How To Win the War

Axis vs. Allies

on the Home Front

Maintaining Resources: The Axis

Three Key Resources

• Raw Materials
• Labor
• Morale

Maintaining Resources: The Axis

Unlike the Allies, the Axis powers did not coordinate resources

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Constant struggle to protect or acquire raw materials needed for the conducting the war

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In reality the Allies wore the Axis nations down.

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Japan and Germany used a variety of methods (some ruthless and brutal) to meet demands

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Maintaining Resources: The Axis

Nazi Germany

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• Emphasis had always been on territorial expansion at the expense of “inferior races.

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• - Germany did little to mobilize its economy and resources until 1942.

-- Very few taxes and they got to be a part of the “master race”.

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- The goal was to keep the German people as unburdened as possible.

- No strict wartime government controls on food, wages, and prices until 1944.

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- Food was denied to slave laborers to give to the German people.

Maintaining Resources: The Axis

Spearheading the production process in Germany was Albert Speer.

Goal was to organize production to meet the demands for a total war.

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In the first four years of the war Germany produced about 10,000 aircraft per year. Between 1943 and 1944, 32,000 were produced.

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About 5000 tanks per year between 1940 and 42. In 1943 and 1944 the average was about 23, 000 per year.

Maintaining Resources: The Axis

Slave Labor and other workers

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• Germany did not use women in the regular work force.
• Women were considered childbearers and their responsibility was the home.
• Begs the question, “If the men were fighting, and women weren’t working in the factories, who was?
• Answer is slave laborers – Approximately 7 million laborers.
• Most of the slave labor came from POW camps. Poles, French, and Soviets.

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Maintaining Resources: The Axis

• Under the illusion of Morale
• Used propaganda, film, music, and radio to keep up morale.
• Lost credibility after defeats in Britain, Soviet Union and North Africa.
• Stalingrad and El Alamein were particularly difficult.
• Bombing campaigns by Allies were not particularly demoralizing.
• Himmler and the SS sustained a hatred of the Allies and support for the war.
• After 1944 – Awful realization that the Soviets were coming to Germany.

Maintaining Resources: The Axis

• Resisting Hitler inside Germany
• Hitler did have enemies inside Germany.
• Many professional soldiers hated the whole Nazi concept.
• Secret Police (Gestapo) were constantly seeking out and eliminating any subversion.

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Maintaining Resources: The Axis

• Hitler must die!
• First attempt was March 1943.
• Planted a bomb on a plane but the timer failed.
• Hitler had no idea that the bomb was ever there.
• The most elaborate attempt was made in July of 1944.
• A bomb was planted by Col. Stauffenberg
• A coup was to follow
• Bomb went off and Hitler survived.
• All involved were arrested and put to agonizing deaths.

Hitler and Mussolini visiting the site about two hours after the assassination attempt.

Hitler took terrible revenge. SS officers shot their way into the war offices where the coup leaders were holed up and arrested the coup leaders. Justice was meted almost immediately, and some leaders were given the choice of suicide or the firing squad, but most of them were just shot. According to one source 7,000 arrests were made and 2,000 people were executed

Unready and Unwilling: Fascist Italy

• No country was as unprepared for WW2 as Italy.
• In the three years that Italy was in the war on the Axis side, they produced 10,500 aircraft, 64 ships, 3000 tanks, and about 7000 other vehicles.
• No direct government control over war production.
• Struggled for labor
• Italy after being invaded at Anzio leaves the Axis alliance in late 1943.

Believing in Victory: Imperial Japan

• Japan had been mobilizing since before 1937.
• War vs. China stretched Japan’s war-making capabilities.
• Japan became heavily dependent on foreign imports of raw materials.
• Japan possessed advanced modern technology and a disciplined labor force.
• Total control of petroleum, electricity, and rice
• 75% of Japan’s budget was spent on war production.
• Between 1941 and 45, Japan produced 18 air craft carriers, and 70 other major warships along with 130 submarines.
• Production of planes went from 5000 in 1941 to 28,000 in 1944.

Believing in Victory: Imperial Japan

• The Japanese Labor Force
• Most of the total workforce remained on farms
• After 1943, to deal with labor shortages, the government “DRAFTED” women into the workforce.
• By 1944, 33 million Japanese were working 11 hours a day.
• Slave labor was used in dangerous situations including American, British, and Korean POW’s.
• Undefined war aims created some morale problems.
• Encouraged loyalty to the emperor encouraged the people to prepare for invasion and called upon every man, woman, and child to repel the invaders.

The Allies: Working Together

Working Together: The Allies

• A modern war, meaning that the nations involved all their resources to producing the material for waging war.
• Strategy involved not only the destruction of the enemy military forces, but the creation and maintenance of factories and population centers to produce the vehicles, food, fuel, uniforms, and weapons.

