The Youth Problem: American Educators in an Era of Total War and Mobilization

This paper explores debates among American educators over military mobilization of young Americans for World War II, focusing on the years from 1939 to 1941 as a critical intersection of Depression and World War II politics. By the early 1930s, youth had come to be recognized as a distinct age group that required special attention, especially in regards to the massive unemployment that the Depression had produced. Moreover, American adults were increasingly concerned about the mental as well as the physical strength of American youth, as the Nazis seemed to successfully win the minds of German youth. With the outbreak of hostilities in Europe in 1939, this “youth problem” entwined with national defense. By examining how representatives of education and youth associations, academics, and other concerned adults navigated issues such as the introduction of military training in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the prime federal policy for unemployed youth, and the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, whose passage instituted the first peacetime conscription in U.S. history, this paper demonstrates how the imaginary of American youth shifted from one that had indicated a grave social “problem” to another that represented a beacon to a democratic postwar world.

Methodologically, this paper proposes to situate U.S. history of World War II in a global context by focusing on the years prior to 1941. While historians of other combatants have explored how states mobilized youths for war and nation building, Americanists have generally assumed that civilian mobilization in the U.S., a liberal democracy that stood at the ideological opposite of militarism, was limited to the period from December 1941 to August 1945. Situating American policies in the global tide of youth mobilization in the interwar years offers a new way of approaching the history of World War II globally and comparatively.