Figure 1.--Looking at this image, our eyes are imitly drawn to the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber. It was the 5,000th B-17 built at Boeing's Seattle plant which the workers had personally signed (May 1944). They signed the part they had produced. They were just getting started and there were other plans. Over 12,700 B-17s nwere evetually built. And even more B-24 Liberators--over 18,000. The Germans built less than 1,200 strategic bombers. The British were also building stratehic bombers like the Avro Lancaster and De Havilland Mosquito. Reich cities and the war plants in those cities supplying NAZI armies were reduced to piles of smoledering rubble. But look at little closer at the photograph. Who is producing those war winning instruments of war? Notice all the women! Click on he img for a larger view. .

The Germans and Americans during World War II looked on women very differently. The NAZI view of women was epitomized by the NAZI slogan, Kinder, Küche, Kirche" (children, kitchen, church) -- essentially baby making machines to produce new soldiers for the Fatherland's armies. America could not have been more different. Despite what young women are told about America by Marxist university professors, the United States led the world in the movement for women's rights. Traditionalist views still dominated, but America more than any other country was changing. This had been launcvhed bythe FRontier and promoted by World War I when women entered the military for the first time and alsombegan entering the industrial work force. Women of course are half of the population. And total war is an illusion unless women are mobilized. More than 350,000 American women joined the United States Armed Forces during World War II. Women had been serving as Army and Navy nurses for decades, but World War II led to far more than justbnurses serving in the military and in expanding roles. 【Gruhzit-Hoyt】 But military service as important as it was was only a part of the story andf not the most imoprtant part. What made America different than all the other countries was its enormously productive industrail base. An except briefly during World War I, few women worked in industry. The need for workers inWorld War II soon restrained the draft pool for fighting men. So American industry began recruiting women. For some strange reason and contrary to a large part of American thought today, men and women are different. Some industrial jobs require physical strength, something most women lack. Other industrial jobs require precision, something many men are not very good at. Even the most traditionalist, grizzled industrialist soon realized that women could be very valuable industrial workers. It was soon found, for examole, that women were particularly gifted in quality control roles. They also proved to be more dependable, relaible, and easier to teach workers. Some changes were needed, such as more bathrooms and adding daycare centers, but those were small concessions compaed to what industry was getting. American factories did not become less efficient with women, they became more efficient. Women worked in factories, shipyards, and munitions plants. For most it was a life changing experience that would reverberate in post-War America. 【Parker 】 They produced weaponry and war materials critical to the Allied war effort. This was especially true in aviation plants--a huge and key component of the Arsenal of Democracy. The iconic image of 'Rosie the Riveter' at an aviation plant symbolized the millions of American women who energized America's industrial workforce. By the end of the war, women had not only exceeded a third of the work force in aviation plants, but were approaching 50 percent. NAZI purists saw women in aviation plants as an act of pure desperation by the Americans. Few understood how powder-puff wielding American women enabled the United States to build 100,000 aircraft annually which would pulverize the ar-making capavilty of NAZI Germany. America went from a Depression era unemployment problem to a war-ime labor shortage and American women solved the problem. 【Wright-Peterson】 Men of course still worked and provided a majority of the workers at war plants, but without the women, these plants would have never been as hugely productive and the war-winning dynamo that they ultimately became. At the same time in the Reich, women continued to be a rarity in even vital wst factories throughout the War.

Sources

Gruhzit-Hoyt, Olga. They also Served : American Women in World War II (1995).

Parker, Pauline E. Ed. Women of the Homefront: World War II Recollections of 55 Americans (2002).

Wright-Peterson, Virginia. A Woman's War, Too : Women at Work during World War II (2020).

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Created: 5:26 PM 9/6/2025
Last updated: 5:26 PM 9/6/2025