directed by a white male officer. And she was right. The Central Postal Directory Battalion quickly set up a post office system and a line of communication to intelligence services to locate soldiers across

the continent. Their orders were to get all the mail sorted and delivered within six months. The women officers did it in half that amount of time by working three rotating shifts a day, seven days a week, and their working conditions were less than ideal. Lena King from Philadelphia, a member of the 6888, shared her memories of what it was like in the makeshift postal warehouse. The windows were blacked out to keep us safe from bombs that would drop around our area. The airplane hangar didn't have heat and it was rat infested. But we worked by our battalion motto of no male is low morale because of the isolation and sadness soldiers felt when they didn't have any contact with their loved ones at home. So we had to get it done for the soldiers.

Nelson Peary, who served with the African American 93rd Infantry Division, explained his feelings of fighting for a country where Black Americans had fewer rights. He said, in a thousand brutal ways, we were taught that we were no part of American culture and history. But here we still were, making history. history. The heroism of the 93rd, the Tuskegee Airmen, the 6888, and the million others who stood up to fight this dual war created a strong foundation for the civil rights movement that began to ignite in the years following World War II. More than 15,000 Black American men and women participated in the Manhattan Project, with around 7,000 setting down roots in the secret city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. During the years of the project, every Black American there was forced to live in the Colored Hutment area, a collection of

literal huts erected in a separate location away from the tiny home village of the white population. But once the Manhattan Project was completed, work at the site in various fields continued, and as I mentioned in the last episode, many present and former employees stayed put. In 1955, Oak Ridge was technically still under federal control via the Atomic Energy Commission, which would later become the U.S. Department of Energy. So in accordance with the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, 85 students from the all-Black schools in Scarborough, Oak Ridge's segregated Black community, began to integrate into classes at the white Oak Ridge schools.

It was a federal-run school system, not state-run, so the path to desegregation couldn't be blocked by Tennessee officials. That doesn't mean that the Scarborough 85 didn't experience racism, name-calling, taunting, vandalism. They did. But the integration was overall peaceful, and it received very little national attention. But it was a small step. The Black women who worked during the war in the secret city as cleaners and cafeteria workers and who lived in segregated housing were able to watch their children walk through the doors of a desegregated school. In general, it was the

children who were instrumental in making headway for civil and women's rights in the 1960s. Their first role models were mothers who worked war jobs and then used their earnings to help solidify America's middle class. The shift in thinking and creating more equal public opportunities for women and Black Americans was slow, but it was steadily building. And you know what? There was another huge shift in post-war life that we need to talk about. I've mentioned during this series that while the U.S. and Britain entered into a wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, it was a shaky one. Joseph Stalin was a cruel dictator. When the Soviet Union joined the Allies at a stand against the Axis powers, it wasn't because Stalin was worried about Western Europe or the fate of the Jewish people,

no. In fact, he regularly persecuted Russian Jews himself by removing them from positions of power and creating repressive policies that kept them marginalized. What Stalin really wanted was to keep Hitler out of the Soviet Union. In 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa and marched nearly three million men across Europe straight into the Soviet Union. The six-month campaign did not result in a win for Germany. They were not able to capture Russia, but 20 million Soviets paid the ultimate price in defense of their country. Soldiers were dead and towns and cities were destroyed. In fact, General Eisenhower reported flying over portions of the Soviet Union and saying it was flattened. There was nothing left. From the air, it looked like there were no cities at all.

Stalin needed the Allied powers to keep Germany from trying again. After the war ended, agreements were made to divide Germany into zones of occupation between the Allied countries. They all shook on it for the photo op. And Stalin walked away with control over a massive amount of land in Eastern Europe. And it was divided by what was called the Iron Curtain. Stalin went to work and engineered elections in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria. He engineered a coup in Czechoslovakia in order to establish communist governments under his leadership. By 1948, the Soviet Union officially controlled all of Eastern Europe. Americans and Britons feared the rapid spread of communism throughout Europe, which would

threaten everything that they had just fought to preserve. In August of 1949, four years after the United States completed their nuclear weapons project, the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb, their atomic program undoubtedly accelerated by secrets they stole from the Manhattan Project. by secrets they stole from the Manhattan Project. Americans and Western Europeans who had only just defeated a common enemy found themselves staring down another one. In post-war America, the need for scientists was high as programs on atomic energy and space exploration grew. This high demand for scientists should have made it easier

for women to remain in or join the field, but it didn't. Women were not encouraged to pursue careers in science and often felt unwelcome when they did. Science became a matter of national security, and national security was a matter for men. In 1950, a junior senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy claimed that he had a list of 205 communists employed by the U.S. Department of State. It set off a whole circus of hearings and investigations as the U.S. entered the Red Scare, an era filled with hysteria and suspicion that anyone could be a Soviet spy. McCarthy was censured in 1954 and died in 1957, but the damage was lasting. In 1954, President Eisenhower said, we've got to handle this McCarthyism so that all of our scientists are not made out to be Reds.

Reds being communists. But still, many Americans feared that scientists would release their secrets on atomic energy and put the United States at risk. Science and espionage were conflated in people's minds, and it seemed like common sense to be suspicious of scientists who could also be spies. As late as 1961, Irene Joliot-Curie's daughter was denied an American visa to attend a conference on nuclear physics in Tennessee. Literally, the daughter of a woman whose scientific discoveries propelled the U.S. forward into atomic technology was mistrusted as a potential spy. The most high-profile spy case was the one the U.S. government waged against Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. I've mentioned before

that Julius Rosenberg was a very low-level recruiter in a Soviet spy ring, and all evidence now points to Ethel not being involved at all. But the government used their involvement as a warning. Communism was spreading, and anyone caught in cahoots with the Soviet Union would be caught and punished severely. The couple was convicted and executed by electrocution. The Rosenberg case attracted international attention, partly because it spoke directly to our greatest fear at the time that spies could be anyone. They could be anywhere. We had no idea who was passing on secrets to the Soviets and jeopardizing the safety of a world still digging itself out of the rubble of a devastating war. No one was above suspicion.

Remember Vera Atkins, who made a career spying for Great Britain? In the 1950s, a woman working with Vera accused her of being a Soviet agent. Vera was by then a fully naturalized British citizen, and her motivations and accomplishments were thrown into question in an instant. Vera was Romanian, she was Jewish, and she was a woman. She spent her entire life trying to erase or hide those parts of herself because each one was seen as a weakness or a defect and regarded by her peers with suspicion. It's no wonder that when the SOE's official historian began piecing together the history of the organization, Vera went to great lengths to persuade him to omit details about her Romanian origins.

tales about her Romanian origins, she was protecting herself. Thousands of women emerged from World War II with secrets they kept hidden for the majority of their lives. Secret identities, secret science, and secret jobs. As their secrets get declassified and we discover their histories one by one, we uncover a new picture of World War II, a war that was won by women. There is so, so much more we could discuss about the women who stepped into new roles during World War II, the women who didn't know what they were getting into, and those who did and understood their slim chances of getting back out. The women who pushed the boundaries of science, technology, and communication, and those who refused to go quietly back into a life of domesticity.

quietly back into a life of domesticity. Together, they showed us that women were made for a life of more. I'll see you again soon. Thank you for listening to Hearer's Work. It's interesting. This show is written and researched by Heather Jackson, Sharon McMahon, Valerie Hoback, and Amy Watkin. Edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder,

and is hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. We'll see you again soon.