How WW2 America Won The Production War | WWII In Numbers | War Stories

december the 7th 1941 admiral yamamoto's japanese imperial navy destroys the us battleship fleet based at pearl harbor even though he helped to plan and direct the pearl harbor attack admiral yamamoto actually didn't support it he felt it was probably the most dangerous thing that japan could do in the famous film torah torah torah yamamoto is shown as saying i fear that all we have done is to have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with terrible resolve in fact he doesn't say quite those words but he does say something pretty similar unlike japanese high command yamamoto has lived in the united states and has unrivaled insight into uncle sam's potential when asked how his navy would fare if japan attacked the us yamamoto said for the first six months i will have victory after victory but then if the war continues i have no expectation of success [Music] so yamamoto was aware of america's potential and he was aware of the numbers involved in other words he exhibited the reticence to going to war with the united states for the long term yamamoto's prediction proved spookily accurate 179 days after the pearl harbor attack a battle unfolds that conclusively and decisively ends the japanese campaign of expansion almost exactly to the date as admiral yamamoto had predicted very soon the u.s built up from having about the 18th largest army in the world to the second after the soviet union and what's more it builds up its navy from a thousand ships to five and a half thousand how america achieves such a remarkable and speedy turnaround is a tale of ingenuity enterprise and unimaginably high war-winning numbers [Music] [Music] december the 11th 1940 just four days after japan's surprise air raid on the americans in hawaii nazi germany makes clear its intentions toward uncle sam the united states was not at war with either fascist italy or nazi germany however in a long and rambling speech before the reichstag adolf hitler concluded the speech by declaring war on the usa that was playing right into president roosevelt's hands he had been having great difficulty in focusing the minds of the american people on the war in europe well now he was given the perfect excuse to do so from here on american rearmament will follow a policy of germany first it must confront not just the direct aggressor the empire of japan but also the indirect aggressor nazi germany [Music] what america is going to do is to fight a containment war in the pacific but what it wants to spend more of its resources on is feeding its allies britain and russia and then defeating hitler and germany in europe and only then will it turn its full attention to japan even a limited war of containment still requires troops and at the start of the war america has precious few when general george c marshall the u.s army's chief of staff took over in 1939 the american army was just 174 000 strong now that is really small that was smaller than the size of portugal's army by 1941 that had gone up to 1.8 million that sounds big but in comparison to other countries it's still really pathetically small by contrast the usa's pacific fleet almost matches japan's 11 battleships versus 11 japanese battleships 34 light and heavy cruisers versus 41 100 destroyers versus 129 but the surprise attack on pearl harbor shifts the numbers in japan's favor putting 19 u.s vessels out of action still there are three crumbs of comfort america had three aircraft carriers in the pacific in 1941 these were the lexington the enterprise and the saratoga and they were defending midway island when pearl harbor was attacked so after that they then retreat to the safety of the californian coast [Music] to contain the japanese the usa needs numbers in the pacific what the united states needed to do and to do fast was to build up its military just weeks later president roosevelt presents a budget to congress which diverts enormous resources to war production for 59 billion dollars 52 billion is devoted to re-armament he follows this up with one of the most punitive tax regimes in history the number of americans who were required to pay tax in 1941 was 7 million the number required to pay tax a year later in 1942 42 million and that money was plowed straight into realm [Music] roosevelt then deploys his most powerful weapon capitalism while the soviet command economy used patriotic coercion to build its weapons america paid private enterprise to churn out thousands of planes millions of rifles and billions of bombs and bullets once the tap is turned on it's an extraordinary stream of entrepreneurial initiative as roosevelt's war secretary harry stimson said in a capitalist country if you are going to war you have to let business make money out of it or business will not work in this war american business not only works it underwrites one of the most incredible turns of fortune in all of military history [Music] january 1942 at war with japan and germany america must arm itself in washington head of the federal government's production management office william nudsen calls together many of the usa's most powerful industrialists before they arrived he had all of the different contracts spread out on a table so that when they walked in he simply told them have a look and take your pick quickly four-fifths of