(^344) Chapter Nine
can soldiers were successfully transported to France, and, to save time
and shipping space, their heavy equipment was provided mainly by the
French. Other forms of complementarity that had grown up helter
skelter during the early years of the war continued to its end, but
deliberate management often exacerbated conflicts of interest which a
market with freely fluctuating prices would have at least partially dis
guised. Thus in April 1917, at the height of the shipping crisis, the
British withdrew half of the ships they had previously assigned to the
task of supplying France and threatened to withdraw the rest in June if
the French did not impose stricter controls on imports. The resulting
interruption of supplies had the effect of reducing French industrial
output, even of munitions, for a few months.^65
Military command was also integrated among the Allies, but only
imperfectly and at the last moment. A decision to unite the Allied
armies in France under Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch was taken in
March 1918 when the final German offensive had broken through the
trench lines; but it never became fully effective. His title as com
mander in chief did not allow Foch to issue orders to British and
American troops without first carefully feeling out the views of his
British and American colleagues. Diplomacy and professional consul
tation, therefore, tempered the military chain of command without
preventing the French, British, American, and Belgian armies from
coordinating their counteroffensive quite effectively in the last weeks
of the war.
Allied responses to the heightened crisis of 1917–18 only adum
brated the possibilities of transnational management. Fuller realization
was reserved for World War II. Within national boundaries, however,
the mobilization of manpower and resources achieved in Germany,
France, and Britain by the end of the war came close to absolute limits
set by the manpower and materials available to the planners. The
principles of management were clear enough. Experts could calculate
what the armed forces needed for conducting planned operations; and
administrative skill was sufficient by 1918 to organize the resources of
an entire nation as though it were a single firm designed to supply the
armed forces with all they required.
Preexisting bureaucracies from private industry, from civil govern-
no less than 8.42 million metric tons of food to France between 1914 and 1924 accord
ing to William C. Mallendore, History of the United States Food Administration, 1917–
1919 (Stanford, 1941), p. 42.
- Godfrey, “Bureaucracy, industry and politics in France during the First World
War,” pp. 84–86; Clémentel, La France et la politique économique interalliée, p. 321.