The exhibit of “degenerate art” was a seductive topic among art connoisseurs such as Frederick. But that he would be so brazen as to discuss the forbidden works while serving in the military proved how out of place he really was.

Everything Frederick loved—jazz, art, liberal ideas—was counter to the ideology of the Third Reich and the nationalistic views of his parents. Yet somehow, this made his desire to be a paratrooper all the more profound.

But Frederick’s dreams of becoming a war hero were quickly thwarted. Many years later, he revealed to his children, in sparse detail, that he hadn’t served for very long before he was captured in an Italian village trying to flee on a bike with flat tires.

3. Fighting Hitler and Jim Crow

3.

Fighting Hitler and Jim Crow

DURING ELINOR’S LAST YEAR OF NURSING SCHOOL in 1943, the American military was deeply entrenched in battle with the Axis Powers all over the world: the Germans and Italians in Europe, North Africa, and the Atlantic, and the Japanese in East Asia and the Pacific. There was hardly a person in the United States who wasn’t impacted by the war in some way. The very idea of serving in the military to fight Hitler was appealing to anyone young and patriotic, as well as to those in need of the stable income the military provided, which was arguably one reason why black men enlisted. Given that Jim Crow was just as pervasive in the military, the African Americans who joined were volunteering to meet the threat of fascism head-on even though the liberties they fought for weren’t extended to them. World War II united Americans across race, class, faith, and ethnicity. More than thirteen million, or 10 percent of the country’s population, would serve in some capacity by the end of the war.1

Elinor was patriotic, but there was so much more to her enlistment in the Army Nurse Corps. With her beloved father gone, she needed a fresh start far away from Milton—and after nursing school, far from New York too, where social unrest and deep racial tensions were simmering. Although New York had the appearance of being progressive, the city overtly condoned Jim Crow discrimination in the form of segregated hotels, restaurants, performance halls, and movie theaters.