u.s government contracts have been distributed to the 100 biggest companies in the united states and america has the workforce to handle this one of the reasons why it's possible to get going so fast is that america has a lot of unemployed resources u.s unemployment quickly falls by 9 million wages rise an incredible 70 percent the great depression is finally over it's often said that the second world war was good for america americans are better off quite a lot better off in 1945 than they were in 1941 which is not true anywhere else the secret of their success can be found in the engine of america's car industry mass production one of the big advantages the united states has is a long experience of mass production the car industry in america is bigger than any other car industry each worker had one job it meant that the worker didn't need to be particularly skilled they just had to be able to do one thing which they perfected and did very quickly before it moved on to the next person who did their job manufacturer of the american jeep is so simplified that over the entire war more than 600 000 facsimiles with interchangeable spare parts are built at several factories belonging to both the willys and ford motor companies [Music] this is the willy's jeep this one made by ford and the license from the willys company these vehicles produced in enormous numbers we're talking about building altogether 640 000 of them during the war a third of them going to the soviet army and to britain and this vehicle could carry 800 pounds of equipment or could pull an anti-tank gun and five crew members and go almost anywhere by the end of the war every american regiment has 149 of these vehicles some u.s companies have a surprising head start on others automobile giants general motors and ford have been building armaments for years for germany now it may come as a surprise but adolf hitler had a life-size portrait of henry ford the father of mass production hanging in his office he idolized him for two reasons first his anti-semitism which forded outlined in a series of newspaper articles throughout the 1920s and secondly he admired ford's vision of capitalism so it's no surprise that ford wins an enormous amount of contracts in germany to help germany re-arm in july 1938 hitler awarded ford the grand cross of the german eagle which was the highest honor that he could bestow on a foreign national the following month you see a executive general motors man called james mooney also receiving this self-same medal so you know again you see this reward going across the atlantic for helping hitler re-arm both companies will now cash in on american demand for their mass production know-how henry ford's son edsel proffers a plan to mass produce the liberator heavy bomber for the u.s army air force it is an enormous challenge a car had 15 000 parts that had to be put together on an assembly line well a b-24 four-engine bomber had precisely 488 193 parts so this was something else altogether could it actually be done the ford motor company is awarded the contract to produce the b-24 liberator bomber edsel creates a gigantic plant to construct the plains at willow run south of detroit willow run is awe-inspiring it's a room a mile long by a quarter of mile wide it was called the largest room in the history of mankind you started with these four parallel conveyors production lines and at a certain point it becomes two and then just one the whole thing really is quite incredible but it almost didn't happen the building was so long that it actually poked out from the republican-controlled county that most of it was in into a democratic county that was bordering now that democratic county charged higher taxes henry ford wasn't going to have any of that so what he did was to have the building rebuilt at a right angle so it actually obeyed the border of the republican county and had a turntable inside the building so that the aircraft would come along the production line and then be turned at right angles and carry on being built inside the republican county the number of aircraft built at willow run is extraordinary they were rolling them off at about one every 63 minutes so almost 1b24 an hour at peak production that's a staggering 650 planes a month [Music] a total of one-fifth of america's military equipment will roll off assembly lines operated by car manufacturers but to keep those lines moving requires workers the only problem is able-bodied men are signing up for military service there's a famous recruiting station right in times square in new york city and there were apparently 5 000 people waiting in line in front of it on the morning of monday december 8 1941. by war's end more than 16 million americans will serve the subsequent gap in the labor market needs to be filled as the size of the american military begins to expand it leaves a void in the industrial workplace and it's probably best known the way that we fill that void with women even as early as january 1942 something like 2.8 million women were involved in war work that figure will rise to fully 19 million in 1945 the most iconic woman war worker is a propaganda poster girl named rosie the riveter router the riveter was a striking character who embodied strength and self-sufficiency but she was also feminine she was alluring the idea was to make her attractive to make