Black J. World War Two A Military History

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in March 1939, and there were possibly about 1 million deaths per

year in the Gulags during the war, although, both then and subse-

quently, the situation was kept secret. Conditions were very harsh,

with beatings, starvation rations and the severe cold of the majority

of the camps, many of which were in the harsh terrain of Siberia,

particularly near Vorkuta and in the Kolyma valley. Fresh influxes of

prisoners came from the territories occupied by the Soviet Union in

1939–40, especially Eastern Poland and the Baltic republics. Once

the war was over, Soviet prisoners of war released from German

camps were sent to forced-labour camps, as they were judged

suspect.There was similar harsh treatment of those who had fought

for the resistance: after the war, such independence was crime.

Labour discipline was part of a close control of the Soviet

economy, particularly of industry and transport. This enabled the

government to enforce considerable adaptability on both. From the

late 1920s, the Soviets had developed industrial production and

mining in, or east of, the Urals, which were beyond the range of

German air attack.This looked back to a long tradition of produc-

tion in the Urals that had been greatly encouraged in the early

eighteenth century under Peter the Great, but was stepped up under

Stalin, such that about one-third of Soviet coal, iron and steel

production was there. The Ural metallurgical industry proved of

particular importance during the war. Major new industrial capacity

was also developed near Novosibirsk in south-western Siberia, and

new plants were built in Soviet Central Asia. The movement east

took industry closer to raw materials and energy infrastructure, but

exacerbated the serious transport problems of the Soviet system.The

evacuation of industrial plant from threatened areas was a formidable

undertaking. It is claimed that it involved nearly 1.5 million railway

wagons in the second half of 1941. This evacuation of plant,

combined with destruction through war and scorched-earth poli-

cies, ensured that the Germans did not benefit in economic terms

from their conquests to the degree they anticipated.

It was particularly in the Soviet Union that the mobilisation of

resources involved a marked degree of direction of the economy,

including all aspects of resource allocation and labour. Already an

autocracy, the Soviet system sustained the war effort, despite the loss

of many of its leading agricultural and industrial areas to German

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advances in 1941 and 1942. Indeed, although Soviet production

statistics should only be used with care, in the first six months of the

war, the Soviet economy lost areas producing 68 per cent of its iron,

63 per cent of its coal and 58 per cent of its steel; as well as 40 per

cent of its farmland, including, in Ukraine, much of its most fertile

area. These losses were accentuated by scorched-earth policies in

areas that seemed vulnerable to German occupation. Combined,

they were but part of the profound wartime disruption caused by

unexpected invasion. In agriculture, the Soviets found it necessary to

encourage individual enterprise, although the constraints of an auto-

cratic system remained in place.

By the spring of 1942, the Soviets had regained pre-war produc-

tion levels of weaponry, and thereafter it greatly increased. This

ensured that German forces were outnumbered in every weapon

type, and, increasingly, by enormous margins.The productivity of the

Soviet system helped overcome the inherent limitations of a planned

economy, especially under an authoritarian regime ruling in

response to a mixture of ideology and paranoia.The Soviets proved

particularly effective in the manufacture of artillery, tanks and

ground-support planes, but was less effective in transport equipment,

such as rolling stock and, even more, lorries (trucks), while strategic

bombers and shipping were not Soviet priorities. As a result, matériel

from the West, especially lorries, was of particular importance for

Soviet logistics. The inefficiencies of the Soviet system, which

included inadequate quality control and training in industry and

poor maintenance in the military, however, exacerbated the difficul-

ties created by conscripting skilled workers and by using unskilled

workers in industry, to ensure high breakdown and replacement rates

for weapons. More generally, the variability of such rates lessens the

value of tables of weapons manufacture. As an example of the

resources available to Soviet forces, the troops transferred from

Europe to invade Manchuria in 1945 left their tanks behind and

were equipped with new ones in Siberia, thus reducing transport

burdens on the Trans-Siberian Railway and greatly speeding up the

transfer, although there were bottlenecks at the depots because so

many troops demanded tanks at once.

The build-up of the Soviet war economy had deleterious conse-

quences after 1945, as this vested interest directly contributed to the

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large share of resources and investment directed to the military, and,

thus, to the inability of the Soviet Union to satisfy consumer

demands, particularly once post-war growth greatly slackened in the

1970s; although all government figures for Soviet economic perfor-

mance are open to question.

The USA

Shifts in the distribution of manufacturing plant also played a role in

the USA, but the character of industrial mobilisation was very

different to the situation in the Soviet Union. In part, this was

because the USA had not been invaded and subjected to the

conquest of much of its industrial capacity, but there was also a very

different political background. The dynamic of the American

response relied on lightly regulated capitalism, not coercion. Having

had cool relations with much of American business during the

1930s, President Roosevelt turned to them to create a war machine,

a task that was doubly difficult because there had not been a military

build-up in the 1930s comparable to that of the Axis powers. The

American army was in a particularly poor state, and smaller in 1939

than that of Portugal, although Portugal had a larger overseas empire.

