McNair Paper Number 50, Chapter 4, Notes, August 1996

1. Marvin A. Kreidberg and Merton G. Henry, History of Military Mobilization in the United States Army, 1775-1945 (Washington, DC: Headquarteres, U.S. Army, 1955), 692-693.

2. Kreidberg and Henry, 502-504. These Industrial Mobilization Plans (1922/1924, 1930, 1933, 1936, 1939) can be found in the National Archives. The 1933, 1936, and 1939 plans (all published by the Government Printing Office) can also be found at the National Defense University Library Archives. Kreidberg and Henry rely very heavily in this section of their massive work on mobilization on Harold W. Thatcher, "Planning for Industrial Mobilization 1920-1940 (Washington, DC: Office of the Quartermaster General, 1948). There is a circulation copy of this work in the National Defense University Library collection.

3. Kreidberg and Henry, 516-517. Given the situation in World War I, this seems like an odd lapse.

4. Industrial Mobilization Plan, Revised 1933, vii-xi, National Defense University Library Archives.

5. Industrial Mobilization Plan, 1933, 18. See the cover for the dates of approval by both service secretaries. The Gerald P. Nye Committee (Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry) was highly critical of this plan because it did not sufficiently control war profiteering and because the Committee saw a threat of press censorship in the public affairs parts of the plan.

6. Kreidberg and Henry, 518-525.

7. Industrial Mobilization Plan, Revised 1936 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1936). Available in National Defense University Library Archives.

8. Kreidberg and Henry, 529-530.

9. Industrial Mobilization Plan, Revision of 1939 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1939) 1-18, and Annexes to 1939 I.M.P.[Industrial Mobilization Plan]. Available in the National Defense University Library Archives.

10. Kreidberg and Henry, 581, 593. Witness the passage of the draft extension bill on 12 August 1941 by just one vote, with Germany about to invade Poland and with Japan deep into an 8-year war with China. See also Emergency Management of the National Economy: Vol XIX Administration of Mobilization WWII (Washington, DC: Industrial College of the Armed Forces, 1954), 67-68 (hereafter referred to as ICAF) for Roosevelt's trials with a wary and suspicious legislature. Only 93 Army General Staff Officers were permitted to be assigned in Washington, and that did not change until legislation passed on 2 July 1940, increased it.

11. Kreidberg and Henry, 692-693, highlight the reasons for the failure to implement the Industrial Mobilization Plan. The Special Senate Committee Investigating the National Defense Program studied the failure too and found that "public opinion prior to the outbreak of the war was sharply divided as to the role this country should play in the European conflict." The Senate committee also blamed the Congress for not suspending competitive bidding, a time wasting process in an emergency and permitting the War and Navy Departments to negotiate prices as had been recommended by the various Industrial Mobilization Plans. See Kreidberg and Henry, 692-693. Kreidberg and Henry argue that the planning was not a total waste, however, because the War and Navy Departments did get permission, on 2 July 1940, to negotiate prices, but were still competing some contracts 4 months into the war. The procurement recommendations embodied in the various plans were followed, and the military did learn a great deal about industry in the process of studying it since 1924 (Kreidberg and Henry, 689-691). See also Director of the Service, Supply, and Procurement Division, War Department General Staff, Logistics in World War II: Final Report of the Army Service Forces (reprint) (Washington, DC: Center for Military History, 1993), 5. Public policy was "confused" and as long as that was true, nothing as bold as implementing the Industrial Mobilization Plan could be accomplished.

12. For all that, the United States was far better prepared for a World War in 1941 than it was in 1917. Defense spending was mounting rapidly in 1941 before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. While war expenditures were about one-tenth of nonwar expenditures in 1939, they became one-fifth in 1940 and almost half in 1941 (they were 16 times greater in 1943 and almost 20 times greater in 1944). From January 1941 to December 1941, munitions production increased 225 percent. There were two million men in the Army and Navy by the end of 1941. Lend-Lease was an ongoing operation supplying our future allies with vital munitions, raw materials, and food. In sum, the foundation had been laid for the prodigious buildup that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor. Alan Milward, War, Economy and Society: 1939-1945 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), 63-72.

13. Donald M. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1946), 35.

14. Kreidberg and Henry, 468.

15. Gough, "Soldiers, Businessmen and U.S. Industrial Mobilization," 81-83.

16. Robert D. Cuff, commentary in James Titus, ed., The Home Front and War in the Twentieth Century: The American Experience in Comparative Perspective: Proceedings of the Tenth Air Force Academy Military History Symposium (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1984),112-115. A history of this era written for the Industrial College of the Armed Forces states that it "was necessary to induce manufacturers to accept defense contracts" because of negative past experiences. Industry feared being left with excess capacity and was reluctant to build new plants even for fat contracts. Before Pearl Harbor was attacked "private enterprise was . . . reluctant to invest its money in plants to produce weapons for a war that might not come," and through that era this country seldom invested public funds in manufacturing facilities. But on 25 June 1940 Roosevelt secured legislation that authorized the Reconstruction Finance Corporation "to make loans, to . . . purchase capital stock in any corporation (a) for the purposes of producing, acquiring, and carrying strategic and critical materials as defined by the President, and (b) for plant construction, expansion and equipment." 54 Statute 573, cited in ICAF, 21-23.

17. Kreidberg and Henry, 689-691.

18. Industrial College of the Armed Forces, 12.

19. Kreidberg and Henry, 682-683.

20. Herman M. Somers, Presidential Agency: The Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), 6-7; Kreidberg and Henry, 682-683.