her into an icon to encourage women to work in war production rosie the riveter was a fictional character but she does seem to have been based on a woman called rose monroe who was actually a riveter and who was working at willow run [Music] by 1943 axis factories are also working at full tilt their most crucial shortage is not labor but something which has spurred the japanese to conquer half of southeast asia and forced hitler to lose an entire army at stalingrad oil the lifeblood of world war ii's killing machines that well you can't fight modern war oil was at the heart of the national strategies of every country involved in the conflict in the early stages of the war nearly every major offensive carried out by the axis powers is because of oil the reason for this is simple a tiny number of countries control almost all the world's oil over 90 of it is in the hands of the allies germany and japan control just three percent for the japanese it was a big problem because they imported almost all their oil for the germans too the situation is so bad that hitler even signed a four year deal with the petrochemical giant ige farben to produce synthetic oil from coal at six times the cost of normal oil german petrochemical giant ige farben agrees to expand synthetic oil production at its plant at leona east germany to 350 000 tons per annum but that's only a fraction of what's required so this is why the russian caucuses are so vital to hitler the oil fields at baku alone produce more than three times what germany consumes in oil every year but the only key oil field hitler's panzers capture is called michopop which produces a useful 2 million barrels of oil per year but the germans failed to exploit their bounty when the germans arrive at my cop they find that the russians have destroyed all the drilling equipment the germans haven't brought along any of their own the most the germans ever got out of my cop was 70 barrels a day in the pacific the japanese fare better by april 1942 the japanese have captured the philippines burma and the dutch east indies it has 70 of the world's 10 it has vast rubber resources at its disposal now and then most importantly it has oil the japanese recognized that there would be sabotaging of equipment that would delay or keep production levels low and so the japanese compensated for that the japanese came fully tooled to repair their captured oil fields some people thought that it was going to take about two years and in fact it only took the japanese a few days getting the oil out of the ground is simple but japan's navy lacks the numbers to protect its tankers for the most part japanese merchant vessels are sailing unarmed and unescorted in their return voyages to the japanese home islands now what can the americans do they can attack these ships with submarines and planes in fact despite gaining the means to produce more oil than iran and california combined japan's oil imports actually sink to barely 15 per cent of their pre-war level the situation got so dire by the end of the war that japan was having to convert its ships to run on coal and the small boats and planes that ran on oil only had enough for one-way tickets suicide missions by contrast america which produces its own oil has massive reserves america supplied 90 of the high octane aviation fuel used to keep allied aircraft in the skies but for the axis powers fuel was so scarce that often the first time a german pilot flew would be in combat that's a real handicap and as a result the allies ruled the air but in summer 1942 nothing seems predictable if japan wants to complete its stranglehold on the pacific it needs to sever australia's lifeline to the usa and to do that it must first destroy the us navy april 1942 in just four months japan has conquered much of southeast asia and they're not done yet they also want to get hold of india but they can't because of the monsoon rains so yamamoto gets approval for a plan that sees him looking south directly towards australia to cement japan's dominance in the pacific yamamoto wants to cut australia off as the last springboard for an allied strike back australia takes the threat seriously and reads itself for a full invasion 61 heavy gun emplacements are placed around her coast and 34 000 troops are brought back from north africa [Music] but before it can threaten australia yamamoto's fleet must first clear the us navy from the pacific part of this thrust toward australia would include a decisive naval engagement on the high seas that would sweep the u.s navy once and for all from the field of battle so that it would no longer represent a threat to continuing japanese expansion to put this plan into action japan aims to capture the strategic strong point of port moresby new guinea the american fleet steams into the coral sea to defend it what follows will be a new kind of sea battle it was the first naval battle in history where the opposing ships never came within sight of one another naval warfare has now been projected by air power not being projected by the big guns the gathered forces look fairly evenly matched both sides have two heavy aircraft carriers containing just under 130 battle-ready aircraft both have nine battle cruisers protecting their carriers the us has 13 destroyers japan 15 but japan does have the advantage of an extra light carrier japan's fleet