‘The Greatest Team in the World!’: Sporting Metaphors in American Recruitment and Morale Propaganda During World War Two

During World War II Americans were encouraged to join various teams. Those teams could be literal, your Division’s baseball or ship’s boxing team, your Service’s collegiate football team, or more metaphorical, referring to the branches of the Armed Services; the Army, the Navy, the Army Air Force, the Coast Guard, the Marines, or the United Nations (alliance). Women were also allowed to join those teams, at least “for the duration”. On the home front, the “team” built ships, saved cans, and went all out for production. Occasionally interracial cooperation in the team was encouraged and even celebrated (Teamwork, 1946). Drawing on contemporary sources, particularly posters and film, this paper addresses the cultural reasons for the power of this sporting metaphor as a knowing and accepted shorthand, through consideration of the deep links between sports and essential American values and virtues, such as democracy (Tunis, 1941), teamwork, and competition. According to American propagandists World War Two was after all a competition between two teams, democracy versus fascism, and one that the United States would inevitably win. Importantly, this institutionalized sports’ nationalism continues to resonate in the framing of American patriotism today (Knoester & Davis, 2021), as does commemoration of World War II (NFL Superbowl, 2020).