In 1939, Congress agreed a major increase in military expenditure.

Part of this was directed at creating a larger manufacturing base for

war material. The War Resources Board was established in 1939, in

order to ready industry for a war footing, and the Office of

Production Management under William Knudsen, head of the car

manufacturer General Motors, followed in 1941. Turning to business

for co-operation in rearmament led to a lack of coordination, and

numerous failings in the quality of munitions were exposed by the

Truman Commission in 1941; but this was rectified by the establish-

ment of the Office of War Mobilisation in May 1943. Furthermore,

the Americans benefited from their already-sophisticated economic

infrastructure, which helped in the adaptation of the economy for war

production.

Although care is needed before pushing any compar-

ison, there is a parallel between the operational flexibility that the

Americans frequently displayed in combat and that of their economy.

The USA surmounted the domestic divisions of the 1930s in

order to create a productivity-orientated political consensus which

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brought great international strength.This consensus enabled America

to go on holding elections, as the constitution decreed, including a

presidential election in 1944 (in which Roosevelt won with 53.4 per

cent of the popular vote). In contrast, there was no general election

in Britain until after the war with Germany had ended; although by-

elections did occur to fill vacancies in the House of Commons and

these led to defeats for the government.As authoritarian regimes, the

Soviet Union and the Axis regimes did not expose their govern-

ments to the scrutiny of the electorate. In America, the war did not

see hard-fought adversarial politics, and there was no equivalent to

the bitter divisions over policy seen on the Union side during the

Civil War, not least in the 1864 election, or, later, during the Vietnam

War. This reflected a far greater sense of outrage and unity of

purpose; although it is important to note the continuation of party

divisions and their linkage to questions of military policy. Thus,

Roosevelt was bitterly criticised for the failure of preparation seen at

Pearl Harbor.

The resources, commitments and pretensions of the American

federal government grew greatly during the war, and taxes and

government expenditure both rose substantially. Government

spending totalled $317 billion, and nearly 90 per cent of this was on

the war. One consequence was a major growth of the federal capital,

Washington, which developed as the government bureaucracy grew.

The population there rose in response to the influx of federal

workers. Many were women, who were employed as clerks, and the

presence in the city of large numbers of young single women was

typical of the extent to which the war had a widespread impact on

detailed social patterns.

The development of Washington and the federal bureaucracy

were aspects of a wartime expansion that continued into the post-

war world, and serve as a reminder of the danger of treating the war

years as separate to those of peace.The continuation of this expan-

sion owed much to the Cold War with Communism, but there was

also a clear contrast between the response to the Depression, which

had led to much more modest expansion in government, and the

marked expansion that resulted from World War Two.There was also

a pronounced shift in authority and power from state to federal

government.

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In the USA, the attitude and techniques of the production line

were focused on war and fuelled by massive capital investment and

capacity expansion, as well as by a policy of keeping skilled workers

at their jobs. The Americans produced formidable quantities of

munitions – $186 billion worth – and an infrastructure to move

them. Such production was necessary. Equipment was destroyed or

broke down, while the rate of consumption of munitions was high:

over 1 million tons of 105 mm ammunition was used in the battle

for Okinawa; and, throughout the war, especially in the Philippines

in 1944, American army operations in the Pacific were affected by

problems in ammunition supply.

Aircraft and ship productive capacity and production greatly

increased. In 1941–5, the USA produced 297,000 aeroplanes and

86,000 tanks.The capability of the war economy was amply shown

in shipbuilding, which was crucial to the global scope of Allied

power and to operational capability. Most of the 42 million tons of

shipping built by the Allies during the war was constructed by the

Americans. The British shipbuilding industry was affected by

German bombing, as well as by serious problems of resource supply

and allocation, and the capacity for expansion was limited. The

Soviet industry was badly affected by German occupation. Canadian

production increased, but it was the Americans who were respon-

sible not only for much of the new shipping but also for the rapid

response to needs and for the expansion in types. Many of the new

American vessels were Liberty ships, built often in as little as ten

days, using prefabricated components on production lines. This was

an aspect of the rapid design and production methods that charac-

terised American weaponry development, as with the introduction

of the bazooka. By March 1944, the USA was producing one aircraft

every 294 seconds. All-welded ships replaced riveting, speeding up

production.

In contrast, the Japanese made scant use of welding. Their ship-

building industry also suffered from resource problems, including a

lack of steel, poor plant and weak organisation, including an absence

of standardisation. Despite losing oil tankers with a total tonnage of

1,421,000, mostly to German submarines, which inflicted particular

damage to American inshore shipping on the Atlantic coast in the

early months of the year, the tonnage of the American oil-tanker

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fleet rose from 4,268,000 tons in 1942 to 12,875,000 tons in 1945.

