An exploration of the use of alcohol by American servicemen in World War II, and the attitudes and viewpoints of Army chaplains relating to alcohol consumption, helps to shed light on several important aspects of the history of America's participation in that war and military attitudes towards vice. In a nation that had to mobilize millions of young men, and had only recently made the sale of alcohol legal again, the war provided a testing ground for both alcohol policy in the Army and the expression of attitudes towards the socialization of drinking for a wide range of organizations and individuals. The study of United States Army chaplains and alcohol consumption in World War II reveals several important points about the military, war, religion and America in the 1940s. Military planners took a uniformly lenient approach to the consumption of what they considered to be nonintoxicating beer by enlisted men while chaplains' attitudes reflected the diversity of their denominations as well as their personal attitudes on vice and morality. The story of these conflicting attitudes and how they play out during World War II can be understood through a close look at the letters, memoirs and archival records of the United States Army Chaplains' Corps.

Army chaplains during World War II had numerous official duties, which included providing religious services to service personnel, acting as counsellors to men in need of religious and/or personal guidance, visiting servicemen in hospitals, and generally looking after enlisted men's morale. Chaplains linked the welfare of men's morale with the state of their moral health. In discharging their duties, chaplains identified several ways that the servicemen's moral well-being came under threat, including gambling, sexual activity, indecent entertainment and indecent literature. Another one of these identified “problems” was alcohol consumption. The first thing to note here is that the views of chaplains towards the consumption of alcohol varied, often depending upon their denomination. For instance, a Catholic chaplain may well have taken a much more liberal view of drinking, which was indeed the case, than, say, a Methodist chaplain. However, chaplains were able to identify what they saw as a threat to men's morals in the form of alcohol abuse and overindulgence.

To start, it is important to keep in mind the general view towards alcohol consumption within the United States itself in the early 1940s. Prohibition had only been repealed in 1933, a scant eight years before the US entered World War II. Public attitudes toward drinking shifted after repeal of Prohibition. For example, according to John Burnham, by the late 1930s consumption of alcohol was often portrayed in Hollywood films without the stigma of deviance.Footnote ¹ This same, more lax attitude toward alcohol consumption could be seen in alcohol advertisements in magazines which generated large income streams by 1945. In addition, church opposition to alcohol consumption was mostly coming from church hierarchies rather than from congregations. Still, to many people Prohibition was linked with World War I and the advent of World War II sparked many of the same debates. According to Jay Rubin, “the Selective Service Act of May 1917 established dry zones around military camps throughout the United States and prohibited individuals from selling or serving alcoholic beverages to members of the armed forces.”Footnote ² Despite repeal, on the eve of World War II there was still a large contingent of people, approximately 35 percent of the American electorate, who believed in Prohibition and continued to lobby for the “dry” cause. For them, the outbreak of another war might prove helpful to their position. By the eve of war, however, “no state completely barred the sale of beer, while only three – Mississippi, Kansas, and Oklahoma – continued to prohibit hard liquor,” although there were some local options still in force.Footnote ³

Before the first call-up of servicemen in 1940 and after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 the Regular Army of the United States had been dealing with the alcohol issue. According to Faris Kirkland, “drinking in the armed services became an almost obligatory ritual.”Footnote ⁴ While the numbers of servicemen in the Regular Army were small between 1933 and 1940, with the call-up of large numbers of men as early as 1940 more people became concerned about the impact of the sale of alcohol on Army posts as well in the towns adjacent to military installations. They worried that the sale of alcohol could prove detrimental to men's moral behaviour. In 1941 a bill (S.860) was put forward in the Senate by Morris Sheppard, a Texas Democrat, and “a long-time prohibition advocate … call[ing] for bans on the sale and possession of alcoholic beverages ‘including beer, ale, or wine’ at all American military bases,” but the bill was unpopular and had very little mainstream support.Footnote ⁵

General George C. Marshall, Army chief of staff, commented on the proposed bill in a memo to Henry L. Stimson, secretary of war, suggesting that military commanders were worried that the enactment of such a bill would force servicemen further afield and into “dives and honky-tonks, with unfortunate results.”Footnote ⁶ “Our troubles begin when the men leave the reservation,” he continued, to which Stimson replied that he concurred with that view, noting “the same issue arose in 1911.” In a newspaper account in the Christian Advocate of February 1941, Clarence Hall reported on the conditions in Alexandria, Louisiana which was surrounded by three camps, all gearing up for a huge influx of the latest recruits. He claimed to have witnessed two Regular Army soldiers getting a new recruit drunk in a nearby bar as well as a woman in the same bar influencing two naive Wisconsin farm boys into drunkenness. Hall also proclaimed the town had a house of prostitution, “police protected and inspected.”Footnote ⁷ There were other forms of recreation, however, according to this reporter, who also noted the work of a Methodist minister in providing alternative recreational opportunities which had led to packed Sunday and weekday services at his church. Hall editorialized that this just went to “show where the soldiers will go if given a welcome.”

