150 e lusive v ictories
his command are suffi cient and ready to wage war successfully. For a
major military confl ict on a global scale, with key allies also depending
on American war production, the president also has to mobilize and
coordinate enormous economic resources. Last, as a political leader, the
president must make certain the citizenry is ready for the sacrifi ce that
war will entail. Th e people have to accept the necessity for war, under-
stand what it will cost, and consent, at least passively, to become
participants.
Th e Roosevelt administration began economic and military mobili-
zation as the war clouds gathered over Europe in late 1938, and prepa-
rations accelerated in the next three years. As noted earlier, after Munich
the president secured a large appropriation to build aircraft, announcing
a goal of building 15,000 planes per year. After the fall of France in 1940
the administration also embraced a major shipbuilding program.
But these important fi rst measures were already late. Modern mil-
itary hardware had become so complex that the lead time between
when weapons were ordered and their actual availability was several
years. (Compare this to the Civil War, fought largely with weapons
already in production that needed only to be manufactured on a larger
scale.) Th e aircraft carriers put in production in 1940, then, would not
begin to appear in the battle zone until early 1943.
Another fl aw in the initial mobilization lay in its purpose. Every-
thing the president wanted—from long-range bombers to capital ships
(aircraft carriers and battleships)—was designed to deter an aggressor,
not to fi ght him. One historian goes so far as to conclude, “From the
beginning of rearmament, Roosevelt sought, not rearmament, but the
appearance of rearmament.” Had the president had been left to his
own devices, the United States would have entered the war with a hope-
lessly unbalanced force structure, lots of planes and ships but virtually
no ground troops. For that matter, much of the new equipment would
have been shipped to allies already at war.
Fortunately, Roosevelt did not surround himself with sycophants,
and he solicited views that diff ered from his own. Several of his key
aides objected to his approach to military mobilization. In particular,
he was challenged at a November 1938 meeting on his plans to focus
so heavily on aircraft production by then Brigadier General George
C. Marshall Jr., recently promoted to Army Deputy Chief of Staff.