raw and synthetic materials. One of the key lessons of the First World War was the importance of having regular and adequate supplies of raw materials to sustain the industrial war effort. There grew up in the inter-war years a body of strategic thinking which saw economic preparation for war and economic mobilization as the foundation for military success. It was widely believed that those powers that controlled access to vital material resources needed for war would have greater staying-power and military capacity. During the war both sides waged economic warfare to deny these resources to the other, and shortages of certain raw materials became serious as the war went on, particularly for the Axis states. So important were strategic raw materials perceived to be that states with limited natural resources made efforts to find synthetic substitutes for the important materials they lacked. In the end shortages proved critical only for Germany and Japan, under the combined pressure of naval blockade and bombing.

Some case could be made for arguing that much of the international crisis of the 1930s was caused by the search for more secure and sizeable sources of raw materials following the collapse of an open world economy in the 1929 slump (see world trade). Japan's aggression in the China incident had strong economic motives behind it, particularly control of the mineral and coal deposits of Manchukuo. The Japanese recognized their potentially vulnerable position as a major importer of raw materials, and the creation of the New Order in Asia during the 1930s with the formation of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere was designed to make Japan less open to the threat of sanctions and blockade. Mussolini's attack on Abyssinia was partly conditioned by the belief that it held vast untapped mineral resources which Italy lacked. In the case of Germany the link was clear. From the mid-1930s Hitler wanted to build up a ‘blockade-free’ economy through a programme of import-substitution and foreign expansion. Lebensraum (living-space) in central and eastern Europe was designed to compensate for Germany's limited supply of raw materials by engrossing through conquest the sources of oil, coal, iron ore, and other commodities in the east.

The growing pace of rearmament in the 1930s and the revival of world trade created pressures on the supply of raw materials. The USSR and the USA were relatively immune through possession of large continent-wide resources, though even the USA was dependent for a number of key industrial raw materials (including chrome, manganese, nickel, and rubber) on external sources of supply such as the British Empire. For the other states dependence on overseas supply remained high. The UK imported 60% of its raw material supplies in 1938. Japan imported almost 90% of its iron ore in 1938, and two-thirds of its oil. The situation in Germany was in some respects even worse for it was highly vulnerable to blockade and had an insufficiently powerful navy to contest the sea lanes. In 1938 Germany was almost completely deficient in 20 out of 26 ‘strategic’ materials (see Table 1) and had adequate supplies of only four—potash, magnesite, coal, and zinc. The UK not only had the naval power to keep open supply lines to its empire and the USA, but the British Empire as a whole had adequate stocks of 19 out of the 26 key materials and was a major supplier of at least nine for the rest of the world.

Raw and synthetic materials, Table 1: percentage of world output in 1938of key raw materials in the British Empire, USA, USSR, and Germany

Material	Br. Empire	USA	USSR	Germany
For production of oil and coal, and principle use of key raw materials, see statistics.
Source: Contributor.
Bauxite	15.6	7.7	6.1	2.3
Antimony ore	2.1	1.6	0.0	4.1
Chrome ore	37.6	3.6	17.3	0.0
Copper ore	29.8	25.1	4.8	1.5
Iron ore	12.9	20.2	19.5	6.1
Lead ore	35.9	18.7	3.9	5.6
Magnesite	7.4	16.1	0.0	42.6
Manganese ore	36.1	0.8	41.3	8.3
Molybdenum ore	0.2	92.4	0.0	0.0
Nickel ore	87.9	0.4	2.3	0.0
Tin ore	39.2	0.0	0.0	0.2
Tungsten ore	25.2	7.8	0.0	0.0
Zinc ore	29.0	25.1	3.7	11.9
Coal	24.8	29.0	10.9	16.4
Crude petroleum	2.4	60.3	10.6	0.2
Phosphates	9.1	26.8	15.8	0.0
Potash	0.1	9.6	4.1	62.2
Pyrites	8.9	5.4	n.a.	4.2
Sulphur	0.0	78.5	0.0	0.0
Mercury	0.0	11.9	5.2	1.9
Vanadium ore	34.8	27.3	0.0	0.0
Cotton (ginned)	17.0	41.7	13.5	0.0
Rubber	51.9	0.0	0.0	0.0
Silk (raw)	0.1	0.0	3.6	0.0
Wool	45.7	11.5	7.6	1.2
Cobalt ore	45.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Titanium	72.0	1.1	0.0	0.0

