Automobile Factories Switched to War Production As America Entered World War II

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In 1941 civilian automobile production totaled about 3.6 million vehicles. In 1942 that number dropped to less than 1.15 million. Postwar civilian production numbers did not reach 1941 levels until 1949.


Bullets by the Billions: Chrysler Switches World War II Production from Cars to Cartridges

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Like the other automobile manufacturers, Chrysler had for the past three years devoted a small percentage of its production fulfilling for the military what were known as “educational orders” – small production runs of various military items, the purpose of which was to work out production problems in the boardroom and on the shop floor in advance of America entering the war. With the country now a belligerent, this pre-war exercise between industry and the military, not always harmonious, was being put to the test.

Within a week of Keller’s meeting in Washington, Chrysler vice president Charles L. Jacobson, tasked with organizing and running the new operation, got an Army Ordnance team to inspect and approve the Evansville plant and a letter of intent for the making of 5,000,000 .45 caliber cartridges a day. One week later, Army Ordnance phoned Jacobson and increased the order to 7,500,000 rounds a day.Within twenty-four hours Army Ordnance again called and gave Jacobson another change order – increasing production to 10,000,000 rounds a day. Before the month ended, that number had jumped yet again to 12,500,000 rounds.

From June 1942 to April 20, 1944 when the contract ended, Chrysler’s Evansville arsenal produced 96 percent of the military’s .45 caliber cartridges: 3,264,281,914 rounds. Rejection rate of cartridges was less then .1 percent of production. It also produced almost a half-billion .30 caliber cartridges, hundreds of thousands of specialty rounds, reconditioned 1,662 Sherman tanks, rebuilt 4,000 Army trucks, delivered 800,000 tank grousers (track extensions for use in mud), and was preparing to make 7 million fire bombs when the war ended.

A Matter of Priorities: American Production in World War II, Part 1

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To avoid a repeat of what historian Geoffrey Perret called “the production farce” of World War I, in 1924 the War Department created the Army Industrial College (AIC). Its one-year curriculum annually brought together promising young officers, economists, and industrialists to mutually teach and learn what it took to equip an army in time of war. Its conclusions were organized into a 20-page survey of industry outline, annually updated, and incorporated into the military industrial mobilization plan. Its appendices identified “who could make what, how well, how quickly and at what price” and by 1941, when stacked, were more than four feet high.

Simultaneously, the War Department placed what came to be called “educational orders” of important new weapons designed to work out production problems as much as possible under the interwar budgetary constraints. For example, a medium tank contained about 4,500 individual parts. The prime contractor might make 1,000. Hundreds of subcontractors would be needed to make the other 3,500. Thanks to the work of the AIC, the War Department had the names and addresses of every one


A Matter of Priorities: American Production in World War II, Part 1

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How many men will the United States need in uniform? Where and how quickly will it get the arms, equipment, and supplies needed to support them in an upcoming global war? These were questions the leaders of America’s armed services had been wrestling with for months. Army leaders remembered the domestic production chaos experienced in World War I when half-trained troops arrived in France and fought German armies using Allied weapons – many units even had to wear British uniforms! Thanks to astute lobbying by Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall, this time America was addressing the military manpower and logistic needs earlier, but was it early enough? Would the money coming in – $9 billion and counting – be properly allocated? Most important of all, who would get what, when? Tough questions, made tougher because of a variety of needs and demands – all urgent, many conflicting.

To avoid a repeat of what historian Geoffrey Perret called “the production farce” of World War I, in 1924 the War Department created the Army Industrial College (AIC). Its one-year curriculum annually brought together promising young officers, economists, and industrialists to mutually teach and learn what it took to equip an army in time of war. Its conclusions were organized into a 20-page survey of industry outline, annually updated, and incorporated into the military industrial mobilization plan. Its appendices identified “who could make what, how well, how quickly and at what price” and by 1941, when stacked, were more than four feet high.

Simultaneously, the War Department placed what came to be called “educational orders” of important new weapons designed to work out production problems as much as possible under the interwar budgetary constraints. For example, a medium tank contained about 4,500 individual parts. The prime contractor might make 1,000. Hundreds of subcontractors would be needed to make the other 3,500. Thanks to the work of the AIC, the War Department had the names and addresses of every one.

איך מחשבים כמה אנשים ואוגדות צריך כדי לנצח במלחמת עולם?

Then, of course, there was the problem of manpower itself. In July 1941 President Roosevelt requested an estimate of how big an army the nation would need to defeat the Axis. To answer that question, Marshall turned to Maj. Albert Wedemeyer of the General Staff. Wedemeyer had studied at Germany’s Kriegsakademie and got to know the Wehrmacht’s methods and many of the field marshals and generals now fighting.

Army intelligence projected that by 1943 Germany and its allies would field 400 divisions. Using the standard offensive ratio of two to one, that meant to achieve victory America and its allies had to deploy 800 divisions. With German armies in the summer of 1941 advancing at will into Russia, Wedemeyer, anticipating its defeat, wrote off any contribution from the Soviet Union. He calculated that Britain and its Empire could provide 100 divisions. The balance, 700 divisions, had to come from America.


Economists and industrialists agreed that the maximum population percentage the military could siphon without wrecking industrial mobilization was 10 percent. In 1940, America’s population was about 135 million with a workforce of about 40 million men and almost 13 million women, making the low figure 4 million and the high figure 13.5 million. A combat infantry division of 15,000 men requires about 25,000 support troops. Not taking into account the needs of the other branches, 700 Army divisions required up to 28 million men, more than 20 percent of America’s population – an impossible number.

After some serious number crunching and allowing for the needs of the other branches, Wedemeyer determined the Army could obtain a maximum number of 8.8 million men organized into 216 divisions. To move 5 million of these men to Europe would require 1,000 transports of at least 7,000 tons. Building such a fleet and training and equipping the troops would take roughly two years.



A Matter of Priorities: American Production in World War II, Part 2

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What made the situation particularly galling is that it could have been avoided. In June 1940, Marshall and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Harold “Betty” Stark had twice requested Roosevelt to authorize complete national industrial mobilization. Roosevelt overruled them, preferring “progressive” rather than “complete” mobilization. With the country finally emerging from the Great Depression, the military found itself competing with growing civilian market demands and an industry reluctant to further increase military production.

It was not until July 1941 – two weeks after Germany invaded the Soviet Union – that Roosevelt gave the Army and Navy the go ahead to develop a systematic industrial plan “to defeat our potential enemies.” This resulted in the Wedemeyer report delivered a couple of months later. But by then a year’s production had been irrevocably lost and Marshall now had to divide his growing but still scarce resources with a new customer, the Soviet Union, and Stark had to find shipping to get it there

In November 1941, Dill appealed to Marshall “for tanks to bolster British defences in face of a possible German attack through the Caucasus and Anatolia.” Within 24 hours, Marshall authorized the transfer of 350 medium tanks from the next three months’ production. It was, in the words of the U.S. Army’s official historians, “virtually the entire . . . medium tank production earmarked for the for the U.S. Armored Force.”