Peden G.S. Arms, Economics and British Strategy From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs
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It is difficult to see how much more could have been done to divert
spending power to the government. Certainly Chu rchill, advised by
Lindemann, believed that the maximum tolerable limit of mobilisation
had been reached by the latter part of 1942.
79
International comparisons
by Harrison show that Germany and the Soviet Union, and even the
United States from 1943, mobilised higher proportions of domestic
resources for the war than Britain. However, the totalitarian states could
adopt methods that no free society would accept, and Ge rmany was able
to conscript labour throughout occupied Europe. The sacrifices made
by the American population were less than those by the British because
the United States could increase its national income by mobilising
resources still unemployed or underemployed from the depression. In
1943 Britain mobilised a higher proportion of her labour force for war
production and the armed forces than the United States, and more for
war production and almost as much for the armed forces as Germany.
80
Altogether Britain sacrificed the equivalent of 18.6 per cent of her pre-
war wealth between 1939 and 1945, the largest element being external
disinvestment.
81
Such mobilisation was possible because sea power enabled Britain to
take full advantage of an international division of labour in the world
economy, importing food, raw materials and munitions. British strategy
always relied upon being able to mobilise overseas resources, but the
sources of external finance varied over time. There were four ways in
which Britain could finance purchases abroad. First, she could earn
foreign exchange by exporting goods and services, but it was inevitable
that earnings would cover a declining proportion of purchases as Britain
mobilised her industry for war production. Second, she could use her
gold reserves which, notwithstanding the decline in 1938–9, were still
greater than in 1914, but were small in relation to the purchases that
would be made in a long war. Third, the government could take over
British-owned foreign securities, and obtain foreign exchange via the
dividends, or by selling the securities, or by using them as collateral for
loans, but Britain had already reduced her stock of foreign securities in
the First World War. Finally, she could borrow, either by persuading
countries to accumulate sterling in London, typically by holding
Treasury bills, or by raising loans outside the sterling area; however,
79
Wilson, Churchill and the Prof, pp. 97–8.
80
Mark Harrison, ‘Resource mobilization for World War II: the USA, UK, USSR, and
Germany, 1938–1945’, Economic History Review, 41 (1988), 171–92, at 184 and 186;
Hancock and Gowing, British War Economy, p. 371.
81
Stephen Broadberry and Peter Howlett, ‘The United Kingdom: ‘‘victory at all costs’’ ’,
in Harrison (ed.), Economics of World War II, pp. 43–80, at p. 69.
The Second World War 195
under the Johnson Act, she could not borrow in the United States, by far
the most important overseas source of munitions.
The accumulation of sterling balances in London represented trans-
actions that were not by any m eans restricted to supply of goods for the
British war economy. Most of India’s sterling balances were the result of
an agreement between the chancellor of the exchequer and the secretary
of state for India in February 1940 whereby the British Treasury would
pay the whole of the extra cost of Indian forces (compared wi th peace-
time) while they were serving abroad, plus the cost of military stores
supplied by India to British forces in the Middle East. The cost of
maintaining India’s forces rose rapidly after the entry of Japan into the
war, and India’s sterling balances increased from £295 million in mid-
1942 to £1,138 million in mid-1945, and a further £300 million was
transferred from the United Kingdom to India by the sale of securities
held by UK residents. Middle Eastern coun tries also accumulated
sterling balances through the supply of goods and services to British
forces. As regards food and raw materials for the United Kingdom, the
important parts of the sterling area were Australia, New Zealand and the
African coloni es. Munitions and machine tools for British production of
munitions had to be sought outside the sterling area, North America
being the only practical source of supply, besides also being a more
economical source of food and raw mater ials than Australasia from a
shipping point of view. Canada’s economy was closely linked to that of
the United States, and before the war she had financed a deficit in her
balance of payments with her southern neighbo ur b y a surplus in her
balance of payments with Britain. Consequently, Canadian supplies had
to be paid for partly in gold and American dollars, to cover the Canadian
deficit. Canada, not being a member of the sterling area, was less willing
than other dominions to allow Britain an unlimited overdraft, and
British purcha ses were paid for partly by the sale of Canadian securities
held by UK residents.
