What a Wonderful War!

Nineteen forty proved an exceptionally good year for corporate America. Not only did the subsidiaries in Germany share in the spoils of Hitler’s triumphs, but the European conflict was generating other wonderful opportunities. America herself was now preparing for a possible war, and from Washington orders for trucks, tanks, planes, and ships started rolling in. Moreover, initially on a strict ‘cash-and-carry’ basis and then through ‘Lend-Lease,’ President Roosevelt allowed American industry to supply Great Britain with military hardware and other equipment, thus enabling brave little Albion to continue the war against Hitler indefinitely. By the end of 1940, all belligerent countries as well as armed neutrals like the US itself were being girded with weaponry cranked out by corporate America’s factories, whether stateside, in Great Britain (where Ford et al. also had branch plants), or in Germany.

It was a wonderful war indeed, and the longer it lasted, the better — from a corporate point of view. Corporate America neither wanted Hitler to lose this war nor to win it; instead they wanted this war to go on as long as possible. Henry Ford had initially refused to produce weapons for Great Britain, but now he changed his tune. According to his biographer, David Lanier Lewis, he ‘expressed the hope that neither the Allies nor the Axis would win [the war],’ and he suggested that the US should supply both the Allies and the Axis powers with ‘the tools to keep on fighting until they both collapse.’

On 22 June 1941 the Wehrmact rolled across the Soviet border, powered by Ford and GM engines and equipped with the tools produced in Germany by American capital and know-how. While many leaders of corporate America hoped that the Nazis and the Soviets would remain locked for as long as possible in a war that would debilitate them both, thus prolonging the European war that was proving to be so profitable, the experts in Washington and London predicted that the Soviets would be crushed, ‘like an egg’ by the Wehrmacht. The USSR, however, became the first country to fight the Blitzkrieg to a standstill; and on 5 December 1941, the Red Army even launched a counter-offensive. It was henceforth evident that the Germans would be preoccupied for quite some time on the Eastern Front, that this would also permit the British to continue to wage war, and that the profitable Lend-Lease business would therefore continue indefinitely. The situation became even more advantageous to corporate America when it appeared that business could henceforth also be done with the Soviets. Indeed, in November 1941, when it had already become clear that the Soviet Union was not about to collapse, Washington agreed to extend credit to Moscow, and concluded a Lend-Lease agreement with the USSR, thus providing the big American corporations with yet another market for their products.

American Aid to the Soviets…and to the Nazis

After the war, it would become customary in the West to claim that the unexpected Soviet success against Nazi Germany had been made possible because of massive American assistance, provided under the terms of a Lend-Lease agreement between Washington and Moscow, and that without this aid the Soviet Union would not have survived the Nazi attack. This claim is doubtful. First, American material assistance did not become meaningful before 1942, that is, long after the Soviets had single-handedly put an end to the progress made by the Wehrmacht and had launched their first counteroffensive. Second, American aid never represented more than four to five per cent of total Soviet wartime production, although it must be admitted that even such a slim margin may possibly prove crucial in a crisis situation. Third, the Soviets themselves cranked out all of the light and heavy high-quality weapons — such as the T-34 tank, probably the best tank of World War II — that made their success against the Wehrmacht possible. Finally, the much-publicized Lend-Lease aid to the USSR was to a large extent neutralized — and arguably dwarfed — by the unofficial, discreet, but very important assistance provided by American corporate sources to the German enemies of the Soviets. In 1940 and 1941 American oil trusts increased the lucrative oil exports to Germany; large amounts were delivered to Nazi Germany via neutral states. The American share of Germany’s imports of vitally important oil for engine lubrication (Motorenol) increased rapidly, from 44 per cent in July 1941 to 94 per cent in September 1941. Without US-supplied fuel, the German attack on the Soviet Union would not have been possible, according to the German historian Tobias Jersak, an authority in the field of American ‘fuel for the Fuhrer.’

Hitler was still ruminating the catastrophic news of the Soviet counter-offensive and the failure of the Blitzkrieg in the East, when he learned that the Japanese had launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The US was now at war with Japan, but Washington made no move to declare war on Germany. Hitler had no obligation to rush to the aid of his Japanese friends, but on 11 December 1941, he declared war on the US, probably expecting — vainly as it turned out — that Japan would reciprocate by declaring war on the Soviet Union. Hitler’s needless declaration of war, accompanied by a similarly frivolous Italian declaration of war, made the US an active participant in the conflict in Europe. How did this affect the German assets of the big American corporations?

 Save as PDF