World War 2
American Industry
The war could not have been won without the massive material contribution made by American Industry. The American genius for mass production was one of the Allies most important weapons.
From March 1941 the United States supplied the British war machine with weapons and war materials under the terms of the Lend-Lease Act - Churchill's close relationship with Roosevelt was key to this. After the United States entered the war, the aid was extended to the Soviet Union. Over the next three years the United States provided its allies with civil and military aid sufficient for them to equip 2'000 infantry divisions. One of the key elements to victory in Europe and the Pacific lay in the sheer size and efficiency of the American economy, which applied the latest business methods to war production and the rapid expansion of the US armed forces.
In 1939 the United States manufactured only a small amount of military equipment for its own needs. By 1944 it was producing no less than 40% of the world's armaments. In 1940 only 346 tanks had been built in the US; in 1944 alone 17'500 rolled off the production lines. Figures for aircraft production leapt from 2'141 in 1940 to 96'318 in 1944. Also, by 1945 nearly 3'000 Liberty Ships had been built, seeing service in the Atlantic and Mediterranean and with the US Navy's massive fleet trains in the Pacific. Ironically, the basic design for these immensely useful craft had been produced by a shipping company in Sunderland, England, in 1879.
One US wartime Ford plant employed 42'000 people. Much of their output was bound for the Soviet Union, which by 1945 had taken delivery of nearly 500'000 US-made trucks and jeeps. Red Army soldiers advanced on Berlin in American trucks wearing America-made boots; 15 million pairs of which were made and shipped over to the Soviet Union. Soviet war production was boosted by US machine tools, high-grade petroleum, steel, copper and rail locomotives and track. Shipping losses in the Battle of the Atlantic were offset by the construction of 3'000 Liberty Ships, general-purpose frieghters whose average construction time was only 42 days. One Liberty Ship was built as quickly as five days. The war years laid the foundation of American ecconomic and industrial pre-eminence in the postwar era.