Hence, temperance groups and some churches continued to lobby for restrictions and voiced objections to alcohol sales as they related to servicemen, with complaints coming from many directions often arriving in the Office of the Chief of Chaplains. For instance, in February 1941 a US Representative from Arkansas, David Terry, forwarded a letter to Chief of Chaplains (Brigadier General) William Arnold sent to him by the Anti-Saloon League of Arkansas. The Anti-Saloon League supervisor Clyde Coulter suggested to Terry that “there is glaring need right now … for legislation that would banish the sale of beer, and any and all other beverage alcohol, from the Army Camps, and from the areas surrounding them.” He noted that the conditions around the camps were getting worse and that “it is imperative that these defenders of our nation be defended from liquor, and from the vice districts that result from and accompany the whiskey and beer business.”Footnote ⁸ Terry informed Arnold that Coulter's letter was typical of many that he received and asked for clarification on the Army policy on the issue of alcohol. Arnold's reply to this prewar query was one that he would repeat on other occasions throughout the course of the war. He noted that “appropriate efforts will be made to provide sound, moral training” for the men being called up into the Army and pointed out that the Army would observe “all federal laws and statutes pertaining to the sale and use of intoxicating liquors on federal reservations.” Arnold also informed Terry that the Army had no jurisdiction on what happened off-camp but that local commanders were working with local organizations to provide “wholesome and clean recreation.”Footnote ⁹

When war came for the United States, as noted earlier, various “dry” organizations pressed for a bill to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages to members of the armed forces. Church affiliation not only related to the views of chaplains and the Chief of Chaplains' Office, but to prohibition proponents as well. According to the Women's Christian Temperance Union several church groups supported wartime prohibition, including the “Northern Baptist, Southern Baptist, Methodist, Disciples of Christ, Presbyterian, United Presbyterian, Reformed Church, Lutheran Church (Norwegian), and Evangelical Church (Augustana Synod).”Footnote ¹⁰ Despite persistent lobbying, these organizations did not make headway as politicians like Robert Ramspeck, a Democrat from Georgia serving in the House of Representatives, claimed he did not want “to have 10,000,000 boys come home the way 4,000,000 did from the last war, and say ‘You voted my drinks away while I was gone’.”Footnote ¹¹ The policy that did emerge was a “wet” one. Servicemen could obtain beer by purchasing it at the Post Exchange (PX) when they were off duty throughout the war but only officers could buy hard liquor. There was no “free, official issue of alcohol” and the amount of alcohol available for purchase was strictly limited. It was not until July 1945 that “Eisenhower also sanctioned a liquor ration for the NCOs' messes in the ETO [European Theater of Operations].”Footnote ¹²

The brewing industry, of course, fully endorsed the categorization of 3·2 beer as nonintoxicating and a positive good for servicemen's morale. In 1942 Alvin Griesedieck, the chairman of the Brewing Industry Foundation, wrote an article for the Quarterly Journal of Studies in Alcohol. In the article Griesedieck laid out the benefits of supplying beer to troops, quoting from historical military figures such as George Washington and General Pershing. He asserted that there was “a great deal of misinformation over the availability of beer at Army, Navy and Marine posts in the United States and overseas.”Footnote ¹³ He explained that beer was not part of any rations received by servicemen but was, instead, made available to them at post exchanges and clubs on bases for consumption during leisure hours. Griesedieck then went on to explain the function of the foundation, which was to work as a public-relations arm of the brewing industry. Part of the foundation's work included liaising with local commanders and civic authorities in areas around military establishments to ensure that licensed “retail beer outlets” were kept to a high standard and operated within the limits of existing local liquor laws. Clearly, adverse publicity about alcohol consumption among troops was not in the interest of the brewing industry.

