Home front during World War II

Governments became involved with new issues such as rationing, manpower allocation, home defense, evacuation in the face of air raids, and response to occupation by an enemy power.

The Charter stated the ideal goals of the war: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people; restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; free access to raw materials; reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, as well as the disarmament of aggressor nations.

[5] Tens of thousands died when Kuomintang (Nationalist) troops broke the levees of the Yangtze to stop the Japanese advance after the loss of the Chinese capital, Nanjing.

Japan had captured major coastal cities like Shanghai early in the war, cutting the rest of China off from its chief sources of finance and industry.

[7][8] The two million French soldiers held as POWs and forced laborers in Germany throughout the war were not at risk of death in combat, but the anxieties of separation for their 800,000 wives were high.

[17] The Nazi Hunger Plan was to kill the Jews of Poland quickly, and slowly to force the Poles to leave by threat of starvation, so that they could be replaced by German settlers.

[29] The government implemented rationing in 1941 and first applied it to bread, flour, cereal, pasta, butter, margarine, vegetable oil, meat, fish, sugar and confectionery all across the country.

Most rural peasants struggled and lived in unbearable poverty, but others sold their surplus food at a high price; a few became rouble millionaires, until a 1947 currency reform wiped out their wealth.

[41] With a view of building up the economic base of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Japanese Army envisioned using the islands as a source of agricultural products needed by its industry.

[42] The Japanese Army also tried using cane sugar for fuel, castor beans and copra for oil, derris for quinine, cotton for uniforms, and abaca (hemp) for rope.

[48] The government greatly expanded its powers in order to better direct the war effort, and Australia's industrial and human resources were focused on supporting the Australian and American armed forces.

[76] The Japanese imprisoned the ruling British colonial elite and sought to win over the local merchant gentry by appointments to advisory councils and neighbourhood watch groups.

With the surrender of Japan the transition back to British rule was smooth, for on the mainland the Nationalist and Communists forces were preparing for a civil war and ignored Hong Kong.

In the long run the occupation strengthened the pre-war social and economic order among the Chinese business community by eliminating some conflicts of interests and reducing the prestige and power of the British.

In Bengal, with an elected Muslim local government under British supervision, the cutoff of rice imports from Burma led to severe food shortages, made worse by maladministration.

[85] When Nazi U-boats began targeting Mexican oil tankers in the Gulf of Mexico in May 1942, the government and population felt increasingly negative towards the Axis which led to an official declaration of war on Germany.

[86] Enthusiasm for the war began to wain in August as a result of many agriculturalists and factory owners converting their operations for wartime production to meet trade agreements made with the United States which led to the amount of domestic goods decreasing.

According to a 1997 post by Walter Felscher to the "Memories of the 1940s" electronic mailing list: For every person, there were rationing cards for general foodstuffs, meats, fats (such as butter, margarine and oil) and tobacco products distributed every other month.

Red Cross nurses served widely within the military medical services, staffing the hospitals that perforce were close to the front lines and at risk of bombing attacks.

Russian Marshal Georgi Zhukov called on his troops to, "Remember our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our wives and children tortured to death by Germans....We shall exact a brutal revenge for everything."

The government used propaganda heavily and planned in minute detail regarding the mobilization of manpower, identification of critical choke points, food supplies, logistics, air raid shelters, and the evacuation of children and civilians from targeted cities.

Intense propaganda efforts by the government to promote savings and postpone consumer purchases were largely successful, especially on the part of housewives who generally controlled their family budget.

[109] The government began making evacuation plans in late 1943, and started removing entire schools from industrial cities to the countryside, where they were safe from bombing and had better access to food supplies.

Starting in January 1945 the government operated an intensive training program to enable the entire civilian population to fight the "decisive battle" with the American invaders using grenades, explosive gliders and bamboo spears.

"[111] Health conditions became much worse after the surrender in September 1945, with so much housing stock destroyed, and an additional 6.6 million Japanese repatriated from Manchuria, China, Indochina, Formosa, Korea, Saipan and the Philippines.

Sakamoto Kane, Kōchi housewife wrote: "For fish, the community council gave us a distribution of only shrimp and swordfish; we can't get either pork or beef.

This was partially due to loyalty for the emperor and fear tactics from the Japanese government, which had spread misinformation that the American soldiers would commit atrocities against innocent civilians.

[139] According to oral history studied by Thomas Havens, traditional paternalistic norms proved a barrier when the government wanted to exploit woman power more fully for the war effort.

Typically fictional and nonfictional stories focused on social roles as mothers and wives, especially in dealing with hardships of housing and food supplies, and financial concerns in the absence of men at war.

Evacuation of women and children from the major cities, out of fear of Allied bombing, was covered in detail to emphasize willingness to sacrifice for patriotism portrayed through fiction, news articles and photographs.