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揭秘：纳粹占领下的法国竟是个巨大裸体营地
文章简介： 1940年～1945年德国纳粹占领法国，关于这一时期，人们一直以来的集体记忆是饥饿、抵抗和恐惧。但是新书《：糜烂年代》却彻底颠覆了这一观念：在纳粹的占领下，巴黎成了个
1940年～1945年德国纳粹占领法国，关于这一时期，人们一直以来的集体记忆是饥饿、抵抗和恐惧。但是新书《：糜烂年代》却彻底颠覆了这一观念：在纳粹的占领下，巴黎成了个&花花世界&，女性的性解放运动空前高涨。这本书的问世，让法国这个在二战期间被怀疑同德国纳粹纠缠不清、历史混乱不堪的国家对自己的过去更加迷惑。
后面内容更精彩 点击图片进入下一页 出生率直线上升 《：糜烂年代》将这一时期的巴黎描绘成了一个大型聚会，书的作者帕特里克&比松是法国电视台历史频道的导播，他说，&我知道这是一个禁忌话题，一段没有人想重提的历史，这会伤害我们的民族尊严。但是事实是人们接受了德国的占领，没有反抗。& 比松说，在这段艰苦的日子里，为了渡过经济上的难关，巴黎的女人忘掉了被纳粹关押在集中营里的丈夫，和德国的军官鬼混。尽管她们都鄙夷地把德国军官称为&金发野蛮人&&&实际上，这样的&野蛮人&，对法国女人有着莫名的吸引力。不仅仅是德国军官，任何可能帮助她们渡过难关的人，老板、商人、邻居，她们都可以为之&献身&。在食物需要配给的岁月，她们的身体是唯一可更新、无穷尽的货币。 比松说，&在寒冷的冬季，煤炭供应紧张。晚上10点到次日清晨5点的宵禁，成了色情活动的黄金时期。结果，1942年，法国有200万男人都被关押在监狱里，但是当年法国的人口出生率却直线上升。&
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二战美国战时经济
作者：Christopher J. Tassava 对美国来说，与是二十世纪中最重要的经济事件。二战的影响是深远及多方面的，它决定性的终结了大萧条。战争结束时政Ｆ已经成为一个具有巨大影响力的经济角色，它可以管控经济活动，或通过支出及消费部分控制经济。美国的工业通过战争得到了复兴，到1945年时许多工业部门不是大幅倾向（如航空及电子工业）就是彻底依赖（）国防生产。经由战争强化的有组织劳工运动甚至已超过其在大萧条时期的水平，成为对政Ｆ及私人企业的一个主要制约力。战争时期科学技术的快速发展延续并强化了自大萧条时期开始的（科学发展）趋势，并使许多科学家、工程师、政Ｆ官员及民众产生了将会有持续科学创新的长期性预期。同样，战时个人收入的可观增长及生活质量的持续提升，使许多美国人预计自己的物质条件将会越来越好，而当时其他国家则害怕经济萧条在战后卷土重来。最后，全球性战争严重破坏了世界上除了美国之外的其它主要经济体，这使得美国在1945年后享有空前的经济及政治力量。
被称为的全球性冲突源自于，大萧条的动荡引发了各国政Ｆ、经济及整个世界的动荡。例如在德国，阿道夫•ＸＴＬ的崛起及NC党的诞生至少部分是因为ＸＴＬ声称他可以将一个虚弱的德国转变为自给自足的军事经济强国，这样强大的德国可以掌控自己在欧洲及世界事务中的命运。而当时如美国及英国等自由力量正遭受大萧条的持续打击。 在美国，富兰克林•罗斯福总统承诺实施“新政(New Deal)”，这将在新的基准上彻底重建美国资本Ｚ义制度及统治方式。新政在年间跌宕起伏，它缓解了的一些影响，但并没有终结经济危机。到1939，随着德军入侵在欧洲爆发时许多经济指标仍显示美国还深陷于大萧条之中。例如，1929年后美国国内生产总值连续四年下降，然后才缓慢而蹒跚的增长到1929年时的水平，并最终在1936年时才再次突破（1929年时的水平）。 失业率是衡量影响的另一项指标。在年间，美国的平均失业率为13.3%。到1940年夏季，仍然有530万美国人失业—虽然远低于1932年时的1150万人失业（约占美国劳动力的30%），但这依然是数量惊人的闲置劳力资源，同时这部分人常常饱受贫疾之苦。 尽管这些数据令人沮丧，但在其他方面，美国已为战争做好了相当程度的准备。1939年间大量新政项目及创建的政Ｆ机构意味着政Ｆ显然可比1929年时更广泛主动的介入社会及经济事务。此外，新政使美国人对政Ｆ在国家事务中起主导作用习以为常；而且在罗斯福领导下，政Ｆ通常选择引领而不是放任私营企业发展，政Ｆ还采用新的方法规划及管理规模庞大的政Ｆ项目。 战备及转型 当年间战争遍及欧洲及亚洲之时，政Ｆ的领导层就已经把战备视为最重要的一环——通过一些国家级计划为战争作准备：扩充军队、增强如英国等盟国的实力，以及最重要的是将美国的工业基础生产从民用物资转向生产武器等其它战争物资。“转型”是年间美国经济的核心问题。许多行业的公司高层拒绝转向军工生产，因为他们不想让市场份额落入那些没有转型生产的竞争对手手中。为此“转型”成为政Ｆ官员及劳工领袖的目标。1940年，一名全美汽车工人联合会的高级官员（the United Auto Workers labor union）沃尔特•鲁瑟（Walter Reuther）支持主要的汽车厂商转产飞机产品，这推动了转型的进行。虽然该计划最初被许多汽车厂商高层及联邦官员所拒绝，但鲁瑟计划成功促使美国大众意识到美国对战争准备工作的滞后。不过汽车厂商直到1942年才完全转型进入战时生产，1943年才开始大规模飞机生产。 对于当时的观察家们来说，并不是所有产业的转型都如汽车产业转型那般滞后，比如商船制.造业的转型动员就更早及更富有成效。商船制.造业由美国海事委员会（U.S. Maritime Commission (USMC)）监督，该机构成立于1936年，以挽救自1921年起便处于萧条凋敝中的造船业并确保美国的船厂有能力满足战时需求。随着美国海事委员会的支持及资金资助，全国各地开始新扩建造船厂，特别是在海湾及太平洋沿岸地区，商船制.造业开始腾飞。年间整个行业只建造了71艘船只，而在1938年到1940年间，由海事委员会资助的造船厂共建造了106艘船只，随后这些船厂在1941年中又独立建造了几乎同样多数量的船只。造船业成为美国战争准备中的先锋行业是由于其战略出口——现在需要更多的船只来将美国的物资运送到英国、法国及其它美国的盟友手中——另外就是海事委员会可通过（签署）建造合同、船厂督查及用原材料激励承包商等多种措施管理造船业。
挂机一个月得百万，你还蓝瘦香菇么？
作为租借法的一部分，许多由海事委员会的造船厂建造的商船将美国的物资运送至欧洲盟国手中。租借法案出台于1941年，它提早预示了美国能够而且将要承担的巨大经济重任。从各方面看，租借法至关重要。尤其是它使得英国与苏联在美国于1941年12月完全参战前有能力与轴心国作战。（虽然学者们仍在评估租借法对这两个主要盟国的影响，但在没有美国援助的情况下这两个国家很可能可以与德国继续作战下去，看起来租借法为英苏扩充军力出力良多并缩短了它们为夺回失地而向德国发动进攻所必需的准备时间）年间，通过租借法美国出口了价值325亿美元的物资，其中价值138亿美元的物资提供给了英国，95亿美元的物资提供给了苏联。战争决定了飞机、舰船（还有舰船修理业务），军用车辆及军需品是需求量最大也是最为重要的租借法物资，不过粮食也是提供给英国的一种重要物资。 珍珠港事件成为转型的巨大助推剂。美国对日本及德国的正式宣战最终清楚的表明现在美国经济应当转变成为罗斯福总统在整整一年前的1940年12月时所宣称的“民Ｚ的兵工厂”。从华盛顿的联邦政Ｆ官员们角度来看，创建有效的行政管理机构是迈向战争动员的第一步。 战争管理 从1939年开始进行战备到1944年战时生产达到顶峰，美国领导人认识到任由战时经济的发展处于无控情况下带来的风险过于高昂。例如民众不相信美国的制.造商们会停止民用消费品的生产而转入生产战争物资。为了协调经济的增长并保证战争必需物资的生产，联邦政Ｆ成立了一批战争动员管理部门，这些部门不仅采购物资（或安排陆军和海军采购），而且在实际生产中直接监督这些物资的制.造商，并对私人公司及整个行业的运作具有重大的影响力。 虽然有新政及一战动员作为参考，但二战时美国的动员管理部门在战时经济增长的条件下表现出其独有的特征。最主要的便是美国动员的集中度显著低于其它参战国。例如英国与德国的战时经济就由军方及文官组成的战争委员会所监督。而在美国，陆军及海军既未被纳入国家行政管理机构，也不是将军事及民事各部门纳入其中并管理庞大战时经济的最高管理机构。 但相对的是军方对于人力及装备的庞大需求几乎不受限制。经济方面，政Ｆ在相当程度上缩减了民用产品的生产（例如汽车及一些非必需的食品），甚至还缩减了一些与战争相关但没有军事用途的产品（纺织品及服装）生产。不过与陆海军平级的一系列政Ｆ高级动员管理部门与军队并不站在一条线上，这些部门试图对陆军及海军采购诸如坦克、飞机、舰船等工业制成品，以及钢铁、铝等原材料，甚至军队人事施加影响。一个衡量联邦开支及同时期军费开支增长规模的方法是通过比较GDP，战争期间其增长速度极为惊人。 表1显示了GDP、联邦支出及军费开支的惊人增长 表1二战期间联邦支出及军费开支（按照1940年币值计算，单位十亿美元）
