In two world wars, the richer countries mobilized their economiesmore successfully than others. How may we explain this? Identify and account for the most significant deviations from this rule.

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In two world wars, the richer countries mobilized their economies

more successfully than others. How may we explain this? Identify and account for the most significant deviations from this rule.

It is widely believed that military dominance was one of the key factors that led to the success of the allied powers in the World Wars. In both the wars, the coalition that won no doubt had a superior military strength. They fielded far greater number of soldiers and military equipment. In fact in World War I, the Allied army outnumbered the Central Powers by more than 60% and fielded almost double the amount of military equipment. In World War II the Allied armies fielded about 40% more soldiers and the military equipment advantage was similar to that of World War I .But a more in depth study of the economics of the wars would reveal that the ability of the nations to mobilize their economic resources for the purpose of war played an equally important role in the outcome of the war. The world mobilizing literally means ‘The act of assembling, equipping, and preparing military and naval forces for active hostilities’ i.e. to assemble and marshal economic resources for the purpose of war. Mobilization has various aspects: military (change in armed forces share of working population), economic (change in defence share of GDP) and production (change in real GDP). Military advantage of the allies was significantly built on their pre war economic advantage i.e. the larger the size of the economy (which includes manpower, land and GDP), the simpler for that country to overpower the armies of the enemy.

By 1914, ground had been prepared to carry out warfare on a level and strength that were unsurpassed. Gigantic armies of millions of men were mobilized and put in the field. The large numbers engaged, the long persistent actions, and the high rates of fire resulted in massive expenditures not only of ammunition but on other supplies as well. The scale of the supply emergency was far larger than anything anticipated by any of the belligerent powers. The fight soon developed into a survival contest in which the end result would depend chiefly upon the capacity of the belligerents to meet the heavy drain upon their economic resources. The main burden of the war fell upon the industries supplying the munitions requirements, but scarcities of raw materials, supporting industrial capacity and manpower soon became apparent. Supply crises in one form or another developed within all the belligerent powers and threatened the success of military operations. Under the weight of these conditions, governments intervened directly in the conduct of industry, transportation, and agriculture. For the first time, industry came to recognize the meaning of the word control-controls over raw materials, foodstuffs, prices, profits and credit. All these controls by the government were essential to divert resources to meet the urgent demands of military requirements but these controls distorted the functioning of the private enterprise economies. In this way, the war economy came into existence.

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In World War II, belligerent countries faced similar basic problems

of economic mobilization as in the first one; tremendous military requirements, inadequate industrial capacity and significant shortages of necessary raw materials. They faced the same problem of speeding up the translation of industry to war production; problem of determining adjusting requirements and capacity; problem of upward spiralling prices and of economic stabilization by price control and associated measures and of setting up huge emergency agencies to handle the various mobilization functions. Only this time the extent of the mobilization effort was immensely larger than in the first one. The ...

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