-
Chapter XIX:
-
- The Procurement Role of the ASF
Out of its experience with civilian
agencies, and especially from the controversy with the WPB, the ASF tried
to advance a definite opinion regarding the relationships which should
exist between key civilian agencies and military procurement agencies
during economic mobilization. In a general way such relationships had been
more or less assumed in the industrial mobilization plans prepared before
World War II. But the war itself was the testing ground where the
practicability of those ideas was determined.
-
- It fell to the lot of the Army
Service Forces, and particularly to General Somervell, to demonstrate that
though both types of agencies, civilian and military, might have different
administrative roles to perform, they could nonetheless work together in
what was necessarily a joint enterprise.
-
- In attempting to make the fullest
use of the nation's resources in carrying on the war, there never was more
than one alternative to an organization under which civilian and military
agencies worked together. That alternative was to remove all military
procurement operations from under the direction of the armed forces and to
turn them over to civilian agencies which would be responsible for both
general economic mobilization and military procurement.
The possibility that economic mobilization might be turned over to the
military was never contemplated by the responsible civilian secretaries or
military chiefs of the armed forces during World War II. Certainly this
writer can assert with absolute assurance that General Somervell never for
a moment felt that the military services should assume responsibility for
economic mobilization. On the other hand, he was strongly opposed to the
idea that military procurement should be turned over to the civilian
agencies which were directing economic mobilization.
- The essence of Somervell's
position, and that of Secretary Stimson and Under Secretary Patterson, and
all their principal associates, was simply this: in arming the military
forces in a time of all-out war effort, the nation's economic resources
had to be called upon to provide in abundance the weapons necessary to
defeat the enemy. This meant a large-scale shift of productive
resources-manpower, raw materials, and industrial plant-from ordinary
consumer goods to military goods. In the process there was bound to be a
diminution in the supply of goods and services available for civilian
consumption.
-
- The modern concept of war is one
of a struggle between national economies. It
[281]
- involves not merely an economic
potential to produce great quantities of weapons but a nation's actual
output. Only when the. economic resources of a nation are readily
available for the output of military equipment on a large scale can its
armed forces benefit from its productive capacity. And modern strategy of
warfare-certainly the American strategy of warfare-has now become based in
large part upon the concept of supply superiority-that is, the employment
of overwhelming quantities of military equipment against the enemy.1
Strategy has always depended in some measure upon logistics, but perhaps
we are now more dependent upon this factor in our military thinking and
action than ever before.2
Accordingly, economic mobilization is one of the essential elements of
total warfare.
-
- In the War Department point of
view economic mobilization during World War II had two interrelated but
nonetheless separate features. First, there was military procurement: the
determination of supply needs, the design and specification of weapons,
the contracting with certain industries (those making end-items of
equipment) for the delivery of specified quantities of weapons, scheduling
and expediting the delivery of weapons, inspection for contract
performance, the issuance of delivery instructions, and the payment of
contract prices for items delivered.
-
- In all these relationships the
military procurement agencies should have direct access to contractors
unimpeded by intervention of a third party. Second, there was economic
mobilization in a more general sense: the central control of the common
resources of the nation needed to realize military procurement goals and
at the same time to keep the entire national economy functioning. This
involved a determination of total
productive resources available for military procurement; necessary action
to increase the supply of manpower, raw materials, and productive
facilities; production and delivery scheduling of the manufacturers of raw
materials, civilian goods (transportation equipment, electric power
systems, food distribution facilities, etc.), and common industrial goods
used both by the military and civilian producers (ball bearings, motors,
copper wiring, etc.); control of the use of transportation facilities;
price control; rationing of civilian supplies; war financing; economic
warfare and foreign trade; and many other duties. These were
responsibilities for civilian agencies in a period of all-out war effort.
-
- Throughout the war the War
Department tried to make clear that it was possible and desirable to have
military procurement agencies and civilian control agencies working
together but with somewhat different responsibilities in effecting
economic mobilization for war.
