How the Office of Civilian Defense Worked

The OCD was divided into nine regional offices, each with a salaried regional director at the helm. Under each regional director, were unpaid volunteer state directors, county and city directors and finally block leaders.

The OCD had four operating divisions:

Fiorello LaGuardia was the first person to head up the OCD. Yet after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, there was a new urgency to the OCD's efforts. President Roosevelt was concerned about LaGuardia's ability to manage the agency under the new threat. In 1942, LaGuardia resigned and Harvard Law School professor James Landis took over.

Landis reorganized the agency, recruited new personnel and moved what he saw as superfluous departments to other governmental agencies (for example, he moved the OCD's physical fitness program to the Office of Defense Health and Welfare Services). When there still had been no air raids or threats apparent by 1943, Landis resigned and recommended that the OCD be abolished. Roosevelt didn't listen. He felt there was still a need to keep the agency afloat.

Deputy director John Martin became acting director for six months. When he resigned in 1944, Martin was replaced by Lt. Gen. William N. Haskell, who led the organization until its demise in 1945.

The OCD had only 75 paid staff members [source: National Park Service]. Its numbers and its strength instead came from a massive volunteer workforce. By 1943, the organization had 14,000 local defense councils throughout the country, and more than 11 million volunteers [source: Foster].

To volunteer, interested citizens had to meet age, citizenship and training requirements. (Children under 16 were able to volunteer under adult supervision in the Junior Citizens Service Corps.) Volunteers were given positions based on their skills and interests. For example, fire fighters were sent to auxiliary fire service positions, while retired World War I pilots worked for the Civil Air Patrol. Each member had to say an oath of loyalty when he or she was admitted to the corps.

People could volunteer in the following areas:

The OCD also had volunteer efforts in place to restore transportation, communications and other essential services after an attack; prepare emergency hospitals and mobile medical teams to care for bombing victims; and keep watch for enemies in the skies.

The OCD was formed with the aim of protecting American citizens during a turbulent and dangerous time in world history. Yet within a few years of the agency's establishment, it became very clear to government leaders that there would be no need for blackout drills or emergency medical services to treat bombing victims. World War II would not be coming to America's continental shores.

Even before that realization set in, the OCD became the subject of great criticism and controversy. Members of Congress and the media charged that the organization was poorly run --indecisive and disorganized. They criticized that the agency was spending millions of dollars with the main objective of getting President Roosevelt reelected for a fourth term. Many of the OCD's programs were deemed to be entirely frivolous -- for example, when Eleanor Roosevelt hired her friend Mayris Chaney to boost children's morale by teaching them dancing at a salary of $4,600 a year (the equivalent of about $62,000 today) [source: Time].

It's difficult to confirm or deny whether the OCD was an effective organization, because it was never able to act upon any of its plans. With the exception of Pearl Harbor, any incidents that did occur on American soil during World War II were minor, and quickly contained. However, the organization did establish important civil defense measures, including sandbag stockpiling, which later proved useful for natural disasters.

By June 30, 1944, the nine regional offices of the OCD had closed. President Harry Truman signed an executive order to terminate the organization on June 4, 1945, and the OCD officially shut down on June 30, 1945.

All of the OCD's programs came to an end, with the exception of the Civil Air Patrol, which had been transferred to the War Department a few years before. However, civil defense was not entirely finished. In 1950, President Truman established the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) to oversee states' civil defense efforts, such as building shelters to protect against the growing nuclear threat. Under President Richard Nixon's administration, the government established the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency (DCPA) to replace the OCD, but the focus shifted from armed conflict to natural disaster preparedness.

The volunteer army that President Roosevelt launched no longer exists, but remnants of its spirit of cooperation could be seen after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina. The Department of Homeland Security now leads the charge against attacks on American soil, but local communities continue to play an important role in emergency preparedness efforts.