Chapter 1: Industrial Mobilization
Alan Gropman

In a toast made by Joseph Stalin during the December 1943, Teheran Conference the Soviet dictator praised United States manufacturing:

I want to tell you from the Russian point of view, what the President and the United States have done to win the war. The most important things in this war are machines. . . . The United States . . . is a country of machines. Without the use of those machines . . . we would lose this war.¹

World War II was won in largest part because of superior allied armaments production.² The United States greatly out produced all

its allies and all its enemies, and at its output peak in late 1943 and early 1944, was manufacturing munitions almost equal to the combined total of both its friends and adversaries. The prodigious arms manufacturing capability of the United States is well known by even casual readers of World War II history, if its decisiveness is not as well understood. But myths provoked by sentimentality have evolved in the half century since the war ended, and these have become a barrier to comprehending the lessons of that era.

When viewed in isolation, the output is indeed impressive. United States gross national product grew by 52 percent between 1939 and 1944 (much more in unadjusted dollars), munitions production sky rocketed from virtually nothing in 1939 to unprecedented levels, industrial output tripled, and even consumer spending increased (unique among all combatants). But United States industrial production was neither a "miracle" nor was its output comparatively mighty given the American advantages of abundant raw materials, superb transportation and technological infrastructure, a large and skilled labor force, and, most importantly, two large ocean barriers to bar bombing of its industries.³ Germany, once it abandoned its Blitzkrieg strategy, became similarly productive, if not more so, and British and Russian industry, given German attacks on Britain and the Soviet Union, performed outstandingly, too.⁴

This is not to say that United States logistics grand strategy⁵ was

not ultimately effective. The United States and its allies were, of course, victorious, and in winning, the United States lost far fewer lives than any of its adversaries and fewer than its main allies. Stalin was correct when he hailed American production. But the halo that has surrounded the era needs to be examined because enormous governmental supervisor labor-management relations,⁶ and domestic political frictions hampered the effort--and there is no reason to think that these problems would not handicap future mobilization efforts. With enormous threats looming in the mid-1930s and increasing as Europe exploded into war at the end of the decade, the United States was in no way unified in its perception of the hazards, nor was there any unity in government or business about what to do about it.⁷ A nostalgic look at United States industrial mobilization during World War II will not make future mobilizations of any size more effective.

Certainly none of the major World War II adversaries was less prepared for war in 1939 than the United States. There were fewer than 200,000 men in the Army, only 125,202 in the Navy and fewer than 20,000 in the Marine Corps. Those troops who went on maneuvers

in 1939 and 1940 used broomsticks to simulate rifles and trucks to represent tanks.⁸ Despite war orders from Britain and France in 1939 and 1940 and Lend-Lease shipments to Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere after Lend-Lease took effect in March 1941, there were still 5 million Americans unemployed at the end of the year.⁹ Hitler's Germany had long since absorbed its unemployment by building arms and German infrastructure. In the United States great progress had been made by the time production peaked in late 1943, compared with the situation in 1941, but output could have been even higher.

The inefficiency of World War II industrial mobilization, the fact that it took from August 1939, when the first federal agency designed to analyze mobilization options--the War Resources Board--as inaugurated, to May 1943, when the final supervisor agency was put in place--the Office of War Mobilization--should be instructive. That industrial mobilization, because it had failed in World War I, was studied throughout the inter-war period should also be sobering. Certainly the interwar planners hoped to improve on the World War I experience with industrial mobilization. They failed.

Mobilization Activities Before Pearl Harbor Day

Despite the fact that World War I had been raging for 32 months when the United States declared war, and in spite of the large numbers of war orders received by United States industry to arm the French and the British, and despite the National Defense Act of

1916 which, among many other things, established a mechanism for mobilizing industry. United States ground and air forces that fought in World War I were largely supplied by French and British munitions. Industrial mobilization had been so inept that Congress passed legislation soon after World War I ended to build an apparatus to ensure that the next time the United States went to war it would be better mobilized industrially.

The National Defense Act, June 1920, explicitly outlined responsibilities in the Office of the Secretary of War that streamlined procurement for that day's military and planning for the future.

Hereafter, in addition to such duties as may be assigned him by the Secretary of War, the Assistant Secretary of War, . . . shall be charged with the supervision of the procurement of all military supplies and other business of the War Department pertaining thereto and the assurance of adequate provision for mobilization of materiel and industrial organizations essential to wartime needs . . . There shall be detailed to the office of the Assistant Secretary of War from the branches engaged in procurement such numbers of officers and civilian employees as may be . . . approved by the Secretary of War . . . Chiefs of branches of the Army charged with the procurement of supplies for the Army shall report direct to the Assistant Secretary of War regarding all matters of procurement.¹²

The Assistant Secretary of War now had under his control something that had been lacking in the Army for 150 years: unified

procurement and a directive to plan for future purchasing. In October 1921 in his first memorandum, the Assistant Secretary established a Procurement Division to supervise "the procurement of all military, supplies and other business of the War Department . . . and the assurance of adequate provision for the mobilization of material and industrial organizations essential to wartime needs." This division was further subdivided into a Planning Branch and a Current Supply Branch. The Planning Branch was accountable for planning for wartime procurement and industrial mobilization, and was also the agency designated to deal with the Navy department and all other government departments on "all matters pertaining to the allotment of industrial facilities and materials required for war." The Planning Branch was further subdivided into many sections including: Industrial Policy, Purchase, Production Allocation, Labor, Finance, Foreign Relations, Transportation, and Storage. It survived into World War II, and for more than a decade was the only agency engaged in industrial mobilization planning.¹³

People who worked in the Assistant Secretary's office, however, received no respect from members of the General Staff, and throughout the 1920s and 1930s there was friction between the logisticians and the operators. At times the relationship became sulfurous. For example, General Charles P. Summerall, Army Chief of Staff from 1926 to 1930, "forbade his subordinates to cooperate with" the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War, "which he recommended be abolished." He called the Assistant Secretary's Executive Officer, Brigadier General George Van Horn Mosely, a logistician, a "traitor," and a "scoundrel."¹⁴

In addition to the Planning Branch in the Assistant Secretary's office, there was another logistics entity: the Army and Navy Munitions Board, created in 1922 to coordinate "the planning for acquiring munitions and supplies required for the Army and Navy Departments for war purposes and to meet the needs of any joint plans." This Board was also charged with developing "a suitable legislative program" to be put into effect at the appropriate time to "enable the procurement program to be" established. Unlike the procurement and planning duties determined for the Assistant Secretary, the Army and Navy Munitions Board had no specific legislative sanction and no appropriation until July 1, 1939 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt directed that this organization and several other joint boards come tinder the direct supervision of the president.¹⁵

It was clearly understood that the Army and Navy Munitions Board was not subordinate to the Army and Navy Joint Board--mainly an operational planning organization--but was equal to it. Through the early 1930s there was little life and no power in the Munitions Board because of interservice problems. The Army G-3 did its planning for troop mobilization without reference to the Navy, and the Planning Branch did its industrial mobilization planning similarly oblivious to the Navy's potential needs. In 1932, however, the Munitions Board was reorganized to include the Director of the Planning Branch and similar personnel from the Navy logistics community. A secretary was authorized and eight divisions formed dealing with such items as price controls, contracting, commodities, power, etc. In 1933 the Board took over sponsorship of the industrial mobilization plans and began to compile lists of strategic and critical materials.¹⁶

Education For Mobilization

But when the Planning Branch was formed in 1921 and the Board in 1922, there was no formal schooling for the people who joined the staffs of either organization. That was rectified in 1924

with the establishment of the Army Industrial College. Staff Officers in the Assistant Secretary of War Office recognized from the start that formal education was needed if those who worked in the Planning Branch were to be effective. In 1924 the War Department issued a general order establishing the College: "A college to be known as the Army Industrial College . . . for the purpose of training Army officers in the useful knowledge pertaining to the supervision of all military supplies in time of war and to the assurance of adequate provisions for the mobilization of materiel and industrial organizations essential to war time [sic] needs." The College was assigned to the Assistant Secretary; for supervision rather than the General Staff which supervised all other general service schools. The first course lasted 5 months and had only 9 officers in its student complement, but soon after the College was established, Navy and Marine officers began attending. From the beginning, the student focus was on general logistics and not just on procurement. In the 1920s the prestige of the school was low, but over time it improved, although probably no officer--and certainly no combat officer--saw it as equal in importance to the Army War College.¹⁷

The motivations of the school's founders went beyond just understanding the mechanics of procurement and industrial mobilization. They hoped to educate military officers to control industrial mobilization, and in fact direct the war industries. These officers believed it had been a mistake to leave control of war industries in the hands of financiers and industrialists like Bernard Baruch during World War I, and thought that military control would yield efficiency. "Neither side viewed the other as a partner in a mutually beneficial endeavor."¹⁸

The staff officer most involved in fostering the creation of the College, James H. Burns, wrote: "While actual production was essentially the task of industry, planning and control--in the broad sense--of the production of War Department supplies . . . were primarily military responsibilities." He argued that the "authority" to

plan and control "should not be surrendered" to agencies outside of the War Department, and that Army "should organize" to supervise industry. He believed that the War Department "should not only have a plan worked out, but that military men should be thoroughly trained in the plan so that they could man key positions in time of war." Once war production was started "these men could be replaced by 'Captains of Industry' working as a part of the War Department organization." Thus the Army Industrial College was to provide logistical officers with the expertise to ensure their dominance over civilians in mobilization.¹⁹

The notion of the Army completely directing industry in the United States strikes one as arrogance at worst and naive at best, but it is most symbolic of the suspicion which soldiers held for businessmen--the former dedicated to their mission and to victory for which they would sacrifice their lives if necessary, and the latter dedicated to improving the bottom line. The notion that somehow soldiers (sailors and marines too since they became Industrial College students soon after the school opened) could master industry after a 5-month (later a 10-month) course is of course preposterous, and General Hugh Johnson, a World War I mobilization authority, wrote so in 1938 and again in 1939:

The Army Industrial College is a get-rich-quick course in which professional Army officers are taught, in a few months, all about running the industries of this country by military instructors, most of whom never even ran a peanut stand. . . . The average officer lives a life as remote from our day-to-day business struggle as a cloistered monk.