-
- From the time that the War
Department was first set up in 1789, it had enjoyed the statutory
authority to purchase military supplies. Under ordinary peacetime
conditions military procurement and supply was a problem of internal War
Department organization and procedures. These activities raised few
questions of broad economic importance. Even during the Civil War the
procurement operations of the Union Army apparently proceeded
[282]
- without much concern for their
impact upon the economic resources of the nation. It was not until World
War I that our government acted on the theory that military procurement
must be integrated into the general program for utilization of the
nation's total productive resources.. Industrial mobilization planning
from 1920 to 1940 was based upon this proposition. President Roosevelt
acted upon it in May 1940 when he set up the Advisory Commission to the
Council of National Defense. There was never any real doubt that military
procurement in wartime meant economic mobilization for war. The War
Department, however, still retained its responsibility for military
procurement. The economic mobilization of national industrial resources,
from the Army's point of view, did not involve the removal of procurement
responsibilities from the War Department.
-
- As noted above, the NDAC in 1940
and then the Office of Production Management in 1941, gave their primary
attention to helping the War and Navy Departments expand and improve their
military procurement operations.
-
- Between the two wars the procurement
bureaus of the War Department were mere skeleton organizations. Even
between June 1940 and December 1941 they had been slow in building up
their internal operations by commissioning or hiring top-ranking civilians
for key positions. The War Department needed and did in fact obtain major
assistance from both the NDAC and the OPM.
-
- After mid-1941, however, the War
Department felt that some of the persons who had provided this initial
help in building up procurement organization and methods should be
absorbed within the Department itself. After 9 March 1942, for example,
General Somervell asked Mr. Nelson to release Mr. William H. Harrison,
head of the WPB Production Division and a former vice-president of
American Telephone and Telegraph Company. This was done.
-
- Harrison was
commissioned a brigadier general, and eventually as a major general was
placed in charge of the entire procurement program of the Signal Corps. A
number of his assistants were likewise brought into the Army.3
-
- The shift of key personnel from
the central civilian agencies to the military procurement agencies of the
Army Service Forces represented, in Army thinking, merely one step toward
total wartime economic mobilization. This move was in the accepted
tradition which held that in time of national emergency, the military
skeleton organization would expand by bringing in civilians to man our
defenses in every sphere of activity from procurement to combat.
-
- The main
impulse for this expansion was supposed to come from within the military
agency since military procurement operations could best be handled by the
armed forces themselves.
-
- There were some groups in WPB
which developed an opposite point of view, a point of view which held that
the military procurement power rightly belonged to the WPB under the
provisions of Execu-
[283]
- tive Order 9024 which created the
WPB, and that those powers were usurped by the military organization. In
support of this view the official WPB history states, for example:
-
- Nelson was not aggressive about
his Jurisdiction and his powers. He allowed ANMB to elude his grasp,
although it was subordinate to him, and he permitted the War Department's
Services of Supply, over which he said he had no control, to become
something decidedly other than what he thought it should be.4
-
- And at another point, it adds:
Everything that WPB attempted to do with
respect to procurement was conditioned by
the primary fact that Nelson had delegated
the power of actual procurement to the Services.5
-
- The WPB history says in effect
that there can be no effective mobilization of the nation's economic
resources unless the central civilian direction of economic resources is
combined with military procurement under a single administrative agency:
-
- A genuinely effective control of
procurement by WPB would have meant that it was in a position effectively
to: (1) expedite war procurement; (2) achieve maximum use of existing
facilities; (3) conserve critical resources; (4) eliminate competition
between the procurement agencies; (5) further the maintenance of a sound
national economy by the proper distribution of war contracts; (6) procure
at the lowest total expenditure; and (7) develop uniform policies which
would guide the procurement agencies in the realization of these goals. To
do this it would not be enough merely to enunciate policies; it was
necessary to control the actual administration of procurement policies at
the point of procurement. WPB would have to insert itself into the flow of
procurement plans and orders so that it could clear appropriation requests
for non-combat items to determine need and procurement program
feasibility; clear purchase programs and schedules for sufficiency
of supplies, timing of orders, and types of purchase transactions; and
direct actual placement of orders.6
-
- Aside from the jurisdictional
issues involved this statement implies that if the War Production Board
had been allowed to procure munitions, the over-all war production effort
would have been strengthened. The history apparently concludes that (1)
there was no effective economic mobilization in World War II and (2) the
explanation lies in Nelson's failure to insist upon a transfer of military
procurement operations from the armed forces to the WPB. This point of
view helps to explain why ASF-WPB relationships were at times bitter. The
War Department and the ASF argued throughout the war that
organizationally, military procurement had to be integrated with military
logistics and strategy. They consistently held that effective economic
mobilization could be realized through close collaboration between a
central civilian agency and the military procurement agencies. The 12
March 1942 agreement between the War Department and the War Production
Board was a statement of respective responsibilities that was entirely
workable in practice, and the experience of the war years seemed to
confirm this belief.