The materials needed to sustain a war economy fell into a number of categories. There were those needed to feed heavy industry and engineering such as coal, iron ore, copper, lead, zinc; there were materials critical for weapons production, notably bauxite to provide the aluminium for aircraft manufacture; there were materials needed to keep the armed forces moving, oil and rubber; finally there were scarce minerals needed in industrial processes for alloys or specialized equipment, such as tungsten, molybdenum, or platinum. All states had adequate access to some of these, but no state had straightforward access to them all (see statistics Tables 6, 7, 8). The high dependency on overseas supply led some governments well before the war to pursue strategies of autarky, or self-sufficiency, by means of which domestic production would be expanded either through exploiting domestic natural resources more fully, or by finding a synthetic substitute.

In October 1936 Hitler launched a Four Year Plan designed to achieve this goal. Iron ore imports were to be reduced in favour of lower-grade domestic ores; synthetic rubber and oil programmes were established on a scale necessary to satisfy Germany's potential military needs in the mid-1940s. The production of synthetic textiles—forerunners of the man-made fibres developed after 1945—was encouraged to reduce Germany's high dependence on overseas supply of cotton and wool. Synthetics were used for everything from parachutes to uniforms. In the same year Japan's leaders initiated a synthetic oil programme to produce 14 million barrels a year by 1943. In mainland Japan strenuous efforts were made to discover and exploit all available raw material reserves however poor their quality. Neither programme reached the planned goals. Japan lacked the industrial expertise and a sufficiently advanced industrial base to produce what was needed (in 1939 only 0.5% of the synthetic oil plan was achieved). In Germany the programmes were interrupted by the outbreak of war, and though a great deal was subsequently achieved, emphasis was also placed on exploiting captured resources.

The democracies also made preparations for the use of raw materials in wartime. The UK and France set up state-funded programmes to build up stocks of strategic materials in the late 1930s and encouraged the expansion of raw material output in their colonial territories, particularly in Africa, the Caribbean, and Canada. The USA passed the Strategic Materials Act in June 1939 which empowered the bureau of mines to search for all possible sources of scarce materials in the continental USA and to stockpile resources from overseas. By 1941 more than $1 billion had been spent on stocks, and the raw material output of a number of Latin American states was boosted by American investment programmes and generous orders. In this way heavy American reliance on resources from China and south Asia was reduced in favour of supplies from the western hemisphere.

With the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 Germany's worst expectations were fulfilled: the Allied blockade denied it access to overseas markets almost entirely. Economic warfare was initiated across the world to deny resources to Germany, and from 1940 to Italy as well. When Japan refused in 1941 to reverse its military expansion in Asia it became subject to embargoes on key materials, and when this situation precipitated a Japanese invasion of colonial territories in South-East Asia, Japan too was blockaded. Throughout the war Germany, Italy, and Japan had to satisfy their requirements of strategic materials from the new economic blocs conquered in Europe and Asia.

Both these blocs provided very significant supplies; without them the Axis war effort would have been much reduced. German conquests in Europe brought access to Romanian oil, bauxite from Greece and Yugoslavia, Polish coal, manganese from the USSR, and iron ore from France. Thanks to this expansion, supplies of coal were 60% greater in 1944 than in 1936, and supplies of iron ore 140% greater, while Romania provided a large proportion of German oil requirements from 1940 to 1944. In the Japanese case the seizure of Malaya, French Indo-China and the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) made all the difference to Japan's war effort. The NEI supplied rubber, cobalt, and by 1943 the great bulk of the bauxite needed for Japanese aluminium production. French Indo-China and Malaya provided tin and rubber, the Philippines large amounts of copper. Most important of all was oil. The oilfields seized in the Dutch territories produced nine times as much crude oil by 1943 as all the sources in Japan and China together. Without the supply of oil from southern Asia Japan's war effort would have ground to a halt.