战备管理部门 为了监管如此快速的增长，罗斯福总统于1939年成立了一系列战备管理部门，包括紧急管理办公室（the Office for Emergency Management）及其主要分支机构、国防咨询委员会（the National Defense Advisory Commission）、生产管理办公室（the Office of Production Management）及战争资源分配委员会（the Supply Priorities Allocation Board）。这些部门在引导及掌控战争动员方面均没有取得突出的成绩，因为所有这些部门中都包括了两类相互竞争的成员：一方面，虽然私营企业高层管理人员加入了联邦动员管理部门，但他们仍然优先考虑自己公司的利益，如公司利润及市场地位等。另一方面，立志改革的联邦官员们则强调需尊重国家进行动员及战争准备的权利，这些官员多数自新政时期就加入政Ｆ部门了。结果正是由于动员管理部门内部派系阵营分明，“动员管理部门未能充分掌控军工生产”。
战时生产局 1942年1月，作为另一项协调民用及军用生产需求措施的一部分，罗斯福总统成立了一个新的动员管理部门，战时生产局（the War Production Board，WPB），并将其直接置于前西尔斯罗巴克公司经理(Sears Roebuck) 唐纳德•尼尔森（Donald Nelson）的管理下。尼尔森很快就意识到处理复杂多变的战时经济难题可简化到处理一个问题：平衡民用的需求—特别是那些支撑经济的工人们的要求，与之对比的是军用需求—那些服役男女军人及军事、政Ｆ领导人的要求。 尽管尼尔森及其他高级官员并没能完全解决这一问题，但他实现了几个关键经济目标。首先在1942年末，尼尔森成功解决了所谓的“可行性探讨”：行政官员与军事官员之间关于1943年时美国经济是否应转向满足军事需求的争论。尼尔森表明（现在就）将全部生产就集中到军事方面将损害43年后美国用于战争的长远生产能力，他说服军方缩减其需求。因此他建立了一份优先军工品生产计划，以满足大部分军事需求及部分民用需求。另一方面，战时生产局在42年后期创建了“原材料管制计划（Controlled Materials Plan，CMP）”，有效的向各工厂分配钢铁、铝及铜。原材料管制计划在战争期间得到执行，它减少了军队各军种间以及军方与民间部门关于这三种供不应求关键金属（分配）间的争执。 战争动员办公室 到1942年底已经很明显的表明尼尔森及战时生产局已无法彻底掌控不断发展的战时经济，特别是和陆海军在关于是否有必要继续生产民用品上的争吵。因此，1943年5月罗斯福总统成立了战争动员办公室（Office of War Mobilization）并在7月任命詹姆斯•贝尔纳（James Byrne）—一名深受信任的顾问、前任美国最高法院ＤＦ官，以及所谓的“总统助理”—为该部门负责人。虽然战时生产局并没有被撤销，但战时动员办公室很快就成为华盛顿的主要动员协调部门。与尼尔森不同，贝尔纳通过担当战时生产局内对立各派系间仲裁人角色、解决委员会与武装部队之间的分歧、处理战时人力委员会内众多问题等方式成功在各战争勤务管理部门间就协调战时生产达成协议。战争动员办公室掌控了民用劳动力市场并保证了向军队持续提供征召入伍的士兵。 在战时管理局及战争动员办公室等最高管理部门下，各式各样的联邦管理部门管控着从劳动力（战时人力委员会，the War Manpower Commission）到商船建造（海事委员会，the Maritime Commission），从商品价格（价格管理办公室，the Office of Price Administration）到食品供应（战时粮食管理局，the War Food Administration)等一切事务。由于这些部门管理工作的规模范围巨大，有时它们的努力未能成功，特别是当这些部门还带有新政时期过时观念的时候。到美国参战中期时，例如公共资源保护队（the Civilian Conservation Corps）、公共事业振兴署（the Works Progress Administration）、农村电气化管理局（the Rural Electrification Administration）—这些新政时期著名的部门都试图在动员管理部门中找到自己的用武之地但都未能成功—它们都已经实际或实质上被撤销了。
人口迁徙 人口迁移是另一个主要的社会经济趋向。1500万美国人加入了军队，他们成了军方雇员，在各军事基地间来回奔波调动；1125万人最终被部署到海外。持续时期，大约1500万美国平民也进行了大迁徙（改变了他们的居住地）。非裔美国人对迁移表现出有特别的意愿及具有持久性。仅1943年就有70万人离开南方，12万人来到洛杉矶。民众的迁徙沿城乡轴线表现的很明显，特别是沿着一条东西轴线跨越国内各军事生产中心城市。例如表4所示，三个州在1940年到1945年间人口增长了三分之一，这在长期内改变了它们的及经济状况。 表4 年间，州、州及州人口增长情况（单位：百万人）
而第3个社会经济趋向则有点出人意料：那就是民用商品供应减少，但许多美国人个人收入却在快速增长。由于政Ｆ防止价格通胀的努力及通过军事合同给予高额工资补贴，以及提高劳动规模及组织化程度，几乎所有美国人的收入都有增长—白人与黑人，男性与女性，熟练工人与非熟练工人。行业末端的工人挣得最多，1945年制.造业工人的实际收入比1940年时增加了四分之一。这些收入的上涨是战时收入分配“大压缩（Great compression）”政策的一部分，“大压缩”诣在使美国国Ｍ收入均衡分布（注：所谓的“大压缩”Great Compression政策是指20世纪20～50年代期间，美国政Ｆ主导的旨在于缩小国Ｍ收入差距的收入分配改革，这一概念最早由经济史学家戈丁与马戈共同提出。）。还是看那3个在战争中繁荣起来的州，表5显示了其在战后个人收入继续增长的情况。 表5 1940年及1948年
平均个人收入情况
总体而言尽管生产主要集中在军事相关方面，另外还受到定量配给制的影响，但在战争上花费了数以十亿计美元的同时投在民品经济上的消费也在增加。劳动者们没有花钱购买那些缺乏供应的服装及汽车，而是在电影方面消费了大量金钱，这刺激了的繁荣。1943年及44年，美国人（在赌博业上）投入在以往任何时候都多的合法赌资，而赛马场也取得了比以往更多的收益。1942年，美国人在合法**（legal pharmaceuticals）上花费了9500万美元,比41年时多了2000万美元。1944年11月百货商店的销售额比之前任何一年中的任何一个月都要多。配给品及奢侈品的黑市—从肉类、巧克力到轮胎及汽油—在战争期间也蓬勃发展。