-
- At the end of 1942 and in early
1943, General Somervell and others in the War Department were alarmed by
legislation introduced into Congress calling for the creation of a new
"super" economic mobilization agency which would combine the WPB
and the procurement activities of the armed forces.7
[284]
- Senator Claude Pepper of Florida,
one of the sponsors of the proposal, explained his stand in an article in The
New Republic entitled "To Smash the Final Bottleneck."8
He argued that the "least proper" agency to be placed in charge
of "war production" was the military. He went on to assert that
only if the military forces found that they had to depend upon another
agency for their supplies would they be "held to a strict accounting,
required to present its requirements in terms of a fully developed
strategical program." He criticized the military forces for not
turning "production" over to "production men from
industry."
-
- Somervell was moved by this
article to write a lengthy personal letter to Senator Pepper to explain
the Army's point of view.9In
it he expressed surprise and shock because of the Senator's unfriendly
tone and apparent "faulty information." Somervell argued first
of all that logistics and strategy were inseparable in war and that the
armed forces' mission to defeat the nation's enemies could be fulfilled
only if they had "complete responsibility and authority in a single
chain of command" for the design, procurement, and distribution of
weapons. In 1942, when the same kind of relationship was being developed
between the War Industries Board and the armed forces that had been worked
out in World War I, Somervell had insisted that it was not feasible to try
to "rip" military procurement out of the whole process of
determining military strategy and providing the logistical resources for
its, execution. He identified the major steps in the flow of munitions as
follows:
- a. Strategical and
logistical planning.
b. Development of need for all types of supplies and equipment
based on that planning.
c. Research to develop new and improved weapons and other materiel.
d. Production and testing of pilot models.
e. Determination of
facilities capable of producing the end-items of military supplies and
equipment in sufficient quantities at the times required.
f. Construction of production facilities where those existing are
inadequate.
g. Placing
of contracts.
h. Expediting and following up production.
i. Inspection for quality.
j. Testing and proof firing.
k. Providing shipping orders to the manufacturers.
l. Making transportation arrangements domestic and overseas.
m. Distribution through bases and intermediate depots, sub-depots,
holding and reconsignment points, and ports of embarkation to troops
either in the United States or overseas.
n. Maintenance of supplies and equipment, including procurement and
distribution of spare parts and tools, salvage, and rehabilitation.
-
- These activities did not occur in
sequence, Somervell pointed out. Strategical planning continued throughout,
and production programs were adjusted and readjusted in the light of
battle experience. The various proposals for civilian control of
purchasing and production would transfer at least those segments of the
munitions flow listed in paragraphs a to i. "The effect would be
to split an integrated process into three parts: The beginning and the end
to be under the jurisdiction of the War Department, the middle to be under
the jurisdiction of an independent civilian agency." With such a
plan, it would be difficult to meet emergency needs, virtually impossible
to differentiate between the functions of the various agencies, and in
case of failure, to determine which was
[285]
- to blame. The Army's production
achievements had been great. Despite certain specific failures, many of
which were not the fault of the services, military specialists and
civilian experts, co-operating with committees from industry, had compiled
a magnificent record. Germany had begun its all-out war effort in the
early 1930's and was devoting 43 percent of its national output to war;
the United Kingdom began in 1936 and was concentrating 39 percent of its
production on war; the United States, which did not begin its effort until
the summer of 1940, was devoting 39 percent of its output to war.
