ABSTRACT
The USA actively entered the war in November 1942, three years after it began, and for the two and a half years of their involvement American civilians’ experience was quite different from that of the British. American prosperity continued to grow after the war but, in Britain, shortages and rationing lasted another ten years. The Labour party had contributed to the coalition wartime government and a few of its leading lights had earned credibility. Winston Churchill was adulated as a war leader but not seen as the working-class champion who would deliver a caring new world. If capitalism gave American householders the means to determine their own lifestyles, Britain’s benign post-war state presented its citizens with radical but limited housing templates, and they were obliged to take what they were given. In post-war Britain, building materials were rationed and private house building curtailed: there were new schools to build for the expanded pupil population and new hospitals for the NHS.