The War Department itself has no business whatever 'directing' industry in war. That is a mammoth and vital task--as great and vital as fighting a war. The Army already has the latter task. It should not jimmy up the works by taking on another just as big the moment the guns begin to roar . . . it would be just as

absurd and disastrous to use them on this job as it would be to elbow all the generals aside and put industrial leaders in command of armies. Put armies under soldiers and industrial mobilizers under industrialists and let all shoemakers stick to their lasts.²⁰

By December 1941 the College had trained about 1,000 officers of whom 15 percent were from the Navy and Marine Corps. Many of these men worked in the Planning Branch and Army and Navy Munitions Board. During World War II there were about 25,000 officers in Army procurement, and no more than 2 percent of these could have been Industrial College graduates.²¹ The students of the Industrial College studied industry, intensely, examined the activities of the War Industries Board and other World War I mobilization agencies and analyzed mobilization problems from that war. They also provided analytical support to the Planning Branch and to the Army and Navy Munitions Board when these organizations wrote the various Industrial Mobilization Plans.²²

Inter-War Planning for Industrial Mobilization

The National Defense Act of 1920--the foundation for the Planning Branch, the Army and Navy Munitions Branch, and the Army Industrial College--also directed that the Assistant Secretary of War prepare an industrial mobilization plan to prevent the fumbling that occurred during World War I.²³ During the interwar period there were four plans written. The first, in 1922, written in the Planning Branch, was really an outline of a plan to be prepared in three volumes,

which evolved into an Industrial Mobilization Basic Plan in 1924--but which was still an outline plan. The latter recognized the need for an industrial mobilization super agency to be "established by act of Congress or by the President, under congressional authority for . . . coordinating, adjusting and conserving the available agencies for resources so as to promptly and adequately meet the maximum requirements of the military forces and the essential needs of the civilian population." This was essentially a procurement plan.

The keystone of the 1924 plan and all those that followed was a hypothetical M[Mobilization]-Day, the date of the first day of mobilization, considered synonymous with a declaration of war. The officers in the Planning Branch (and subsequent authors) found it inconceivable "in the light of American practice and thinking" that the "United States would ever begin mobilizing before the outbreak of war."²⁴ As it actually happened, Roosevelt indeed began to consider mobilizing industry even before Germany invaded Poland. Four mobilization agencies were tried, and all of them failed, before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

The 1930 plan had three additional flaws, all of which were carried through in subsequent Industrial Mobilization Plans. One was the assertion that existing executive and other government agencies should not be used as any of the government's tools for industrial mobilization. This provoked hostility in the senior departments. Another was the failure to recommend a branch to collect, assess, and distribute statistics (also carried forward into subsequent plans), and, most significantly, the failure to recognize that the United States would probably have to assist in arming its allies.²⁵

The 1933 plan's preface summarized the thinking behind all of the interwar industrial mobilization planning:

War is no longer simply a battle between armed forces in the field--it is a struggle in which each side strives to bring to bear against the enemy the coordinated power of every individual and every material resource at its command . . . The following comprise the essentials of a complete plan for mobilization of Industry:

1. Procurement planning
   1. Determination of requirements
   2. Development of plans for the procurement of such requirements
2. Plans for control of economic resources and mobilization of industry
   1. Determination of the measures to be employed to insure the proper coordination and use of the Nation's resources.
   2. Development of plans for the organization and administrative machinery that will execute these control measures.²⁶

The plan was approved by both the Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy (the first to be approved by both, and the first written by the Army and Navy Munitions Board). This plan called for appointment by the president of an "Administrator of War Industries."²⁷

The Army and Navy Munitions Board planned for a transition organization to mobilize industry during the period immediately after a declaration of war and before the War Industries Administration was fully formed. Planners wrote on July 19, 1934: ". . . to make the War Industries Administration responsive to the needs of the Army and Navy, it is proposed to take from the Army and Navy Munitions Board and from the Army and Navy Departments a limited number of seasoned officer personnel . . . to assist the Administrator of the War Industries Administration and to act as advisors to

him." They also suggested that the Army and Navy Munitions Board "conform its structure to that planned for the War Industries Administration." This meant that at the outset of the war the country's economy would be controlled by Army and Navy officers.²⁸

The 1936 plan, a further revision of the 1933 plan (a revision of the 1930 plan) was 75 pages long, including suggested legislation!²⁹ This Plan called for a War Resources Administration and War Resources Administrator, an individual with vast powers, similar to those that Bernard Baruch had in 1918 as head of the War Industries Board and James F. Byrnes was to get in May 1943 as Director of the Office of War Mobilization. Baruch, who was asked to review this plan, was critical of it because it failed adequately to consider the production needs of the civilian population. He was also insistent that industrial mobilization be implemented under civilian control and that specific plans for the use of industry should be made by civilian industrial experts in the respective fields. He found intolerable the degree of involvement in industrial mobilization of the Army and Navy Munitions Board.³⁰

The 1939 plan was even shorter than the 1936 revision. Like the 1936 plan, it called for an Administrator of War Resources to be at the top of the entire mobilization apparatus and that all other agencies formed to mobilize the country's industries were to assist the War Resources Administrator.³¹ This Plan, was published after Germany invaded Poland, and it was not used. The muddling that had accompanied World War I mobilization was being repeated. Given the eagerness expressed by the Congress and the Assistant Secretary of War and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, why?

For one reason, the plans were thin--the last being only 18 pages--and therefore superficial. One reason for this was the number of staff officers who could be in Washington either on the Army General Staff or in the Assistant Secretary's Office was severely limited

by Congress.³² There were simply too few staff officers to perform significant industrial mobilization planning at the same time as operational planning and other staff functions. Congress was especially concerned that the president might drag the country into an unnecessary war. The disillusionment and resentment that followed World War I hamstrung the president.³⁴

Although perhaps better than nothing, and certainly better than anything on the shelf in April 1917, the Industrial Mobilization Plans were faulty. They were prepared entirely by military, agencies with some knowledge of industry but no real depth. They were, moreover, rigidly based on the M-Day concept and lacked the flexibility needed for adaptation to a gradual mobilization. The industrial mobilization planners, furthermore, envisioned a one-front war such as they had experienced in World War I. The Army and Navy Munitions Board were unwilling to work with existing governmental departments. And most importantly, President Roosevelt could not possibly abide a plan that put so much power in the hands of uniformed military.³⁴ It was not even possible when the Soviet Union was invaded in June 1941. And Roosevelt was still uncomfortable putting control of the economy under the military when the United States was attacked on December 7, 1941.³⁵

There were, in addition to political problems perceived by the president, internal difficulties within the Army. The rancor between the general staff and the Assistant Secretary's office was echoed in the lack of coordination between the logistics element (G-4) and the operations element (G-3) on the general staff. The operations plans drawn up by G-3 and various joint planning elements were logistically unrealistic. The G-4 wrote in 1936 that, with the 1933 Industrial Mobilization Plan and a survey of industry in hand (by 1940 the Planning Branch and other planners had surveyed 30,000 industrial firms which supplied 70,000 different items the Army required,³⁶) the forces to be mobilized in the first 30 days after M-Day could be fed, transported and sheltered in a "reasonably satisfactory manner," and could also be "supplied with required equipment from storage of procurement except [author's emphasis] for airplanes, tanks, combat cars, scout cars, antiaircraft guns, searchlights, antiaircraft fire control equipment, .50 caliber machine guns, pontoon equipment. . . . gas masks, radio and telephone equipment and equipment for medical regiments."³⁷

In addition to the political climate militating against implementation, superficial planning, disharmony between operators and logisticians, the United States business world was not too keen on being mobilized until the president and Congress and the people were behind it, and that did not occur until December 7, 1941. Fifteen years of contact between the military and industry had not much improved the attitude of businessmen.³⁸ They were hurt by the boom and bust cycle of World War I and were not to be hurt willingly again.

Ultimately it came down to Roosevelt. He did indeed scuttle the Industrial Mobilization Plan of 1939 only to be driven back to its "essential form in 1943 after years of wasted administrative motion." Why? Because in the period from 1939 to 1941 he saw himself bound to his political base. He had to rally and sustain a "New Deal political coalition for reelection" and a country, for a "united world war effort."

In the end, the president rejected the Industrial Mobilization Plan because "he could not afford politically to be seen to support a plan that organized labor and agricultural spokesmen and influential New Dealers opposed, even if he had wanted it himself." Big industrialists, furthermore, were opposed to government control, had been hostile to much that Roosevelt had done during the New Deal, and had "demonstrated unparalleled ability to retain prerogatives notwithstanding economic and wartime crises. And they continued to exact a price for their private performances." The president "had to bargain" with the industrialists, "and bargaining means joint decision making and shared power.³⁹

It is not that the Army Industrial College, the Planning Branch and the Army and Navy Munitions Board accomplished nothing. Their procurement recommendations were followed, and their surveys of industry helped the service procurement agencies. This was significant because these retained procurement authority" throughout the war. More than 90 percent of the ordnance contracts that were negotiated went to firms that had been surveyed in the 1920s and 1930s. And during 1942 the Army and Navy Munitions Board set priorities for all contracts for the Army, Navy, Maritime Commission and the Coast Guard and even some Lend-Lease orders. In late 1942 Board members were directly transferred to the industry divisions of the War Production Board ending this role.⁴⁰

Yet Roosevelt must have given some thought to implementing the Industrial Mobilization Plan, because in August 1939 at Roosevelt's

behest, the Secretary of War appointed a War Resources Board chaired by Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. Board Chairman of United States Steel and four other prominent industrialists, educators, or investment bankers to study the Plan and recommend adoption or revision.⁴¹ Assistant Secretary of War Louis A.Johnson certainly thought that Roosevelt was about to implement the Industrial Mobilization Plan when he appointed the War Resources Board, because Johnson welcomed the members of the Board (with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Thomas Edison) on 9 August 1939 with an announcement that in the event of an emergency or war, the Board would become a super agency analogous to the War Industries Board in World War I. The Board endorsed most of the 1939 Industrial Mobilization Plan, but it was disbanded in November 1939 by the president and its report was classified.⁴²