The flexibility of American society helped directly: by 1944, 11.5

per cent of the workers in the shipbuilding industry were women.

Shipbuilding capability also had a dramatic impact on the number of

warships, and this was seen as very important. In 1944, Ismay wrote

to Churchill:

the war we have to wage against Japan is of an entirely new

type. It is no mere clash of opposing fleets. Allied naval

forces must be so strong in themselves, and so fully

equipped to carry with them land and air forces, that they

can overcome not only Japanese naval forces but also

Japanese garrisons supported by shore-based air forces…the

bigger the Allied fleet free to seek out the enemy, the better

the chances of destroying the Japanese fleet.

Between Pearl Harbor and the end of the war, no fewer than 18 fleet

carriers, 86 light fleet or escort carriers, 8 battleships, 46 cruisers, 349

destroyers and 203 submarines were among the warships commis-

sioned into the American navy.

As another example of the extent to which the war led to new

demands, the American Army Map Service produced over 500

million maps, while, despite having its offices in Southampton badly

bombed in 1940, the British Ordnance Survey produced about 300

million maps for the Allied war effort.Air power led to an enhanced

demand for accurate maps, in order to plan and execute bombing

and ground-support operations. There was a premium on carto-

graphic expertise. Walter Ristow, Chief of the Map Division of the

New York Public Library, became head of the Geography and Map

Section of the New York Office of Military Intelligence, while

Armin Lobeck, Professor of Geology at Columbia, produced maps

and diagrams in preparation for Operation Torch.

Industrial expansion affected American demographics and society.

The populations of Washington, Oregon and, in particular, California,

where many of the new American shipyards and aircraft factories were

located, rose considerably, and the economy of California greatly

changed. By the end of the war, 8 million Americans had moved

permanently to different states, while large numbers had worked away

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from home for shorter periods. Some were African-Americans: about

700,000 African-American civilians left the South permanently, espe-

cially for California. The opportunities that war industrialisation

provided for African-American workers helped loosen racial, as well as

gender and social, relations. However, much segregation remained, and

racial tension was exacerbated by housing shortages and volatility in

the labour market that reflected migration. This led to serious

outbreaks of violence, particularly in Detroit in June 1943 (but far

from only there). Roosevelt responded by sending in federal troops.

In the armed forces, the War Department was unwilling to estab-

lish racially-integrated military units, and there was opposition to

using African Americans in combat roles or as officers. Most African

Americans served in service roles, for example in aircraft mainte-

nance or as mess men. These policies reflected racist attitudes that

were weakened as the need for more combat troops was appreciated,

but segregation remained central to military policy until Truman

changed it in 1948.

War with racist Axis regimes made some Americans uncomfortable

about segregation, and the government was anxious to maintain the

support of African-American politicians and workers, although other

Americans did not make any connection.The mobility in attitude and

experience that stemmed from the war encouraged conservative

responses on the part of some. In March 1944, Roosevelt’s absentee

voting bill, designed to help the soldiers vote, was defeated in favour of

a state-dominated voting plan designed to restrict the vote by African-

Americans. In the longer term, and with important contributions

from post-war causal factors, the mobility in attitude and experience

powerfully helped develop both the desire for change on the part of

African-Americans and a growing willingness on the part of govern-

ment, the military and many Americans to respond positively.

The same was true for Native Americans. Large numbers served

in the military or left reservations to work in industry, while women

took over male jobs. Native American average annual income rose

about 250 per cent in 1940–44. The Nationalities Act passed in

October 1940 granted Native Americans citizenship, and they thus

became subject to conscription.

The new economic geography of the USA included new

communication routes that were outside the range of submarine

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attack. Pipelines were laid from Texas to the industrial centres of the

North-East, including the ‘Big Inch’ from Houston to New York, in

order to lessen the need for coastal shipping. The coastal inland

waterway system was improved. Both steps were designed to lessen

vulnerability to German submarines. In 1942, the Alaska Highway

was built in order to provide an overland route through Canada to

the American bases there. Although there was much use of rail, and

improvements in rail capacity, during the conflict, wartime mobilisa-

tion contributed to the longer-term shift towards roads in the USA.

They were a more flexible communication system.

For American companies, gross corporate profits rose markedly,

helping fund investment. For American workers, average wages rose

far more than the cost of living, helping ensure that at the individual,

as well as the corporate and national, level the war saw America

become far stronger and more prosperous.This was an absolute as well

as a relative increase. It provided a stable tax base for greater govern-

ment expenditure, and also helped enable the USA to remain a net

creditor during the war and thereafter; while all the other warring

states were debtors. Britain lost a quarter of its national wealth during

the war, and was the world’s greatest debtor nation by 1945.