The vulnerability of the Axis economies was exploited wherever possible by the Allies. In 1940 the British and French developed plans to seize the Swedish iron ore fields and to bomb the Soviet oilfields to deny these supplies to the Reich. Neither operation was carried out for fear of the political repercussions, though it was German access to Swedish iron ore that precipitated the Norwegian campaign in April 1940. When the strategic air offensive against Germany began in earnest the iron and steel and synthetic oil industries were top targets. In 1944 the destruction of much of Germany's oil producing and refining industries paved the way for the final collapse of Germany's air force and industry, and then of the Reich itself. Against Italy and Japan the western states operated a submarine campaign that created havoc with vital supplies of ore, coal, and oil. In 1944 the Allies sank almost 750,000 tons of Japanese tanker capacity, and supplies of oil from the south virtually dried up. The naval and air assault on Japan's shipping lanes during 1944 and 1945 brought its war economy to the point of collapse (see Japan, 7) even without the relentless fire-bombing of Japanese cities.

There were a number of ways in which the Axis tried to conserve strategic materials to meet these threats. Civilian consumption was progressively reduced and resources allocated to war industry and the armed forces. By the end of 1940, 75% of German steel and 80% of all aluminium was allocated to military purposes. Scarce materials were strictly rationed and quotas arranged between the armed forces and industry to make sure that materials went to where they were most needed. Where the shortage was critical, efforts were made to find substitutes, or to find more rational production methods less wasteful of materials. By 1944 46% fewer raw materials were used in the production of the BMW aero-engine than in 1941. From 1942, when the Speer Plan set up Central Planning, the supply of raw materials was reviewed centrally and supplies granted only to the most efficient firms, with strict priorities. The result of all these efforts was an increase in military production to very much higher levels in 1944 with only modest increases in raw material input. Thanks to increased efficiency and rationing Germany remained ‘blockade-free’ until bombing reached its peak in 1944–5.

The same course was followed in Japan. Rationing, resource substitution, the collection of scrap metal and rubber and reduction in quality were all used to sustain Japan's war output. The synthetic oil programme slowed down with the conquest of south Asia, but strict control over use of natural oil was imposed on industry and the civilian population. When the tide turned against Japan the failure of the synthetic oil programme was fully exposed. Instead of the 14 million barrels planned, only 1.5 million were produced at the peak. The supply of crude oil collapsed in 1944 and 1945. From 1944 Japan fought from a rapidly shrinking raw material base.

The Allied powers were by no means immune to these problems, but they were in a stronger position than the Axis because they were better endowed with natural resources and had less restricted access to world markets. In 1938 the future Allies produced 57 million tons of steel and 718 million tons of coal to the 31 million tons of steel and 241 million tons of coal of the Axis states. During the war the gap widened through the massive productive effort of the USA (see Table 2). What the British Empire and the USA did not produce from their own resources they were able to buy from overseas. Despite the threat of the submarine most of the world's trade routes were kept open, and new routes established to Africa and the Middle East, while the Arctic convoys supplied the USSR. The western Allies were able to invest freely abroad in order to build up alternative sources of supply when the collapse in the Far East cut them off from the tin, oil, and rubber of southern Asia.

Raw and synthetic materials, Table 2: Output of selected raw materials in the USA, 1939–45

Material	1939	1940	1941	1942	1943	1944	1945
Source: Contributor.
Coal (mill.tons)	394.8	460.8	514.1	582.7	590.2	619.6	577.6
Iron ore (mill.tons)	51.7	73.7	92.4	105.5	101.2	94.1	88.4
Crude oil (mill.brls)	1,265	1,353	1,402	1,386	1,505	1,677	1,713
Bauxite (000 tons)	375	439	937	2,602	6,233	2,824	981
Chrome ore (000 tons)	4	3	14.3	112.9	160.1	45.6	14.0
Manganese ore (000 tons)	32.8	44.0	87.8	190.7	205.2	247.6	182.3

There was also a much higher level of co-operation between the Allied states in the provision of strategic materials. The UK relied heavily on its empire and on American supplies. The introduction of Lend-Lease in 1941 and the onset of American rearmament led to an unprecedented degree of collaboration between the empire and the USA in assessing future raw material needs and agreeing to their distribution between the various economies. In May 1942 an Empire Clearing House was set up for materials produced in the British colonies and dominions. In January 1942 a Combined Raw Materials Board was set up to oversee the whole raw material effort of the Allies and to decide on allocation with the USSR as well. Nearly 60% of the Lend-Lease supplies sent to the USSR was in the form of agricultural and industrial materials and equipment to meet the urgent need for raw materials after the German invasion in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA) and the consequent loss of the Soviet Union's western industrial regions. It was even supplied with high-grade aviation fuel which could not easily be produced by the Soviet oil industry. By contrast co-operation between the Axis states was much less evident. For example, Japan was not given the most advanced scientific information on synthetic oil production by the Germans until January 1945. However, Japan and Germany did send supplies to each other via the USSR up to the time of BARBAROSSA and surface blockade runners continued to run between the two countries until 1944 (see also Axis strategy and co-operation).

