Troop Movements

The story of how the mass mobilization for World War II catalyzed the national and international political movements and conflicts of the postwar period

In the popular imagination, World War II is perceived as the last great moment of national consensus, when the United States was united around the collective purpose of battling a clear enemy whose aim was global dominance. The government led an unprecedented mobilization, building an international military force through which the country soon became the preeminent world power. In the context of this mobilization, the military brought together disparate sectors of workers, all of whom were enmeshed in struggles over workers’ rights and civil rights in the wake of the Great Depression and New Deal.

In Troop Movements, Tejasvi Nagaraja explains how this mobilization for world war—involving soldiers and defense workers—provided an opportunity for entangled experiences and alliances across race, class, and global concerns. In the process, this anti-fascist mobilization and the reactions to it catalyzed the national and international political movements and conflicts of the postwar period. Many of these diverse war workers, Nagaraja contends, led a “greatest generation” of labor, Black freedom, and anti-imperial social struggles, which linked racial and economic and international issues. Their struggles took place from Pennsylvania to Panama, Georgia to Germany, Michigan to Manila.

Synthesizing diverse sources—from the US Army and UK Colonial Office archives to labor unions’ and civil rights organizations’ records—Nagaraja reconstructs this story of top-down and bottom-up movements. To understand the entwined history of labor unions and big corporations, Jim Crow and civil rights, US empire and the military industrial complex, he argues, their entanglement during World War II must be accounted for. Troop Movements traces the origins of postwar America’s domestic and foreign politics to this crucible of worldwide war, with a mass workforce at its heart.