-
- "For more than twenty years
the War Department has been designing and developing improved weapons and
teaching its officers and industry how they could be best produced,"
Somervell
declared. To supplant these proven men and methods with untried personnel
and unproven experiments would be bad enough at any time; in wartime it
would be disastrous. In his opinion the Army should control the production
of munitions because it was expert in weapons. The civilian agency still
had the tremendous job of controlling raw materials, and semi-finished
products. This meant that War Department supply plans were based upon
"an absolute control of the civilian economy in the hands of civilian
emergency agencies." To imply that Army control over the production
of its own weapons was inefficient or would result in dictatorship,
General Somervell concluded, impugned the devotion to duty, the honesty,
the loyalty, and the professional competence which had always been the
pride of the Regular Army.
-
- The arguments stated in the
letter of Senator Pepper were reiterated on many subsequent occasions.
When testifying before the Senate Small Business Committee on
7 December 1942, General Somervell put the case more briefly: ". . .
it is a cardinal principle of organization and of business administration
that you cannot give a man a responsibility without giving him the
authority to carry it out. Now, what you are advocating in this bill is to
lift out of the middle of the Army's responsibility a piece of it and hand
it over to somebody else, and yet hold the Army responsible for winning
the war." 10
-
- On 16 December 1942 Under
Secretary Patterson told the Truman Committee that many people incorrectly
assumed that the armed forces wanted to take the procurement of weapons
away from other agencies and a few people absurdly believed that the Army
wanted to regiment the American economy.11
All that the Army and Navy were defending during World War II was the
right they already had of supervising the production of their own weapons.
He illustrated dramatically how the flow of munitions from drawing board
to battle was indivisible. Bomb fuses used for high altitude or
dive-bombing were found to be unsatisfactory for the type of low-level
bombing required in the Aleutian campaign. An ordnance officer who
participated in the bombing attacks, flew back to Picatinny Arsenal, and
designed a new fuse. He supervised production changes, and then rushed
back to the Aleutians to teach others how to use the new fuses in battle.
Such an accomplishment would have been difficult with "duality of
control." The civilian War
[286]
- Production Board had a big job to
do, Mr. Patterson declared, and was better qualified than the Army to
mobilize industry, expand facilities, and distribute raw and semi-finished
materials. It also had to provide civilian supply necessary to support the
war effort. There was "no thought that the military departments
should control the American economy." It was essential only that the
armed forces procure munitions which they were best able to procure, while
civilian agencies directed the economy of the nation in support of the war
effort.
-
- In March 1943 Secretary of War
Stimson stated the case once again in a long and detailed letter to
Senator Robert R. Reynolds, chairman of the Senate Committee on Military
Affairs.12
The Secretary vigorously opposed an Office of War Mobilization with powers
over military procurement. The job of providing the Army with munitions
was continuous and indivisible. Dual control would hurt military
operations. The physical job of transferring organizations and personnel
was almost insurmountable. Relieving officers in wartime to serve with the
new civilian agency would hurt morale. Above all, turning over a task as
important as military procurement to an untried agency which might not be
able to do the job was too great a risk to take. The War Department had
the primary responsibility of defeating the enemy, and it ought not be
deprived of tools necessary to accomplish its mission.
-
- When hearings were finally held
on the proposal for an Office of War Mobilization by a subcommittee of the
Senate Committee on Military Affairs in May 1943, the War Department
simply submitted a brief which was published as Exhibit 6. This brief
answered specific questions submitted by the committee about existing
organizational arrangements. The brief concluded: research, design, engineering,
contracting, production, inspection, testing, distribution, and
maintenance of military equipment are essentially integral parts of a
unified whole, and are necessarily so dependent on each other and on
military planning and strategy that no part can be torn loose from the
whole without serious injury to the entire operation and to the
prosecution of the war. The fact that these operations can be abstracted
from the unified whole for the purpose of description must not be
permitted to mislead the Committee into thinking that they also can be
segregated in their actual performance without disastrous consequences.13
-
- Finally, the War Department
transmitted to the Senate Committee on Military Affairs a booklet which
presented the basic thinking of the War Department about its procurement
responsibilities." Again, the arguments were those used before. First
of all, in wartime as in peacetime, the Army should fix specifications for
military equipment, let contracts for such equipment directly with
manufacturers, inspect contract performance, and accept final delivery of
completed items for storage or immediate shipment to troops. Research and
development, modifications in the light of war experience, and production
improvements went along simultaneously with this whole process. Many ideas
for change came from manufacturers, but the Army insisted upon final
decision on the basis of the specific combat
[287]
- needs
to be fulfilled. The Army wanted a unhampered relationship with contract
of end-items weapons so that it could make adjustments in design and
production promptly, without seeking the concurrence of another agency.