82
The biggest problem, however, was financing British purchases in the
United States on the cash and carry basis that prevailed in 1939–41:
Britain’s gold and dollar reserves fell from £519 million in September
1939 to £108 million by the end of 1940; and American securities
owned by British residents were requisitioned and sold as fast, and
perhaps faster, than the New York stock market could absorb them.
83
Initially the intention had been to spin out the reserves over a three-year
war and purchases of American munitions were limited as tightly as
possible, so as to allow scarce dollars to be spent on machine tools and
82
Sayers, Financial Policy, chs. 9–12.
83
Ibid., pp. 369–70, 496.
Arms, economics and British strategy196
raw materials for munitions production in Britain. On 30 January 1940
Britain’s total requirements in the United States for the first twelve
months of the war were estimated at £197 million, of which aircraft
accounted for 11.7 per cent and other munitions 6.1 per cent, whereas
machine tools accounted for 21.8 per cent and cotton 13.2 per cent.
Britain was also heavily dependent on American petroleum, which
accounted for another 15.2 per cent of projected dollar expenditure in
1939–40.
84
Faced with imminent defeat in the summer of 1940, British
purchasing policy changed drastically and dollars were spent freely. The
ending of financial caution was encouraged by signs that American
opinion was shifting in favour of the Allies and that it was almost certain
that credit would eventually be made available. French contracts were
taken over after France asked for an armistice. In July 1940, at a time
when American firms were producing about 250 aircraft a month for
British contracts, with a projected peak of 700 a month, it was agreed to
place orders for an additional 3,000 a month from January 1941. This
enormous increase was beyond the current capacity of the American
aircraft industry, but British orders encouraged an expansion of capacity
that was to serve the United States well wh en it entered the war. The
loss of army equipment at Dunkirk made orders for tanks and anti-tank
guns, field artillery, anti-aircraft guns and small arms a matter of
urgency. However, the Ministry of Supply was more cautious than
Beaverbrook’s Ministry of Aircraft Production and the scale of orders,
although vast, was sufficiently limited to ensure that the supply of
machine tools and raw materials requ ired for production in Britain
would not be diverted to American firms.
85
The immediate supply of aircraft and munitions available in the
United States was at first of limited value both in terms of quality and
quantity. It was not until 1941 that the Americans had fighters in pro-
duction that were comparable to B ritish or German fighters of 1939
vintage.
86
The 150 Brewster Buffalos that were delivered to the RAF in
1940 were rejected for European operations and sent to the Far East, as
were Curtiss Hawks delivered as part of the residue of French contracts.
From 1941 American fighters served in the Middle East, in the ground
attack role, but the Merlin-powered P-51 Mustang, which was more
than a match for German fighters, was not delivered to the RAF until
1944. The quality of American bombers was at least equal to European
standards, but they were available only in small numbers until 1943 and
84
Hancock and Gowing, British War Economy, p. 106.
85
R. Duncan Hall, North American Supply (London: HMSO, 1955), pp. 146–53, 158–77.
86
Craven and Cate (eds.), Army Air Forces, vol. VI, esp. pp. 211–15, 218–19.
The Second World War 197
did not conform to Bomber Command’s view of what was required for
the strategic air offensive against Germany. Most were employed in the
Middle or Far East, or by Coastal Command. Although $120 million
were allocated in July 1940 to the purchase of 2,000 medium tanks in
America, the only machines available for early delivery were light tanks
and, as noted above, the first American medium tanks did not reach
Egypt until May 1942.
87
As had been anticipated in June 1940, President Roosevelt found a
way round the John son Act once the US Treasury and American public
opinion were satisfied that Britain no longer had the means to pay
dollars for her purchases. On 17 December 1940 he came up with the
idea of Lend-Lease, whereby munitions, raw materials and even food
would be handed over to Britain, if the President decided that they
would thereby best be employed for the defence of the United States.
