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World War II -- pre-War economies - mechanized America
World War II: Pre-War Economies: Mechanized America
Figure 1.--Here we see a parade in Lowville, a small town in New York with Cubs and Scouts, we think in 1940. Notice all these cars. We have never seen a Hitler Youth procesion with even a fraction of the cars. Actual we have never seen so many cars even in Berlin, let alone small German towns. Industrial production of this magnitude was an indication of potential military production. The question for the democracies became if America would recognize the mortal danger poised by the the toltalitarian powers in time to convert its potential into actual military power.
America's industrial potential come from the enormous American industrial expansion during the late-19th and early-20th century. The result was a mechanized America, including American agriculture. In contrast, European agricultural was not mechanized. This affected the industrial capacity of European countries, including Germany. A key element of American industrial development was taken by Henry Ford who introduced the assembly line and mass production. The result was the Model-T Ford which put an automobile within the price range of the average American worker and astronomical production runs. It also significantly increased steel production in America--the single most important metal needed to conduct war. America profuced 50 million tons of raw steel production based on 1929 output, the last pre-depression year. (Less well understood was the actual capacity and ability to rapidly expand production.) [U.S. Geological Survey] American car ownership was so wide-spead that even poor people might have cars. As the Drepression descended on America, Will Rogers quipped, "America was the first country to go to the poor house in an automobile." And this mean that America had an indudtrial capacity litteraly beyond the scale of European countries, including Germany. And any calculation of German capacity would have to account for the fact that America was just one of the potential advisaries which Hitler was creating. This included France (until June 1940), Britain and the Empire, and the Soviet Union. European workers, including German workers, at the time for the most part were buying bicycles. European automobile companies were more like craft shops, producing high-quality automobiles for well-to-do customers in relatively small numbers . This meant that America had the capacity to build mechanized vehicles in huge numbers and a time when the vaunted Deutsche Wehrmacht went to war on foot, still heavily dependent on horses and bicycles.
Sources
U.S. Geological Survey. "Iron and steel statistics."
