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American Wartime Values In Historical Perspective: Full-Employment Mobilization Or Business As Usual, Timothy A. Canova

Timothy A. Canova

This paper explores the range of values implicated by war and compares today's dominant values with those that prevailed during previous American wars, with a particular emphasis on the World War Two and early Cold War period. War is related to values, and as economists like to remind us, what we value becomes apparent in the movement of people and prices. Part I of this Article considers the moral, ethical and monetary values that prevailed throughout the 1940's and early 1950's. The normative threads that kept the World War Two effort on track were those of mobilization and shared sacrifice. …