Why? For one thing, the Board membership included no one from either labor or agriculture. For another, the Plan contemplated speedy enactment of a full range of legislation required to permit a War Resources Administration to control prices, profits, wages, labor allocation, imports, exports, etc. But the president was not ready to ask for this legislation because he believed Congress was not ready to pass it. The president was fully aware of the vocal criticism of the Plan--that it was a scheme to drive the United States into war and also to put control of the economy in the hands of the military. At that time Roosevelt was also not primed to turn over the domestic economy to the War Resources Board. Roosevelt, finally, had not tested the men of the Board, and was unsure about their political loyalties, competence and agendas. A combination of domestic politics and Roosevelt's personality forced the demise of the War Resources Board, the Industrial Mobilization Plan, and the War Resources Administration.⁴³

Mobilizing for War: 1939 to 1941

With the defeat of Poland and the onset of the Sitzkrieg (between October 1939 and May 1940), there was little momentum in Washington affecting industrial mobilization, although the General Staff and Joint Board were busy. There was no "referee of claims made by either armed service except the Army and Navy Munitions Board."⁴⁴ With the attack on the Low Countries and France, however, industrial mobilization decisions were made. On May 25, 1940, Roosevelt established by Executive Order the Office of Emergency Management inside the Executive office of the president. This new organization helped coordinate and direct emergency agencies which were beginning to proliferate, and it spawned a number of important war organizations like the National Labor Relations Board, Office of Civilian Defense, Office of Defense Transportation, War Food Administration, War Manpower Commission, National Housing Agency, and Office of Price Administration. The head of this office was titled Liaison Officer for Emergency Management (William H. McReynolds).⁴⁵

Immediately after creating the Office of Emergency Management, Roosevelt resurrected the Council on National Defense and its Advisory Commission. The Office of Emergency Management served as a secretariat for the Advisory Commission.⁴⁶ These bodies had been sanctioned by legislation in 1916, and Congress had never repealed the authorization. The president, therefore, could recreate these agencies without congressional approval. The Council was made up of key cabinet officials: Secretaries of War, Navy, Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, and Labor--those departments essential to mobilizing for war--but the Advisory Commission, "made no

pretense of reporting to the Council."⁴⁷ Its seven civilian leaders (chosen with "political astuteness" by Roosevelt): Stettinius (advisor for industrial materials matters), William S. Knudsen (advisor for industrial production), Sidney Hillman (labor) Leon Henderson (price stabilization), Chester C. Davis (agriculture), Ralph Budd (transportation), Harriet Elliot (consumer protection)--reported individually and directly to Roosevelt.⁴⁸

The members of the Commission organized into many divisions and subdivisions. Knudsen's industrial production element had subdivisions run by senior, experienced industrialists working for him: W.H. Harrison of American Telephone and Telegraph advising on construction, and Harold S. Vance of Studebaker counseling on machine tools and heavy ordnance, Dr. George Mead (inventor of the Wasp aircraft engine) on aircraft, E. F. Johnson of General Motors on small arms and ammunition, Admiral Emory S. Land (chairman of the Maritime Commission) on shipbuilding, George M. Moffett of the Corn Products Refining Company on food and chemicals. Stettinius, who ran the Industrial Materials Division had three subdivisions: mining and mineral products, chemical and allied products, and agricultural and forest products--all of which were run by big businessmen.⁴⁹

However it was divided and subdivided, and no matter the caliber of the people in it, the Advisory Commission was not the agency

to supervise industrial mobilization--it had no formal leader (critical in an organization with powerful men who see themselves as equals), and (more importantly) no authority. And it is indicative of Roosevelt's frame of mind and approach to bureaucracy and domestic politics that this organization existed until October 23, 1941⁵⁰--even after subsequent organizations were founded.

Airplanes, especially bombers, were central to Roosevelt's strategic viewpoint, and the president turned to William Knudsen to help him generate the facilities that would eventually lead to construction of the greatest air armada in history. Purchases by the British and French before 1940 and by the British after 1940 helped lay the foundation for the unprecedented growth in the aviation industry.⁵¹ Creative funding to build the necessary aircraft manufacturing plants was also an initiation of the Advisory Commission. Unlike Germany, the United States mobilized by building armaments in depth rather than in width by first spending money and allocating resources to build factories. By contrast the Germans pushed more arms out of existing facilities by allotting materials for manufacture of munitions.⁵² Leon Henderson, a commission member, and Donald M. Nelson, an adviser to the Commission came up with a 5-year amortization scheme to permit industrialists to write off plant construction costs if these were expended for building munitions. Knudsen carried the ball in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. Legislation spurred new construction at a critical time.⁵³

After Pearl Harbor was attacked, the government generated the funds for most factory construction,⁵⁴ but Roosevelt would have found it impossible to get this kind of funding in 1940. There was more to the Commission, though, than gearing up industry.

The Advisory Commission, probably because Sidney Hillman was a commissioner, made a pronouncement on labor calling for fair treatment of labor during the emerging crisis using the emergency to sop up unemployment, insisting on a 40-hour week with overtime pay for extra work, demanding compliance with the Walsh-Healy Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Labor Relations Act; pressing for adequate housing for the labor force, and asserting the need for non-discrimination in the labor force on the basis of age, race, or gender.⁵⁵

Though the Commission industrialists could advise the president and cajole industry, the group failed because Roosevelt would neither give them the authority to succeed or often the information they needed. The president, for example, called in 1940 for industry, to tool up to build 50,000 airplanes per year. But nobody told the Commission what kinds of airplanes to produce or the numbers of each model. Everybody knew tanks would be needed in great numbers, but U.S. tank designs were in flux.⁵⁶

Nobody was satisfied with the results of the Advisory Commission--neither its members nor the president nor mobilization gurus

like Bernard Baruch.⁵⁷ Congressional dissatisfaction was reflected in Senator Robert Taft's November 21, 1940 announcement that he would introduce a bill to create a War Resources Board under a single administrator. Industrialists were also disturbed. Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., Chairman of the Board at General Motors, also in late November called for a single person to direct a National Defense Board, and several weeks later National Association of Manufacturers President J.W. Prentis made a plea for a single civilian leader with decision-making authority.⁵⁸

This general dissatisfaction led Roosevelt to create by Executive Order, on January 7, 1941, the Office of Production Management, a "curiously blended compromise of many pressures" designed to stimulate production. Knudsen was appointed Director General, a logical choice it appeared at the time, and because labor support was essential to winning the battle of production, Sidney Hillman was made Associate Director General. The secretaries of war and navy were members of the Office of Production Management policy council, but Knudsen and Hillman were to run the Office, rationalize war production, and coordinate the many other government agencies involved in producing for rearmament.⁵⁹

This Office had three functional divisions purchases, production, and priorities, and two staff divisions: a Bureau of Research and Statistics and a Production Planning Board. But there was extensive overlap in these functional and staff divisions--causing friction, and also much duplication between the Office of Production Management and a proliferation of liaison groups. "Businessmen, industrial representatives, and Army and Navy procurement officers seeking decisions were shunted back and forth from division to division,

sometimes for days and weeks."⁶⁰ It was ineffective from the start and lasted only about a year.

The key problem with this new Office was similar to the central difficulty with the Advisory Commission, the lack of clear authority. To make matters worse, several parts of the Advisory Commission were spun off as independent entities such as the Office of Defense Transportation and Office of Price Administration. These operated as equals to the Office of Production Management.⁶¹ There developed factions, frictions, prejudices, and parochialisms, and Knudsen and Hillman were not able to cope with the resultant clashes,⁶² perhaps because Roosevelt did not give his support to Knudsen and Hillman when these disputes occurred. Another crucial problem was this new office never had control over civilian production,⁶³ and from the time the Office of Production Management was founded, munitions production competed fiercely with manufacturing items for the civilian population. Industry would rather produce for civilians than for the government.⁶⁴

Even Roosevelt's declaration of an unlimited national emergency on May 27, 1941 did nothing to improve Knudsen's lot. That act on the part of the president was supposed to create a merger of the Army and Navy Munitions Board and the Office of Production Management, but nothing like that occurred.⁶⁵ However, progress

was made. On March 22 it issued Order M-1 requiring producers of aluminum give preference to defense orders and specifying the sequences in which non-defense orders should he filled. In the following months copper, iron, steel, cork, certain chemicals, nickel, rayon, rubber, silk, and other materials were brought under similar controls. The Office also prohibited the use of affected materials for less essential purposes. While the Army and Navy Munitions Board was permitted to prioritize military products, the Office of Production Management could assign priority ratings to essential civilian products.⁶⁶

Additionally, the Office began to survey industry during this period to explore what production capacity existed. For example, Merrill C. Meigs, chair of the Joint Aircraft Committee for the Office of Production Management surveyed the aircraft industry to explore its potential output. Meigs also began to examine standardization potentialities so that something like mass production could be achieved in an industry that heretofore had resisted such approaches. Meigs, like other industrialists who probed industry, found that the most serious shortage confounding defense production was the scarcity of machine tools.⁶⁷

As defense production was accelerating, moreover, manufacturers began to complain that they faced training problems and labor discontent. New skills were needed. Labor leaders tried to use the looming emergency to bid up wages. Roosevelt appointed in March 1941 a National Defense Mediation Board to settle controversies between employees and employers. It was instructed to act when the Secretary of Labor certified that a dispute threatened production or transportation of equipment or materials essential to national defense that could not be adjusted by a conciliation commission inside

the Department of Labor.⁶⁸ As an example of Roosevelt's penchant for creating competing institutions, the Office of Production Management was not a partner to this Mediation Board, nor were its successor organizations. Until the Office of War Mobilization was founded on May 27, 1943, and the president decided to support its director explicitly, disputes between agencies like the Office of Production Management (or the War Production Board later) and any other significant organization could only be settled by Roosevelt himself, and he was too burdened before Pearl Harbor to adjudicate disputes between powerful departments, bureaucrats, or personalities. After Pearl Harbor, such an effort by the president was out of the question.

