The Oxford Illustrated History of World War Two by Richard Overy

Author:Richard Overy
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780199605828
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2015-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

The crew of the British vessel HMS Belfast in Russia on convoy duty with Lend Lease supplies to the Soviet armed forces and people. The northern route to Archangel and Murmansk was dangerous and hazardous for the men involved.

It proved necessary to increase the scope of state intervention (against much resistance) in order to bring about the conversion to war as rapidly as possible, but American industrial practices—large firms, mass production methods, high engineering standards, professional management—meant that private initiative as much as state control was a driving force of American war production. The United States produced two-thirds of all Allied supplies during the war, including 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery pieces, 86,000 tanks, and 2 million trucks. American shipyards turned out 8,800 naval vessels, sixteen to every one produced by Japan. All of this could be done while sustaining generous consumption levels by the standards of other states (though rationing, particularly of petrol, was introduced for a number of products) and raising income levels for the workforce. Average calorie intake was higher in 1944 than it had been in 1938, a situation enjoyed by no other warring population. Better food and higher incomes were particularly important for the poorer sections of American society, hit hardest by the depression, but now able to share high standards with the better-off. Though historians have argued that the idea of wartime boom years can be exaggerated, by comparison with the decade of economic crisis that preceded it, the boom seemed real enough.

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