终战时美国的地位 宏观经济层面上，战争不仅决定性终结了，而且形成了战后政Ｆ、私人企业及工会成员间在生产上相互合作的氛围，达成合作的各方又促进了战后经济的继续发展。美国在战争中不仅本土毫发未损，而且依靠战时工业的扩张增强了经济实力，这使得美国比它所有的盟友及敌人都具有绝对及相对的优势。 由于经济实力比世界上其它任何国家都要富强，美国的领导层决定使美国成为战后的中心。美国对欧洲（年间，通过（ERP）即“”援助了130亿美元）及日本的援助（年间援助18亿美元）推进了这一目标的达成，它重建了、法国、英国及日本的经济，使之满足美国进出口的需要及其它一些需求。甚至在战争结束前，1944年的通过创立标准、成立如（International Monetary Fund）及前身等机构确立了国际经济事务中的关键方面。 总之，正如经济历史学家•米尔沃德（Alan Milward）所写：“1945年美国在经济上处于比1941年时更无与伦比的强大地位。…到1945年时美国在未来25年的经济统治地位基础已经被牢固确立…这很可能是第二次世界大战对战后世界造成的最大影响。”
The American Economy during World War IIFor the United States, World War II and the Great Depression constituted the most important economic event of the twentieth century. The war's effects were varied and far-reaching. The war decisively ended the depression itself. The federal government emerged from the war as a potent economic actor, able to regulate economic activity and to partially control the economy through spending and consumption. American industry was revitalized by the war, and many sectors were by 1945 either sharply oriented to defense production (for example, aerospace and electronics) or completely dependent on it (atomic energy). The organized labor movement, strengthened by the war beyond even its depression-era height, became a major counterbalance to both the government and private industry. The war's rapid scientific and technological changes continued and intensified trends begun during the Great Depression and created a permanent expectation of continued innovation on the part of many scientists, engineers, government officials and citizens. Similarly, the substantial increases in personal income and frequently, if not always, in quality of life during the war led many Americans to foresee permanent improvements to their material circumstances, even as others feared a postwar return of the depression. Finally, the war's global scale severely damaged every major economy in the world except for the United States, which thus enjoyed unprecedented economic and political power after 1945.The Great DepressionThe global conflict which was labeled World War II emerged from the Great Depression, an upheaval which destabilized governments, economies, and entire nations around the world. In Germany, for instance, the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party occurred at least partly because Hitler claimed to be able to transform a weakened Germany into a self-sufficient military and economic power which could control its own destiny in European and world affairs, even as liberal powers like the United States and Great Britain were buffeted by the depression.In the United States, President Franklin Roosevelt promised, less dramatically, to enact a "New Deal" which would essentially reconstruct American capitalism and governance on a new basis. As it waxed and waned between 1933 and 1940, Roosevelt's New Deal mitigated some effects of the Great Depression, but did not end the economic crisis. In 1939, when World War II erupted in Europe with Germany's invasion of Poland, numerous economic indicators suggested that the United States was still deeply mired in the depression. For instance, after 1929 the American gross domestic product declined for four straight years, then slowly and haltingly climbed back to its 1929 level, which was finally exceeded again in 1936. (Watkins, 2002; Johnston and Williamson, 2004)Unemployment was another measure of the depression's impact. Between 1929 and 1939, the American unemployment rate averaged 13.3 percent (calculated from "Corrected BLS" figures in Darby, 1976, 8). In the summer of 1940, about 5.3 million Americans were still unemployed — far fewer than the 11.5 million who had been unemployed in 1932 (about thirty percent of the American workforce) but still a significant pool of unused labor and, often, suffering citizens. (Darby, 1976, 7. For somewhat different figures, see Table 3 below.)
