Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America's World War II Military
Thomas A. Guglielmo
Oxford University Press
The first comprehensive narrative of racism in America's World War II military and the resistance to it. Many Americans have long told themselves that its World War II military was a force of unalloyed good. While saving the world from Nazism, it also managed to unify a famously fractious American people. Divisions offers a decidedly different view. Prizewinning historian Thomas A. Guglielmo draws together more than a decade of extensive research to tell sweeping yet personal stories of race and the military; of high command and ordinary GIs; and of African Americans, white Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. Guglielmo argues that the military built not one color line, but a complex tangle of them representing a sprawling structure of white supremacy. In response, freedom struggles arose, democratizing portions of the wartime military and setting the stage for postwar desegregation and the subsequent civil rights movements.