Griesedieck went on to reference endorsements the foundation had received from various military commanders with regard to their work. He even noted that efforts to introduce prohibition legislation to army camps resulted in “[c]haplains and camp commanders issu[ing] statements testifying that beer was an aid to morale and moderation.”Footnote ¹⁴ Furthermore, Griesedieck was able to demonstrate that the brewing of beer, in a wartime economy, brought benefits to farmers who sold the grain to brewers and those who purchased the residual “spent grain” as feed for farm animals. In addition, taxation on the production and sale of beer added to the federal tax base. Accordingly, it was clear that “the brewing industry has endeavored to meet the highest obligation of good citizenship” and deserved the trust and confidence of the American public. Industry forces worked to counter attempts by sectors within and outside the military who called for limiting the availability of alcohol to US service personnel.

For the servicemen, of course, the availability of alcohol varied greatly depending on where they were stationed. For instance, American servicemen who served in the ETO were able to frequent pubs in the United Kingdom or purchase (or at least have access to) wine or alcohol throughout their sweep across Europe in Italy, France and even Germany. For servicemen in the Pacific, access to alcoholic beverages was far more restricted and mostly relied on the supply sent by the US government, which was often available on an irregular basis. Many commentators and veterans noted the numerous substitutes that the servicemen came up with when alcohol was not readily available. These amateur-distilled beverages varied enormously depending upon the available local ingredients. Novelist James Jones recorded the manufacture of “raisin jack” or “swipe” made by combining “canned peaches or plums or pineapple … putting in a double handful of sugar … to help it ferment, then leaving it out in the sun in the jungle.”Footnote ¹⁵ Historian John Ellis also noted the other bootleg liquors such as “jungle juice” made from “fermented coconut milk” and recorded James Jones again remembering men on Guadalcanal combining Aqua Velva aftershave lotion “with canned grapefruit juice,” which “made a drink rather like a Tom Collins. Everyone loved it.”Footnote ¹⁶ These makeshift beverages were not without risk, however. Rubin records that on Eleanor Roosevelt's “trip to the Pacific theatre in 1943 … [she] sadly reported the absence of wine and beer on one of the islands” but she did record that “last night four men died from drinking distilled shellac.” This was not an isolated incident, with the most toxic substitute being methyl (wood) alcohol. “In 1945 the Army disclosed that 188 GIs died in France and Germany between January 1 and July 10 from consuming bootleg methyl alcohol.”Footnote ¹⁷

Historians like Paul Fussell claim that alcohol consumption was “ubiquitous during the war among servicemen of all ranks,” and the Chief of Chaplains files suggest that this consumption did not go unnoticed either in the United States or by chaplains around the globe.Footnote ¹⁸ For example, in December 1942 the Chief of Chaplains' Office received a letter from the Pomona Grange of Butler County, Pennsylvania asking Arnold to get chaplains to “use their influence” to get alcohol banned from camps. The response to this request was sent by Arnold's assistant, Albert Corpening, who recorded that “the Chief of Chaplains had no power of command” but he had encouraged chaplains “to be active in those things that are for the moral and spiritual welfare of their men.”Footnote ¹⁹

Other areas of the government forwarded requests for information to Arnold's office, leaving him to respond. In January 1943 a letter written to General Marshall, Army chief of staff, from George Turner of the Harvard Divinity School was sent to Arnold. Mr. Turner's letter was centred on the question why Marshall and the Army did not support wartime prohibition. Turner raised several points with regard to this issue, such as the need to provide military police (MP) to police intoxicated soldiers, the problems of drunken soldiers on trains, and how alcohol availability might turn a “dry” soldier into a “wet” one, and ended by noting that he could not “seem to reconcile a laissez-faire attitude toward alcoholism with a 100% determination to win the war.”Footnote ²⁰ Arnold's response took two full pages, although he began by suggesting that answers to many of Turner's questions were a matter of opinion. Arnold did note that currently each chaplain in the Army was looking after the moral welfare of approximately 1,200 servicemen. He also pointed out that the Army could not restrict what happened off-base because that would entail trampling on the rights of ordinary citizens.Footnote ²¹ Arnold's views had been set out many times since before the war. In March 1941 he told Senator Joseph Ball that he favoured “any Federal legislation that will enable the Secretary of War and his subordinate commanders to deal effectively with vice conditions around camps and posts,” though this fell far short of endorsing a ban on alcohol.Footnote ²²

