A Global War 1065

A Global War

World War II rapidly spread to almost all corners of the globe. Total war
absorbed national resources on an unprecedented scale, as factories began
to turn out weapons, munitions, and war materiel. Governments assumed
considerable control over economies, coordinating production, raising taxes,
and imposing rationing. Scientists were put to work in the war effort.
In June 1941, Germany launched an air and ground attack on the Soviet
Union. However, Hitler failed to reckon with determined Russian resis­
tance, as well as with the harsh Russian winter. The largest invading army
in history ground to a halt in the frozen snow. Finally, on December 7,
1941, Japanese planes carried out a surprise attack on the U.S. naval and
air force base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The raid inflicted great damage on
the U.S. Pacific Fleet and brought the United States into what had become
a global conflict fought on an unprecedented scale.

Total War

Britain was the first combatant in World War II to find itself engaged in a
total war. As the war expanded, other states confronted similar challenges.
German military planners counted on Hitlers confident assertion that the
United States would stay out of the war and that Germany could bring the
British to their knees. But the United States, where British resistance won

sympathy and admiration, could help Britain in other ways. On December
29, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that the United
States would be “the arsenal of democracy,” despite official neutrality. Since
direct loans might recall for many Americans the defaults by those coun­
tries in debt to the United States after World War I, Congress passed the
Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. It authorized the president to lend destroy­
ers, trucks, and other equipment, and to send food to Great Britain, which
in exchange would lease naval bases in the Caribbean to the United States.
Unlike Germany, which had been preparing for war virtually since Hitler
came to power, Britain had to start almost from scratch. The British govern­
ment succeeded in rallying the king s subjects to wartime sacrifices. Because
very few people had any doubts about the extent of the Nazi threat to Britain
itself, military conscription at the beginning of the war was quickly accepted.
Before the war began, the British armed forces comprised 500,000 people;
at the end of the war, 5 million. Women took the places in industry vacated
by departing troops, accounting for 80 percent of the increase in the labor
force between 1939 and 1943. In 1939, 7,000 women worked in ordnance
factories in Britain; in October 1944, there were 260,000.
The British War Cabinet imposed governmental controls on the economy
and by 1942 had achieved a high degree of coordination in wartime produc­
tion. The government imposed higher taxes, implemented rent control,
established rationing, and called for voluntary restraints on wage raises.