Aside from the availability of massive resources, especially oil, the

extent of manufacturing capacity, and the fact that their industry was

not being bombed as those of the other combatants were, the

Americans benefited from a relative lack of need for imports. This

contrasted greatly with the situation in Japan and Britain. Both of

the latter required imports of raw materials, oil and food.

In turn, American industry produced massive quantities of goods

for allies, including 55,000 aeroplanes, 18,000 of which went to the

Soviet Union.The Allies benefited more than their opponents from

the provision of munitions and other supplies to members of the

alliance under strain, although German military support helped

prevent an earlier Italian collapse.The movement of military supplies

between the Allies made a significant impact in particular operations:

in North Africa in 1942, the British benefited from American tanks.

Large quantities of Anglo-American supplies were provided to the

Soviets. They helped compensate for particular deficiencies. Thus,

American jeeps and trucks provided a valuable degree of mobility

for Soviet forces. However, there were heavy losses to German

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attacks on shipping moving supplies from Britain to the Soviet

Arctic port of Murmansk. It was far less hazardous to move supplies

to the Soviet Union via Alaska or, even, Persia (Iran), but there were

serious logistical problems involved in both routes, as well as the

problems of access to the war zone once the supplies had arrived.

There were also important exchanges of knowledge among the

Allies, particularly between Britain and the USA.The Tizard mission

sent to the USA in 1940 provided valuable British technology,

including a prototype cavity-magnetron. This was central to the

development of microwave radar.

The exchange of intelligence

under the BRUSA (Britain and the USA) agreement of May 1943

was important.

Like America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand benefited in

their wartime industrial mobilisation from the absence of attack on

their manufacturing centres. Thanks to production for the war,

Canadian gross national product more than doubled in 1939–45,

while federal government expenditure rose from $680 million in

1939 to $5,136 million in 1945.The War Measures Act was used to

regulate industrial activity, and the Wartime Prices and Trade Board

set wages and prices and allocated scarce commodities, although the

regulation of the workforce through the National Selective Service

had only limited success.

The Canadians supported a major war

effort that tends to be overlooked when the Allies are treated in

terms of Britain, the USA and the Soviet Union. There was a vast

expansion in the Canadian armed forces. At the outbreak of war,

there were fewer than 9,000 regulars, alongside 2,700 reservists and

51,000 militia. In contrast, 1,086,343 men and women were enlisted

during the war, and a military that had not been equipped for war

was provided with the necessary equipment.

The development of industries in Canada and Australasia was

linked to a longer-term decline in dependence on imports of British

manufactures. The war also accentuated the tendency for increased

economic (and strategic) co-operation between Canada and the USA.

Britain

Britain showed the impact of the war on an hitherto non-authori-

tarian society. The outbreak of war led to the passage of the

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Emergency Powers (Defence) Act of 1939, which extended the

power of government. That year, conscription was introduced and

new ministries were created for Economic Warfare, Food, Home

Security, Information, Shipping and Supply, Power and Production.

National wage-negotiating machinery did not, however, prevent a

serious miners’ strike in early 1944. Industrial production, however,

increased markedly, while unemployment fell substantially.

Farming provided a good example of the new interventionist

character of British government.The industry was subject to a hier-

archy of control. Each county was administered by a separate War

Agricultural Executive Committee, the members of which were

appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture, and was, in turn, divided

into districts controlled by district sub-committees. Unlike in World

War One, the policy of encouraging tillage (cultivated land) was

imposed as soon as the war began. By 1945, tillage was 55 per cent

more than the 1935–9 average, leading to a greater production of

grains, which reduced the need for food imports. Information and

labour direction were both part of the process. In June 1940, a farm

survey was begun in order to assess productive capacity, and a more

comprehensive survey followed from the spring of 1941. Farmers

were provided with labour, especially young women from the Land

Army and, later, prisoners of war, and with machinery. The latter

helped to ensure that World War Two established modern agriculture

in Britain, although it was the great expansion in American agricul-

tural production that was of particular value to the Allies, not least in

providing food for Britain and the Soviet Union.

In Britain, the Soviet Union and elsewhere, the war also saw a

major increase in urban allotments. These were very important as a

source of potatoes, vegetables and meat (chicken and pigs), although

animals were also kept in backyards. Aside from providing food,

allotments indicated the way in which the war effort demanded full

attention. Leisure was restricted, as workers farmed their allotments

in the evening and at weekends. In Japan, strenuous efforts were

made to cope with the impact on food imports of Allied attacks on

shipping, but the same attacks also cut fertiliser imports, hitting agri-

cultural productivity, while many farm workers were conscripted. By

1943, average consumption of food in Japan was falling, a fact that

exacerbated the already brutal treatment of Allied prisoners.

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