Arnold noted, in his response to George Turner, that the behaviour of men on trains was indeed unfortunate. This issue came up frequently in the civilian and military records. Yet Arnold tended to blame what he called the overenthusiastic civilian who wanted to buy drinks for the soldiers to show their support. He also confirmed that there was a “regulation which prohibits the sale of liquors on Army reservations but permit[s] beer to be sold” and “is the product of long experience under many kinds of conditions.” Arnold, a Roman Catholic, was Regular Army, having been in the military since before the war. Hence his attitude towards alcohol consumption may have been more tolerant than that of many of his correspondents and even some of the chaplains under his leadership. Arnold went on to address one point, however, that Turner had made about prohibition in the Soviet and German armies. Arnold suggested that these types of prohibition were apparently “easier to enforce in the armies of the totalitarian powers than in those of the democracies.” American opinion, he said, “does not appear to be ready for a general prohibition,” and he noted that reports of drinking in the US Army were exaggerated. He quoted a recent survey that had suggested “on their Saturday nights in town one soldier in ten drinks some liquor, three drink beer and six drink neither. When off duty on other nights of the year, one in 24 drinks liquor, one in five drinks beer, and three out of four drink neither.”Footnote ²³ The Office of War Information had also conducted a survey in late 1942 which “found troops not engaged in excessive drinking, 3·2 beer sales a positive factor, and Army officers preferring wet communities to dry.”Footnote ²⁴

While the archival records hold many such antialcohol letters as the one referenced above from George Turner, there were occasional letters voicing a different opinion. For instance, in June of 1943 George Eads of the International Research Bureau in St. Louis, Missouri wrote to Henry L. Stimson, secretary of war, to complain about a chaplain who had been distributing antialcohol literature to troops at Camp Williams, Maine. Eads enclosed a copy of the literature and noted that “these organizations [Intercollegiate Association for the Study of the Alcohol Problem and Christian Civic League], which profess to be scientific, civil or independent, are controlled by such professional prohibition organizations as the Antisaloon [sic] League – all committed to the re-enactment of another national prohibition law.” Eads also wrote to the chaplain involved, Chaplain Carl Opsahl, explaining to him that this type of literature, “masquerading as scientific,” was “merely characteristic of the trickery of groups of professional parasites who attempt to hide their real character under the cloak of the Christian religion.” Eads pointed out that the headquarters of the Intercollegiate Association for the Study of the Alcohol Problem in Washington, DC was in the “Methodist Building … which houses the Methodist Board of Temperance.” He ended his letter to Opsahl by proclaiming his “surprise to find that a chaplain in the army would become party to a scheme so unfair to the youth of America.”Footnote ²⁵

Interestingly, the views put forth in Eads's letter were in the minority in the Chief of Chaplains files. The vast majority of correspondence had to do with criticism of Army policy and practices, or requests for clarification of the same. One category of complaint had to do with the use of chaplains' statements or images in publications that endorsed the consumption of alcohol. In October 1943, Lloyd Griffeth, secretary of the Winfield Kansas Ministerial Association, wrote to the Chief of Chaplains asking for clarification with regard to a report that appeared in the Winfield Daily Courier on 16 September. This short article, by Joe Marsh, was sponsored by the Brewing Industry Foundation's Kansas Committee, a state arm of the previously discussed foundation. Marsh had declared, as had others, that “chaplains and the military police agree that instead of ruining discipline, 3·2 beer sold in Army camps provides our soldiers with a mild form of relaxation without impairing their efficiency.” Mr. Griffeth called this “malicious propaganda of Brewers of Liquor” and noted that “we feel that such statements of Brewers are untrue, and yet before we can contradict this propaganda we must have an official statement from you.” Herman H. Heuer, Chief of Chaplains Arnold's assistant, replied, noting that this concern that brewers are suggesting that chaplains endorse their products “has previously been brought to the attention of this office” and they were looking into it.Footnote ²⁶ The general supportive sentiment with regard to the benefits of providing beer to the soldiery was widespread in both government and the military. Many officials believed that providing what they considered nonintoxicating 3·2 beer to men in camps, as noted earlier, stopped the soldiers from going off the military reservation into unsavoury civilian areas and/or drinking hard liquor.

Other people sent in copies of other advertisements that used the image of chaplains to try to sell alcoholic products. E. Philip Vogel, a lawyer in Loveland, Ohio, sent a letter to the General Commission of Army and Navy Chaplains’ office on 10 February 1944 detailing a “full page advertisement of the Hudepohl Brewing Company” that appeared in the Cincinnati Times Star which had a drawing of a chaplain conducting services, allegedly, in the Solomon Islands. The suggested purpose of the advertisement was to encourage people to buy war bonds. The Hudepohl Brewing Company claimed, at the bottom of the ad, that they were “proud to state that the Hudepohl Organization has contributed MORE THAN ITS CURRENT QUOTA of pay roll savings for war bonds” and that the ad was “prepared under the auspices of the U. S. Treasury Department and the War Advertising Council.” Vogel was outraged on behalf of chaplains serving around the world. The letter of complaint made its way to the Chief of Chaplains’ Office and Arnold's assistant, Heuer, responded to Mr. Vogel thanking him for his “interest in the Chaplain Corps” and asking Vogel to send a copy of the advertisement, perhaps because the law forbade the use of “military themes” in alcohol advertisement.Footnote ²⁷

