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America had been expanding its military production beginning in the late 1930s. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought America into the War. The Roosevelt Administrtion organized the most expansive armaments program ever conducted in world history. The output American factiries mot only armed the American military, but its allies as well. The quantity and quality of those arms astonished America's enemies and allies alike. Neither the NAZIs or the Japanese had any idea just how effectibely American production could be converted to war production. Air Marshall Goering sneared. "The Americans only know how to make razor blades." Four years later with the Luftwaffe in tatters, Goering said he knew that the War was lost when American P-51 Mustangs appeared over Berlin escoring waves of bombers. The record of American war production is staggering and in large measure determined the outcome of the War.
It was the Japanese carrier attack on Pearl Harbor that brought America into the War. While Pearl Harbor was a stunning tactical victory, it was a strategic blunder by the Japanese of incaluable proportions. It was a stunningly successful military success, brilliantly executed by the Japanese. Eight battle ships, the heart of the American Pacific fleet were sunk. But the three carriers were not at Pearl. Despite the success of the attack, it was perhaps the greatest strtegic blunder in the history of warfare. The Japanese attack on the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor changed everything. A diverse and quareling nation, strongly pacifistic was instantly changed into a single united people with a burning desire to wage war. The issolationism that President Roosevelt had struggled against for over 7 years instantly disappeared. Even Lindburg asked for a commision to fight for the United States.
American children were not affected by World War II like children in Europe and Asia. The Atlantic and Pacicific Oceans acted as an affected barrier to the Germans and Japanese. Many American children lost their fathers, but unliked European children were not orphaned or displaced. American children, however, did particiapte in a variety of war-time activities to support the war effort. Children studied current events. Air raid drills and alerts were common. Both children and their families were involved with conservation and recycling of goods. The Scouts and other youth groups were actively involved in may home-front activities. Children often worked in sponsored rallies, parades and cultural events (such as dances) to raise money to buy war stamps and bonds to finance the war. Some children were more adversely affected by the war. Althiough not separated from their patents, Japanese Americans in Pacific coast states were interned in concentration camps. Italian and German families were also interned, but only those who parents were believed to have been involved in subversive activites.
The Government organized a major conservation and recycling effort. Cities and states were given quotas. Children and their families were involved with
conservation and recycling of goods. Many children participated scrap metal, used tire, and paper drives to collect materials iseful to the war effort. Contests were held to meet established quotas. Newspapers reported on the quantities of material collected. Some comapnies sponsored drives and offered prizes. Given the need for alumininum for aircraft production, drives were launched for old pots. As the Japanese cut off America from sources of raw rubber, drives were launched for old tires. Children would even brought their own old toys in for scrap drives. At that time toys were much more likely to be made from metal than in our plastic society today. While these activities and drives were very widely publicized, we are not sure just how useful the amterials collected actually were. We have not yet found any studies indicating the actual value of these drives.
America experienced rationing for the first time in World War II. Some products that were rationed during World War II were sugar, meat, coffee, typewriters, fuel oil, gasoline, rubber, and automobiles. Food rationing probably affected most Americans the most. Each American was issued a book of ration cupons each month. Rationed goods were assigned a price and point value. Families were not restricted to certain quantities of rationed goods. But once their cupons were
used up, they could not buy rationed goods until the next month. Families were incouraged to plant victory gardens. These gardens supplied a mjor part of the vegetable supply during the War. Rubber and gas were the most vital product rationed. Limited fuel supplies during the war affected America in many ways. Gas rationing was done differently than food rationing. Car owners had to register and were given windshield sticker based on how the car or other vehicle was used.
Pleasure driving was prohibited. We have less information about clothing at this time. I do not believe that clothes were actually rationed, but the availability of civilian clothing was very much affected. Certain fabrics like silk or synthetic fibers were not available for civilian use. Shoes were rationed in America. Stamp 17 in War Ration Book 1 was good for one pair of shoes until June 15. (Probably about every 3-4 months.) Families could pool the coupons of all members living in the same household. Even tennis shoes which had become popular in America were hard to get because that had rubber soles.
Food was a key weaon in the war. America not only fed its population and burgeoning military, but played a major role in feeding Alied armies. Spam became a key item in the diet of the Red Army soldier. The average person couldc not raise meat, although some families began raising rabbits. Many people, however, could raise vegetables. The Depsartment of Agriculture suggested that Americans produce their own vegetables in Victory Gardens. The response was overwealming. There were by 1943 about 20 million Victoty Gardens. Most were in backyards, but even in the citires there were rooftop Victory Gardens. They produced over half of the fresh vegetables consumed in America and provide additional supplies for home canning.