heads to a chain of islands north of the coral sea but before hostilities even begin america has an ace up its sleeve a crack team of code breakers named hypo station the somewhat aptly named hypo station was a team of code breakers run out of hawaii by somewhat eccentric figure called joseph rochefort now he was a very celebrated crypt analyst who would famously work day and night just ran on coffee and he actually wore a dressing gown and slippers over his uniform hypo is attempting to decipher japanese naval code jn25 this is a seriously difficult task because that is ciphered using a hundred thousand five digit numbers in order to scramble any messages it's really hard to break but rochefort and his team were able to crack about a third of the code and that was just enough for them to learn that the japanese were preparing something very big in the coral sea thanks to hypo us admiral nimitz knows the japanese are coming and dispatches a force including the two aircraft carriers lexington and yorktown on may the 7th 1942 it blunders into the japanese task force the battle of the coral sea was a complete mess for starters both sides misidentified their advanced ships for the main force and therefore launched their carrier planes against them [Music] they only found their opponents carriers on the second day of the battle neither side had adequate fighter screens to protect their ships the battle takes its toll on both sides japanese light aircraft carrier shoho and u.s carrier lexington are both lost [Music] aircraft losses are almost even too but japanese personnel losses are practically twice that of america so the overall result is an allied victory the united states comes out of the battle and it can declare itself the winner because it prevented the invasion of port moresby japan puts its plans for australia on hold but the imperial navy has not finished taking on the americans yamamoto decides to once and for all seek that final decisive battle and that it will be done at midway atoll the island of midway is a tiny archipelago and u.s staging post it's about 1500 miles west of hawaii and it's just basically three lumps of rock each of which is about two miles across and one of which has got an airstrip by sending a diversionary flotilla toward the aleutian islands yamamoto plans to trick the american fleet into exposing itself north of midway and in range of japanese battleships the japanese imagined that this battle would be a trap for what was left of the united states navy and that they would quickly sort that out but that's not going to happen and that's because the united states knows that midway's the target nimitz even knows the very date they want to attack the 4th of june 1942. yamamoto's bluff is about to be called in fact he is the one being duped the u.s also seeds disinformation the two of its pacific aircraft carriers are absent patrolling the australian coast while another uss yorktown was lost at coral sea none of which is true japanese believe that the american aircraft carrier uss yorktown has been sunk in the coral sea but it has not yorktown was damaged and limped back to hawaii for repairs the initial estimates is that 90 days will be needed to get the ship back in fighting shape but 1400 dockyard engineers pull off a minor miracle in just 48 hours the yorktown is back up and running and it's steaming into the fight admiral yamamoto doesn't know it but at midway u.s admiral nimitz will have three aircraft carriers at his disposal and the american senses an opportunity i'm a huge admirer of admiral nimitz the american commander-in-chief because nimitz again and again made brilliant judgments and his brilliant judgment for midway of course was when the code breakers tell nimitz that the japanese are going for midway he decides to bet the ranch and to send his carriers to take them on and to launch a decisive counter thrust against midway and it required huge courage to do this when admiral nagumo launches 108 planes against the us air base at midway he is completely surprised when one of his spotter planes cites an american carrier force steaming in his direction just as his returning aircraft are being refitted on deck the american carrier force timed its attack perfectly it came in three waves [Music] 41 devastator torpedo bombers go in but only six come out [Music] they were shot to pieces by the japanese fighter cover but the devastators had done their job because coming out the sun were 37 dauntless dive bombers and they're able to drop their loads on three aircraft carriers aircraft carriers akagi kaga and soryu take 10 direct hits the flight decks of every single one of those aircraft carriers was covered with petrol tankers bombs aircraft being refueled i mean this is going to go up like a barbecue with the gas left on you drop a match and that's exactly what happens and in a matter of minutes akagi kaga and soryu are reduced to funeral pyres here you narrowly escapes but not for long because we come back and get hear you later and in addition to losing four aircraft carriers 600 of japan's best pilots are knocked out of the war but at midway alone japan lost 70 of its most experienced pilots either killed or injured she would never be able to recover [Music] it really boils down to this this one magic moment where 10 bombs in 10 minutes decide the outcome of the war in