Everything in the newspapers was not about chaplains condoning alcohol consumption, however. The Chief of Chaplains files also contained a report of an article from the Christian Advocate of November 1944 written by Chaplain Rual T. Perkins, with a longer version printed in the Virginia Methodist Advocate.Footnote ²⁸ Perkins noted that “during the eleven months that I have been serving in the Southwest Pacific, the liquor problem has become of increasing concern to me. I am driven to write this by a recently instituted practice of issuing American beer to all men in this area, through the quartermaster.” Perkins complained of this practice for three reasons: the cost to the taxpayer, the fact it seemed to encourage men to drink and the allegation that the shipments of alcohol took up valuable cargo space. Perkins insisted that this practice was “geared as to encourage every man to take his ration and many are becoming beer drinkers for the first time because of it.” In addition, he noted, those who do not drink their ration sell it on, “making petty bootleggers out of thousands of innocent boys.” He claimed as well that he had been approached by “many men” about “the problem.” Turner went on to note that

His complaint extended to the fact that many Protestant chaplains could not get their hands on communion grape juice while wine was available and finished by noting that “these are some of the problems that we face when we confront the liquor evil in the Southwest Pacific.”Footnote ²⁹

An insert in the Virginia Methodist Advocate article, with a by-line from the War Department, provided a response from Bishop Edwin F. Lee, director of the General Commission on Army and Navy Chaplains. He attempted to clarify the situation by stating that “the Army does not issue beer, whisky, or soft drinks to its personnel. All overseas post exchanges may requisition and are, as far as possible, supplied with beer and soft drinks for sale to personnel. The sale of whisky or distilled liquors is prohibited.” Instead “the Army attempts to supply the Post Exchanges with one case (twenty-four bottles) per man per month of both beer and soft drinks.”Footnote ³⁰ An undated press release from the General Commission on Army and Navy Chaplains, issued by Jacob S. Payton of the Public Relations Department, attempted to “clarify liquor misunderstandings” of this sort. The release began by countering rumours that “the men in the armed forces are being supplied with beer and whisky to the exclusion of soft drinks.” Noting that reports of this type were “disturbing to parents whose sons are from homes where temperance is advocated,” Bishop Lee issued the press release to supply the facts with regard to alcohol distribution. Rumours suggested that “the War Department issues rations of beer. This it disclaims. It does permit the Post Exchange to requisition beer and soft drinks,” but it was up to the servicemen to decide whether or not to drink either. The release also noted that whiskey was prohibited by the Army.Footnote ³¹ Many of the complaints that came into the offices of the government were the product of runaway rumours.

Still, the controversy over selling beer to servicemen did not go away and this often required one or another department of the Army to clarify policy. Roy J. Honeywell, chaplain assistant, wrote to Dr. C. Floyd Zimmerman of Philadelphia with regard to a letter Zimmerman had sent on 15 May 1945. Zimmerman's letter had been referred to the director of the Special Services Division of the Army Service Forces who replied on 4 July 1945. Zimmerman was informed that “beer of 3·2 alcoholic content, which is considered nonintoxicating … is offered for sale in Army exchanges in all theatres of operation, along with cola drinks, ice cream, candy, cigarettes … no soldier is compelled to buy.”Footnote ³² Zimmerman had referred to a letter from a soldier complaining of the lack of soft drinks while beer was readily available. Zimmerman was informed that “these supplies are … transported to the men whenever and wherever possible, and recent first-hand reports from the Pacific told of the delivery of ice cream to isolated units by parachute,” so the soldier's complaint seemed to be an isolated incident. Honeywell also enclosed a statement from the chief of Army Exchange Services, F. R. Kerr, titled “Information Regarding Manufacture and Sale of 3·2 Beer in the Army.”Footnote ³³

According to Kerr's statement, it was “the Congress of the United States [that], in considering the question of intoxicants, decided that beer containing the amount of alcohol specified above was not intoxicating and its manufacture was approved even during the period that Prohibition was in force within the United States.” Furthermore, the War Department contended that it should provide soldiers with items necessary for relaxation that “conform to moral and ethical standards,” implying that despite the views of some clerics, alcohol consumption was not an immoral act. In this case the Department considered “3·2 beer, along with cola drinks, coffee, cocoa, ice cream, candy, etc., in accord with such moral and ethical standards.”Footnote ³⁴