Each of the Axis countries wre of course aware that the United States had a huge indistrial capacity. American industry was, however, oriented almost entirely toward the consumer economy. Even in 1941, America was churning out automobiles which used steel, chrome, copper, and rubber. Axis countries were unsure just how much Of American industry could be effectively converted to war production and how quickly. The ever optimistic Dr. Goebbels convinced himself that America's contribution would be minimal in both men amd material. He wrote in his diarry a couple months after Hitler declared war, "The Americans are so helpless that they mut fall back again and again. upon boasting about their matériel. Their loud mouths produce a thousand airplanes and tanks almost daily, but when they need them in eastern Asia they haven't got themand are therefore taking one beating after another. [January 24, 1942--Goebbels, pp. 41-42.] Goebbels was good at glib remarks, but his assessments are commonly completely wrong that. Even as he wrote those words, the American airmen and soldiers that would bomb the Reich into rubble and and crack the Atlantic Wall were on their way to England.
World War II was an industrial war. There was no discussion of racial supermen in America. From the beginning President Roosevelt stressedv industrial production. Anf here America had an unparalled capacity to produce. The key to winning the War was production. The record of American war production is staggering and in large measure determined the outcome of the War. American produced weapons and equipment in quantities the NAZIs and Japanese had not conceived.
America expaned aircraft production to 23,000 planes in 1940 both to equip its own military and to assist Britain and France. Great priority was given to aircraft production and by 1944 America built 96,000 planes, more planesc than were possessed by Germany and Japan combined and this does not include British and Soviet production. The 1944 production included both the P-51 Mustangb that could accompany the Allied bombers in strikes over Germany and the B-29s that could reach Jspan from the newly won bases in the Marianas.
The tank was a major factor on World War battlefields. It was the Germans who developed an effective tactical doctrine to effectively employ the tank. German tanks were effective, but like many German World Warv II weapons over-engineered and not easily adapted to massproduction. The German tanks were expensive and complicated to build and dificult to maintain in the field. America produced 4,000 tanks in 1940 and 41. The United States rapidly retooled its huge automobile industry to build military vehicles. There were 17 Chrysler, Cadilac and other plants converted to produe tanks. America by 1942 was producing 4,000 Sherman M-4 tanks a month. Germany could only produce 4,000 tanks annually. Hitler announced plans to expand production to 800 per month in 1943. Imressive, but less than 15 percent of what FDR planned for American plants in 1943. [Goodwin, p.363.] American tank production reached nerarly 30,000 in 1943. It is true that German tanks were better than American tanks (armour protection and fire power), but the Sherman had some advantages over the German tanks (speed, maneurability, and ease of maintenance). In addition, the Soviets were also significantly outproducing the Germans and theit T-34 which was actually superior to many German tanks. In addition, the British was also producing the excellent Challenger tank.
American factories geared up for the War effort and many new factories were opened. The unemployment so severe during the Depression was no longer a problem. In fact there was now an increasingly severe labor shortage. This was not only a matter of increasing production, but also the draft that begun in 1940 began to take men out of the work force. This was increadsingly important after Pear Harbor (December 1941), war production was increased to unprecedent levels and millions of men were drafted or enlisted in the military. The vacancies in the work force was made up with youths, women, and minorities. Sometimes older children worked part time along with their mothers to support their families. Child labor laws were suspended during the war. Millions of children between the ages of 12-17 years were employed in a wide range of jobs. Even in factories it was common to see boys of 16 and 17 years of age working. It was not just mom in the form of Rosey the Riveter that went to work during the War. Jobs were opened to minorities, especially blacks, that were formerly excluded from many jobs. Both the British and Russians adopted similar policies to mobilize the civilian population for War work. The Germans took a very different approach. Instead of women and youths, they employed slave labor to keep their factories going.