Second, the Army maintained that there was a need or
civilian control of economic mobilization generally, and that there were
vital tasks to be performed by such agencies as the WPB, the WMC, the OPA,
and the National War Labor Board. Military procurement could not take
place in wartime without the control over industrial resources exercised
by these agencies. Third, there were necessarily vital relationships
between military procurement by the Army and the Navy and economic
mobilization as controlled by other agencies. The Army, for example,
adjusted its supply requirements downward in the light of available raw
materials, manpower, and productive plant. The Army recognized that it,
plus the Navy and the Maritime Commission, could not claim the entire
available supply of raw materials. There were domestic transportation
needs, utilities systems, clothing, food, shelter, and many other items
essential to keep all industrial production under way. But the Army asked
that it be told approximately what it might expect in various resources
and that it then be permitted to decide for itself how these might be most
advantageously used in fixing and modifying production schedules. The Army
thought that the relative spheres of competence between military
procurement and economic mobilization could be drawn in general terms and
that the necessary collaboration could be realized by mutual adjustment
and good will.
- This in brief was the War
Department's argument for economic mobilization to be accomplished
through two separate sets of agencies, one, the military agencies for
military procurement, and the other, the civilian agencies for control of
basic economic resources. The pattern of relationships which was actually
established for the duration of World War II followed the lines indicated
by the Army argument.
- In any event, Congress in 1943
did not enact the proposed legislation for a super agency combining
central economic controls and military procurement. Legislative action
perhaps was discouraged or even forestalled by the President's action in
May 1943 in creating an Office of War Mobilization in the executive office
of the President and in appointing James F. Byrnes to head it. This step
added a new organizational entity which had previously been missing in
Army thinking. The Byrnes office was not the super agency proposed in the
pending legislation. It did not disturb the existing responsibilities of
the military procurement agencies and of the central civilian control
agencies. It became instead a formalized or institutionalized means
whereby the President's top authority could be made effective in settling
any controversies which might arise between the military and civilian
agencies.
- The War Department subsequently
never had reason but to welcome the addition of this unit in the Executive
Office of the President set up to exercise watchful and friendly oversight
of all phases of economic mobilization.
-
Did the Army Want Control of the Civilian Economy?
-
- The War Department case just
summarized should be sufficient to disprove the charge that it wanted
control of all
[288]
- machinery and of all policies
governing mobilization of the nation's economic resources for war. But
this charge was so frequently and irresponsibly made that a few additional
words may be warranted.
- In his testimony before the
Senate Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program, Under
Secretary Patterson had deplored the fact that people were being led to
believe that the Army wanted to take over the civilian economy. "How
that story got started I do not know," he said at the time.15
Whatever its source, the story gained credence as it passed from tongue to
tongue, and became a favorite topic among journalists.16
It finally came to be accepted as fact in certain official reports. For
example, the report The United States at War, prepared in the
Bureau of the Budget, states:
-
- . . it was the doctrine of the
Army that the military should take control of all elements of the economy
needed for war, once war was declared. Under "total" war, this
would include total control of the Nation, its manpower, its facilities,
its economy . . . the Army never gave up the effort to increase its
control in these areas .... [Military leaders] never abandoned the sincere
conviction that they could run things better and more expeditiously than
could civilians. This approach was involved, for example, in the
transition from the Production Requirements Plan to the Controlled
Materials Plan, as is explained below. Similarly, when the WPB, after a
bitter struggle in which the President made the decision, reestablished
its right to control production schedules, the military promptly
reestablished, if it did not actually extend, its influence through the
Production Executive Committee and the Staff which surrounded the
Executive Vice Chairman.17
-
- Similar charges, coupled with
direct personal attacks upon General Somervell, are repeated even more
extensively in the official history of the War Production Board.18
This history attributes the ineffectiveness of the March 1942 agreement
between WPB and the War Department largely to General Somervell's
personality and to ASF empire-building. Ignoring Mr. Eberstadt's
refutation of the charge, this official history cites as evidence of
military desire to control the economy: Somervell's proposal for WPB
reorganization, the military attitude on priority ratings, and WPB
difficulty in checking on military procurement. Nelson's relations with
the Navy, it suggests, were not as stormy as those with the War
Department. The implication, of the WPB history is that if the WPB had
been dealing with almost any individual in the War Department except
General Somervell, relations would have been better. A personal attack
upon General Somervell fails to take into account the fact that his
attitude on economic mobilization reflected the combined thinking of his
staff, and that the reasoning on which this attitude was based convinced
men like Patterson, Stimson, and later Byrnes, to draw a distinction
between direct military procurement and civilian control of economic
resources.
