Jim Lacey, Keep From All Thoughtful Men: How U.S. Economists Won World War II (Annapolis, MD, Naval Institute Press, 2011)
Author: James Lacey has been the Professor of War Policy Strategy at the Marine Corps War College (MCWAR) at the Marine Corps university (MCU) for the past decade. Prior to that he was a senior analyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Washington, DC. Lacey served over a dozen years on active duty as an infantry officer and is retired from the Army Reserves. He earned his PhD from Leeds University and has widely published books and articles.
Overview: An intricate account of the organization of production in the United States during World War II. How revolutions in both statistics and finance changed forever the nature of war. While the book relates the overall story of how economics dictated war planning at the highest levels, more specifically it tells how three obscure economists came to have more influence on the conduct of World War II than the Joint Chiefs. Because military historians rarely understand economics and economic historians just as rarely involve themselves with the details of war, there has never been a military history that shows how economics influenced the planning of strategy and the conduct of any war. The book includes eight appendixes of primary source documents—very useful.
Central Thesis: Contrary to popular belief and lazy historical writing, economists were instrumental in winning World War II. Economists, namely the three detailed in the book were able to reorient American strategic planning around achievable production goals, rather than more or less imaginary targets invented by the military, politicians, or civil servants.
Historiography: The book directly attacks the historical record asserting that Gen. Albert Wedemeyer single handedly devised the Victory Program. Instead, Lacey shows that this was based on merely one interview with Wedemeyer and no other sources, so Lacey dove in.
Scope of Book: Describes the bureaucratic fights between civilian experts and military staff over the extent and speed to which the American economy — hardly firing on all cylinders as war began in Europe — could be reoriented to produce the munitions necessary for a serious military effort.
- At the center of Lacey’s story are three economists who, he shows, had far-sighted views of the true capacity of the American economy: the reasonably well-known Simon Kuznets and two nearly forgotten figures, Robert Nathan and Stacy May.
- Throughout the book, Lacey insinuates that American mobilization was hardly a unified effort, that American leaders viciously disagreed with each other about the shape of the war, and that Allied victory in World War II was neither foreordained nor easily achieved.
- Initially, the military and FDR generated wish lists for production that didn’t correlate with actual American labor and financial capabilities—largely because, well, no one ever thought to bother correlating them.
- Underlying the logistics of war in general and of World War II in particular is that military strategy generates requirements, while the feasibility of meeting requirements depends on both existing production and financing capabilities, and on opportunities and realistic possibilities for expanding these capabilities within a specified time period.
- Economists pushed the military toward ambitious plans, but the military, jaded by World War I experiences, were unwilling to provide workable guestimates prior to Pearl harbor. In 1942, economists armed with statistics and an in-depth, professional knowledge of the complexities of finance. They conducted feasibility studies and determined possibilities and priorities. They organized endless money flows to finesse war’s age-old problem: how to keep the cash from running out.
- Lacey asserts that the shambling results of this looming production debacle, if uncorrected, could have cost the Allies the war.
- Ultimately, Lacey claims these economists had more influence on the conflict’s conduct than the Joint Chiefs.
- Devising a workable mobilization plan required knowing how much slack there was in the economy, given its “normal” or peacetime potential, how much additional labor could be mobilized among woman and those retired given the extraordinary conditions, and how much civilian consumption could be depressed without adversely affecting the war effort. But a plan could not go forward without numbers for projected men in uniform at specific dates, as well as targets for planes, tanks, ships, and munitions.
- All told, Kuznet’s feasibility study of August 12, 1942 saw American material reaching capacity for cross-channel invasion capabilities by late spring 1944. Marshall and his lieutenants thus duly altered their plans for a cross-channel invasion to reflect the forecast realities of American industrial production.