162 e lusive v ictories
Roosevelt believed that setting ambitious targets would goad industry
to produce more than most believed possible, but his approach also had
a downside. Th e focus on quantity above all else, for example, led to an
emphasis on older and cheaper aircraft models rather than modern
types the Army Air Force needed for its strategic bomber off ensives.
Although hardly brilliant, the Roosevelt administration’s economic
mobilization eff orts stand up well in a comparative light. Interestingly,
the time needed to rationalize war production after Pearl Harbor was
about the same as the Wilson administration required to sort out its
economic eff orts following American entry into World War I. It helped
that the lingering eff ects of the Depression left the United States in
early 1942 with considerable slack industrial capacity and unused man-
power that could be converted quickly to military production.
Compared to the military output of the other belligerents, the Amer-
ican mobilization record shines. American industry in 1944 produced
40 percent of total world military output. Great Britain, which began
full rearmament in 1938, could not come close to meeting its needs in
either quantity or quality, and relied heavily on Lend-Lease to equip its
forces. Th is dependence gave the United States economic leverage, too,
that the administration used to secure open access to the British
Empire.
By contrast, the Soviet Union outproduced the United States in
tanks, with a basic design in the T-34 that surpassed the American M-4
medium tank in many respects. But with little need for a navy, Soviet
industry was free to concentrate on a narrower range of armaments,
while the Red Army relied heavily on some 350,000 trucks supplied
under Lend-Lease to keep moving in its great off ensives in the last two
years of the war. American equipment for the British and Soviet mili-
taries traveled across the oceans in the 2,700 Liberty ships built between
late 1941 and 1945, a remarkable total that still represented less than half
of the ships built in American yards during the war. As for the Axis
powers, Germany suff ered from divided and wasteful industrial pro-
duction until Albert Speer became armaments minister in 1942, Italy
never came close to equipping a modern army before its 1943 surrender,
and American industry outproduced its Japanese counterpart in every
category, including at least eighty more aircraft carriers during the
war.