The Office of Production Management was concerned about the labor pool and initiated large retraining programs. Also, in August 1941, the Office urged manufacturers to employ women and entreated women to enter the laboring force. Roosevelt made public and private statements to help ensure that minorities received a fair deal from industry and labor unions. In June 1941 he created the Committee on Fair Employment Practice to investigate and redress grievances growing out of departures from his policy against employment discrimination on grounds of race, creed, color, or national origin.⁶⁹ This was pragmatic--if the United States was to be the Arsenal of Democracy, it needed to eliminate barriers to employment.

Typical of Roosevelt, in April 1941 he established another organization that had elements within its portfolio that the leaders of Office of Production Management believed properly belonged to it. Under Leon Henderson, a new dealer bureaucrat, Roosevelt established the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply. This newest entry was responsible for recommending procedures to dampen inflation and also to ensure that civilian needs received adequate attention. Civilians were not to be neglected, because to do so could destroy morale and weaken health and safety standards. But they could not be pampered. Henderson, called an "all-outer" because he believed in an all

out war effort, one that paid attention to victory before considering business profits and civilian discomforts. Henderson believed he had the power to curtail civilian production in order to promote industrial conversion. But the Office of Production Management thought it had this authority. The latter was staffed by industrialists who wanted to produce for the civilian market. Henderson was disturbed by wide-scale automobile manufacturing and production of appliances that were consuming steel and other materials needed for the war effort. In July 1941, he took the initiative and ordered curtailment in future production of automobiles, and the Office of Production Management forced Roosevelt to mediate. In August Roosevelt ruled that the civilian supply function was to be broken off from Henderson's office and given to the Office of Production Management.⁷⁰ It was all a matter of priorities, and clearly the business leaders who predominated in the Office of Production Management had different priorities from Henderson and perhaps even the president. But the political moment had not yet arrived for Roosevelt where he could ask civilians and their suppliers for sacrifices.

Establishing grand priorities was essential in the summer of 1941 because on July 9, 1941, Roosevelt directed the War and Navy Departments to collaborate on a report "on the munitions and mechanical equipment of all types which . . . would be required to exceed by an appropriate amount that available to our potential enemies. From your report we should be able to establish a munitions objective indicating the industrial capacity which this nation will require." On August 30 he told the services to factor Lend-Lease requirements into their analysis and asked for a final answer in 10 days.⁷¹

The War Department "Victory Plan" called for 61 armored divisions and 61 mechanized divisions, but the Army created only 16 of the former and none of the latter, although American infantry divisions were, by comparison to any other country's, lavishly mechanized

Lend-Lease shipments frustrated this. The Army estimated that the United States sent enough equipment to the United Kingdom and other parts of the British empire, the Soviet Union, France, Italy after it switched sides, China, and other allied and associated states to create 101 U.S.-type divisions. Where the Victory Plan called for 215 Army divisions of all kinds, only 89 were created.⁷²

Remarkably, however, the size of the Army the Victory Plan called for was close to the number actually mobilized. The Victory Plan called for an Army of 8.8 million (reaching 8.3 million at its peak), a ground force of 6.7 million (topping out at 6 million) and an Air Force of 2 million (which peaked at 2.3 million). The Victory Planners were assisted by Army Air Force planners who determined that the United States would need 6,680 heavy bombers and 3,740 very heavy bombers and 13,038 bombers for replacements. They also called for 8,775 fighters and an equal number of replacement fighters.⁷³ The Navy had been building since the mid-1930s, and had in being a two-ocean Navy that dwarfed Hitler's (except for submarines) and Mussolini's, and was larger than Japan's. It was not until December 17, 1941 that the Bureau of Ships presented its first "Master Plan for Maximum Ship Construction" which became the guiding document for the president and his agencies devoted to munitions production. ⁷⁴

By this time, however, Roosevelt and his advisors believed that the Office of Production Management was failing. Production was not accelerating, and the most nagging problem was establishing priorities. What was to be built first, to whom would it go (domestic or overseas military), what essential civilian items were to be manufactured, who got which raw materials and when? The Office had limited priority-setting authority. Bernard Baruch and the Director of the Bureau of the Budget called for the creation of a single agency to centralize priority authority over all production, civil and military. Because of such recommendations Roosevelt created the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board, under the leadership of Donald Nelson, a key member of the Office of Production Management. Vice President Henry Wallace was Chairman of the Board and Harry Hopkins was also a board member, but Nelson was in charge.

This new Board was to be both a part of the Office of Production Management and superior to it in matters of allocating resources and setting priorities. Thus William Knudsen's subordinate, Donald Nelson--Knudsen's Director of Purchases and later Director of Priorities--was now his superior in the most important control element: establishing priorities and allocations. The Executive Order establishing this new agency authorized the Board to: "Determine policies and make regulations governing "allocations and priorities with respect to the procurement, production, transmission, or transportation of materials, articles, power, fuel, and other commodities among military, economic defense, defense aid, civilian and other major demands of the total defense program." But there were other agencies which were granted similar responsibilities.⁷⁵ The Board's first meeting was on September 2, 1941 and its last on January 13, 1942 (when it was absorbed in the War Production Board). In that time production indeed increased.⁷⁶

The Supply Priorities and Allocations Board recognized early that efficiency lay in establishing an allocation system versus spending time on priorities. Trying to establish priorities corrupted the system when everybody wanted everything now and certainly ahead of everybody else.⁷⁷ Many agencies were in the business of establishing requirements and the order in which they would be manufactured. The Joint Chiefs of Staff played a major role and beneath them the Army and Navy Munitions Board. But the Army and Navy, who did their own procuring might not always agree with the decisions of the Joint Chiefs. Other powerful agencies were also involved in this process--the Maritime Commission, Lend-Lease, and (after mid-January 1942) the War Production Board. The last was, "in theory, empowered to make decisions on reductions if its Planning Committee indicated the necessity for such a step. Because of its composition, however, the Board itself could rarely agree on such matters, and it never claimed authority to determine the order of strategic necessity." Grand strategy was supposed to be the governor, the province of the Joint Chiefs who would send its munitions priorities to the War Production Board based on it.⁷⁸

The Board's task was enormous. Once the needs for the military and the civilian economy were known, and of course these essentials changed, how much steel, aluminum, copper, rubber, and dozens of other materials were needed to build the millions of weapons and other necessities? It was crucial not to manufacture too much of a munition, because with the people and facilities stretched tight, superfluous production would cost money, effort, energy,, and most importantly, time. Sequencing was also critical. There is no sense in

allocating steel for aircraft engines if there is insufficient aluminum to build airframes. The Board, like the Office of Production Management, found that the estimates the Army and Navy Munitions Board of raw material requirements were "practically worthless." For example the Munitions Board estimated the requirement for copper for the first 2 years of the war to support a 4 million person army was 25,000 tons, when the real requirement turned out to be nearly 1 million tons.⁷⁹

The Army and Navy were not comfortable with civilians responsible for prioritization and allocation, and in November 1941 made a move to put a super priorities committee above Nelson's Supply Priorities and Allocations Board. The military constructed this new agency in such a way that uniformed people would be dominant, but President Roosevelt rejected the idea. As the president got increased funding from Congress in the summer and fall of 1941, Nelson's Board began in August 1941 (effective November 30 that year) to reduce production for civilian goods. Automobiles were the first to be cut back.⁸⁰ On October 9 nonessential building and construction was stopped so that the Board could allocate building materials to war plant construction. On October 21 manufacturers were told to stop using copper in almost all civilian products. The Board sharply limited the production of refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, metal office furniture, and other nonessential products.⁸¹ On Pearl Harbor Day, Nelson and other principals from the Supply Priorities and

Allocations Board agreed that complete conversion of the automobile manufacturing industry was the "first and biggest item" on their agenda.⁸²

In the end, the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board failed to solve the mobilization problem too. Adding it to the Office of Production Management in many respects made decision-making more difficult than it had been previously, but the bigger obstacle was getting decisions once made to stick without further appeal to department secretaries and, ultimately, the president. This difficulty was not solved until May 1943, and only then because Roosevelt allowed it to be solved. Herman Somers wrote: "From the beginning, the ever resounding demand for reform centered around the absence of coordination, centralized authority, and central policy-making--all facets of the same problem. . . ."⁸³ Unfortunately the War Production Board was to suffer from the same fatal flaw.

The War Production Board

Roosevelt tapped Nelson to be Chairman of the War Production Board in mid-January 1942, because probably nobody had a better background--having been, for more than a decade, the chief merchandising executive of the world's largest distributing firm, Sears. Perhaps nobody in America knew better where almost everything in the United States was manufactured, "how much and how well."⁸⁴ Nelson was given a charter by the president to draft the executive order that would establish his new organization,⁸⁵ and Roosevelt set the tone nationally in an address to the country on January 6, 1942:

The superiority of the United States in munitions and ships must be . . . so overwhelming that the Axis nations can never hope to catch up with it . . . to attain this overwhelming superiority, the United States must build planes and tanks and guns and ships

to the utmost of our national capacity. We have the ability and capacity to produce arms not only for our own armed forces, but also for the armies, navies and air forces fighting on our side. . . .