Interestingly, the information provided by the Kerr statement also noted that in order to provide items to troops the War Department approved the production of these products overseas. The US government was involved in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. Kerr noted that “in breweries, requisitioned overseas by the Army and operated for the most part by civilians in the countries where our forces are located, only the nonintoxicating 3·2 beer is manufactured for the use of troops.” The reasoning behind the decision to manufacture beer in foreign countries was so that shipping space would not be taken up with the products; hence “adequate supplies of food, medical supplies, ammunition, and vital equipment” were shipped without disruption. Kerr went on to note that “all of the breweries are self-supporting; no public funds or money accruing from the sale of war bonds are used.”Footnote ³⁵

Yet complaints continued to pour in. On 3 March 1945 Chaplain Paul McCullers wrote a four-page letter of complaint to the Office of the Chief of Chaplains. He started by explaining that he had been in the Army since May 1943 and came into the role to lead “men to Christ.” The crux of his problem was the distribution of alcohol among the men in his outfit. McCullers described the setting up of a “locker fund,” or what he called a “liquor store,” by the officers which had “1008 members up to March 1, 1945 with an investment of $40,720 … [and] during the month of February the liquor store sold to the men $2,188·40 worth of liquor.” He noted that there was much shipping space taken up with the transport of alcohol while he had spent the last two months without his religious equipment. The remaining two pages of the letter contained a selection of quotes from the Bible and prominent Americans against alcohol followed by a selection of Bible stories reflecting faith and sin.Footnote ³⁶

The response from Chaplain Walter B. Zimmerman, assistant for Army Ground Forces, indicated that the official Chaplains' Corps point of view was more liberal than that of many of the chaplains. Zimmerman noted that Chaplain McCullers's “point of view is fully appreciated” but also noted that “it is not believed to be the function of this office to attempt to solve the basic problem which you have indicated.” Zimmerman went on to suggest that the best approach to problems outlined in McCullers's letter was “through the individual and his education and re-education toward proper attitudes. We believe chaplains must keep this in mind.” In other words, McCullers might do better by speaking with the individual men under his charge rather than writing overly pious four-page letters to the Chief of Chaplains. Zimmerman also warned that “no chaplain wants to become a mere crusader or reformer. Our work is larger than this.”Footnote ³⁷

Even in the closing days of World War II alcohol consumption remained a topic of some debate. On 11 April 1945 Reverend R. LaRue Cober of the Genesee Baptist Church in Rochester, New York wrote to the War Department under the auspices of the Council for Christian Social Progress of the Northern Baptist Convention. Cober submitted a list of seven questions he wanted answered as part of his research for the Northern Baptist Convention. He wanted to know: the policy on the sale of alcohol, the shipping space used for transporting the same, information on US-run overseas breweries and soft-drink manufacturing plants, and “what percentage of the Armed Forces are known to use alcoholic beverages,” along with data about drunkenness and alcoholism. He also wanted clarification on rumours about the provision of pills, used as stimulants, to American fliers. Major General J. A. Ulio, the adjutant general, responded by providing the details of War Department policies towards alcohol and its practices with regard to manufacturing, shipping and distribution of the same. The close of his letter, trying to reassure Cober, is worth quoting at length. He stated,

Ulio also explained that Benzedrine tablets were occasionally prescribed to airmen but were not given out routinely.Footnote ³⁹

But what of the chaplains in the field, those who did not write to the Chief of Chaplains to complain? How did they regard the issue of alcohol provision and consumption, as recorded in their letters, diaries and memoirs? Their first-hand accounts and observations during the war are littered with stories about alcohol consumption and their personal views on the subject. Some of them made a point of recording their own abstinence. Chaplain Robert Chapman, a Methodist from Alabama, noted that on arrival at a new assignment in Europe it seemed “everybody had gone to a beer party … I decided to go to the party too. I couldn't and wouldn't drink any of the beer, but might be able to get a sandwich or two,” thus suggesting a rather laid-back attitude toward consumption.Footnote ⁴⁰ Another chaplain, Ben Rose (Presbyterian), pointed out that

In fact, the behaviour of fellow officers often drew the heaviest criticisms from the chaplains. Chaplain Rose noted in his account of the war that “a captain in the 113th came to me after the play quite drunk. That was not unusual.”Footnote ⁴² Chaplain Ben Knowles, another Methodist, noted, “I don't smoke, drink, swear, or tell vulgar stories which separates me from the general run of [officers].”Footnote ⁴³ In fact, Knowles was quite critical of his fellow officers' behaviour, noting that “the officers I was with yesterday and last night were interested in two things, it seems – gambling and drinking. There was one Mormon among them who does neither.”Footnote ⁴⁴ And another, Chaplain Watt Cooper, a Presbyterian in the Navy serving with the Seabees, was exasperated enough to write,