In addition to the world-wide control of raw material supplies, the Allies also introduced a range of controls and restrictions at home to conserve raw materials and to divert them to war use. They too found alternative materials, introduced more rational production methods to save on scarcer materials, and exploited domestic supplies more extensively. In the case of rubber, where 98% of American supplies and 87% of British supplies came from South-East Asia, it became necessary to find a synthetic substitute (buna). In a remarkably short space of time the USA was producing more synthetic rubber in a year than had been imported in 1940. The situation in 1942 was nevertheless a difficult one and the gap between consumption and production was met partly from accumulated stocks equivalent to a whole year of pre-war consumption, and partly from a nation-wide collection of scrap rubber which bridged the gap between the collapse of overseas supply and the domestic production of synthetics. Some idea of the sheer scale of the American effort can be seen by comparing American and German output. In 1943 the USA produced 730,000 tons of synthetic rubber, Germany 121,000 tons.

The main threat to Allied supplies of raw materials came not from simple deficiency but from the military actions of the Axis. The battle of the Atlantic and Axis successes in the German–Soviet war both threatened in 1942 to undermine the Allied war effort to a dangerous degree. The U-boat menace extended as far as the coastal waters of the eastern USA, and cost so much in the loss of oil tankers (see convoys) that an expensive oil pipeline (the famous ‘Big Inch’) had to be built from Texas to the industrial centres of the north-east. The threat to British trade was met by a massive shipbuilding programme in the USA (see Liberty ships, for example) which was only finally lifted by the defeat of the German submarine fleet in May 1943. The most serious danger was the loss of the UK's oil supply, which by 1942 came almost entirely from the USA and the Caribbean, 65% of it shipped from the eastern seaboard of the USA where it was, at that time, particularly vulnerable to interception by submarines. For the UK there was no alternative source, for it had been decided in the 1930s that synthetic production was too costly, and oil from the Middle East was consumed by Allied forces in Africa and India. From 1942 to 1944 the Allies lost 6.5 million tons of tanker capacity, which was only made good by the addition of 8.5 million tons of tankers from American shipyards. As a result of this effort the supply of oil to the UK rose from a weekly average of 150,000 tons in the spring of 1942 to an average of 350,000 tons a week by the summer of 1943.

The loss of the raw materials of the western USSR was a more serious blow. It was made good partly from western supplies channelled through Siberia, Archangel, and the Persian route, partly by the fuller exploitation of resources in the Urals and Siberia. The Soviet authorities made war production a priority. Where possible civilian production was virtually eliminated, and when necessary Soviet weapons were produced without scarce materials. The irony was that the German conquerors obtained much less from the captured areas than they had hoped. Manganese production was expanded quickly, but the output of coal, iron ore, and other metals revived either very slowly or hardly at all, while the failure of the southern thrust in 1942 meant that Germany never got the oil of the Caucasus. Much of what was extracted in the USSR was used by the German forces there, while transport difficulties, the destruction of facilities by the retreating Red Army when it employed a scorched earth policy, and a shortage of German engineers to organize the new production, all militated against effective exploitation.

As the war turned against the Axis states the raw material gap between the two sides began to widen. Neutral states which had traded with both sides began to favour the Allies. Latin American governments prohibited exports to the Axis states; Turkey curtailed its supply of chrome to Germany; Spain reduced the flow of tungsten, and so on. By the last months of war the Axis states were compelled to rely on stocks, scrap, and domestic production. Bombing and submarine attack eroded the raw material base through continuous attrition.

By 1945 Japanese imports of iron ore were 3% of the level in 1942, coal imports were 3.3%, bauxite imports 0.3%. As a result the quality and number of Axis weapons deteriorated rapidly and the reduction in strategic supplies for German and Japanese industry was an important factor in the rapid collapse of both countries' resistance in 1945.

Richard Overy

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