Only this all-out scale production will hasten the ultimate all-out victory . . . Lost ground can always be regained--lost time, never. Speed will save lives; speed will save this nation which is in peril; speed will save our freedom and civilization . . . ⁸⁶

Roosevelt's Executive Order establishing the War Production Board on January 16, 1942, granted Nelson as Chairman broad powers: to exercise general direction over the war procurement and production programs; to determine policies, plans, procedures and methods of the several federal departments and agencies in regard to war production and procurement; to grant priorities for construction; and to allocate vital materials and production facilities. And while Nelson was the "Chairman" of the War Production Board, the rest of the Board only existed to advise him.⁸⁷ Nelson planned to limit himself to filling the materiel requests of those responsible for formulating grand strategy. If the services' plans called for a specified quantity of a system that industry could not produce, however, Nelson would inform the leaders.⁸⁸

This Board grew into a bureaucracy of 20,000 people,⁸⁹ and it remained in existence into the post-war period under another name (Civilian Production Administration). Although the media pronounced Nelson the "arms czar" and "dictator of the economy" and "the man who had to tackle the biggest job in all history" Nelson's

authority was severely diluted by the creation of the Office of War Mobilization in May 1943. Roosevelt did not give Nelson the support he needed to succeed. Nelson was not strong enough to demand both the president's support and noninterference from competing agencies (especially the Army and Navy), and he refused to seize all of the levers of power he needed in order to flourish.⁹⁰

There were two parts to the job--first, to build up materiel production, and second, where production could not be built quickly enough, to divide the shortages so that the least important elements would receive the least support. There were three basic problems that occupied Nelson and his staff throughout the war as they fought to increase production: (1) supplying raw materials from which the war materiel and essential civilian products were made, (2) providing the plants and equipment in the factories to manufacture the tools of war, (3) staffing the plants with enough people with the right skills. "There was never a time" during World War II "when material supplies, plant facilities, and manpower were in perfect balance.⁹¹

Nelson, having inherited the people and the organization of the Office of Production Management, Supply Priorities and Allocations Board, and even the National Defense Advisory Committee, organized the War Production Board in similar fashion. Sidney Hilman, for example was chief of Labor Division, the Production Division was put under William H. Harrison, a vice president at American Telephone & Telegraph, the Industry Operations Division was under James S. Knowlton, president and chief executive officer of SKF Industries; the Statistics Division was run by Stacy May, etc.⁹² The Board also had divisions responsible for monitoring specific war industries and also had large numbers of people in the geographic regions of

the country collecting data, providing advice, assisting plants, negotiating contracts, etc.⁹³

If America was to become the Arsenal of Democracy, it had first to convert its civilian-based industry to the task of producing war materiel, and the main industry to be converted was automobile manufacturing. This American enterprise was equal to the total industry of most of the countries in the world. In America the automobile industry, was spread over 44 states and 1,375 cities. The primary contractors numbered more than 1,000 and there were tens of thousands of sub-contractors. More than 500,000 workers produced autos and trucks when the United States entered the war--one out of every 260 Americans.And 7 million others--one out of every 19 Americans--were indirectly employed in the industry. Automobiles consumed 51 percent of the country's annual production of malleable iron, 75 percent of plate glass, 68 percent of upholstered leather, 80 percent of rubber, 34 percent of lead, 13 percent of copper, and about 10 percent of aluminum. One of Nelson's first orders was to cut off car production, and the last automobile to come off the production line during World War II did so on February 10, 1942. This move was essential because during the war automobile manufacturers produced more than 50 percent of all aircraft engines, 33 percent of all machine guns, 80 percent of all tanks and tank parts, one half the diesel engines, and 100 percent of the trucks the Army moved on. This industry also produced airplanes by the tens of thousands. Most of the B-24s, the most heavily produced airplane in the United States inventory, were manufactured by what had been the automobile industry and most of those were manufactured at one factory, Willow Run. About 20 percent of total United States munitions production came from the automobile industry.⁹⁴ It manufactured

455,522 of a total of 812,615 aircraft engines and 255,518 of a total of 713,717 propellers. The industry also produced 27,000 complete aircraft.⁹⁵

Of course more than the automotive industry converted to war, and one of the most striking examples is International Silver, which at the beginning of the war made tableware. By the end of the war this medium-sized firm was producing surgical instruments, Browning automatic rifles, 20mm shells, cartridge and shell brass for many calibers of weapons, machine gun clips and cartridge belts, magnesium bombs, gasoline bombs (3 million of them monthly at peak production), adapter casings, combination tools, large and small rotors, contact rings, spring assemblies, forgings, connecting rods, trigger pins, lick bolts for all pins, flange and tube assemblies, front sight forgings for guns, etc.⁹⁶

In addition to the shortages of time, plants, materials, and people, the War Production Board also suffered from unrealistic demands by the president, the Secretaries of War and Navy and various service chiefs. Through 1942 and 1943, the grand strategists set goals that were well above what could actually be produced given the status of American industry. In time the output was prodigious, growing almost geometrically into 1944. But, in the first 2 years of effort, the overestimation of capacity by those not responsible for producing materiel was frustrating to those called on to produce it.⁹⁷

Almost from the start, because the president and warrior chiefs expected more production than the Board seemed to be able to deliver, there was dissatisfaction with the War Production Board and with Chairman Nelson. Nelson's sharpest present day critic is Paul Koistinen who argues that Nelson faced three tests at the outset if he wanted to achieve dominance over the wartime economy, and he failed all of them. He needed to get "tough with the industrialists who were coming to" his new organization from the Office of War Production and the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board. These businessmen, to Koistinen, were more eager to protect their narrow interests than to "harness the economy for war." Nelson, to win, also

had to "bend the military which had grown powerful and practically independent to the board's will." Many commentators agree with Koistinen's first two points. His third is that Nelson should have given "labor, New Dealers, and small business a meaningful voice in mobilization matters so that the" War Production Board "involved broad-based, not simply big business, planning, and thus tapped the nation's full economic potential." Koistinen's criticism of the entire mobilization effort is slanted in this direction, and this third argument does not find resonance.⁹⁸

Harry S Truman's Special Senate Committee Investigating National Defense reported, about a year "after the Board was established, that Nelson, with the expressed powers Roosevelt granted him, could have "taken over all military procurement," but he chose not to do so. Truman's committee argued that had Nelson indeed taken procurement from the Army and Navy "many of the difficulties with which he has been confronted in recent months might never have arisen. Instead, Nelson delegated most of his powers to the War and Navy Departments, and to a succession of so-called czars. This made it difficult for him to exercise the functions for which he was appointed. At the same time, none of the separate agencies had

sufficient authority to act alone."⁹⁹ Other commentators agree that Nelson's Board was fatally undermined within in its first trimester by voluntarily yielding "to the Armed Services both priorities power and the right to clear military contracts before the contracts were let to suppliers." With General Administrative Orders 2-23 and 2-33 in March and April 1942 Nelson "surrendered direct decision-making authority over the great bulk of the finished output needed for war."¹⁰⁰ This was costly to the power of his influence and his freedom of action.

There were plants that the War Department ordered built that were superfluous, and given the limited amount of materials and construction workers, a surplus in one area meant a shortage in another. Many new factories and many expanded ones were not needed, Harold Vatter argues. Locomotive plants went into tank production, "when locomotives were more necessary" than tanks. Truck plants "began to produce airplanes," which produced "shortages of trucks later on.¹⁰¹ Alan Milward makes a similar point, and

bases his criticism on the lack of firm priorities. "Completely new factories," he writes, "were built with government help when there was no possibility that they would ever get the necessary raw materials to sustain their planned production."¹⁰²

One should not, however, make the mistake of believing that the War Production Board was impotent. It had the power to compel acceptance of war orders by any producer in the country, and it could requisition any property needed for the war effort.¹⁰³ And Nelson's Board also controlled the supply of raw materials.

The Controlled Materials Plan

Nelson's major task, as it turned out, was the administration of the Controlled Materials Plan--the allocation of raw materials to the specific industries that produced the weapons systems. Nelson wrote, in an over simplification, that war production could be broken down into three sections, only one of which was truly his. First was establishing requirements. The president and the joint chiefs and the combined chiefs determined the requirements, and the War Production Board translated those decisions into production requisites. Once that was known, the Board had to decide how much of what systems the economy was capable of producing. And with that known, how to balance resources against demands. Everything could not be produced at once, raw materials had to be carefully apportioned because to overproduce one munition would mean that another would be under produced.¹⁰⁴ To ensure that production was tightly balanced, the War Production Board centralized control of raw materials. To ensure that the British were operating under the same plans as the Americans, Roosevelt established a Combined Raw Materials Board in late January 1942.¹⁰⁵

The Controlled Materials Plan replaced the Production Requirements Plan (a November 1941 voluntary, program) which had permitted manufacturers at all levels to state production material requirements for government orders. The Controlled Materials Plan, administered by the Production Executive Committee, chaired by Charles E. Wilson of the War Production Board, was a "vertical allocation plan, under which allotments were made by programs and passed down through the chain from procurement agency [e.g., the armed services] to prime contractors to sub- and sub-sub-contractor, whereas in the [Production Requirements Plan] direct applications had been received from all levels in the subcontracting plan." The Controlled Materials Plan was a "more accurate" and "more equitable and more effective distribution of materials." It was announced on November 2, 1942 that it would become effective in the second quarter of 1943 and fully effective in the next quarter. It was certainly superior to the Army and Navy Munitions Board priorities system in rationalizing the distribution of materials.¹⁰⁶

The Controlled Materials Plan was a method of forcing all consumers of raw materials to plan for themselves. No order for raw materials could be accepted until the Production Executive Committee had in hand an exact statement of raw materials requirements. The allocations were made quarterly and, for the first time in the war, the armed forces procurement agencies were forced to consider their future demands within the "context of long-term strategy."¹⁰⁷ Controlled materials planning was a massive undertaking. Two streams of paper carried requirements and allotments information through the "interlocked industrial and governmental structure."

The first stream of paper, leading up the supply-demand balance for the total economy determined each calendar quarter by the War Production Board Requirements Committee, began at the lowest layer of manufacturing subcontractors. Bills of materials (detailed schedules of amounts of each contained material required to make one unit of a fabricated product) were transmitted up the manufacturing ladder to the assemblers of end products and other prime contractors. There they were accumulated, each prime contractor combining his own and his subcontractors' material requirements, and transmitted to the procuring claiming agency. From bill-of-material information and other sources, each claimant agency prepared estimates of controlled-materials requirements in total and by program detail and submitted the estimates to the [War Production Board] controlled-material branches (steel, copper, and aluminum) and the Requirements Committee staff. . . . The second stream of paper began at this point with the allotment of materials to each claimant agency representing its share of the anticipated supply of each controlled material available for purchase directly by the agency and by its prime and subcontractors. . . . the claimant agency distributed allotments (authorizations to purchase) to its prime contractors. The prime contractors retained that part of the allotments necessary to cover their own direct procurement from the metal mills and reallocated the remainder to their suppliers.¹⁰⁸

Although the literature usually speaks of three raw materials in the Controlled Materials Plan--steel, copper, aluminum--there were actually 13 categories of carbon steel and 10 of steel alloy to be allocated separately, and 4 classes of copper-based alloy products, 3 classes of copper shapes, and wire mill and foundry products. Aluminum products came in 21 classes of shapes and alloys. But the revolutionary step in the Controlled Materials Plan was not in these refined allocations. It rested rather on the principle that the delivery of materials were "not affected by preference ratings." meaning once the Requirements Committee "determined the distribution of steel, copper and aluminum which in its judgment was best calculated to meet war, export, and essential civilian needs, all approved programs had equal validity.¹⁰⁹

To the War Production Board, that is. Certainly the War and Navy Departments (and other claimants like Lend-Lease Administration, Maritime Commission, Office of Civilian Supply, and even other agencies later in the war) did not think that all approved programs had "equal validity." At times different systems had higher priorities, like the necessity of accelerating the building of landing craft in 1942 and 1943, and especially in the first half of 1944 for Operation OVERLORD and amphibious assaults in the Pacific.¹¹⁰ The Controlled Materials Plan forced a strict accounting on all users of steel, copper and aluminum, but the key civilian agency turned over most of these precious materials to the military for their further allocation based on grand strategy.