In spite of these dismal statistics, the United States was, in other ways, reasonably well prepared for war. The wide array of New Deal programs and agencies which existed in 1939 meant that the federal government was markedly larger and more actively engaged in social and economic activities than it had been in 1929. Moreover, the New Deal had accustomed Americans to a national government which played a prominent role in national affairs and which, at least under Roosevelt's leadership, often chose to lead, not follow, private enterprise and to use new capacities to plan and administer large-scale endeavors.Preparedness and ConversionAs war spread throughout Europe and Asia between 1939 and 1941, nowhere was the federal government's leadership more important than in the realm of "preparedness" — the national project to ready for war by enlarging the military, strengthening certain allies such as Great Britain, and above all converting America's industrial base to produce armaments and other war materiel rather than civilian goods. "Conversion" was the key issue in American economic life in . In many industries, company executives resisted converting to military production because they did not want to lose consumer market share to competitors who did not convert. Conversion thus became a goal pursued by public officials and labor leaders. In 1940, Walter Reuther, a high-ranking officer in the United Auto Workers labor union, provided impetus for conversion by advocating that the major automakers convert to aircraft production. Though initially rejected by car-company executives and many federal officials, the Reuther Plan effectively called the public's attention to America's lagging preparedness for war. Still, the auto companies only fully converted to war production in 1942 and only began substantially contributing to aircraft production in 1943.Even for contemporary observers, not all industries seemed to be lagging as badly as autos, though. Merchant shipbuilding mobilized early and effectively. The industry was overseen by the U.S. Maritime Commission (USMC), a New Deal agency established in 1936 to revive the moribund shipbuilding industry, which had been in a depression since 1921, and to ensure that American shipyards would be capable of meeting wartime demands. With the USMC supporting and funding the establishment and expansion of shipyards around the country, including especially the Gulf and Pacific coasts, merchant shipbuilding took off. The entire industry had produced only 71 ships between 1930 and 1936, but from 1938 to 1940, commission-sponsored shipyards turned out 106 ships, and then almost that many in 1941 alone (Fischer, 41). The industry's position in the vanguard of American preparedness grew from its strategic import — ever more ships were needed to transport American goods to Great Britain and France, among other American allies — and from the Maritime Commission's ability to administer the industry through means as varied as construction contracts, shipyard inspectors, and raw goading of contractors by commission officials.
