Seventy years ago today, America was a very different place politically and culturally. Americans were going to a lot of movies, smoking a lot of cigarettes, and generally looking forward to Christmas. They never expected what was about to come one week later.
Craig Shirley’s new book, “December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World” chronicles each of the 31 days of that historic month, detailing cultural and political events as they unfolded.
Shirley — a noted biographer of Ronald Reagan — spent countless hours accumulating the vast troves of information included in the tome. He culled information from original sources like private diaries, but also found telling bits of information in the public record.
For example, he notes a December 1 Idaho Times headline which read: “Nazis See Fall of Moscow Near.” Meanwhile, the Bismarck Tribune reported seventy years ago today that, “‘Wise Statesmanship’ Might Save Situation, Japs Tell Reporters.”
(Listen to a podcast of my full conversation with Craig Shirley here.)
Shirley avoids the temptation of focusing solely on geopolitics, and instead provides a full spectrum of information, painting a broad picture of what the America was like at the time. “The average American went to the movie theater, on average, twice a week,” Shirley says. And the average American “consumed 2,500 cigarettes a year.”
“Everybody smoked — and everybody smoked everywhere,” he said. “They smoked in movie theaters, and they smoked in theaters; they smoked on trains.”
Of course, the story hinges on December 7 — a date which still lives in “infamy.” The attack on Pearl Harbor dramatically changed America’s identity, shattering the notion that two oceans could protect the nation. It literally changed everything.
Prior to Pearl Harbor, “America was very decidedly an isolationist country” Shirley says. “There had been Gallop polling that showed that something out of the order of seventy percent of the American people were against getting involved in the European War.”
“And they didn’t even give a thought — polling wasn’t even offered — [about] the situation in the Pacific” he said.
Listen to a streaming podcast of my full interview here. Or download the podcast on iTunes.