The Controlled Materials Plan solved a nagging problem--controlling

what was built and when by releasing or withholding raw materials--but it consumed many thousands of people and much time. Nelson was in the sorry position of simply not being able to satisfy everybody all the time. "He was battered, abused, and cajoled by other agencies" of the government. Instead of being the interwar planners ideal of a wise man surveying the war from an unmatched viewpoint and apportioning economic strength where it would do the most good, he was thoroughly inside the turbulent milieu.¹¹¹

Nelson's biggest difficulty was Roosevelt's unwillingness to support him in his inevitable disputes with the plethora of wartime agencies the president created to deal with the emergency and his continued willingness to create potentially rival agencies. There were powerful prewar New Deal agencies like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (which added to its authority the Defense Plant Corporation, Defense Supplies Corporation, Metals Reserve Company, and Rubber Reserve Company) whose role might conflict with Nelson's Board. And there were venerable institutions like the War and Navy Department that had been created in the 18th and 19th centuries which also might see activities of the War Production Board as usurping their authority. Many other war agencies were founded before the War Production Board--like the Board of Economic Warfare, the Office of Lend-Lease (with the powerful Harry Hopkins in charge initially), and the Office of Defense Transportation that had charters that overlapped Nelson's. Other agencies founded after Nelson's like the Petroleum Administration for War, Rubber Development Corporation, War Manpower Commission and dozens of others had charters that seemed to authorize powers that the War Production Board also possessed. He willingly gave away rationing authority, to the Office of Price Administration. Probably his most serious lapse (other than permitting the services to procure their own munitions) was permitting the War Manpower Commission to be independent of him. This agency, created on April 18, 1942 to "assure the most effective mobilization and maximum utilization of the Nation's manpower in the prosecution of the war," was offered to him by Roosevelt. However, Nelson permitted it to be independent.

Manpower was a constant bottleneck during the war.¹¹² All of this might have been manageable if Roosevelt were a manager, which he was not; if he had appointed a person to run the War Production Board whom he trusted explicitly, which he did not; or if Nelson were more attuned to bureaucratic ways, which he, apparently, was not. Nelson was doomed, and, of course, the industrial mobilization effort suffered.

The military never saw itself as Nelson's partner, and involved itself in "every facet of the home front war program." When there was a problem such as with deliveries of finished goods the military would intrude in the transportation business. If there was a labor problem, manufacturers would turn to the military rather than to the War Labor Board to solve it--turning to the agency paying the bills. It was easy to turn to the military to solve problems in time of a total war. It might not have been wise over the long term, or even efficient, but it was easy because the military had enormous prestige and power. Because the military did not want to yield procurement to the War Production Board, it naturally accepted Nelson's abdication in these areas, enabling it to outmaneuver the Chairman.¹¹³

Philosophical differences also marred the relationship. Nelson's concern for the civilian population--those who worked in the factories and operated the farms--was interpreted by some in the Army as "pampering" civilians. Nelson complained about "bitter fights" with the Army over manufacturing tractors or spare parts for cars, washing machines, refrigerators, etc.¹¹⁴ Nelson, from the beginning of the war well into the peace that followed, insisted that the economy had to be controlled by civilians. He argued that "military men are bound to place above everything else the needs of specific munitions programs." If they did gain complete authority over the country's resources, Nelson maintained, they "would inevitably produce disorder, and eventually balk their own efforts by undercutting the economy in such a way that it could not meet their demands." His

running battle got into the press, much to his chagrin. "The Army had at its disposal and freely used many unfair methods of meddling [with] anyone who stood in its way . . . Very soon after I had made, and stuck to" the decision on making spare parts for appliances and automobiles United States factories were no longer producing in order to keep these labor saving machines in some working order, "articles began appearing in the press stating that 1,500 plants making munitions of war were going to have to shut down because they could not get materials. War Department officials in high places were feeding out those [false] stories."¹¹⁵

Students of the period generally agree that the Army wanted control of the economy--something it had desired from the moment it began planning for industrial mobilization, and a root reason for opening the Army Industrial College. Herman Somers notes that, soon after the War Production Board was formed, General Brehon Somervell, chief of the Army's Services of Supply made a play to put the new Board under the control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Somers writes: "The Army and Navy came to regard Nelson and the [War Production Board] as advocates of a comfortable civilian economy, which would resist to the end curtailments to expand military production."¹¹⁶ We have seen, however, that Nelson wanted to convert the automobile industry to munitions production well before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and that his first action as chairman was to do just that.

In addition to leaving military procurement to the Navy and

War Departments, Roosevelt did not give Nelson the authority or the tools to control inflation, which increased as the large pool of unemployed dried up. In September 1942, Roosevelt asked Congress for the powers necessary to fix all wages and prices. Congress yielded on October 2, granting the president the authority to issue a "general order stabilizing prices, wages, and salaries affecting the cost of living," and empowering the president to create the office of Economic Stabilization. On October 3, 1942, Roosevelt appointed James F. Byrnes, the ultimate insider, Director.

Byrnes quickly resigned from the Supreme Court and began his new job on October 15. He had blanket authority "relating to control of civilian purchasing power, prices, rents, wages, salaries, profits, subsidies, and all related matters." The Director of the Office of Economic Stabilization was to be the final judge of any jurisdictional disputes among the various wartime agencies and within the president's executive office regarding economic policy. Byrnes was to the civilian economic strategy what Roosevelt was to the war's grand strategy. Very significantly, Byrnes was able to set up his office in the White House. Roosevelt told Byrnes: "Your decision is my decision, and . . . there is no appeal. For all practical purposes you will be the Assistant President."¹¹⁷ Had he said that to Nelson, the War Production Board might have turned out to be the supreme mobilization agency that the interwar planners called for. Might have rather than would have because it is not clear that Nelson's personality was up to using such a full grant of authority. Herman M. Somers argues that Nelson, a man of "great abilities and character" was "probably not temperamentally suited to the onerous job he undertook. "He was mild mannered and intellectual, not given to quick decisions. He was not adept at and did not welcome the "infighting" or the

power struggles involved in high administration" jobs for "high stakes." Somers concludes that Donald M. Nelson was "too nice a guy for the job."¹¹⁸

The dispute between the Army and Nelson that finally drove him out of office was industrial reconversion. Reconversion has always been handled badly in the United States, and the fact that the Woodrow Wilson administration mishandled it in the late teens (causing heightened unemployment) cost the Democrats control of the Congress and White House in 1920. Nelson wanted to begin reconverting industry as soon as feasible and many in Congress were eager to have factories in their districts and states reconvert too. Nelson directed one of his key assistants to study reconversion in April 1943, and made clear that he intended to move into this controversial area. War production peaked in November 1943, although for some items, like airplanes, 1944 was a bigger year. There was a sharp decline in war orders. But the Army wanted no reconversion of industry, because it might lead to a slackening of the war effort. The Army would have been happy if there were pools of unemployed workers forced to stay in war industries, and unable to opt for better paying or more secure jobs in factories producing for the civilian market. Harry S Truman was on record calling for "an orderly resumption of civilian production in areas where there is not manpower shortage and with materials not required for war production."

But the Army was powerful, and some business leaders also fought reconversion because they were tied to war production and did not want competitors to get a leg up in the potential market. Nelson began to reconvert slowly, and the Army forced his removal in the summer of 1944.¹¹⁹ By the time Roosevelt sent Nelson to China on assignment to get him out of town, the president had already appointed an agency that superseded the War Production Board: the Office of War Mobilization, May 27, 1944--the last of the series that began with the with the War Resources Board in August 1939. Significantly, the president installed James F. Byrnes to run this new organization.

