In order to guide in our research, we first examined the question, “How do wartime letters from WWII reveal details about the political and social landscape of the United States during the period?”
In order for us to provide an answer to this question, we examined a couple more focused questions as well:
Does the culture seem different on different fronts of the war?
How does soldier morale compare during different stages of the war?
How severe is the disconnect in knowledge about the war between families at home and family members on the frontline?
Through the utilization of these more focused questions, we were able to narrow down our research to a select number of sources. This made it easier to find information on a topic with many sources to look at. Through the combination of the sources we found, we were able to draw together overarching themes from each of the letters examined which helped us bring an idea to how we wanted to create our analysis. All and all, through this extensive research we were able to see how the social and political norms of the time can be drawn from the censorship of the letters from World War II.