It was not in America’s interests that Britain should be defeated by
Germany. Equally, however, the Roosevelt administration was not
averse to pursuing American interests by securing concessions from
Britain. The US Treasury was suspicious of the way in which the ster-
ling area operated to Britain’s advantage in international trade, and the
US State Department hoped to press Britain into abandoning imperial
preference. Under the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 Britain had to
provide the United States with ‘direct or indirect’ benefits in return for
supplies, and in subsequent negotiations Britain was pressed to agree
not to discriminate against American exports. Churchill secured a
statement from Roosevelt that the Americans did not require a com-
mitment to the abolition of imperial preference in advance of the signing
of the Mutual Aid Agreement of 1942, but under the agreement both
countries committed themselve s to work for the elimination of all dis-
crimination in international trade. Meanwhile, Britain had had to state
in September 1941 that it would not export any goods that embodied
materials supplied under Lend-Leas e, thereby making it easier for
American firms to take over British markets. The Secretary of the US
Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, ensured that Britain would continue to
be financially dependent by limiting any rise in Brit ain’s gold and dollar
reserves. In June 1941 Britain’s gold reserves had reached a low of £65
million. By the end of 1942, however, as a result of expenditure by
American forces in Britain and in the sterling area, the reserves stood at
£254 million. Thereafter, the US Treasury checked the rise in the
reserves by reducing the range of food and raw materials covered by
87
Hall, North American Supply, p. 175.
Arms, economics and British strategy198
Lend-Lease.
88
The price of Churchill’s policy of victory at any cost was
a weakening of British power, through the accumulation of sterling
balances and the loss of overseas assets and markets, and consequent
dependence upon the United States.
Grand strategy: the period of the Anglo-French alliance
Anglo-French war plans prior to September 1939 had been based on the
assumption that blockade would be as potent a weapon as it had seemed
to be in 1916–18. It was expected, therefore, that the Germans would
seek an early victory before blockade could wear them down. British
and French planners thought in terms of a long war, in which they would
follow a defensive strategy in the opening phase, gaining time in which to
mobilise their superior resources, including those of their empires, and
moving to an offensive strategy only when the balance of power had
shifted decisively in their favour. The RAF intended to bomb the
enemy’s manufacturing resources as part of the wearing-down process.
The British expected the Germans to attack the United Kingdom and its
trade routes by air and sea, as well as France by land, and notwith-
standing the commitment made early in 1939 to send the BEF to France,
most of the RAF would remain in the United Kingdom. The Luftwa ffe
was expected to inflict heavy civilian casualties with high-explosive
bombs and to use gas to terrorise the pop ulation.
89
Churchill was con-
cerned as late as July 1941 that there should be no shortfall in British
production of gas.
90
In the event, neither side used gas against cities.
Too much was expected of the blockade, no doubt because the
Germans had been inclined to exaggerate its effectiveness in the First
World War. The Nazi–Soviet Pact on 23 August 1939, and more par-
ticularly the Soviet–German trade agreement of 11 February 1940,
raised the issue of how effective sea power alone could be in preventing
88
Alan P. Dobson, US Wartime Aid to Britain, 1940–1946 (London: Croom Helm, 1986);
Sayers, Financial Policy, chs. 13–15, and p. 496.
89
Chiefs of Staff, ‘Planning for war with Germany’, DP (P) 2, 15 Feb. 1937, CAB 16/
182, and ‘European appreciation, 1939–40’, DP (P) 44, 20 Feb. 1939, CAB 16/183,
TNA are the key British documents. For French strategy and its influence on British
thinking before the war, see Robert Young, ‘ ‘‘La Guerre de longue dure
´
e’’: some
reflections on French strategy and diplomacy’, in Adrian Preston (ed.), General Staffs
and Diplomacy before the Second World War (London: Croom Helm, 1978), pp. 41–64,
and Talbot C. Imlay, Facing the Second World War: Strategy, Politics, and Economics in
Britain and France 1938–1940 (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 17–20, 27–33, 42–
50, 84–106. For the scale of expected air raid casualties in Britain being far in excess of
what actually occurred, see O’Brien, Civil Defence, pp. 96, 392–3, 677–9.
90
The Churchill War Papers, ed. Martin Gilbert, 3 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1993–
2000), vol. III, p. 954.
The Second World War 199
the Germans gaining access to raw materials. At first the British Min-
istry of Economic Warfare did not believe that the Soviet Union’s
normal exportable surplus would be of major assistance to Germany,
but by March 1940 it was warn ing the Cabinet that the effect of the
blockade might be largely nullified by Soviet supplies.