The Office of War Mobilization (And Conversion)

The president was being pushed to establish a war mobilization office by Senator Harry Truman and his committee. Truman's committee and other congressional investigative committees were dismayed by the lack of unity in the industrial effort and demanded a single civilian-directed procurement agency for all Army, Navy, Maritime Commission, and Lend-Lease needs. Truman knew that Nelson had much more authority than he exercised and therefore called for a War Mobilization Board--stating that he would create one by legislation if Roosevelt did not take the initiative.¹²⁰ Other efforts also forced the establishment of the Office of War Mobilization.¹²¹ For its part, the Senate Military Affairs Committee recognized the weaknesses in the War Production Board. There were too many agencies with a say in too many parts of the economy for efficiency. The press was also onto this failing and were vocal in their criticism. Roosevelt either sensed the pressure or understood the necessity, or both, and created by Executive Order the new office, designating a handful of government officials as advisers (Nelson was one of the five), and chartered the Office of War Mobilization to "develop unified programs and to establish policies for the maximum use of the Nation's natural and industrial resources for military and civilian needs, for the effective use of the national manpower not in the armed forces, for the maintenance and stabilization of the civilian economy, and for the adjustment of such economy to

war needs and conditions." The key to the Executive Order was in this sentence: "To unify the activities of the Federal agencies and departments engaged in or concerned with production, procurement, distribution or transportation or military or civilian supplies, materials, and products and to resolve and determine controversies between such agencies or departments." The new office could issue "directives and policies" to carry out its charter, and "it shall be the duty of all such agencies and departments to execute these directives, and to make to the Office of War Mobilization such progress reports as may be required."¹²² James F. Byrnes, the first Director of the Office drafted the Executive Order and wrote the language to make the new agency effective. From the start he was called Assistant President. The only things missing in James Byrnes portfolio were foreign affairs and military grand strategy.¹²³

By 1943, Byrnes had become immersed in economic planning. As Director of the Office of Economic Stabilization he was intimately concerned with all major segments of the economy because his office was charged with eliminating inflation. No similar office had been established during World War I, and as a result consumer prices rose and the national debt ballooned. The Office of Economic Stabilization was not able to eliminate inflation, but it did dampen it and in the process Byrnes learned a great deal about the economy and how segments of it--agriculture, industry, etc.--worked to profit or benefit their narrow interests rather than the general welfare.¹²⁴

Byrnes' powers were extensive. The Executive Order establishing the Office of Economic Stabilization permitted him:

to formulate and develop a comprehensive national economic policy relating to the control of civilian purchasing power, prices, rents, wages, salaries, profits, rationing subsidies, and all related matters--all for the purpose of preventing avoidable increases in the cost of living, cooperating in minimizing the unnecessary migration from one business, industry or region to another, and facilitating the prosecution of the war. To give effect to this comprehensive national economic policy the Director shall have power to issue directives on policy to the Federal departments and agencies concerned.¹²⁵

Interestingly, the Office of Economic Stabilization did not disappear with the creation of the Office of War Mobilization. Fred M. Vinson, a former congressman and appeals judge (and later Chief Justice) replaced Byrnes and his office was subordinate to Byrnes' new one. (Vinson eventually became Director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, its new title after October 1944.) The arrangement worked well because the men knew each other, had worked together in the past, and Vinson clearly understood Byrnes' relationship with the president.¹²⁶

Soon after taking office, Byrnes wrote to the chiefs of all the procuring agencies and pointed out his duties as prescribed by the

president. He put everybody on notice that he intended to scrutinize all procurement. He called for establishing within and at the top of each agency a procurement review board that would include a representative of the Office of War Mobilization. Some offices, notably Lend-Lease and the Maritime Commission did so immediately, but the Army had to be told a second time and the Navy only did what it was told when the president insisted they follow orders. The Navy dragged its feet for months trying to subvert Byrnes' authority. Byrnes wrote the president that General George C. Marshall was cooperating and that billions of dollars were saved through this cooperation, but that the Navy was recalcitrant. The Navy, counting on its special relationship with Roosevelt, tried to go around Byrnes, but the President forwarded their memoranda to Byrnes for answering.¹²⁷

The Office of War Mobilization, also located in the White House, was certainly in a position by fiat and personality to rationalize industrial mobilization. Byrnes was indeed "assistant president" and more powerful than any cabinet member, for he had jurisdiction over all agencies, bureaus and departments.¹²⁸ But what should be its role vis-a-vis the Joint Chiefs? Some in Byrnes' office thought that he should sit with the Joint Chiefs of Staff so that grand strategy and procurement would be harmonized. But the services, especially the Navy, resisted civilian participation in military, affairs, especially war planning. There was established within the Joint Chiefs of Staff a Joint Production Survey Committee with representation from the Office of War Mobilization, a compromise between full integration of procurement and military strategy. Previous to that time Nelson's War Production Board was not represented on Joint Chiefs of Staff committees. Byrnes did not consider his relationship with the Joint Chiefs to be satisfactory. The Chiefs still wanted a great deal of the say regarding industrial mobilization. But Byrnes was able to establish his authority over the Joint Chiefs on matters of supply, although doing so was not easy.¹²⁹

He did this by informing the Chiefs at the outset that he and

the Office of War Mobilization were responsible for the balance that must be maintained between civilian and military production, and, therefore, he had to know what was being procured by the services. Moreover, he had to know that the amounts being procured were not excessive. Byrnes, for example, set up a procurement review board for the Army which found that it needed some testimony concerning military matters. The Army refused to show any such data to civilians, and Byrnes told the Chief of Staff that he would take the Army's refusal to cooperate to the president. The Army gave in.¹³⁰

Prior to the creation of the Office of War Mobilization there was no synchronizing of grand strategy and production. And although the new Office was an imperfect mechanism for effecting this synchronization, it did have the president behind it and Byrnes' extensive experience, keen intelligence, and high common sense. The problem was the active competition for limited resources that kept agencies in permanent conflict. Byrnes' approach was to exercise control by listening to arguments from disputing agencies after conflicts had developed and make the necessary decisions. This is, more or less, the role the industrial mobilization plans had reserved for the War Resources Administrator, except that the planners hoped that this bureaucrat would resolve conflicts before they occurred. Byrnes did not need a big staff to do that job, and in fact kept his staff tiny (10 initially, 16 in November 1944, 80 in June 1945 and 146 in May 1946 during the height of reconversion, compared with 20,000 in the War Production Board).¹³¹ He used the staff of the various agencies to provide him the information he needed. Byrnes deliberately safeguarded the autonomy of the agencies he dealt with, acting as a disinterested decision-maker--a judge in effect.¹³² Moving the decision-making power to the Office of War Mobilization diminished Nelson's authority and prestige and also that of the War Production Board. There was only one authority higher than Byrnes--Roosevelt--and the president was adamant that

Byrnes' decisions would stick. Even the War Department "tended to accept" Byrnes' decisions as final, and he was able to stop "the military agencies practice of looking to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for ultimate procurement decisions."¹³³ Roosevelt loved it! He told a friend that "since appointing Jimmy Byrnes to [the Office of War Mobilization] he, for the first time since the war began, had the leisure 'to sit down and think.'"¹³⁴

Byrnes took on the dispute with the Joint Chiefs that had caused Nelson to be fired: reconversion. As a politician who was painfully aware of the costs to his party for failing to implement an ordered demobilization after World War I, he was sensitive to the demand. His aim, and that of civilians in the war agencies, was to prevent unemployment and severe industrial dislocation with the ending of war production. Almost all agreed on the objective, but timing was everything. For at least 18 months before the end of the war in Europe, a large proportion of Byrnes' time and that of people in numerous agencies like the War Production Board was devoted to

COORDINATION OF THE WAR AGENCIES

the problem of reconverting industry. Two actions were involved: advance planning for the change-over that would occur after victory, and a gradual resumption of peacetime enterprise while the war was still going on.¹³⁵

Some aspects of demobilization planning came easily, like agreement

on how to clear away government property and how to settle cancelled contracts. "The sharp policy questions . . . were over how much, if any, resumption of normal civilian activity" could be undertaken with the war going on. "The heat engendered caused a greater wave of name-calling in Washington than any other conflict." Nelson and his supporters were accused of being willing to prolong the war to give business interests an early advantage. Big business lined up on both sides of the issue, so did government agencies and even people in the War Production Board. Where people stood on the issue depended on where they sat. For example the War Manpower Commission sided with the military because manpower was so tight--it was the major bottleneck by the time this issue became prominent. It wanted no freedom for workers to opt for civilian products employment while there were still landing craft and other tools of war to be built. The Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion was "indispensable" in adjudicating this issue because it was above all of the competing agencies and departments, and when it made reconversion decisions, it was "never seriously challenged." In August 1944, it sanctioned limited reconversion--which it slowed dramatically in December 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge, but it reopened the gates in March 1945. "From early 1944 to the end no agency made any policy decisions in the reconversion field without clearing with [the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion]."¹³⁶

Make no mistake, however, reconversion was not a factor until munitions production actually peaked. The unremitting drive was for output, and the system produced arms prodigiously.

United States Production in World War II

No matter where one looks, one finds very impressive American production statistics throughout World War II. The war on the ground in Europe was often tank warfare. Between 1918 and 1933 the United States produced only 35 tanks and no two of them the

same model. In 1940, after witnessing Germany's Blitzkrieg in Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, the United States produced 3,309 tanks, versus 1,400 in Britain and 1,450 in Germany. In 1943, however, the United States manufactured 29,500 tanks, more in one year than Germany produced in the entire war from 1939 to 1945. In all, the United States manufactured 88,430 tanks during World War II versus 24,800 in Britain and 24,050 in Germany.¹³⁷

Consider also aircraft. In 1940 the United States had 41 engine and propeller plants; by 1943 it had 81 plants, with 5 built in Canada with U.S. funds (most of the 40 new factories were of considerably larger size). Aircraft production floor space increased from 13 million square feet in the prewar period, to more than 167 million square feet in 1943, and the value of the facilities mushroomed from $114 million prewar to almost $4 billion in 1944. In 1939 the United States produced 5,865 aircraft valued at about $280 million, and in 1944 America produced 96,379 airplanes valued at almost $17 billion. The dollar figure is deceiving because during the war the costs of manufacturing aircraft dropped. At the beginning of the war a four-engine, long range bomber cost $15.18 per pound and at the end $4.82 per pound. A single seat fighter cost at the outset $7.41 per pound and $5.37 at the end. Between January 1, 1940 and August 14, 1945 the United States manufactured 303,717 and between December 7, 1941 and the Japanese surrender, 274,941. And the power, weight and speed of the aircraft by the end of the war had dramatically increased. The United States produced 97,810 bombers, Germany 18,235, and the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union produced more than Germany too. The United States produced 99,950 fighters, Germany 53,727, and American fighters were longer ranged, better armed and better armored (after 1943). The United States produced 1.6 times as many aircraft (heavier and longer

ranged) than Germany, Italy and,Japan combined. The Soviet Union produced more aircraft than Germany, and the United Kingdom slightly less. Both United States allies consumed millions of tons of American raw materials through Lend-Lease to build aircraft.¹³⁸

Despite such output, there was no production "miracle" in the United States during World War II. Unquestionably, munitions production expanded greatly but the base the expanded production was measured from was a depressed one. Compare for example the period 1941 to 1945 with another period of rapid industrial expansion, peacetime at that, 1921 to 1925. Total industrial production output peacetime increase was double that of wartime (53 percent versus 25 percent). If the period 1941 to 1944, when wartime production peaked and before it turned down, is compared with the period 1921 to 1924, the wartime figure is slightly higher (45 percent compared to 38 percent).¹³⁹ How then did the United States produce the hundreds of thousands of airplanes, tens of thousands of tanks, and tens of thousands of landing craft if the output increase in the early 1940s was no greater than it had been in the early 1920s? The answer is twofold: massive conversion of the industrial base and generous government funding for infrastructure construction.