-
- Certainly the question whether it
is possible to draw a line in wartime between military procurement and
control of economic resources is a serious one deserving the most
thoughtful, as well as the most unbiased, consideration. War Department
statements of its position always assumed that it was possible to draw
such a line, and that its attitude was not inconsistent with civilian
control of the nation's economy. As stated earlier, there never was any
[289]
- attempt by the Army to deny the
need for central civilian direction of national resources and there never
was any proposal that these functions should be transferred to the Army or
Navy.19
The War Department recognized that "ours is a civilian
government"; the War Department itself was headed by civilians. While
many top positions in procurement and supply activities were held by
professional soldiers, 96 percent of all officers in the ASF and the AAF
involved in procurement activities had been recruited from civilian life.
"The American military system from the beginning, has been built upon
the fundamental distrust of a standing Army . . . . But in time of war, by
virtue of our system our Army has always, by necessity, been a citizen
Army." 20
-
- It may well be asked: What basis
was there in fact for the accusation of military desire to control the
civilian economy? The charges were always vague in nature. For example,
the volume published by the Bureau of the Budget reports: "General
Somervell found time to prepare an elaborate plan for the organization of
WPB which would have placed complete control of WPB and of the economy
under the joint Chiefs of Staff:" 21
Similarly, in referring to the same episode, the official history of the
WPB argued that General Somervell's plan would have "placed the
apportionment of materials for the essential civilian economy under the
military," and would have "assigned to the military
responsibility for the establishment of policies to govern resources
mobilization, use and apportionment." 22
The fact of the matter is that Somervell's suggestions did not put forth
what they are thus purported to have said. The organization chart
submitted with the text clearly showed the WPB directly under the
President and not under the
Combined Chiefs of Staff. General Somervell suggested only that a Combined
Resources Board (a new designation for the already existing Combined Raw
Materials Board) be placed under the Combined Chiefs of Staff, but with
Mr. Harry Hopkins as chairman. Nowhere in the report was it proposed that
any military body take over control of the civilian economy.
-
- Undoubtedly the specter of the
ANMB greatly confused military relations with the WPB in 1942. It had been
the ANMB which officially published the various industrial mobilization
plans during the 1930's. The 1939 plan had pointed out that while these
plans had been prepared by Army and Navy officers, "Their operation
will be undertaken by civilian administrators appointed by the
President." 23
Only if there was a delay in creating a central civilian War Resources
Administration would the ANMB assume the responsibility for limited
guidance of industrial effort. 24
When the WPB was created on 16 January 1942, the executive order provided
that "the Army and Navy Munitions Board shall report to the President
through the Chairman of the War Production Board."
-
- With Mr. Eberstadt as chairman of
the ANMB after December 1941, there were several early attempts to make
the board an important means of co-ordinating Army and Navy procurement
activities and of "advocating the interests of Army
[290]
- and Navy" in WPB councils.25
Subsequently, through June and July 1942 a good deal of confusion existed
about what the ANMB was supposed to be, what it was supposed to do, and
how it was related to the WPB. Mr. Eberstadt refused to join the WPB staff
in July 1942 because the position offered him was to be circumscribed by
competing jurisdictions. Then an agreement was made on 25 July which
provided for the continuance of the ANMB to "formulate and advocate
before WPB the requirements of the Services, to reconcile conflicts
arising between the Services with respect to such requirements," and
to assign representatives of the services to appropriate divisions of WPB
upon WPB approval.26
Because the discussions in May, June, and July on a revised priorities
directive and the relative merits of "horizontal" versus
"vertical" allocations of raw materials were conducted in the
name of the ANMB, there was still further misunderstanding. Matters
improved somewhat when that organization virtually ceased to exist and Mr.
