Industry

Narrator's post:

The Allies adopted a variety of responses to overcome the difficulties they encountered in each of these areas. In industry, the Allies response took on a dual nature. Firstly, by attacking factories, sources of raw materials and supply lines that brought these raw materials back home. As King noted in his entry in the Pacific section of the blog, the US enforced a “submarine blockade” of Japan; a blockade which strangled Japan by preventing supplies of raw materials and food from entering. Dick O’Kane of the US Wahoo highlighted in his entry in the blog that in one patrol alone, the US Wahoo managed to destroy 14 Japanese merchant ships. Placed within the context that Japanese industry could not keep up with the losses of naval, let alone merchant shipping, a lost of 14 merchant ships went a long way in severing the lifelines to Japan, as O’Kane entitled his post. Though not covered by the blog, British and American bombers also destroyed German factories in locations such as the Ruhr in massive bombing campaigns. Though costly, by 1945, US bombers and fighters numbering 7000 plus another 1500 RAF bombers were available to bomb Germany and her factories; partly explaining therefore why German production of material such as tanks fell from 22100 in 1944 to 4400 in 1945.

At the same time, the Allies, in particular the USSR and USA, mobilized their economies into the production of vital war materiel to equip their armies to defend against the Axis menace. As noted by Yakovlev, the USSR shifted many of its vital factories away from the cities to the interior of Siberia in order to protect them from the German advance. Such a shift preserved the Soviet’s industrial abilities to rapidly produce in particular the T-34 tank, which spearheaded the beginnings of Zhukov’s counteroffensive against the Wehrmacht in the USSR. In conjunction, a central planning agency the Stavka was set up to coordinate overall industrial production, ensuring therefore factories worked overtime to meet the production targets set by this body. The conversion of American industries was more “straightforward”. Once Roosevelt had convinced Congress of the need to rearm, the bosses of large corporations turned their factories to produce armaments rather than consumer goods. With the ability to plan efficient production, the economy was geared up for war. At the conclusion of the war in 1945, US production included 297000 aircraft and 86000 tanks, figures which amounted to two- thirds of overall Allied production of armaments such as these vital to win the war.