ResourcemobilizationforWorldWarIItheU.S.A.,U.K.PDFVIP

Resource mobilization for World War II: the U.S.A., U.K., U.S.S.R., and Germany, 1938-1945* Mark Harrison** Department of Economics University of Warwick * Published in the Economic History Review, 41:2 (1988), pp. 171-192. ** Mail: Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. Email: mark.harrison@warwick.ac.uk. A first draft of this paper was presented to the Annual Conference of the National Association for Soviet and East European Studies (Cambridge, March 1987) and the Colloquium of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University College of Swansea (Gregynog, April 1987). I am grateful to the participants, especially Wlodzimierz Brus (Oxford), Bob Davies (Birmingham), and Peter Wiles (LSE). I also owe special thanks to Volker Berghahn, Stephen Broadberry, and Annwen Jones (Warwick), Sir Alec Cairncross (Oxford), Michael Ellman (Amsterdam), Peter Fearon (Leicester), and Lynn Turgeon (Hofstra) for help across unfamiliar terrain, as well as to the editors for their constructive criticisms. 2 Resource mobilization for World War II: the U.S.A., U.K., U.S.S.R., and Germany, 1938-1945 In 1946 Raymond Goldsmith (formerly head of the economics and planning division of the U.S. War Production Board) published an estimated balance sheet of war production of the major belligerent powers of World War II. His results are shown in table 1. Goldsmith commented: The cold figures ... probably tell the story of this war in its essentials as well as extended discussion or more elaborate pictures: the initial disadvantage of the Western Allies; the surprising stand of the U.S.S.R.; the rapid improvement in the United Nations’ position in 1943; their decisive superiority over Nazi Germany in 19