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What Is Civil Defense? World War I through the Eisenhower Administration
Before homeland security was civil defense, the marathon twentieth-century effort to prepare Americans to protect themselves against direct attack by an enemy. Throughout history prior to the twentieth century, enemy armies and navies routinely ravaged civilian noncombatant populations lacking effective protection. But the twentieth century witnessed first, the invention of aircraft, which allowed enemies to bypass land- and water-based military forces and initiate aerial conventional bombing attacks, and second, nuclear weapons, which multiplied potential for inflicting harm. Thus, the United States, separated by vast oceans east and west and friendly countries north and south, became vulnerable for the first time in its relatively short history. The concept of civil defense is very old and yet new, particularly for Americans. Civil defense is expensive and the evolution of advanced weaponry rapid. Hence, the history of civil defense in the United States is tortuous. One approach to organizing the history is to divide civil defense into six sequential periods of more intense activity, which are separated by periods of insufficient political and financial support, untold frustration and temporary stagnation. The six periods are World War I, World War II, the Truman years, the Kennedy years, the Reagan years, and the George W. Bush years. In the following text, the names of governmental bodies related to civil defense are bolded to help the reader keep straight their evolving names over time. Part A below covers World War I, World War II, and the Truman years. Part B covers the Kennedy years, the Reagan years, and the George W. Bush years to date. I. World War I The question of civil defense in the twentieth century first arose during World War I when the Germans mounted a total of 103 bombing raids, 51 by dirigibles and 52 by airplanes, on the civilian population of England. A total of 300 tons of bombs was dropped, resulting in 1,413 fatalities and 3,607 injuries. Hundreds of thousands of Londoners used underground railway stations, basements and dugouts for shelter at night during air raids. (1)
Even the United States, far from the European theater of war, encountered numerous attacks of sabotage by Germans and German sympathizers in America and close to her shores, who deterred the flow of American armaments to the Allies. (2) The sinking in May 1915 of the British ship “ Lusitania” off the coast of Ireland by German torpedoes after her Atlantic crossing from New York City to Liverpool, electrified Americans who were beginning to understand that warfare had moved from battlefield and combat between naval vessels of war into their lives. Of the 1,965 people aboard the ship, 1,198 people perished, including many Americans.
The U.S., however, was never seriously threatened with a catastrophic direct attack on her own soil during World War I. Nevertheless, civilian interest in civil defense was considerable and found an outlet in civil defense programs that mobilized support for the war and maintained “anti-saboteur vigilance, encouraged men to join the armed forces, facilitated the implementation of the draft, participated in Liberty Bond drives, and helped to maintain the morale of the soldiers.” (Kerr, p. 11) The legal basis for civil defense activity during World War I was the United States Army Appropriation Act of August 29, 1916, which made the Secretary of War responsible for civil defense and established the Council of National Defense. The Secretaries of War, Navy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor, who comprised the council, established the “relations which render possible in time of need the immediate concentration and utilization of the resources of the nation.” (Kerr, p. 11) As civilians responded favorably to their nation’s participation in the war, the Council of National Defense encouraged the establishment of state defense councils patterned after the federal example and promoted similar councils at the local level. The objective of this tri-level system of councils was to transmit “to the people the needs of the government,’” and to reflect “back to Washington the moods of the people.” (Kerr, p. 12) “The practice of working through the federal structure was thus established at an early date and this precedent greatly influenced subsequent civil defense planning.” The tri-level system went dormant at the conclusion of the war, yet the mold had been set. II. World War II Shortly after 1939 the Roosevelt Administration reestablished the civil defense machinery andcreatedthe Division of State and Local Cooperation on July 31, 1940 to assist the Council of National Defense in dealing with the mobilization of civilian resources for possible use in wartime. Defense monies flowed for building plants and facilities, whose introduction into the civilian scene caused social and economic problems of housing, schools, sewers, and public health. The Division of State and Local Cooperation had no power to address these new social problems. As a result, big city mayors led by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York City complained that the Division was a bottleneck and demanded the establishment of a civilian defense agency that could deal directly with local governments, bypassing state governments. A 1940 document produced by the U.S. Conference of Mayors put it this way: “Aircraft does [sic] not recognize State political boundaries any more than microbes do; and neither do bombs for that matter. For efficient organization it is simply out of the question to expect state agencies, restricted in their functioning to obsolete and archaic political boundaries, to handle the task…” Mayor La Guardia even sent a committee of firemen to London in October 1940 to study the problem of civilian protection against aerial bombardment. (Kerr, p. 12) As a result of the pressure from the nation’s mayors, President Roosevelt on May 20, 1941 established by executive order the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD),which was located within the Office of Emergency Planning (OEP), Executive Office of the President. The essential duties of the new organization were to promote protective measures, elevate national morale, and provide a means for local participation in the defense program. Mayor LaGuardia was the head of the OCD while continuing as New York City’s mayor. LaGuardia placed emphasis on the protection aspects of the program, calling physical fitness, welfare, nutrition, child care, housing, and consumer advice “sissy stuff.” The OCD received a near-mortal blow when LaGuardia appointed First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as assistant director of voluntary participation, a position that she used to hire Mayris Chaney, a professional dancer, to “formulate and direct an OCD recreation program for children.” (Kerr, p. 18)