On the other hand, there were chaplains who drank alcohol. Some denominations required abstinence and, according to an account by Chaplain Richard Maher, a Mormon, chaplains were asked to take an oath. He recorded that a Mormon chaplain suggested to a Methodist, “You smoke! And I know you had to take an oath that you would not smoke or drink before your Church would allow you to become a minister.” The Methodists’ response was, “Yes, that's right, but everybody knew the oath was taken under duress. Nobody took it seriously. It was one of the rituals you had to go through.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Chaplain Knowles went to a new assignment and noted that, in his opinion, “they recently got rid of their protestant chaplain because he wasn't a [true] chaplain. He cursed, told vulgar stories, drank and generally raised the devil so they got rid of him.”Footnote ⁴⁷ The reference to the fact that this chaplain was Protestant is important because many Protestant chaplains complained about their Catholic colleagues. Chaplain Watt Cooper noted that

Chaplain Knowles confirmed this sentiment when he recorded that

For men like Knowles “it hurts, to have some soldier tell of a chaplain who drinks and swears and is as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. What on earth do such men think? How can they live with themselves before God? … God's heart must ache.”Footnote ⁵⁰ The chaplains seem to have drawn a clear line between the behaviour of officers who should know better and enlisted men who should be shown the way.

Most historical accounts of the war suggest that for many ordinary GIs, officer or enlisted man, alcohol helped get them through the war, whether coping with combat or with boredom. Historian Lee Kennett noted that “diaries and letters hit at a variety of expedients to gain at least temporary release from the tensions and the exhaustions of combat. One of these was alcohol.”Footnote ⁵¹ One cannot help but sympathize with the view of Michael Adams in The Best War Ever, when he wrote that “it must be the ultimate act of willful naïveté to pretend that a man engaged in killing other men will be morally corrupted by a bottle of liquor. Only the American army tried to keep its ranks dry … The result was an army obsessed with obtaining booze.”Footnote ⁵² An estimated 85 percent of American servicemen overseas considered themselves “wet.”Footnote ⁵³

The whole issue of drinking alcoholic beverages, whether by officers, enlisted men or chaplains themselves, put the question of morality during wartime into sharp relief for some chaplains. More than one chaplain would have agreed with Chaplain Watt Cooper who stated that “I've heard so much profanity and obscenity and have seen so much drinking and gambling that I may be shock-proof by now … These are not the greatest evils anyway. The sins of the spirit go far deeper.”Footnote ⁵⁴ Yet Chaplain Ben Rose's view was by far the most common view of chaplains in the field: “I know now that not death but sin is the greatest tragedy in the world … Tragedy is when a person destroys himself or herself and those who love them by excessive drinking or lewd and selfish behaviour.”Footnote ⁵⁵

Several conclusions can be drawn from this look at US Army chaplains’ attitudes towards alcohol during World War II. America had demonstrated its obsession with alcohol prior to the war. Statistics suggest that US citizens consumed alcohol at a high rate prior to Prohibition and after repeal consumption went back up to 60–70 percent of levels prior to Prohibition. By the outbreak of the war the level of consumption had increased to pre-Prohibition levels. The forces against alcohol consumption at the beginning of World War II had various arguments to support their position. One of the main points was the concern that the consumption of alcohol would have a negative impact on the moral well-being of the servicemen. Alcohol could work to weaken men's resolves to stay pure; it could lead to other immoral behaviour. Charles Whitebread suggests that “at the core of the effort to regulate morality lies the desire of ‘us’ to regulate ‘them.’ With each prohibition, a socially dominant group burdens a weaker class of citizen with its notion of propriety.”Footnote ⁵⁶

Clearly, the issue of alcohol consumption had a class element. Officers were allowed hard liquor and enlisted men were not. This was no doubt a carry-over from the Prohibition era where the forces wishing to stop alcohol consumption were overwhelmingly middle and upper class and the target of their Progressive Era reform was the lower or working class. This attitude is easily traceable to middle- and upper-class concerns about the potential radicalism of the lower orders. The elitism of this view could easily have been embraced by Army officers, especially those new officers of the expanded Army as opposed to those in the Regular Army. Many chaplains, as officers, could also be seen as elitist in the sense that they too were officers but they also saw their jobs as ministering to the enlisted ranks and not being part of them. Some chaplains may have complained about fellow officers’ habits but chaplains did not, and in fact could not, identify with the enlisted men either. Chaplains were, by virtue of their chosen careers, part of the professional classes and were treated as such by the US Army, just as were medical doctors.