Many of the ships built in Maritime Commission shipyards carried American goods to the European allies as part of the "Lend-Lease" program, which was instituted in 1941 and provided another early indication that the United States could and would shoulder a heavy economic burden. By all accounts, Lend-Lease was crucial to enabling Great Britain and the Soviet Union to fight the Axis, not least before the United States formally entered the war in December 1941. (Though scholars are still assessing the impact of Lend-Lease on these two major allies, it is likely that both countries could have continued to wage war against Germany without American aid, which seems to have served largely to augment the British and Soviet armed forces and to have shortened the time necessary to retake the military offensive against Germany.) Between 1941 and 1945, the U.S. exported about $32.5 billion worth of goods through Lend-Lease, of which $13.8 billion went to Great Britain and $9.5 billion went to the Soviet Union (Milward, 71). The war dictated that aircraft, ships (and ship-repair services), military vehicles, and munitions would always rank among the quantitatively most important Lend-Lease goods, but food was also a major export to Britain (Milward, 72).Pearl Harbor was an enormous spur to conversion. The formal declarations of war by the United States on Japan and Germany made plain, once and for all, that the American economy would now need to be transformed into what President Roosevelt had called "the Arsenal of Democracy" a full year before, in December 1940. From the perspective of federal officials in Washington, the first step toward wartime mobilization was the establishment of an effective administrative bureaucracy.War AdministrationFrom the beginning of preparedness in 1939 through the peak of war production in 1944, American leaders recognized that the stakes were too high to permit the war economy to grow in an unfettered, laissez-faire manner. American manufacturers, for instance, could not be trusted to stop producing consumer goods and to start producing materiel for the war effort. To organize the growing economy and to ensure that it produced the goods needed for war, the federal government spawned an array of mobilization agencies which not only often purchased goods (or arranged their purchase by the Army and Navy), but which in practice closely directed those goods' manufacture and heavily influenced the operation of private companies and whole industries.Though both the New Deal and mobilization for World War I served as models, the World War II mobilization bureaucracy assumed its own distinctive shape as the war economy expanded. Most importantly, American mobilization was markedly less centralized than mobilization in other belligerent nations. The war economies of Britain and Germany, for instance, were overseen by war councils which comprised military and civilian officials. In the United States, the Army and Navy were not incorporated into the civilian administrative apparatus, nor was a supreme body created to subsume military and civilian organizations and to direct the vast war economy.
Instead, the military services enjoyed almost-unchecked control over their enormous appetites for equipment and personnel. With respect to the economy, the services were largely able to curtail production destined for civilians (e.g., automobiles or many non-essential foods) and even for war-related but non-military purposes (e.g., textiles and clothing). In parallel to but never commensurate with the Army and Navy, a succession of top-level civilian mobilization agencies sought to influence Army and Navy procurement of manufactured goods like tanks, planes, and ships, raw materials like steel and aluminum, and even personnel. One way of gauging the scale of the increase in federal spending and the concomitant increase in military spending is through comparison with GDP, which itself rose sharply during the war. Table 1 shows the dramatic increases in GDP, federal spending, and military spending.Table 1: Federal Spending and Military Spending during World War II(dollar values in billions of constant 1940 dollars)
Nominal GDP
Federal Spending
Defense SpendingYear
% increase
% increase
% increase
% of federal spending1940
17.53%1941
47.15%1942
73.06%1943
69.18%1944
86.68%1945
89.49%Preparedness AgenciesTo oversee this growth, President Roosevelt created a number of preparedness agencies beginning in 1939, including the Office for Emergency Management and its key sub-organization, the National Defense Advisory C the Office of Production M and the Supply Priorities Allocation Board. None of these organizations was particularly successful at generating or controlling mobilization because all included two competing parties. On one hand, private-sector executives and managers had joined the federal mobilization bureaucracy but continued to emphasize corporate priorities such as profits and positioning in the marketplace. On the other hand, reform-minded civil servants, who were often holdovers from the New Deal, emphasized the state's prerogatives with respect to mobilization and war making. As a result of this basic division in the mobilization bureaucracy, "the military largely remained free of mobilization agency control" (Koistinen, 502).War Production BoardIn January 1942, as part of another effort to mesh civilian and military needs, President Roosevelt established a new mobilization agency, the War Production Board, and placed it under the direction of Donald Nelson, a former Sears Roebuck executive. Nelson understood immediately that the staggeringly complex problem of administering the war economy could be reduced to one key issue: balancing the needs of civilians — especially the workers whose efforts sustained the economy — against the needs of the military — especially those of servicemen and women but also their military and civilian leaders.
