The+Home+Front

The Power of Persuasion Since WWII, the United States has not experienced a war that required so much of Americans on the home front. While fathers, sons, husbands, and brothers were serving overseas, their families served on the home front. Every American was expected to help boost morale and make sacrifices to shoulder the cost of the war.

Guns, tanks, and bombs were the principal weapons of World War II, but there were other, more subtle forms of warfare as well. Words, posters, and films waged a constant battle for the hearts and minds of the American citizenry just as surely as military weapons engaged the enemy. Persuading the American public became a wartime industry, almost as important as the manufacturing of bullets and planes. The Government launched an aggressive propaganda campaign with clearly articulated goals and strategies to galvanize public support, and it recruited some of the nation's foremost intellectuals, artists, and filmmakers to wage the war on that front.