In addition, some were concerned that alcohol consumption could have a negative impact on the ability of men to fight and win the war. Advocates of prohibition in the early twentieth century had worried about the impact of alcohol on the ability of the lower classes to perform their work, as well as on the stability of family life. During the war concerns were raised as well about the impact of alcohol on the ability of the enlisted men to perform their duties, which in this instance meant fighting the war. Hindsight can blur an appreciation of how the war was portrayed as a life-and-death struggle with evil, often by the churches themselves. Overindulgence in alcohol, then, could harm efforts to win in this seemingly real struggle for the survival of the United States. Under these circumstances, alcohol consumption took on an incredibly significant importance for some. In 1942 George Barton Cutten, president of Colgate University, proclaimed that “we are at war. Alcohol and war do not mix any better than alcohol and gasoline.”Footnote ⁵⁷ Once the United States entered the war, the ongoing debate over alcohol consumption shifted to a discussion of the effect alcohol consumption would have on the ability of the United States to fight, survive and win the war. It just so happened that the bulk of that fighting was going to be done by working-class soldiers. Furthermore, some antialcohol forces believed that a postwar world, without Prohibition and with millions of returning men who had developed a taste for alcohol, could have major problems. How would hometowns cope with a new and large group of drinkers? There was an element of fear associated with concerns about alcohol consumption by US GIs during the war.

Those who were less concerned about servicemen drinking, including most men in the Regular Army and some chaplains, had a different point of view. Officers in the Regular Army knew that alcohol consumption in moderation did not adversely affect men's performance. It may even have been the case that alcohol consumption by off-duty soldiers helped soldiers, and their commanders, deal with the problems associated with off-duty boredom. Soldiers without distractions could spend time brooding on their fate and their future, including the risks they were taking and the loneliness they were feeling. Lori Rotskoff suggests that “homosocial drinking had long been a source of male bonding, a situation that military leaders certainly aimed to promote among the expanding ranks of GIs.”Footnote ⁵⁸ For chaplains who drank, it was impossible to present an argument against the consumption of alcoholic beverages by others, either officers or enlisted. Furthermore, what the Army and War Department were endorsing was the drinking of 3·2 percent beer by the enlisted men. Again, this reflected the views of prohibitionists at the turn of the century and consumers at that time as well; beer was seen as the working man's drink. Rotskoff reports that beer consumption in the United States “increased by more than 50 percent per capita from 1940–1945.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Hard liquor had a more elite status.

While many chaplains did not see a problem with moderate drinking by enlisted men, many others did. Importantly, United States Army chaplains were clerics first, and military men second. What drove them was their religious beliefs and, in most cases, a sense of duty. If men were drafted or enlisted to fight in the war many members of the clergy believed that the church needed to be part of the war effort. Although some men joined the chaplains’ corps for the pay and promotion possibilities, most felt their enlistment was part of their religious calling. Religion had long played a part in American everyday life throughout the lead-up to World War II. Jonathan Herzog notes that “church membership in America remained relatively high throughout the decades before the Cold War” and that “church membership rosters and contributions to religious organizations show that if anything, Americans had managed to become even more religious by the eve of World War II.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Under these circumstances, United States Army chaplains had an important role to play.

Chaplains have been an integral part of the American military since the days of the Revolutionary War. But religion is rarely discussed in books about the wartime experience of servicemen except for the oft-repeated, and often refuted, idea that there were “no atheists in foxholes.” This simplistic view is overturned when the archival record of the Chaplains' Corps is examined. Religion had a significant role to play in fighting World War II if for no other reason than that the chaplains were there to provide religious services. As for morality, chaplains unexpectedly found themselves engaged with unanticipated issues, such as alcohol consumption, during their time in uniform. An investigation into chaplains and alcohol consumption during World War II adds to our understanding of the alcohol debate in the decade immediately after the repeal of Prohibition. It reveals the ongoing concern about the working classes and alcohol consumption and highlights the unease of some officials with regard to the impact of homosocial drinking during World War II on the postwar world. Would there be a major shift in drinking habits? By looking at the wartime dilemmas faced by chaplains in terms of everyday vice, attitudes of government institutions and religious organizations can be seen to reflect anxieties about America in the aftermath of world war.