91
A fundamental
problem with Allied strategy during the first seven or eight months of the
war was the lack of military activity to mak e the Germans use up stocks
of strategic materials. The RAF refrained from strategic bombing,
nominally in response to an appeal to the combatants by President
Roosevelt, but in reality because of the need for more time in which to
prepare, and the French army remained inactive behind the Maginot
Line. Germany was able to import Swedish iron ore and to bring suf-
ficient political pressure on Romania to ensure that the latter continued
to export oil to her, despite Allied attempts at pre-emptive purchase.
92
The Allies’ strategic position, therefore, was by no means as favour-
able for the conduct of a long war as pre-wa r planners had hoped. On
the plus side, the Allied navies were able to prevent German surface
raiders doing much damage to trade. The German pocket battleship
Deutschland was recalled from the North Atlantic in November 1939
after sinking only two merchant ships, and its sister ship, the Graf Spee,
was scuttled on 17 December after an unsuccessful engagement
with three British cruisers, having accounted for nine merchant ships.
93
The threat from submarines was also contained, mainly on account of
the small number of U-boats available in the winter of 1939–40, and the
defective torpedoes with which they were armed.
94
The new German
magnetic mine accounted for more merchant ships than the U-boats in
the last two months of 1939, but by the end of March 1940 the Royal
Navy had developed effec tive countermeasures.
95
The sinking by a
U-boat of the battleship Royal Oak at Scapa Fl ow on 14 October 1939,
and the threat of air attacks, forced the Home Fleet to leave its main base
until adequate defences were in place in March. Nevertheless, the Allies
enjoyed the benefits of command of the sea. A BEF of 158,000 men had
been safely transported to France by 11 October, and the dela y in active
operations on the Western Front gave a much needed breathing space in
which to make up deficiencies in equipment and tra ining.
91
W. N. Medlicott, The Economic Blockade, 2 vols. (London: HMSO, 1952–9), vol. I,
pp. 312–13, 315–26, 403–5; Imlay, Facing the Second World War, pp. 122–3.
92
Medlicott, Economic Blockade, vol. I, pp. 141–8, 250–9.
93
Roskill, War at Sea, vol. I, pp. 112–21.
94
Bennett and Bennett, Hitler’s Admirals, pp. 61–2.
95
Roskill, War at Sea, vol. I, pp. 99–102, 106, 126–8.
Arms, economics and British strategy200
Even so, there was growing unease, particularly in France, that time
might not be on the Allies’ side. French intelligence assessments exag-
gerated the rate at which Germany was expanding her army and air
force, and French munitions production was behind schedule, parti-
cularly as regards aircraft. The more France turned to American firms to
make up the shortf all, the less likely it was that her gold and dollar
reserves would be sufficient for a long war. French planners seem to
have been more pessimistic than the British Ministry of Economic
Warfare about the effectiveness of blockade. French intelligence
believed that the Soviet Union and Germany were working together as
allies, and accordingly the Soviet Union tended to be viewed in Paris as
a potential if not actual enemy. These ideas reached British military
planners through the joint Allied Military Council, and by March there
were doubts on both sides of the Channel about the long-war strategy.
96
It is against this background that one can begin to understand how
plans came to be made that would have involved hostilities with the
Soviet Union. As early as January 1940 the Frenc h were preparing staff
studies of how Sov iet oil production could be disrupted, and by March
the Arme
´
e de l’Air had a draft plan for bombers based in Syria to attack
Baku and other targets in the Caucasus, where 90 per cent of the Soviet
oil industry was situated. Paul Reynaud, who became the Frenc h
premier on 21 March, pressed the British at the Supreme War Council
later that month to give the project their support. Chamberlain, how-
ever, confident that German and Soviet interests were fundamentally
incompatible, believed that the costs of a war with the Soviet Union
would outweigh the potential benefits and a decision was deferred.
97
The Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939 also led to
plans that might lead to a wider conflict. At the Supreme War Council
on 19 December the French premier, Edouard Daladier, advocated
sending an Allied expeditionary force to Finland via Narvik, both
to assist the Finns and to counter German and Soviet designs in
Scandinavia.