In 1939 the United States devoted less than 2 percent of its national output to war, and about 70 percent to satisfying immediate civilian wants. The rest went to civilian government expenditures, private capital formation and exports. By 1944 the war outlays were 40 percent of national output. Industrial production doubled from

1939 to 1945 (but 1939 was still a depression year), and production did increase at the rate of 15 percent per year (more than double the World War I rate). Manufacturing employment increased from 10,151,000 in 1939 to 16,558,000 in 1944, and the percentage of the work force involved in manufacturing increased from 19 percent to 26 percent.¹⁴⁰ Agricultural employment fell from 9,450,000 in 1940 to 8,950,000 in 1944, while people in non-agricultural industries went from 37,980,000 in 1940 to 45,010,000 in 1944. Most of the increase came from sopping up unemployment (which was 8,120,000 in 1940 and only 670,000 in 1944) and employing more women.¹⁴¹

As we shall see in the next section, the United States' output in gross figures is impressive, but all belligerents produced munitions at a furious pace. There is no denying that United States logistics capabilities were a major (probably the major) reason for the allied victory. But the relative output must be kept in perspective. The United States was unquestionably productive and out-produced all its allies and adversaries, but it started from a higher technological base than all other combatants. Its wartime increase in productivity was not impressive by comparison to others. But, and let there be no doubt here, it was enough!¹⁴²

One great advantage the United States had over Germany (which at the beginning of the war had procured in the previous four years a volume of combat munitions equal in real terms to the munitions productions of all her future adversaries combined¹⁴³) was that the former planned for a long war. Conversion of industry alone would not have produced all the munitions needed, new factories

had to be built and old ones modified. It was essential, therefore, for the government to expend scarce materials, machinery and manpower on building and expanding war plants at the expense even of current production. In 1940 about $2 billion was spent on factory construction, more than $4 billion the next year, and almost $8.5 billion in 1942. After the third quarter of 1942 the trend was downward for the rest of the war.¹⁴⁴

Balancing Military and Civilian Needs

Great as the output was, the United States war effort absorbed about 40 percent of the gross national product, which grew 50 percent in constant dollars between 1939 and 1944. The United States devoted a smaller percentage of its gross national product to the war than any other major adversary. There was also a major effort during the war to improve the lot of the population whenever possible. Automobile production was stopped and tires and gasoline were rationed, but the consumers could be compensated with soft goods and services. The War Production Board thought that the American people during the war were "subjected to inconvenience, rather than sacrifice."¹⁴⁵ By comparison to the situation facing civilians in all other nations at war, it would be hard to argue with that assertion. At the height of the war the government spent $94 billion, and of that $81.6 or 87 percent was war spending. The budget was 80 times greater than in 1939, 54 times 1940 and 14 times 1941. But the budget expansion was such that civilians truly did not suffer because

US MUNITIONS PRODUCTION

of the war, and when one considers that unemployment had all but disappeared and what joblessness remained was usually only temporary, the home front prospered. In terms of calories people were generally fed better than they had been before the war, and they consumed more meat, shoes, clothing, and energy.¹⁴⁶

Its population is always a country's greatest resource, and in a major mobilization like that of World War II, usually its greatest hindrance. The United Kingdom suffered a severe people

US MUNITIONS OUTPUT

crunch--its population was the smallest of the major belligerents. Germany and the Soviet Union found themselves people limited too, in terms of productive population. The United States, as indicated below, was limited too in terms of manpower, although its population was larger than all the belligerents (including the Soviet Union soon after the German attack in June 1941) except for China, and its losses were much smaller than all the major adversaries who remained in the war.

The American manpower problem was exacerbated by the number of agencies involved in allocating this crucial resource. The War Manpower Commission was created by executive order by the president on April 18, 1942 as a policy making agency, but the Selective Service System, which drafted more than 10 million people, was completely independent of the War Manpower Commission. In January 1943 the War Manpower Commission lost control of the agricultural

SOME WARTIME SHIFTS IN US ECONOMY

WARTIME EXPANSION IN THE UNITED STATES 1939 TO 1944

labor supply to the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Civil Service Commission recruited independently for the vastly increased responsibilities of the federal government. In time railroad workers and sailors in the merchant marine were also independent of the War Manpower Commission's authority, and, of course, all of these agencies were independent of each other. When the manpower situation became desperate in 1943 and 1944, with superfluous people in selected industries or on farms clinging to draft deferments, it took the power of the Office of War Mobilization to solve the dilemma. There was, for example, an urgent manpower problem on the West Coast where much of the United States' shipbuilding and airplane manufacturing was located. By June 1943, one-third of the shipbuilding yards on the West Coast were behind schedule, and there was a shortage of workers in every

production center. It took about a year for the Office of War Mobilization to implement a policy restricting the freedom of workers to move where they wanted to take advantage of better wages or working conditions, and to moderate the rights of employers to hire whomever they wanted whenever they wanted. The division of responsibility for making manpower decisions harmed the war effort, and only when a supreme judge was added at the top of the apparatus, could problems be solved.¹⁴⁷ The manpower demand was relentless. The United States had in its armed forces in mid-1945, more than 12 million people, more than 98 percent men. However, during the war the United States had mobilized more than 16 million for the military. More than 400,000 died or were missing in action, several times that number were wounded and many of that total were invalided out, and a great number were discharged before the war ended for a variety of reasons. To reach the number who served, about 45 million men were registered for the draft, and 31 million of these were found physically and mentally qualified to serve. About 10 million were drafted, with many additional millions being allowed to enlist. Voluntary enlistments, where one chose the service one wished to join, stopped in 1943 (although one could apply and be accepted to the officer accession programs). It would be hard to argue with Jerome Peppers who states that "we used our manpower unwisely and could have been in serious manning problems in war production and military service had the war not gone so well for us. Fortunately . . . the war ended before our unwise manpower . . . policies could return to bite us. . . . we really had no effective plan for the full scale manpower mobilization which was required."¹⁴⁸

There were many draft deferments for individuals in both agriculture and "essential" war industries that were jealously guarded by those who held them. Many others had deferments too: civil servants, hardship cases, religious officials, aliens, conscientious objectors, handicapped people, etc. Too many men had deferments when the crunch came in 1943 and 1944, but when the War Manpower Commission on February 1, 1943 issued a list of "non-deferrable" occupations

and called on draft boards to reclassify such people as category 1-A and available to the armed forces, the draft boards refused to obey. The Commission, demonstrating its impotence, withdrew the order in December that year. Byrnes was more effective, and in December 1944 issued what came to be known as his "Work or Fight Order" to use the Selective Service System to drive men either into essential jobs that were unpopular, or into the service. Byrnes wanted to call into the services men under age 38 who left essential industries, or who changed jobs in a necessary industry without the authority of the local draft board. He got his way, but few men were affected--fewer than 50,000--probably because the threat of such a possibility kept people working where the government needed them. Some men who refused to work where needed ended up in special Army labor camps doing necessary work but under punitive conditions. Such frankly threatening measures as these were not popular and also not terribly effective, and Byrnes called from late 1943 until the end of the war for national service legislation. Roosevelt included an appeal for such laws in his state of the union addresses in 1944 and 1945, and Byrnes tried to work his magic on the Congress, but to no avail--such legislation never passed.¹⁴⁹ To give the reader one example of the Congress frustrating the president and his "assistant president," consider the fight to draft superfluous farm workers. In November 1942, Congress amended the Selective Service Act to defer essential farm workers unless satisfactory replacement workers could be found. Local draft boards interpreted this to mean a "virtual universal deferment for agricultural workers." By 1944 this practice reached "scandal" proportions. Men were needed as warriors, and certain industries were crying for men, but some industrial workers "trying to avoid the draft were transferring to agricultural work for refuge, while agricultural workers could not be persuaded to turn to the higher remuneration of industrial work for fear of losing deferred status." The farm block in Congress opposed any change to this situation. By January 1945 the only remaining pool of men in the right age category were the 364,000 people holding agricultural deferments. Byrnes appealed to Roosevelt, who authorized reclassification of farm workers. The Congress

ARMS AND AMERICA

passed a bill in both houses to amend the selective service legislation to defer all registrants engaged in agriculture. This bill was vetoed by President Harry S Truman only days before V-E Day.¹⁵⁰

Overcoming Raw Material Scarcities

People were not the only shortage, of course, there were numerous other scarcities that hampered the production and war

NEW CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITY IN THE US

effort. In the beginning of the production process, of course, are raw materials. Although the United States was rich in minerals, the amount being produced in 1940 was a fraction of what was needed, and some raw materials were not available at all--rubber for example.

When the war with Japan began, the United States was virtually cut off from essential natural rubber supplies. A whole new synthetic rubber industry was created from the ground up to help the war effort. First, the government created a synthetic rubber industry. Second, output from rubber producing areas still accessible to the United States was maximized. Third, the government eliminated rubber consumption of nonessential items and curtailed consumption on permitted items. Fourth, conservation measures were taken, such as gasoline rationing primarily designed to conserve rubber, and tire rationing to conserve material for the military. Fifth was expansion

WARTIME GROWTH OF MANUFACTURING FACILITIES

NEW CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES
[Millions of dollars]

	1939	1940	1941	1942	1943	1944	1945 est.)
TOTAL CONSTRUCTION	6,302	6,830	10,757	13,434	7,732	3.935	4,500
.....Total Public	2,411	2,574	5,442	10,669	6,114	2,353	1,985
.....Total Private	3,891	4,256	5,316	2,765	1,588	1,582	2,515
Military	119	337	1,756	5,060	2,423	720	515
.....Army	89	270	1,411	3,934	1,559	319	260
.....Navy	30	67	345	1,126	864	401	255
Industrial	241	569	2,028	3,806	2,198	982	1,280
.....Public	14	145	1,350	3,485	1,973	748	640
.....