"Forget All Differences until the Forces of Freedom Are Triumphant": The World War II–Era Quest for Ethnic and Religious Tolerance

World War II laid the groundwork for the greater inclusion of the descendents of southern and eastern European immigrants during the postwar period. Discrimination by no means disappeared in the immediate postwar years; anti-Catholic feeling continued to manifest itself in attacks by some observers on the authoritarian nature of Catholicism and its supposed incompatibility with American democracy. Here, Fleegler delineates how wartime pluralism revealed very important limits for white ethnics that scholars have tended to downplay. Before the war, educational and propaganda programs combined two different approaches. One, called contributionism, emphasized the cultural and economic benefits that immigrants brought to American life. To a certain degree, it highlighted the differences between ethnic groups and stressed the disparate contributions they made to American society. The other, called the tolerance and unity school, focused on the need to treat individual citizens equally as well as the imperative for cooperation between all Americans, regardless of race or ethnicity. It diminished the differences between groups and focused on what individuals from diverse backgrounds shared in common.