James Landis replaced Mrs. Roosevelt and worked ferociously to put protective measures in place through creation of Civil Defense Corps (a subunit of OCD) of approximately 10 million volunteers, of whom some 8,570,000 had assigned duties, including staffing a communications system for the entire corps and facilities for training volunteers in emergency firefighting. In addition the Corps provided instructions in the building of shelters, training in decontamination and the use of gas masks, camouflage of vital facilities, restoration of essential services, and evacuation and care of evacuees. (Kerr, p. 18) III. President Truman’s Administration President Truman abolished the Office of Civilian Defense in 1945 when it was becoming clear that the problems of civil defense were assuming an entirely new dimension with the possibility of atomic warfare. (3) A number of studies and reports dealing with a proposed civil defense organization were made. Military experts determined in 1946 that the damage inflicted by nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki equaled in amount the heat and blast damage that could be inflicted by 210 B-29s (Hiroshima) and 100 B-29s (Nagasaki) (Kerr, p. 19) The implication was that proper planning could save civilian lives if enemies targeted Americans with atomic bombs. The three ways to do this were: 1. dispersal; 2. sheltering; and 3. evacuation. One definition of civil defense at the time was: “the mobilization of the entire population for the preservation of civilian life and property from the results of enemy attacks, and with the rapid restoration of normal conditions in any area that has been attacked.” (Kerr, p. 20) The basic principle guiding civil defense immediately after World War II was self help, meaning that the government would provide certain things (a national shelter policy, reserve stockpiles of civil defense supplies, an effective attack warning system, plans for the dispersal of industry and the evacuation of individuals from likely target areas, and training programs in various civil defense activities such as firefighting and rescue work), and civilians would be responsible for protecting themselves and their property. Where was the military in this early framework? The military was a mobile reserve that would help state and local governments in meeting firefighting, rescue, emergency medical, and welfare needs. (Kerr, p. 20) The military subsequently changed its position on the matter, convinced that the primary mission of the army was to meet and engage the enemy. One military report put it this way: “Major civil defense problems are not appropriately military responsibilities. Such problems are civilian in nature and should be solved by civilian organizations.” The military would protect its military installations and become involved in non-military areas only in the event of a disaster beyond control of civilians authorities. The bottom line was that the military did not want to be responsible for civilian defense. President Truman, undeterred by military opinion, responded by establishing the Office of Civil Defense Planning(OCDP) whose purpose was to submit to the Secretary of Defense a program of civil defense for the U.S., including a plan for a permanent civil defense agency that would prepare a civil defense system during peacetime, to be used in the event of war. (p. 23) Truman was busy attending to the unification of the armed forces within the new Department of Defense and dealing with the emerging Cold War. In 1948 the OCDP submitted its 300-page report (the Hopley Report), which recommended that an Office of Civil Defense be established directly under the President or the Secretary of Defense. Some objections were again raised within the Department of Defense and some civilian groups that believed this would lead to a “garrison state.” As a result, the recommendation was not adopted. Instead, the President assigned the civil defense function to the National Security Resources Board(NSRB) whose activities he limited to “peacetime planning and preparation for civil defense in the event of war, rather than operation of a full-scale civil defense program.” (GAO, p. 4) Then, in 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb. The National Security Resources Board proposed that a Federal Civil Defense Administration(FCDA) be established directly under the President (which indeed it was through Executive Order No. 10186 in December 1950) and submitted a policy to provide blast shelters in likely target areas. Congress responded to President Truman’s request for immediate congressional action with the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950, which was signed into law on January 12, 1951. Congress appropriated funds (1951, $32 million; 1952, $75 million; 1953, $43 million) for construction of large-scale blast shelter surveys and modification of existing structures to provide blast protection. At the time, the awareness of the blast threat was high and fallout threat low. Then the Soviet Union detonated a hydrogen bomb. The recognition of the enormous destructive potential of the downwind fallout hazard of this new weapon caused the de-emphasis of blast protection and evacuation, and a new emphasis on fallout shelters for nuclear attack survivors. Development of newer and more destructive weaponry, improvements in their delivery, and aggression by a well-armed and hostile Communist bloc resulted in almost continuous reevaluation of the security position of the United States. Although federal leadership concluded that the civil defense function was indeed a strategic defense structure of the United States, defining exactly what comprised civil defense was more difficult. What was its potential? What were its limitations? How should the program be conducted? Was civil defense part of national defense? Between 1951 and 1958, the Federal Civil Defense Administration was successful in launching a number of civil defense programs including an attack warning system, stockpiling of medical and other civil defense supplies and equipment, civil defense exercises, and research programs. (GAO, p. 6) However, the FCDA was not successful in implementing programs to protect the population from atomic attack and little headway was made in providing for survivors. In 1958 the Federal Civil Defense Administration and the Office of Defense Mobilization (whose origins I cannot find) were merged to form the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, which set forth the basic policies, responsibilities, and procedures as a foundation for operational plans. Summary In summary, civil defense in the early twentieth century was something Americans knew about from German bombings of European capitals, the sinking of the Lusitania, and acts of sabotage by some Germans on American soil. Americans were generally accepting of the need to prepare to defend themselves, but received wobbly direction from federal, state, and local governments whose leaders were trying to find monies while developing possible antidotes to rapidly-evolving atomic weaponry systems. Please go to Biot 244 at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_244.html for Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush years. Sources: 1. Thomas J. Kerr: “Civil Defense in the U.S” (out of print). Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1983, p. 10. 2. See Jules Witcover: “Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America, 1914-1917.” Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, 1989. 3. GAO report: “Activities and Status of Civil Defense in the United States, Department of the Army, October 26, 1971. Available online at: www.gao.gov. Accessed August 1, 2005. |
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