98
The War Office began to explore the possibility of
sending supplies and troops across Norway and Sweden, using Narvik as
a base. Churchill, as first lord of the Admiralty, had since September
unsuccessfully advocated laying mines in Norwegian waters to prevent
the Germans importing Swedish iron ore through Narvik during the
winter months, when Swedish ports on the Gulf of Bothnia were
blocked by ice. He was quick to see that, once established at Narvik, the
96
Imlay, Facing the Second World War, pp. 54–6, 58–63, 109–15.
97
Ibid., pp. 70–3, 123–5.
98
Patrick R. Osborn, Operation Pike: Britain versus the Soviet Union, 1939–1941 (Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000), pp. 41–2.
The Second World War 201
Allies could cut off the Germans’ imports of iron ore even more effec-
tively than by purely naval action. He was aware that Germany might
invade Scandinavia, but claimed in a Cabinet paper on 16 December
that the Allies had ‘more to gain than lose by a German attack upon
Norway or Sweden’.
99
On 2 January 1940 the Chiefs of Staff warned the
War Cabinet against what the CIGS, Sir Edmund Ironside, privately
called ‘this half-cock scheme’, on which he commented prophetically: ‘It
is the Dardanelles over again.’
100
Halifax, the foreign secretary, feared a
hostile reac tion in the United States to any breach of Norwegian neu-
trality. The War Cabinet hesitated, and it was not until after the Finns
had signed an armistice on 13 March that it agreed that the mine-laying
operation should go ahead.
101
It was anticipat ed that the Germans
might react by invading Norway, and troops were embarked on cruisers
in the Fort h and Clyde ready to sail to Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim
and Narvik.
There is not room in a book of this nature to do justice to the blunders
that led to the Allied defeat in Norway. Two factors stand out: first, a
marked tendency on Churchill’s part to improv ise rather than to have a
clear and consistent strategy; second , the importance of air power. By
the evening of 6 April the Admiralty knew that there were large-scale
shipping movements in German waters, even before the first British
minefields were due to be laid around Narvik early on 8 April. Never-
theless, Churchill’s reaction on hearing that German warships were at
sea was to prepare for a purely naval encounter, and on his instructions
the troops aboard the cruisers in the Forth and Clyde were disembarked
on 8 April, to allow the cruisers to join the Home Fleet. As a result,
when the Germans landed in Norway on 9 April, the British reaction
was too slow to secure the ports there. There was a further muddle when
Churchill, as chairman of the Cabinet’s Military Co-ordination Com-
mittee, ordered half of a convoy which was carrying an infantry brigade
to attack Narvik to be diverted to Namsos on 14 April, as part of an
unsuccessful attempt to take Trondheim.
102
The Royal Navy did inflict
losses on the German navy, particularly at Narvik, where ten German
destroyers were sunk in two engagements on 10 and 13 April, but it
was unable to prevent the flow of German reinforcements across the
Skagerrak because of the danger of air attack.
99
Churchill, Second World War, vol. I, pp. 480–92, at p. 492.
100
Ironside Diaries, pp. 191–2.
101
Cabinet conclusions, 23 Feb. 1940, CAB 65/5, TNA.
102
Reynolds, In Command of History, p. 123; Roskill, War at Sea, vol. I, pp. 157–62;
Ironside Diaries, pp. 255–65.
Arms, economics and British strategy202
The Luftwaffe dominated the skies over Norway because the RAF’s
fighters lacked the range to intervene from Britain. A squadron of
fighters was transported to central Norway by aircraft carrier but was
unable to sustain itself at its improvised base on a frozen lake against
attacks by German bombers. The Germans had made Norwegian air-
fields their first objective, seizing them with airborne troops and sup-
plying them by air. From that point the Royal Navy was at a
disadvantage. As Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, the commander of the
Home Fleet admitted, ‘the scale of air attack that would be developed
against our military forces on shore and our naval forces off the Nor-
wegian coast was grievously underestimated when the operations were
undertaken’.
103
The Allies’ only success on land was the capture of
Narvik on 28 May, but it was evacuated shortly afterwards because the
troops were neede d in France, where the situation following the main
German offensive in the West was critical.