Henry Ford conceived of the first mass-produced automobiles. Ford assembly lines turned them out by th thousands. In doing so he made them so rapidly and inexpensively that almost all Americans could afford them. Before Ford, workers could hardly afford bicycles. Will Rogers was to quip when the Depression came, "America was the first country to go to the pour house in an automobile." The Government when the War came needed planes of all descriptions, immediately and in large numbers. The oinly way to produce planes in such numbers was by assembly line, but no one had every built complicated air planes by assesmbly line before. Ford engineers said that they could do it and a U.S. Government contract was awarded the Ford Motor Company to build a huge aircraft plant at Willow Run near Ypsilanti, Michigan. This was a startling development as Ford had never even thought of building air planes before, let alone build the by imovatove, untested means/ The Willow Run Airport, with six runways to test the planes to be produced was completed in 1942. Before the War ended, Willow Run had built 8,685 B-24 Liberator bombers--one of the long-range bombers used for the strategic bombing campaign in Europe. . At the height of production, one bomber came off the assembly line every 63 minutes. Never before had airplanes been mass produced. To build these planes, workers were needed. The Federal Government in 1942 the federal government built America's second freeway (now I-94) to speedilt move workers and materials to the new Willow Run plant. The Government in 1943 built a $20 million community beside the plant which became known as Willow Village. The Government built dormitories for single workers and small houses vapabl of accommodating 3,000 people. The Government added thousand trailer homes. Willow Run by the end of 1943 had more than 42,000 workers who came from all over America. Willow Village eventually accommodayted more than 15,000 people. There were 30 dormitories, 6 community buildings, rows and rows of small houses, commercial buildings, police and fire stations, and schools for the children
The Kriegsmarine and its u-boat arm was assigned the task of cutting Britain off from its Empire and the United States. Had they succeeded, Germany may well have won the War. The goal was o sink more ships than the Allies could build. Part of the American response was to increase ship construction and here the liberty ship wasthe center-piece of the American effort. American industrialist Henry Kaiser played a key role by developing a revolutionary new way of shipbuilding--assembling mass produced parts. Kaiser had never bult a ship before. The unfamiliarity of Kaiser and others with ship building was undoubtedly a factor n their succees in developing an innovative construction system. [Sawyer and Mitchell] More than 30,000 parts were mass produced by factories in 32 states. The modular construction techniques developed changed shipbuilding forever. With American shipyards working flat out to build crtically needed naval vessels, the liberty ship cargo vessels were built in what amounts to virtual shipyards all along the U.S. coast. This allowed the United States begining in 1941 to harness skills, resources, and facilities to an extrodinary degree. The output was almost unbelieveable. Not only were labor requirements to build a ship reduced by to thirds and it was done largely by workers who had never worked in shipyards--many had never even seen the sea before. The first liberty ship protype was built in 244 days. Eventually th proces was reuced to an incredible 42 days. One ship as a publicity exercise was actually built in 4 days and 15 hours. Most of the Liberty yards in 1943 began producing Victory ships, a larger and faster freighter that was to be capable of commercial use after the War. The United States, despite the u-boat offensive finished the War wih a merchant fleet larger than it had begun with. The United States expanded its shipbuilding capacity by more than 1,200 percent. American yards built over 2,700 Liberty Ships, 800 Victory Vessels, 320 T-2 Tankers, and various ships. In all, more than 5,200 ships were built.
The American economy began to surge in 1940, in part responding to war orders from Europe as well as domestic rearmamnt. The underutilization of America's economic capacity because of the Depression allowed the United States to maintain civilian consumption at a relatively high level while trememndouly increasing production to persue the War. The Government used a variety of measure to finance the war. This included deficit spending, increased taxes, and awar bond campaign. The Government's financial policy also included measures to control inflation because the increased employment increased incomes at a time when the supply of consumer goods was limited. The United States Government, even before America entered the War, initiated an ambitious advertising campaign to sell bonds. Before America actually entered the war they were called Savings Bonds. The War Advertising Council and the War Finance Committee sought to promote bond sales to finance the War and build civilian morale. The work of these World War II organizations produced "the greatest volume of
advertising and publicity ever given to any product or agency" in American history. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau sold the first Series E U.S. Savings Bond to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on May 1, 1941. The War Finance Committees sold over $185 billion of securities. By the end of World War II, over 85 million Americans had invested in War Bonds, a number unmatched by any other country. Even American children participated in the effort.
Not only did American industry have the capacity to produce weapons and material neded by the armed forces it unbelievable quantities, there was also the potential for an enormously costly project that no one could even guarantee would work. The Manhattan Project was the most costly weapons system in the history of waefarw.
Freidel, Frank. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Rendezuous with Destiny (Little Brown: Boston, 1990), 710p.
Gilbert, Matin.
Goebbels, Joseph. ed, Louis B. Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943 (Doubleday: New York, 1948), p. 566.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time (Simon &Schuster: New York, 1994), 759p.
Kimball, Warren F., ed. Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence 3 vols. ( Princeton University Press, 1984). This is a remarable collection of Roosevelt and Churchill's communications. Kimball has written excellent books on both Lend-Lease Act and on the Morgenthau Plan for occupied Germany. The collection came from presidential, State Department, prime-ministerial, Foreign Office files, and even German intercepts of previously unpublished transatlantic telephone conversations.
Sawyer, L.A. and W.H. Mitchell. The Liberty Ships (Lloyd's of London Press, 1985).
Schlesinger, Arthur Jr. "The Supreme Partnership," The Atlantic Monthly (October 1984).
Schama, Simon. A History of Britain.
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948).
Trapani, Carol, "Letters cemented partnership," Poughkeepsie Journal (December 8, 2001).
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