Though neither Nelson nor other high-ranking civilians ever fully resolved this issue, Nelson did realize several key economic goals. First, in late 1942, Nelson successfully resolved the so-called "feasibility dispute," a conflict between civilian administrators and their military counterparts over the extent to which the American economy should be devoted to military needs during 1943 (and, by implication, in subsequent war years). Arguing that "all-out" production for war would harm America's long-term ability to continue to produce for war after 1943, Nelson convinced the military to scale back its Olympian demands. He thereby also established a precedent for planning war production so as to meet most military and some civilian needs. Second (and partially as a result of the feasibility dispute), the WPB in late 1942 created the "Controlled Materials Plan," which effectively allocated steel, aluminum, and copper to industrial users. The CMP obtained throughout the war, and helped curtail conflict among the military services and between them and civilian agencies over the growing but still scarce supplies of those three key metals.Office of War MobilizationBy late 1942 it was clear that Nelson and the WPB were unable to fully control the growing war economy and especially to wrangle with the Army and Navy over the necessity of continued civilian production. Accordingly, in May 1943 President Roosevelt created the Office of War Mobilization and in July put James Byrne — a trusted advisor, a former U.S. Supreme Court justice, and the so-called "assistant president" — in charge. Though the WPB was not abolished, the OWM soon became the dominant mobilization body in Washington. Unlike Nelson, Byrnes was able to establish an accommodation with the military services over war production by "acting as an arbiter among contending forces in the WPB, settling disputes between the board and the armed services, and dealing with the multiple problems" of the War Manpower Commission, the agency charged with controlling civilian labor markets and with assuring a continuous supply of draftees to the military (Koistinen, 510).Beneath the highest-level agencies like the WPB and the OWM, a vast array of other federal organizations administered everything from labor (the War Manpower Commission) to merchant shipbuilding (the Maritime Commission) and from prices (the Office of Price Administration) to food (the War Food Administration). Given the scale and scope of these agencies' efforts, they did sometimes fail, and especially so when they carried with them the baggage of the New Deal. By the midpoint of America's involvement in the war, for example, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and the Rural Electrification Administration — all prominent New Deal organizations which tried and failed to find a purpose in the mobilization bureaucracy — had been actually or virtually abolished.TaxationHowever, these agencies were often quite successful in achieving their respective, narrower aims. The Department of the Treasury, for instance, was remarkably successful at generating money to pay for the war, including the first general income tax in American history and the famous "war bonds" sold to the public. Beginning in 1940, the government extended the income tax to virtually all Americans and began collecting the tax via the now-familiar method of continuous withholdings from paychecks (rather than lump-sum payments after the fact). The number of Americans required to pay federal taxes rose from 4 million in 1939 to 43 million in 1945. With such a large pool of taxpayers, the American government took in $45 billion in 1945, an enormous increase over the $8.7 billion collected in 1941 but still far short of the $83 billion spent on the war in 1945. Over that same period, federal tax revenue grew from about 8 percent of GDP to more than 20 percent. Americans who earned as little as $500 per year paid income tax at a 23 percent rate, while those who earned more than $1 million per year paid a 94 percent rate. The average income tax rate peaked in 1944 at 20.9 percent ("Fact Sheet: Taxes").
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War BondsAll told, taxes provided about $136.8 billion of the war's total cost of $304 billion (Kennedy, 625). To cover the other $167.2 billion, the Treasury Department also expanded its bond program, creating the famous "war bonds" hawked by celebrities and purchased in vast numbers and enormous values by Americans. The first war bond was purchased by President Roosevelt on May 1, 1941 ("Introduction to Savings Bonds"). Though the bonds returned only 2.9 percent annual interest after a 10-year maturity, they nonetheless served as a valuable source of revenue for the federal government and an extremely important investment for many Americans. Bonds served as a way for citizens to make an economic contribution to the war effort, but because interest on them accumulated slower than consumer prices rose, they could not completely preserve income which could not be readily spent during the war. By the time war-bond sales ended in 1946, 85 million Americans had purchased more than $185 billion worth of the securities, often through automatic deductions from their paychecks ("Brief History of World War Two Advertising Campaigns: War Loans and Bonds"). Commercial institutions like banks also bought billions of dollars of bonds and other treasury paper, holding more than $24 billion at the war's end (Kennedy, 626).Price Controls and the Standard of LivingFiscal and financial matters were also addressed by other federal agencies. For instance, the Office of Price Administration used its "General Maximum Price Regulation" (also known as "General Max") to attempt to curtail inflation by maintaining prices at their March 1942 levels. In July, the National War Labor Board (NWLB; a successor to a New Deal-era body) limited wartime wage increases to about 15 percent, the factor by which the cost of living rose from January 1941 to May 1942. Neither "General Max" nor the wage-increase limit was entirely successful, though federal efforts did curtail inflation. Between April 1942 and June 1946, the period of the most stringent federal controls on inflation, the annual rate of inflation was just 3.5 the annual rate had been 10.3 percent in the six months before April 1942 and it soared to 28.0 percent in the six months after June 1946 (Rockoff, "Price and Wage Controls in Four Wartime Periods," 382).With wages rising about 65 percent over the course of the war, this limited success in cutting the rate of inflation meant that many American civilians enjoyed a stable or even improving quality of life during the war (Kennedy, 641). Improvement in the standard of living was not ubiquitous, however. In some regions, such as rural areas in the Deep South, living standards stagnated or even declined, and according to some economists, the national living standard barely stayed level or even declined (Higgs, 1992).Labor UnionsLabor unions and their members benefited especially. The NWLB's "maintenance-of-membership" rule allowed unions to count all new employees as union members and to draw union dues from those new employees' paychecks, so long as the unions themselves had already been recognized by the employer. Given that most new employment occurred in unionized workplaces, including plants funded by the federal government through defense spending, "the maintenance-of-membership ruling was a fabulous boon for organized labor," for it required employers to accept unions and allowed unions to grow dramatically: organized labor expanded from 10.5 million members in 1941 to 14.75 million in 1945 (Blum, 140). By 1945, approximately 35.5 percent of the non-agricultural workforce was unionized, a record high.