the pacific [Music] japanese losses at midway vastly outnumber america's and nippon cannot keep up with the pace of america's industrial output in the next two years japan will build just seven new aircraft carriers in the same time period america builds 90. midway puts japan on the defensive for the rest of the war midway was a genuine turning point in the second world war and certainly the turning point of the war in the pacific it was assuredly the last moment there was any realistic possibility of the japanese winning the war in the pacific was ended that those japanese hopes were at the bottom of the sea and every japanese animal with half her brain understood that but in this global war before they can finally push nippon out of southeast asia the americans must first push the nazis out of africa [Music] north africa summer 1942 the sending home of 34 000 australian troops to defend their country against a possible japanese invasion weakens british general orkin lex desert army germany's field marshal irvin rommel's africa corps will take full advantage rommel launches this absolutely ferocious counter-attack in the desert he's got the italians he's got the full weight of the africa core he's got nearly 100 000 men 500 tanks 500 aircraft this is a seriously big force one of rommel's victories will be particularly damaging to the british a year and a half earlier the british eighth army captured the libyan port of to brooke now rommel retakes it [Music] in a war in which the british have already taken a seriously heavy pounding the fall of to brook has a really bad effect on britain's morale [Music] fifteen thousand allied troops are killed or wounded thirty-three thousand more are taken prisoner 800 000 artillery rounds 13 million bullets and almost 1200 allied tanks are left behind [Music] churchill actually speaking about it said that defeat is one thing disgrace is another he talked about this as the lowest point he experienced during the war rommel's counter-attack was so effective it not only captured to brook but also pushed orkinleck back to a small town on the north african coast called el alamein the british force positions itself on the edge of the infamous katara depression the qatar depression is a huge sunken wilderness right in the middle of the desert it's got marshes and salt lakes and quick sands this is not a place you can just drive your tanks through blix creek style and that's why this was a good spot for the british to retreat to unable to break through rummel digs in and waits it will prove to be a bad decision the defeat of the japanese at midway has freed american troops for use on the western front but no one can agree where they should strike general marshall who's the us army chief of staff wants to mount an immediate invasion of europe churchill does not like this idea churchill's plan is to fight rommel hopefully win and then use north africa as a springboard to attack italy churchill prevails but has to concede overall military command to american general dwight d eisenhower because the americans have no faith in britain's failed generals operation torch the american-led invasion of north africa is scheduled for november 1942. now this gives churchill just five months to succeed before the americans join in and churchill's really desperate to prove a point that the british and our empire can fight this on their own the man charged with delivering churchill a victory is the new commander of the british eighth army bernard montgomery bernard montgomery or monty as he became known to his troops was a very interesting character he was very confident to the point of arrogance some people couldn't abide him yet at the same time he was deeply loved by his own men he had served well in the first world war and he had also acquitted himself well at dunkirk those were the pluses the big minus was the fact that he had taken part in the planning of the disastrous raid on dieppe which had cost 4 000 canadians and british commandos [Music] despite intense pressure for quick results montgomery refuses to be hurried monty's got a plan and it's a plan that requires a lot of meticulous buildup of forces which is slow and takes time america sends montgomery 300 sherman tanks mass produced at pre-war locomotive and car factories this is the sherman m4 tank manufactured by the american car industry it's reliable it's fast at 30 miles an hour if there's a problem with the sherman it's the armor it's very thin and with its slab sides almost any german anti-tank gun can penetrate it and with a hull and turret full of ammunition it's almost inevitable it'll burst into flame it'll brew up rather horrifically they are known as tommy cookers but in terms of numbers if the germans can produce 2 600 tigers the allies by 1946 have produced 49 000 of these shermans it's simply a numbers game and the allies can out manufacture the germans [Music] october 1942 at el alamein 94 000 german and italian troops will face 195 000 commonwealth it sounds like a sizeable advantage but it's not conventional wisdom says that you need three to one advantage against entrenched enemy monty's only got a two to one advantage that's not great but montgomery also has four times as many tanks as rommel and a crucial tactical advantage what monty has access to is all the german radio traffic because the british have managed