Georgia's Home Front: World War II

Photograph of two military patients playing a game of horseshoes on the quadrangle of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, Warm Springs, Meriwether County, Georgia, 1940-1950?

Just three weeks before Germany’s surrender and four months before Japan’s admission of defeat, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945. The next day, a funeral train carried Roosevelt’s coffin slowly from Warm Springs back to Washington, DC, at thirty-five miles per hour so that grieving citizens could pay respects as it passed through their towns.
The loss of President Roosevelt was one of the last great shocks of World War II. More than 320,000 Georgians fought in the war, over one-tenth of the state’s population. Of this number, 6,754 Georgians died or were missing in action. When Japan’s surrender was announced in the United States on August 14, 1945, Georgians welcomed the war’s end by closing their businesses, throwing parades, organizing thanksgiving services, and crowding the main thoroughfares of their respective towns and cities.
Officers returning home were honored with great fanfare. General Courtney Hodges, a native of Perry, Georgia, who commanded the United States First Army in northwest Europe, returned to Georgia in May 1945, where he and forty-nine servicemen were given the nation’s first homecoming celebration in Atlanta. A dinner for Hodges was also held back in Perry.

Injured Soldiers on Peachtree Street celebrating V-J Day

Soldiers celebrating V-J Day ("Victory over Japan Day") on Peachtree Street, Atlanta, Georgia, August 14, 1945

Photograph of a banquet, Perry, Georgia, 1945

Coming Home

Military Activities

Soldiers and Families

Women's Involvement

Civilian War Efforts

Southwest Georgia Regional Library

Digital Library of Georgia

Military facilities that were built during World War II evolved as centers of training for the postwar landscape. Some Georgia Army air corps and naval air bases worked on a contract basis with the Armed Forces to train pilots during peacetime; some were turned over to city and county governments for service as public-use airports. The Southern Airways School in Bainbridge, Georgia, became a training site for commercial pilots.
Georgia factories and munitions plants became the setting for fair employment standards during the war, and served as a model afterwards.
When African American veterans returned to Georgia at the end of World War II, they arrived ready to participate equally in the political and economic opportunities available in the state. Bolstered by their wartime service, and driven to benefit from the rights they had fought for while abroad, they formed voter registration drives, and campaigned for racial equality. African American veterans founded organizations dedicated to fulfilling and protecting their rights, benefits, and freedoms as former GIs.

Hall County Library System (Ga.)

Chattahoochee Valley Libraries

Photograph of military polio patients posing together for a group portrait at the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, Warm Springs, Meriwether County, Georgia, 1940-1950?

Georgia's Home Front: World War II

Looking to the Future

Looking to the Future