USA broke -How factual? - Flags of Our Fathers (2006) Discussion

[–] mark-1589 15 years ago

As far as I know, it was factually based. The point is that the war was costing a huge amount and its financing had been dependent on war bonds (at that time we couldn't just borrow from the Chinese and the rest of the world was in chaos and broke). Also, we should recall that the US helped finance the other allied combatants - lend lease, etc. I suppose by 1945 the Congress started to balk at the cost, what with the war largely won in Europe, probably some people got complacent. As for the mix-up "farce", it appears that is exactly what happened. They made a big publicity stunt out of an event that did not have the significance they attributed to it - it was just a better photo-op, and they made heroes out of ordinary soldiers (not to denigrate them, but raising a flag is not a heroic act, so the reason they got singled out had more to do with symbolism than heroism). In doing so, they mixed up one of the soldiers and his mother. Opps - FUBAR!!

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[–] solidasiraq 15 years ago

They were all heroes, and the flag raising was not a farce, but it was eventually made into one. Another thing, they were not soldiers, they were Marines. Show a little respect.

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[–] richardpaperboy 15 years ago

According to James Bradley the author of Flags of our Fathers, the USA had spent 88 billion in the fiscal year and had only received 46 billion, and this was when they were still planning a major invasion of the Japan homeland. The warbond tour of the remaining flag raisers produced over 23 billion. The 3 men always denied they were heros, the heros were the ones who died on Iwo, and it was 5 marines and one navy corpsman.

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[–] Maniac-9 14 years ago

The U.S. was only a few years removed from the Great Depression.

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[–] jeffyoung1 14 years ago

You are correct, richardpaperboy. Seems like you've done your homework. The U.S. government budgeted 98 billion dollars for 1945. What worried the government so much was that by the time of the Iwo Jima invasion, $88 billion had already been spent or allocated. The rest of the information is yours. I did not know that U.S. revenue in early 1945 was only 46 billion dollars.

Everyone reading this must bear in mind that the U.S. GDP was something like a quarter to a third of the size it is today. In other words, the U.S. was no where as wealthy as it is today. So there was less revenue. The U.S. population of 1942 totalled approximately 145 million souls, far less than 300 million in 2010, which also means less tax revenue. The U.S. economy was much smaller and less profitable in 1945 than today.

President Franklin Roosevelt tried his best to increase tax revenues. He increased tax rates. He lowered tax brackets further down to lower-income people, thus increasing the number of tax-eligible citizens. But with so many able-bodied men in the military and not working as tax-paying citizens back in the U.S., there was another negative effect on tax revenue.

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[–] cmap2 13 years ago

Frankly, in light of James Bradley's most recent book, Imperial Cruise, which was infused with factual errors and agenda and was poorly-received, I'm skeptical as to much of what he has written in his career.

No one who has studied World War II would dispute the importance of war bonds in financing the effort, but Bradley vastly overstated it by making it sound as if the bond drive was indispensable and the U.S. would have been forced to essentially pack up and go home had it not been for Doc, Rene, and Ira agreeing to take part. That is nonsense and you won't find any respected historians to validate it. The government sold war bonds well before Doc, Rene, and Ira became famous, they sold them after, and it always had recourse to other methods to finance the war in the event a particular bond drive was unsuccessful (e.g., shift/slash spending from other areas, raise taxes, or, if worst came to worst, print money).

Of all the countries involved in World War II, the U.S. was by far in the most advantageous economic position, so much so that afterwards the country had enough spare money to finance literally the rebuilding of Europe under the Marshall Plan.

Bradley simply sensationalized a "The U.S. was on the verge of bankruptcy" thread in order to play up the angle of Doc, Rene, and Ira being "exploited" by the government, which is basically the backbone of the story. That angle plays better if the fate of the war effort is seen as hinging on the bond drive.

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[–] PotassiumMan 11 years ago

It is true that the U.S. economy was very hard-pressed in 1945 by the rigors of fighting the Axis. I'm not going to argue with that. But the notion that people were growing "cynical" at that point, that to me sounds groundless and manufactured. I'll make two points to stress why I believe so.

First of all, our country had much different values in 1945. We didn't easily get discouraged by the demands of war the way we did from Vietnam to the present, partly because at that point in our history, we had never lost a war. The country was run by a generation that believed in hard work and commitment. Many people from that era would have remembered Teddy Roosevelt and his approach to combat. Granted, not all Americans wanted to go to war. Its true that the America First movement did exist and had opposed the war, but after Pearl Harbor, they were discredited and utterly irrelevant.

Secondly, by 1945, we were getting nothing but good news on the war front. Germany was on the verge of surrender after their disasterous defeat in the Battle of the Bulge and Japan never had any military and naval victories against us after 1944. Simply put, by 1945, we were doing nothing but winning. It simply doesn't square with common sense that we would get "cynical" about the conflict. The idea that as a nation, we would become "cynical" about a war were winning especially in that day and age is wildly preposterous and, in my opinion, purely a contemporary Hollywood proposition.

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[–] dannieboy20906 9 years ago

I think other posters have addressed the economics issue better than I can. However, the character of the publicity manager makes one statement that is completely erroneous. He says, in reference to the need for oil "The Arabs only take bullion." In fact, in the 1940's the United States was the largest exporter of oil in the world. We drilled and refined over 80 percent of all the oil produced between 1941 and 1946.

The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.

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