World War II
In 1941, during the run-up to American involvement in World War II, President Roosevelt appointed LaGuardia first director of the new Office of Civilian Defense (OCD). Roosevelt was an admirer of LaGuardia; after meeting Winston Churchill for the first time he described him as "an English Mayor LaGuardia." The OCD was the national agency responsible for preparing for blackouts, air raid wardens, sirens, and shelters in case of German air raids. The government knew that such air raids were impossible but the goal was to psychologically mobilize many thousands of middle class volunteers to make them feel part of the war effort. LaGuardia remained Mayor of New York, shuttling back and forth with three days in Washington and four in the city in an effort to do justice to two herculean jobs. On top of this, he still performed other gestures, such as arranging police protection with his personal assurances for local artists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, when they were threatened by Nazi supporters for their new patriotic comic book superhero, Captain America. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, his role was turned over to full-time director of OCD, James M. Landis. LaGuardia's popularity slipped away and he ran so poorly in straw polls in 1945 that he did not run for a fourth term.
Unemployment ended and the city was the gateway for military supplies and soldiers sent to Europe, with the Brooklyn Navy Yard providing many of the warships and the garment trade provided uniforms. The city's great financiers, however, were less important in decision making than policy makers in Washington, and very high wartime taxes were not offset by heavy war spending. New York was not a center of heavy industry and did not see a wartime boom as defense plants were built elsewhere.
FDR refused to make LaGuardia a general and was unable to provide fresh money for the city. By 1944, LaGuardia was frantically juggling the books to pay the city's bills. His successors realized that New York City could not support his fabulous infrastructure and high wages and pensions for teachers, police and city workers without borrowing more and more until it faced bankruptcy, which came in 1975.
Read more about this topic: Fiorello La Guardia
Famous quotes containing the words war ii, world and/or war:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“The human mind is like Salome at the beginning of dance, hidden from the outside world by seven veils. Veils of reserve, shyness, fear.”
—Muriel Box (b. 1905)
“Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)