Word: wpb
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...answer was less a plan than a promise. In effect, Jimmy Byrnes promised that virtually all of the shackles would be dropped from business when Germany quit on V-E day. The momentum of war production in 1944 would practically be enough to win the war against Japan. And WPB, which controlled the U.S. industrial economy, would shrivel to a vermiform appendix, which the end of the Jap war would snip...
...when burly, black-haired Julius Krug came back to head WPB his coming was like the arrival of a friend to attend the last rites. In this governmental frame of mind, the lid was pried off civilian production, ready to be thrown away when V-E day came tomorrow - or the day after...
...Problems. More production meant the building of more plants, although Nelson had said smugly: the war machine is built. In August WPB still thought no new plants would be needed. But from November on as German resistance stiffened into a crashing offensive, the Army hastily reconsidered. WPBoss Krug had dumped on his desk plans to build one billion dollars' worth of new war plants. These would be for high-octane gas (the octane shortage had been "solved" months ago), for tires (the rubber problem had been "solved"), for jet motors and scores of brand-new weapons...
...these plants would be operating for at least seven months. In the meantime, WPB planned to take facilities out of civilian production. This would hurt. Much of the fat was gone from the civilian cupboard. For example, the hoard of new passenger cars (530,000 in 1942) was below 15,000. After three years of war, civilians might finally be pinched hard...
...long the pinch would last, no one in WPB would guess. The Department of Commerce predicted that war production this year, based on present schedules, will drop below that of 1944. But this will happen only if present schedules remain unchanged. The probabilities are that many of them will be changed-upwards. As the year closed the lesson was plain for all the U.S. to read: in war there is never enough...