to decrypt the famous german enigma machine this is dynamite for monty insecure communication is one thing tanks running on empty quite another one of rama's big problems is that he's running short on fuel and his supply lines at that point stretched almost 2000 miles to keep his tanks running he has to bring 5776 tons of fuel along that narrow roadway every single month but a combination of that distance allied air superiority in the mediterranean naval superiority in the mediterranean means that that much fuel simply isn't getting through [Music] rommel had a sufficient amount of fuel on hand to reposition his armor two times but if he tried to do it a third time he'd run out of gas the battle for el alamein begins like something out of the great war at 2140 on the 23rd of october 1942 882 guns manned by 6 000 artillery men bombard the enemy lines for more than five hours the allies will fire an estimated one million shells during the battle then montgomery sends in his first wave this was known as operation lightfoot the infantry had to be lighter foot not to set off the large tank mines that were in their path this actually took longer than was hoped for and what montgomery called the dogfight the war of attrition then started to take place [Music] back in london churchill is absolutely incandescent how can i find a general who's going to win a battle he rages at the general staff luckily montgomery superior stood by him they trusted that he knew what he was doing under pressure to advance montgomery launches operation supercharge operation supercharge is the suicide mission for its leading troops [Music] so when the commander of this spearhead tells monty the dangers monty says yes i know but i'm willing to accept a 100 casualty rate thirteen and a half thousand british and commonwealth troops perish at el alamein but they enable monty's armor to break through rommel's defensive line despite hitler's usual stand or die orders rommel is running low on fuel he cannot mount a panzer counter-attack so he retreats abandoning 450 tanks and a thousand guns rommel also leaves behind twenty thousand axis troops killed or wounded and a further thirty thousand taken prisoner by the end of the day rommel lost almost a third of his army at alamein he lost huge numbers of tanks by the end he only actually had 35 working tanks left [Music] churchill has his victory it's almost impossible to overstate the moral importance of al-alabayn to britain which remained the only major victory of the war that was won by britain alone without any allies it led winston churchill ultimately to say that before el alamein we had nothing but defeats after el alamein we had nothing but victories [Music] just four days later a great anglo-american fleet consisting of 350 warships carrying over 100 000 troops assembles off the coast of north africa when a joint american and british force launched operation torch that was the invasion of north africa on the 8th of november well by that time rommel's situation seemed hopeless but in february 1943 at tunisia's kasserine pass the americans discovered that rommel has a painful sting in his tail the americans had arrived into north africa pretty firm in the belief that they were going to turn things around they were going to show the british how it was done but actually rommel who bear in mind was on the run from montgomery we're still able to teach the americans a lesson at kazarian pass rommel shock counter-attack at kasserine pass inflicts 10 000 casualties it vindicates churchill's call to delay a liberation of france until the allies have sufficient numbers and experience to take on and beat battle-hardened german troops to this day some american historians argue that the mediterranean was a great snare and delusion which churchill set for roosevelt and roosevelt was foolish enough to fall into but i think the american participation in north africa and later italy was absolutely vital to teach the americans what it was really like making war against the germans north africa was where the americans grew up it was where the british were able to consolidate their power and it was very much a springboard for the allies to win the war in march 1943 rommel leaves africa two months later a quarter of a million axis troops have surrendered most of them are italians but that also includes the better part of the africa corps thanks to hitler's uncompromising orders hitler's desire always to fight on the germans lost close to half a million men for absolutely no gain which of course was a total disaster eisenhower bradley patton montgomery each of these generals cuts their teeth in the deserts of north africa in the years to come that experience will help them turn the tide of the war in the allies favor [Music] [Music] you

Channel: War Stories

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Keywords: military history, war, war documentary, military tactics, war stories, history of war, battles, us industry wwii, ww2, world war 2, second world war, admiral yamamoto, pearl harbor, world war ii in numbers, battle of midway, full length documentaries, war factories usa, us navy ww2, us army ww2, eisenhower, adolf hitler, us business, william s knudsen, general motors ww2 gun, mass production

Id: PTtR1hqpnwU

Length: 45min 3sec (2703 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021