The German attack on Holland and Belgium on 10 May had long
been foreseen and the French army and the BEF advanced to take up
defensive positions east of Brussels. If the Belgian and Dutch armies,
with 22 and 8 divisions respectively, are added to the 10 British and 104
French divisions between the North Sea and Switzerland, there was
almost exact equality with the 136 German divisions deployed in the
West on that date. The French and Germans each had about 2,500
tanks (excluding obsolete French light tanks); the British initially had
only one tank brigade with 100 infantry tanks, but an armoured division
with 143 cruiser and 114 light tanks arrived during the fighting. The
Germans enjoyed superiority in the air, using 2,741 combat aircraft in
the campaign against 1,046 French, 416 RAF and about 400 Belgian
and Dutch aircraft, but even that advantage was a result of British
strategy, which gave priority to the air defence of Great Britain and
reserved most of Bomber Command for strategic bombing. Had the
greater part of the RAF been empl oyed in France, as in 1918, the Allies
would have matched the Germans as closely in the air as on land.
104
A number of factors contributed to the Allied defeat. German dive
bombers acted as mobile artillery, and the concentrated mass of panzer
divisions overwhelmed the widely dispersed French tanks and advanced
to the Channel, cutting the Allied armies in two. The British Tank
103
Roskill, War at Sea, vol. I, p. 179.
104
Lionel Ellis, The War in France and Flanders 1939–1940 (London: HMSO, 1953),
p. 254; Germany and the Second World War, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990–
2001), vol. II: Klaus A. Maier, Horst Rohde, Bernd Stegemann and Hans Umbreit,
Germany’s Initial Conquests in Europe (1991), p. 279; Overy, Air Power; R. H. S. Stolfi,
‘Equipment for victory in France in 1940’, History, 55 (1970), 1–20.
The Second World War 203
Brigade achieved some success at Arras on 21 May but the Allies failed
to close the gap; on 26 May the BEF was ordered to fight its way to the
coast. Two days later the exhausted Belgian army surrend ered. Most of
the BEF and many French troops were evacuated through Dunkirk by 4
June, but all their heavy equipment was lost. After the campaign the
BEF was able to claim that, although it had been deficient in equipment,
its line had never been broken by frontal attacks, and that its retreats had
been made in order to conform to those of its allies.
105
Even if the 1st
Armoured Division had been available earlier, it could not have stopped
the nine panzer divisions employed in the German drive to the coast.
Only by a radically different policy of preparing armoured divisions in
preference to infantry divisions could the British army have made much
difference to the outcome of the campaign. However, armoured divisions
could not have fulfilled the inter-war army’s everyday role of colonial
policing and, in any case, as noted in chapter 3 (see pp. 124–5, 157),
muddle in preparing tank designs delayed the completion even of two
such formations.
British air strategy and doctrine contributed to the debacle. The War
Office had been impressed by German use of air power in close support
of ground forces in the Polish campaign, and wanted to create a tactical
air force under army command, but the Air Ministry was determined to
retain control of all bombers. Sixteen squadrons were earmarked to
support the army, but Bomber Command maintained that the proper
role of its main force was to attack the Ruhr, in a long-term strategy to
disable German industry by attacking oil and power plants. Fewer
fighter squadrons were sent to France than the French wanted, and the
squadrons that were sent lack ed the road transport necessary to cope
with a fast-moving land campaign. Home-based squadrons had suffi-
cient range to cover Dunkirk, but not further inland. The Arme
´
e de l’Air
was undergoing a re-equipment programme, so that its pilots tended to
have either obsolescent or unfamiliar aircraft. Even so, the Luftwaffe
suffered casualties in May that were on the same scale as in August and
September, during the Battle of Britain, suggesting that German control
of the air over Belgium and northern France was not inevitable, if the
Allies had made better use of their forces.
106
105
‘Committee to review the lessons learned from the recent fighting in Flanders
(Bartholomew Committee) Report, 1940’, WO 32/9581, TNA; Lord Gort’s
despatches, London Gazette, no. 35305, 17 Oct. 1941.
106
J. R. M. Butler, Grand Strategy, vol. II (London: HMSO, 1957), pp. 154–6; Ellis, War
in France, pp. 24–9; William Green, ‘Who lost the battle for France?’, RAF Flying
Review, 15 (June 1960), 21–4; Murray, Luftwaffe, p. 45; Overy, Air Power; Webster
and Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol. I, pp. 125–43.
Arms, economics and British strategy204