In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

A s war clouds gathered over Europe and Asia in the late 1930s, U.S. military leaders and President Franklin D. Roosevelt began preparations for war, but only haltingly and quietly at first. Nazi Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, and in September of the same year Germany took control of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. Hitler swallowed the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and, along with the Soviet Union, overran Poland in September. Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, marking the onset of World War II. After a six-month calm, called the “Phoney War” by the press, Germany invaded Norway and Denmark on 10 April 1940. Starting on 10 May 1940, Hitler quickly overran the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. In Asia, Japanese military aggression against China, ongoing since July 1937, resulted in the establishment of a Japanese-controlled puppet government on 30 March 1940, controlling most of eastern China. While these disturbing developments occurred in Europe and Asia, the United States was woefully ill prepared for any significant military action. In August 1940, the United States Regular Army had about 280,000 men and the National Guard from the various states consisted of another 250,000 men. In sharp contrast, the German army had nearly six million men and the Luftwaffe an additional 500,000 in mid-1940. The Japanese, with a much smaller population than the United States, had an army of 2.1 million by 1941. Poland and the Netherlands both had larger one Preparing for War before Pearl Harbor 2 chApter one armies, as did Francisco Franco’s Spain, with a force of 950,000 seasoned troops. In August 1940, Robert P. Patterson assumed the office of assistant secretary of war, responsible for military procurement for the army and Army Air Corps. His comment upon taking office, “the cupboard was nearly bare,” accurately described the available stocks of weapons, equipment, and supplies. There were barely enough 1902 vintage Springfield rifles to equip the infantry, and new recruits often had to train with wooden rifles. Artillery consisted of about 5,000 French 75s (75-mm) from World War I. They had wooden “artillery” wheels and were designed to be pulled by horses or mules. The United States had fewer than 400 light tanks, useless against Germany’s 3,000 medium and heavy tanks. The cupboard contained only two hundred .37-mm antitank guns. The Army Air Corps had just 2,775 planes, only 300 of which were combat aircraft; the rest were trainers. There were almost no stockpiles of ammunition.1 The lack of preparedness is vividly shown by contrasting the weapons and materials on hand in July 1940 with the projected needs of an army of two million men to be created over the next eighteen to twenty-four months. The number of tanks was to grow from a mere 64 in July 1941 to 4,383 by July 1942; the stock of howitzers of several sizes would need to expand from 756 to 4,337; and the supply of .30-caliber M1 rifles had to jump from 46,067 to 341,199 by December 1941. New weapons that were barely part of the arsenal in July 1940 were also produced in large numbers by December 1941, including 85,000 machine guns, 217,000 submachine guns, and 9,518 mortars.2 Prior to Pearl Harbor, the American automobile industry had little interest in making defense products. Following a gradual recovery in sales and production in 1935– 37 from the depths of the Great Depression, sales in 1938 plummeted to 2 million units from 3.9 million the previous year. The auto industry enjoyed a recovery of sales and profits in 1939–41, with sales reaching 3.8 million units in 1941. The experience at General Motors reflected that of the entire industry. GM’s sales in 1937 (1.9 million units) were greater than they had been in 1929 but then plummeted to 1.1 million in 1938. Sales recovered to over 2 million units in 1940 and 2.3 million in 1941. The automakers were not willing to convert existing factory space they were using to earn profits in car and truck manufacturing over to defense production. They did not have the necessary machine tools on hand, and factory space that worked well in making automobiles and automotive components generally was not suitable for making things like tanks and airplanes. Except for the Albert Kahn–designed Ford Motor Company River...

Share