Eberstadt joined the WPB in September 1942.
-
- The importance of the ANMB has
been greatly exaggerated in the official history of the WPB. A few
comments may help to clarify the situation. The Army and Navy Munitions
Board, from the date of its creation in 1922 until 1940, was never an
important administrative agency. The staff of the Assistant Secretary of
War, under the fiction that it was also the staff of the ANMB, carried on
economic mobilization planning. Though the Assistant Secretary of the Navy
joined in approving industrial mobilization plans, the Navy's
participation was limited.
-
- About the time of Pearl Harbor
both Under Secretary of War Patterson and Under
Secretary of the Navy Forrestal did have the idea that the ANMB might be
built into an important agency for collaboration of the two departments.
Mr. Eberstadt had actually been asked to become its chairman in order to
achieve that purpose. The idea proved abortive, however, for several
reasons. Navy procurement officers were not much interested in
collaboration. The WPB questioned the need for the ANMB and looked upon it
as a rival. The staff of the OUSW on 9 March 1942 became the staff of the
Commanding General, ASF, and was thereafter to become primarily concerned
with supervising and expediting the procurement operations of the seven
technical services with a command authority never enjoyed as a part of the
Under Secretary's office. And then some degree of procurement and supply
collaboration between the Army and Navy was worked out under the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.
-
- If it hadn't been for Mr.
Eberstadt personally, the ANMB would probably have withered away entirely
in the spring of 1942. While Mr. Eberstadt became a spokesman on raw
materials problems for Under Secretary Patterson and General Somervell of
the War Department, and for Under Secretary Forrestal and Vice Admiral S.
M. Robinson of the Navy, the real work on these questions was done in
Somervell's staff. Actually, the ASF, the AAF, Admiral Robinson's Office
of Procurement and Material, and the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics tended to
develop their own separate relations with WPB. The relative insignificance
of the ANMB
[291]
- was revealed as early as June
1942 in a report prepared by an Army and a Navy officer for Mr. Eberstadt.
This report made it clear that such procurement cooperation as was then
being promoted through the ANMB was confined to priorities, machine tools,
and optics matters27
-
- In June 1943 General Clay
suggested to Somervell that a memorandum for the President be jointly
signed by Under Secretaries Patterson and Forrestal recommending
discontinuance of the ANMB for the remainder of the war. The reason for
this proposal was that machinery for Army-Navy co-operation already
existed, and it was functioning under the joint Chiefs of Staff.28
Although the recommendation was not followed, it indicated how unimportant
the ANMB had become.
-
- The ANMB was never the rival the
WPB sometimes professed it to be. Although, as already indicated, it might
have developed into an agency for joint Army-Navy procurement
co-operation, neither the Army nor the Navy pushed for such a sphere of
operation in 1942 or 1943. Somervell was too busy endeavoring to make the
Army Service Forces an effective agency for procurement and supply
activities within the War Department. The Navy was never greatly
interested in any top machinery to push procurement collaboration between
the two departments.
-
- In the light of what actually
happened, therefore, it is difficult to understand the fear of the ANMB
which is voiced in the official history of the WPB. The Army and Navy
Munitions Board for a brief time was a means for War and Navy Department
collaboration in a relatively limited sphere-it merely attempted to define
and clarify relations between the armed forces and the WPB on control over
the distribution of raw materials. With the adoption of the Controlled
Materials Plan these relations were defined to the satisfaction of the
Army, at any rate, and the ANMB simply disappeared.
-
- Mr. Nelson's own memoirs may give
a basic clue to WPB-ASF difficulties. On the one hand, Mr. Nelson
continually asserts that he did not want to calculate military supply
requirements or let military contracts. He indicates his general approval
of the 12 March 1942 agreement, but never seems to realize that every
subsequent quarrel with Somervell and the Army which he records involved
some basic modification of that agreement. If the agreement was
satisfactory, Mr. Nelson fails to make clear why the Army, and Somervell
in particular, should not have objected to its unilateral abrogation. It
would seem that Mr. Nelson saw the possibility of a dividing line between
military procurement and central control of economic resources but never
quite understood it.
