It means the civilian side of a country at war: households, farms, factories, schools and local government. The term was popularized during the First World War and used heavily in World War II to suggest that civilians were fighting too, by working, saving, conserving and keeping quiet about military matters. Historians use it more neutrally to describe how war changed daily life away from the battlefields. In occupied countries the line between “front” and “home” often disappeared.

Petrol was rationed in 1939. Bacon, butter and sugar were rationed from 8 January 1940, followed by meat, tea, cheese, preserves and many other goods; clothes were rationed from June 1941 and soap from February 1942. Bread, never rationed in wartime, was rationed from 21 July 1946 to 1948. Food rationing ended completely in 1954, when meat came off the ration. See the Britain chapter for the weekly ration over time.

The Office of Price Administration issued ration books to every man, woman and child. Sugar was the first food rationed nationwide, in May 1942; coffee, meat, fats, cheese and canned goods followed, many under a point system that let shoppers choose among items. A shopper needed both money and valid stamps. Gasoline and tires were rationed to save rubber. Most food rationing ended in 1945, with sugar continuing into 1947.

Census figures show the female civilian labor force rising from about 13.8 million in March 1940 to about 18.4 million in April 1944, with the participation rate rising from 27.4 to 35 percent. The biggest change was among married women, whose numbers in the labor force rose from about 5 million to 8.4 million. Many women had worked before the war; the war moved many of them into better-paid industrial jobs. By April 1947 the total had fallen to about 16.3 million.

“Rosie the Riveter” was a 1942 popular song and then a symbol of women in war industry, made famous by Norman Rockwell’s 1943 Saturday Evening Post cover. The “We Can Do It!” poster now linked with Rosie was made by J. Howard Miller for Westinghouse’s internal factory campaign and was not widely known until much later. Many real women, including Canada’s “Bren Gun Girl” Veronica Foster, were photographed as models of the type.

After Pearl Harbor, Executive Order 9066 of 19 February 1942 let the Army exclude people from military zones. About 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, were removed and held in temporary “assembly centers” and then ten War Relocation Authority camps. No comparable mass removal was applied to German or Italian Americans. In 1988 Congress formally apologized and paid redress to surviving incarcerees.

Densho and the National Park Service note that “internment” is a legal term for detaining enemy aliens during war. Most people held in the War Relocation Authority camps were American citizens, held without charge because of their ancestry. This collection therefore uses “incarceration” and “Japanese Americans,” and notes that the government called the camps “relocation centers.” Justice Department camps that held enemy aliens are correctly called internment camps.

Estimates vary. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey estimated about 305,000 German civilians killed and 780,000 wounded; Richard Overy’s later study gives about 353,000. For Japan, the Survey estimated about 330,000 deaths from nine months of air attack including the atomic bombs, with about 30 percent of the urban population losing their homes. Counting is difficult because records burned and populations moved. See the Germany and Japan chapters.

Richard Overy gives a total of 60,595 British civilian deaths from bombing over the whole war, including the V-1 and V-2 attacks of 1944–45. More than 40,000 of them died in the Blitz between September 1940 and May 1941. Single raids could be devastating: the attack on Coventry on 14–15 November 1940 killed 568 people.

It was Britain’s official evacuation of children, some mothers and other priority groups from cities expected to be bombed, beginning on 1 September 1939. Planners expected about 3.5 million people to take part; about 1.5 million did. Many children returned home during the quiet months of the “Phoney War” and left again when the Blitz began. Germany and Japan ran their own child evacuation schemes later in the war.

Yes. Germany’s expanded Kinderlandverschickung moved about 2.5 million children to the countryside by 1945, many of them aged ten to fourteen to camps run with Hitler Youth involvement. Japan’s cabinet decided in June 1944 to evacuate city pupils in grades three to six; about 360,000 went to more than 7,000 group centers, and many more went to relatives. Evacuation separated families and placed children under institutional discipline.

War bonds were government loans from citizens. Americans bought Series E bonds and savings stamps through payroll deductions, schools and eight war loan drives; Canadians bought Victory Bonds and War Savings Stamps, and Britons bought National Savings certificates. Bonds raised money and also absorbed spending power that might otherwise have pushed up prices for scarce goods. Posters and celebrity rallies promoted them heavily.

North Carolina hosted Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune, Camp Davis, Camp Mackall, Camp Butner and Camp Sutton, and its shipyards and textile mills worked on war contracts. Wilmington’s North Carolina Shipbuilding Company built 243 vessels. Charlotte had the Army’s Quartermaster Depot in the former Ford plant and Morris Field air base. More than 10,000 prisoners of war were held in the state between 1943 and 1945, at the large camps and eighteen smaller branch camps.

Official rations in occupied countries were often far below what people needed, so families relied on gardens, barter, relatives in the countryside and the black market. In the western Netherlands the official ration fell to about 500 calories a day by April 1945, and the Hunger Winter killed some 20,000 people. In the Warsaw ghetto, German authorities deliberately set rations at starvation levels. See the other home fronts chapter.

It is hard to measure. Governments commissioned surveys, such as Britain’s Home Intelligence reports, to find out. Campaigns worked best when they asked people to do things that were possible and seemed fair, such as saving scrap or buying bonds through payroll plans. They worked less well when they ignored real costs, such as childcare for women on night shifts. Under dictatorships, public enthusiasm can tell us little about private opinion. See Propaganda and Reality.

The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, signed on 22 June 1944, offered World War II veterans education and training benefits, loan guaranties for homes, farms and businesses, unemployment allowances of $20 a week for up to 52 weeks, and job placement help. By 1956 about 7.8 million veterans had used the education or training benefits, and the VA backed nearly 2.4 million home loans between 1944 and 1952. Access was unequal, especially for Black veterans in the segregated South.

Demobilization took more than a year. The U.S. Army used a points system based on service and family circumstances to decide who left first, and Operation Magic Carpet used more than 700 ships by October 1945; nearly 700,000 people came home in December 1945 alone. Some soldiers protested the pace in Manila and Paris in early 1946. Others stayed for occupation duty in Germany and Japan.

Start with what the family holds: discharge papers, letters, ration books, photographs and draft cards. The U.S. National Archives holds service and draft records; the Library of Congress Veterans History Project collects oral histories; Britain’s National Archives holds evacuation and civil defence files, and Library and Archives Canada holds service files. The returning home chapter includes a family-history interview guide.