What challenges were there to traditional ideas about gender or family at this time?
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Shortly after the United States entered the war, a Committee on Public Information was formed, to promote the war effort. The former "progressive" movement became an entrenched "Americanism." Anything German was associated with disloyalty. Orchestras refused to play works by Beethoven and Bach, among others, because they were German. Sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage," Dachshunds became "liberty pups." Even German Measles were renamed "liberty measles." Germans were often referred to as "the Huns," and often portrayed as such on posters promoting the sale of war bonds. One such poster showed a German soldier with bloody dagger drawn coming ashore in an ocean littered with the bodies of dead infants. Women and Blacks were recruited for the work force as part of their patriotic duty. Oddly, after the war, it was considered a woman's patriotic duty to give up her wartime job so that the returning soldiers could find work.
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