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.

"World War II did not just seed the civil rights movement; it produced an eruption of Black rebellion and state repression more militant, disruptive, and far-reaching than anything that came before or since. Tapping a mountain of archival evidence, Tejasvi Nagaraja reveals how ‘war workers’—soldiers and defense laborers, women and men—employed strikes, mutinies, and civil disobedience to challenge racism, imperialism, exploitation, and the military-industrial complex at home and abroad. And for their militancy and resolve, many faced detention, dishonorable discharge, and even death. Troop Movements will profoundly change how we think about the 1940s."—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

"In an astonishing feat of research, centering military and civilian war-work and reading soldiers as workers, Tejasvi Nagaraja offers riveting accounts of work-floor strife and solidarity; the arbitrary and brutal Jim Crow discipline that followed African American war-workers across US, British, and French empires; and postwar strikes and mutinies from the Philippines to Paris. Seen from the perspective of workers in motion, Troop Movements shifts the paradigm for understanding the US and global dimensions of World War II and its aftermath, yielding unprecedented insights into the war’s impact on society, the global remaking of racial formations, and the challenges and possibilities of human solidarity."—Penny Von Eschen, author of Paradoxes of Nostalgia: Cold War Triumphalism and Global Disorder Since 1989

"Troop Movements is a groundbreaking book that shows the deep connections among domestic, imperial, and diplomatic politics. While scholars have examined conflicts over race and labor during the Second World War, none have focused so squarely and productively on the links between military and civilian workers. That focus provides a unique perspective on the social and political changes brought by the Second World War at home and abroad and allows Tejasvi Nagaraja to show how those changes set the stage for political clashes in subsequent decades. This is an important study that will find eager readership among scholars and students of labor, race, the military, and beyond."—William P. Jones, author of The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights

Troop Movements

Labor, Race, and Global Freedom Struggles in America’s World War II

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