The War Economy at High WaterDespite the almost-continual crises of the civilian war agencies, the American economy expanded at an unprecedented (and unduplicated) rate between 1941 and 1945. The gross national product of the U.S., as measured in constant dollars, grew from $88.6 billion in 1939 — while the country was still suffering from the depression — to $135 billion in 1944. War-related production skyrocketed from just two percent of GNP to 40 percent in 1943 (Milward, 63).As Table 2 shows, output in many American manufacturing sectors increased spectacularly from 1939 to 1944Table 2: Indices of American Manufacturing Output (1939 = 100)
1944Aircraft
2805Munitions
2033Shipbuilding
1710Aluminum
197Source: Milward, 69Expansion of EmploymentThe wartime economic boom spurred and benefited from several important social trends. Foremost among these trends was the expansion of employment, which paralleled the expansion of industrial production. In 1944, unemployment dipped to 1.2 percent of the civilian labor force, a record low in American economic history and as near to "full employment" as is likely possible (Samuelson). Table 3 shows the overall employment and unemployment figures during the war period.Table 3: Civilian Employment and Unemployment during World War II(Numbers in thousands)
1945All Non-institutional Civilians
94,090Civilian Labor Force
% of Population
57.2%Employed
% of Population
% of Labor Force
98.1%Unemployed
% of Population
% of Labor Force
1.9%Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Employment status of the civilian noninstitutional population, 1940 to date." Available at Not only those who were unemployed during the depression found jobs. So, too, did about 10.5 million Americans who either could not then have had jobs (the 3.25 million youths who came of age after Pearl Harbor) or who would not have then sought employment (3.5 million women, for instance). By 1945, the percentage of blacks who held war jobs — eight percent — approximated blacks' percentage in the American population — about ten percent (Kennedy, 775). Almost 19 million American women (including millions of black women) were working outside the home by 1945. Though most continued to hold traditional female occupations such as clerical and service jobs, two million women did labor in war industries (half in aerospace alone) (Kennedy, 778). Employment did not just increase on the industrial front. Civilian employment by the executive branch of the federal government — which included the war administration agencies — rose from about 830,000 in 1938 (already a historical peak) to 2.9 million in June 1945 (Nash, 220).
Scientific and Technological InnovationAs observers during the war and ever since have recognized, scientific and technological innovations were a key aspect in the American war effort and an important economic factor in the Allies' victory. While all of the major belligerents were able to tap their scientific and technological resources to develop weapons and other tools of war, the American experience was impressive in that scientific and technological change positively affected virtually every facet of the war economy.The Manhattan ProjectAmerican techno-scientific innovations mattered most dramatically in "high-tech" sectors which were often hidden from public view by wartime secrecy. For instance, the Manhattan Project to create an atomic weapon was a direct and massive result of a stunning scientific breakthrough: the creation of a controlled nuclear chain reaction by a team of scientists at the University of Chicago in December 1942. Under the direction of the U.S. Army and several private contractors, scientists, engineers, and workers built a nationwide complex of laboratories and plants to manufacture atomic fuel and to fabricate atomic weapons. This network included laboratories at the University of Chicago and the University of California-Berkeley, uranium-processing complexes at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington, and the weapon-design lab at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The Manhattan Project climaxed in August 1945, when the United States dropped two atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, J these attacks likely accelerated Japanese leaders' decision to seek peace with the United States. By that time, the Manhattan Project had become a colossal economic endeavor, costing approximately $2 billion and employing more than 100,000.Though important and gigantic, the Manhattan Project was an anomaly in the broader war economy. Technological and scientific innovation also transformed less-sophisticated but still complex sectors such as aerospace or shipbuilding. The United States, as David Kennedy writes, "ultimately proved capable of some epochal scientific and technical breakthroughs, [but] innovated most characteristically and most tellingly in plant layout, production organization, economies of scale, and process engineering" (Kennedy, 648).AerospaceAerospace provides one crucial example. American heavy bombers, like the B-29 Superfortress, were highly sophisticated weapons which could not have existed, much less contributed to the air war on Germany and Japan, without innovations such as bombsights, radar, and high-performance engines or advances in aeronautical engineering, metallurgy, and even factory organization. Encompassing hundreds of thousands of workers, four major factories, and $3 billion in government spending, the B-29 project required almost unprecedented organizational capabilities by the U.S. Army Air Forces, several major private contractors, and labor unions (Vander Meulen, 7). Overall, American aircraft production was the single largest sector of the war economy, costing $45 billion (almost a quarter of the $183 billion spent on war production), employing a staggering two million workers, and, most importantly, producing over 125,000 aircraft, which Table 6 describe in more detail.