-
- Incidentally, it should again be
emphasized that it was Nelson, among the top officials of the WPB, who
found it most difficult to get along with Somervell. Mr. Wilson, after the
initial flurry over the determination of his authority had subsided,
developed increasingly co-operative relationships with Army and Navy
personnel. The Production Executive Committee became an agency making for
harmony between the WPB and the armed forces, as well as an instrument for
outstanding production accomplishment. General Somervell felt that Mr.
Wilson's
[292]
- contributions to the war effort
were never fully appreciated, and he regretted the interval of WPB
feuding which led to Mr. Wilson's resignation in 1944. After J. A. Krug
replaced Nelson as chairman of the WPB, relations between the WPB and the
ASF continued to be cordial.
-
- All discussion about civilian
control of the economy was, as far as the War Department was concerned,
completely irrelevant. The real problem was mobilization of the nation's
economy through separate, if interrelated, agencies for military
procurement and central direction of economic resources. The War
Department held that this kind of organizational arrangement was not only
feasible but also indispensable in a war where logistics and strategy were
so basically intertwined. There is nothing in the report of the Bureau of
the Budget or in the history of the WPB which conclusively demonstrates
that this position was organizationally unworkable. All the personality
conflicts and the disposition of some persons to shift the argument to the
ideological level of "civilian versus military" control of the
economy should not conceal the real issue: what type of wartime
organization will most effectively use the nation's resources in the
effort to defeat the enemy?
-
- The War Department's position on
effective organization may be summarized as follows:
- 1. The armed forces should design
weapons and other necessary supplies, determine the quantities necessary
in the light of the planned size and composition of the armed forces, let
the necessary contracts directly with industrial producers, fix delivery
schedules, inspect the output, and give the shipping instructions for
completed articles.
- 2. The entire military
procurement process could not be divided up into phases since it was
vitally interrelated at each step, with numerous changes in design and
production made in accordance with tests and battle experience.
- 3. No third agency should
intervene between contracting. officers of the armed forces and the
contractor, since otherwise the whole vital relationship extending
throughout the procurement process would be interrupted.
- 4. The War Department recognized
that its procurement plans during wartime would have to fit within the
limitations of other procurement programs and within the limits of the
productive resources of the nation.
- 5. A civilian agency should be
responsible for determining the total productive resources of the nation
and for deciding the amount of production indispensable to the wartime
operation of the entire economy. This was not a job for the War
Department. An increase in the output of raw materials; an expansion of
fabricating facilities; an expansion of productive facilities for the
manufacture of such industrial supply items as wire, generators, electric
motors, ball bearings, and other items used in both military articles and
other equipment; the control of labor; the control of the use made of raw
materials-all these were responsibilities to be exercised by an agency
outside the War Department.
- 6. There must necessarily be
close working relationships between the War Department in its procurement
operations and a civilian agency directing utilization of the nation's
whole resources. These relationships should be based upon a thorough
appreciation of the vital role each agency must play in war production.
The
[293]
- agreement of 12 March 1942
between the War Department and the War Production Board was a satisfactory
statement of the respective functions and relationships which should exist
between the two agencies.
- 7. If procurement programs
exceeded available materials and other resources, thereby raising the
question of what should receive priority, the highest military agency, the
joint Chiefs of Staff, should act as umpire determining the relative
importance of ships as against aircraft, for example, and tanks as against
trucks. Any adjustment in mobilization plans, including the size and
composition of the Army, made to conform to production possibilities,
should be a military decision.
- 8. The War Department should
learn from the civilian agency the total resources available to it and
then be free to use these resources
as it saw fit in producing particular types of equipment. Every adjustment
in use should not have to clear through a civilian agency.
- 9. The responsibility of the
armed forces for the successful defense of the nation must carry with it
responsibility for the means used in achieving the military objective. If
a particular tank was faulty or a particular communications set
inadequate, or if there was a lack of trucks where they were needed or not
enough transport vessels to move the military forces to the desired
destination, the fault must clearly be that of the armed forces. There
must be no possibility of shifting the blame elsewhere.
- 10. In wartime all possible
resources must be made available to the armed forces in their effort to
obtain the materiel to achieve military success.[294]
- Page Created June 13th 2001
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