Working Together: The Allies

• Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union generally used the same methods to mobilize their populations and sustain morale to meet the demands of total war.
• As democracies Britain and the U.S. instituted measures with the support and consent of the people.
• The Soviet Union, under the control of one man and one party could coerce and compel citizens to meet whatever the state required.

Working Together: The Allies

• Three things had to be accomplished:
• #1 Provide enough food for the military and labor forces.
• #2 Retool their factories from peace-time production to wartime production
• #3 Maintain national will and morale.

The United Kingdom

• Endured the war the longest
• Gov’t empowered to take charge of almost everything to support the war.
• Heavy taxes imposed and war profiteering strongly punished.
• 1939 – rationing of fuel in place
• 1940 – massive food rationing in place
• Meat, sugar, eggs, and milk were often not available.
• Tea was rationed but bread, potatoes, and fish were very available.

The United Kingdom

• Americans began to arrive in Britain in 1942
• Peak American influx, is June 1944 for the D-Day invasion
• Relationship was pretty positive
• Americans brought food and shared.
• Decline of U-boat activity after 1943 in the Atlantic allowed the U.S. to directly supply Britain with food.

The United Kingdom

• Mobilization of Labor
• Britain mobilized like no other nation.
• 15 million men in the labor pool total. 5 million in the military service.
• 7 million women join the labor force
• 400,000 women in the military service
• 1940-43, Britain out-produced Germany in total planes.

The United Kingdom

• British morale during the war never wavered.
• More than 50,000 civilians die from the bombing attacks during the Blitz.
• Children and elderly moved to the countryside.
• Winston Churchill deserves the credit for directing the war effort and motivating the British people to endure the greatest test in that nation’s history.

The United Kingdom

The United Kingdom

The United Kingdom

The United States

• The period of 1939-1941 saw limited preparedness by the U.S.
• U.S. was still recovering from the Great Depression.
• You could argue that WW2 was won in American factories and on American farms.
• Americans rationed
• Meat, butter, sugar, coffee, gasoline, tires, and shoes.
• Still ate very well.

The United States

• Building Armaments: Women and African Americans at Work
• By the end of the war 12 million men and 250,000 women in the army.
• Almost every bomber and fighter plane was built by women.
• One factory in Michigan could produce one aircraft per hour.
• Unemployment disappeared

The United States

• Women participated actively in the War
• In factories – “Rosie the Riveter”
• At home leading Aid Societies and recycling movements.
• WAVES – Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service.
• WAC – Women’s Army Corps

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The United States

The United States

The United States

The United States

The United States

• African Americans
• The number of African Americans employed doubled.
• Although still serving in segregated units, 1.5 million African Americans enlist in the military.
• Tuskegee Airmen – possibly the most famous group

The United States

The United States

• The Good Life: A glimpse of things to come
• For all Americans wages rose by 70 per cent during the war and opportunities grew for both skilled and unskilled laborers.
• During the war Americans enjoyed benefits had not know in over ten years.
• The general change in the standard of living set the stage for the future economic growth and prosperity that would be unmatched in World History.

The United States

• Morale
• Income tax – nearly half paid a new income tax since they previously paid none.
• War Bonds
• Held drives to collect scrap metal
• Planted “Victory Gardens”
• Hollywood donated actors and actress to promote morale. Honest, Strong, Courageous, and Generous.
• Virtually no draft dodgers

The United States

• Patriotism gone too far?????
• Japanese Internment Camps
• Executive Order 9066 allowed President Roosevelt to define military areas and remove whoever he wanted from those areas.
• Public opinion created rumors about Japanese loyalty.
• President Roosevelt declared most of the West Coast a military area.
• 120,000 Japanese Americans relocated to detention centers.
• Interestingly, during all of the years of the war, only 10 people were convicted of spying for Japan. All were Caucasian.

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Soviet Union

• Soviet Union was largely unprepared
• As Nazis advanced, most people evacuated
• Gov’t physically relocated nearly 3000 factories and most of their workers to prevent their capture.
• Requested lend-lease help from Britain and the U.S.
• No other nation produced more tanks.
• Aircraft production was only second to the U.S.

Soviet Union

• Production of weapons was done under the philosophy of quantity over quality.
• Food production was a major weakness.
• Severe rationing
• Worked to death: Soviet labor
• No consumer goods produced.
• 2.4 million citizens used as slave labor

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Soviet Union

• Morale
• One end the Germans were eliminating people by the millions
• The other end Stalin was sending millions to slave labor camps
• Soviet army lost over 84% of their soldiers due to wounds, disease, frostbite, and capture
• Civilians died by the millions due to disease, malnutrition, overwork, and combat actions
• People were loyal to “Mother Russia”, and triumphed and became united as never before.
• Even today the Russians call it the “The Great Patriot War” and consider it one of the shining moments in Russian history.