Table 6: Production of Selected U.S. Military Aircraft ()Bombers
49,123Fighters
63,933Cargo
14,710Total
127,766Source: Air Force History Support OfficeShipbuildingShipbuilding offers a third example of innovation's importance to the war economy. Allied strategy in World War II utterly depended on the movement of war materiel produced in the United States to the fighting fronts in Africa, Europe, and Asia. Between 1939 and 1945, the hundred merchant shipyards overseen by the U.S. Maritime Commission (USMC) produced 5,777 ships at a cost of about $13 billion (navy shipbuilding cost about $18 billion) (Lane, 8). Four key innovations facilitated this enormous wartime output. First, the commission itself allowed the federal government to direct the merchant shipbuilding industry. Second, the commission funded entrepreneurs, the industrialist Henry J. Kaiser chief among them, who had never before built ships and who were eager to use mass-production methods in the shipyards. These methods, including the substitution of welding for riveting and the addition of hundreds of thousands of women and minorities to the formerly all-white and all-male shipyard workforces, were a third crucial innovation. Last, the commission facilitated mass production by choosing to build many standardized vessels like the ugly, slow, and ubiquitous "Liberty" ship. By adapting well-known manufacturing techniques and emphasizing easily-made ships, merchant shipbuilding became a low-tech counterexample to the atomic-bomb project and the aerospace industry, yet also a sector which was spectacularly successfulReconversion and the War's Long-term EffectsReconversion from military to civilian production had been an issue as early as 1944, when WPB Chairman Nelson began pushing to scale back war production in favor of renewed civilian production. The military's opposition to Nelson had contributed to the accession by James Byrnes and the OWM to the paramount spot in the war-production bureaucracy. Meaningful planning for reconversion was postponed until 1944 and the actual process of reconversion only began in earnest in early 1945, accelerating through V-E Day in May and V-J Day in September.The most obvious effect of reconversion was the shift away from military production and back to civilian production. As Table 7 shows, this shift — as measured by declines in overall federal spending and in military spending — was dramatic, but did not cause the postwar depression which many Americans dreaded. Rather, American GDP continued to grow after the war (albeit not as rapidly as i compare Table 1). The high level of defense spending, in turn, contributed to the creation of the "military-industrial complex," the network of private companies, non-governmental organizations, universities, and federal agencies which collectively shaped American national defense policy and activity during the Cold War.Table 7: Federal Spending, and Military Spending after World War II
(dollar values in billions of constant 1945 dollars)
Nominal GDP
Federal Spending
Defense SpendingYear
% increase
% increase
% increase
% of federalspending1945
89.50%1946
77.30%1947
37.10%1948
30.60%1949
33.90%1950
32.20%1945 GDP figure from "Nominal GDP: Louis Johnston and Samuel H. Williamson, "The Annual Real and Nominal GDP for the United States, 1789 — Present," Economic History Services, March 2004, available at (accessed 27 July 2005).
GDP figures calculated using Bureau of Labor Statistics, "CPI Inflation Calculator," available at
Federal and defense spending figures from Government Printing Office, "Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2005," Table 6.1—Composition of Outlays:
and Table 3.1—Outlays by Superfunction and Function: .Reconversion spurred the second major restructuring of the American workplace in five years, as returning servicemen flooded back into the workforce and many war workers left, either voluntarily or involuntarily. For instance, many women left the labor force beginning in 1944 — sometimes voluntarily and sometimes involuntarily. In 1947, about a quarter of all American women worked outside the home, roughly the same number who had held such jobs in 1940 and far off the wartime peak of 36 percent in 1944 (Kennedy, 779).G.I. BillServicemen obtained numerous other economic benefits beyond their jobs, including educational assistance from the federal government and guaranteed mortgages and small-business loans via the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944 or "G.I. Bill." Former servicemen thus became a vast and advantaged class of citizens which demanded, among other goods, inexpensive, of vocational training an and private cars which had been unobtainable during the war (Kennedy, 786-787).The U.S.'s Position at the End of the WarAt a macroeconomic scale, the war not only decisively ended the Great Depression, but created the conditions for productive postwar collaboration between the federal government, private enterprise, and organized labor, the parties whose tripartite collaboration helped engender continued economic growth after the war. The U.S. emerged from the war not physically unscathed, but economically strengthened by wartime industrial expansion, which placed the United States at absolute and relative advantage over both its allies and its enemies.Possessed of an economy which was larger and richer than any other in the world, American leaders determined to make the United States the center of the postwar world economy. American aid to Europe ($13 billion via the Economic Recovery Program (ERP) or "Marshall Plan," ) and Japan ($1.8 billion, ) furthered this goal by tying the economic reconstruction of West Germany, France, Great Britain, and Japan to American import and export needs, among other factors. Even before the war ended, the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 determined key aspects of international economic affairs by establishing standards for currency convertibility and creating institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the precursor of the World Bank.In brief, as economic historian Alan Milward writes, "the United States emerged in 1945 in an incomparably stronger position economically than in 1941"... By 1945 the foundations of the United States' economic domination over the next quarter of a century had been secured"... [This] may have been the most influential consequence of the Second World War for the post-war world" (Milward, 63).
楼主,你发得太多了.有多少人会去认真阅读你的中英文混合体,你只要简要说明下不就得了?二战前,美国就是世界经济的一哥了,这点不要看大家都知道.但是军事上还不能算一哥.
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