policy - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
the Vietnam War on the one hand and World War II and the Korean on the
other. This section will explore two aspects of this question.
0 Whether the Vietnam War was the most unpopular war in recent US
history, and
0 Whether the opposition to the Vietnam war among the US public was
unique.
Poll data concerning popular opinion about governmental policies
during World War II are relatively scarce.
taking itself was
In addition, the craft of poll
in its infancy and had not reached the sophistication
that was claimed for it during the Vietnam War.
There is strong feeling,
nevertheless, that support for the war policies of the government during
World War II was nearly unanimous. Polling information that is available,
however,
of American wars,
indicates that even during what was presumably the "most popular"
key aspects of the war.
there was considerable difference of opinion concerning
For instance, polls indicated that as late as Juner
e942 only 53 percent of the public felt it had a clear idea of what the war
was about.
In 1944 less than 60 percent could assert that they understood
the goals of the war, and by 1945 80 percent could make that assertion. 12/
Public support for the government's war policies during World
War II appears to have grown in response to three factors:
* Sense of participation in a righteous cause.
* Success of American arms.
1 Relative brevity of the war effort for the United States.
The atrocities the Japanese had been committing in China from
1937 to 1941 convinced Americans that Japan represented not only a threat
t~o US national interests, but also a barbarous force that endangered
Western civilization. The attack on Pearl Harbor confirmed these suspicions.
The Germans were similarly regarded by many Americans as enemies of
civilization. Thus, the two main enemies of the United States represented
evil incarnate to large numbers of Americans.
In their evaluation of the
Germans, the horror of the Nazi concentration camps came to Am~ericans
slowly. In 1943 only 47 percent of those polled were willing to assert
that, "two million Jews have been killed in Europe since the war began."
1-6