ABSTRACT
The war had a great impact on American society. Most obvious was the fact that 15 million men and several hundred thousand women left their civilian lives for service in the military, with its emphasis on discipline, conformity, and hierarchical structure based on rank. Individuals who had never ventured more than short distances from home found themselves scattered all across the United States and shipped to various parts of the world, where they encountered cultures as alien to them as would be life on a different planet. The creation of a wartime economy caused massive population shifts. The demands of war opened new opportunities for some groups. Blacks who had worked as sharecroppers or farm laborers in the South began getting work for decent pay in urban areas for the first time in their lives. During and after the war, Americans tended to take credit for a number of scientific achievements that actually originated elsewhere.
