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The home front is the name given to the activities of the civilians during a state of total war. Life on the home front during World War II was a significant part of the war effort for all participants and had a major impact on the outcome of the war.
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The major powers devoted 50–60% of their total GDP to war production at the peak in 1943. The Allies produced about three times as much in munitions as the Axis powers.
| Country/Alliance | Year | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1935-9 ave | 1940 | 1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | Total 1939–44
|
|
| U.S.A. | 0.3 | 1.5 | 4.5 | 20.0 | 38.0 | 42.0 | 106.3 |
| Britain | 0.5 | 3.5 | 6.5 | 9.0 | 11.0 | 11.0 | 41.5 |
| U.S.S.R | 1.6 | 5.0 | 8.5 | 11.5 | 14.0 | 16.0 | 56.6 |
| Allies Total | 2.4 | 10.0 | 20.0 | 41.5 | 64.5 | 70.5 | 204.4 |
| Germany | 2.4 | 6.0 | 6.0 | 8.5 | 13.5 | 17.0 | 53.4 |
| Japan | 0.4 | 1.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 4.5 | 6.0 | 16.9 |
| Axis Total | 2.8 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 11.5 | 18.0 | 23.0 | 70.3 |
Source: Goldsmith data in Harrison (1988) p. 172
| Country | Year | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1937 | 1939 | 1940 | 1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945 | |
| Japan | 100 | 107 | 109 | 111 | 108 | 99 | 93 | 78 |
| Germany | 100 | 108 | 117 | 108 | 105 | 95 | 94 | 85 |
| USA | 100 | 96 | 103 | 108 | 116 | 115 | 118 | 122 |
Source: Jerome B Cohen, Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction (1949) p 354
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, conquering it in three weeks, as the Soviets invaded the eastern areas. During the German occupation, there were two distinct civilian uprisings in Warsaw, one in 1943, the other in 1944. The first took place in an entity, less than two square miles in area, which the Germans carved out of the city and called "Ghetto Warschau." Into the thus created Ghetto, around which they built high walls, the Germans crowded 550,000 Polish Jews, many from the Polish provinces. At first, people were able to go in and out of the Ghetto, but soon the Ghetto's border became an "iron curtain." Unless on official business, Jews could not leave it, and non-Jews, including Germans, could not enter. Entry points were guarded by German soldiers. Because of extreme conditions and hunger, mortality in the Ghetto was high. Additionally, in 1942, the Germans moved 400,000 to Treblinka where they were gassed on arrival. When, on April 19, 1943, the Ghetto Uprising commenced, the population of the Ghetto had dwindled to 60,000 individuals. In the following three weeks, virtually all died as the Germans fought to put down the uprising and systematically destroyed the buildings in the Ghetto. [1]
The uprising by Polish Catholics began on August 1, 1944 when the Polish underground, the "Home Army," aware that the Soviet Army had reached the eastern bank of the Vistula, sought to liberate Warsaw much as the French resistance had liberated Paris a few weeks earlier. Stalin had his own group of Communist leaders for the new Poland and did not want the Home Army or its Catholic leaders (based in London) to control Warsaw. So he halted the Soviet offensive and gave the Germans free rein to suppress it. During the ensuing 63 days, 250,000 Poles of the Home Army surrendered to the Germans. After the Germans forced all the surviving population to leave the city, Hitler ordered that any buildings left standing be dynamited and 98% of buildings in Warsaw were destroyed.[2]
The UK's total mobilization during this period proved to be successful in helping topple the Axis Powers, but carried a steep cost postwar. Public opinion strongly supported the war, and the level of sacrifice was high. The war was a "people's war" that enlarged democratic aspirations and produced promises of a postwar welfare state.
In mid-1940, the R.A.F. was called on to fight the Battle of Britain but it had suffered serious losses. It lost 458 aircraft—more than current production—in France and was hard pressed. The government decided to concentrate on only five types of aircraft in order to optimize output. They were Wellingtons, Whitley V's, Blenheims, Hurricanes, and Spitfires. They received extraordinary priority. Covering the supply of materials and equipment and even made it possible to divert from other types the necessary parts, equipments, materials and manufacturing resources. Labour was moved from other aircraft work to factories engaged on the specified types. Cost was not an object. The delivery of new fighters rose from 256 in April to 467 in September—more than enough to cover the losses—and Fighter Command emerged triumphantly from the Battle of Britain in October with more aircraft than it had possessed at the beginning. [3]
Food, clothing, petrol, leather and other such items were rationed. However, items such as sweets and fruits were not rationed, as they would spoil. Access to luxuries was severely restricted, though there was also a significant black market. Families also grew victory gardens, and small home vegetable gardens, to supply themselves with food. Many things were conserved to turn into weapons later, such as fat for nitroglycerin production. In the countryside there was not so much rationing because there was a much smaller population by contrast to the large number of people in metropolitan areas.
From very early in the war, it was thought that the major industrial cities of Britain, especially London in the south east, would come under Nazi German Luftwaffe air attack, which did happen with The Blitz. Some children were sent to Canada, the USA and Australia and millions of children and some mothers were evacuated from London and other major cities when the war began under government plans for Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II, but they often filtered back. When the Blitz bombing began in September 1940, they evacuated again. The discovery of the poor health and hygiene of evacuees was a shock to Britains, and helped prepare the way for the Beveridge Report. [4] Children were evacuated if their parents agreed but in some cases they did not have a choice. The children were only allowed to take a few things with them, including a gas mask, books, money, clothes, ration book and some small toys.
During rapid German advances in the early months of the war, nearly reaching the cities of Moscow and Leningrad, the bulk of Soviet industry which could not be evacuated was either destroyed or lost due to German occupation. Agricultural production was interrupted, with grain harvests left standing in the fields that would later cause hunger reminiscent of the early 1930s. In one of the greatest feats of war logistics, industries were evacuated on an enormous scale, with 1523 factories dismantled and shipped eastwards along four principal routes to the Caucasus, Central Asian, Ural and Siberian regions.[5] In general, the tools, dies and production technology were moved, along with the blueprints and their management, engineering staffs and skilled labour.
The whole of the Soviet Union become dedicated to the war effort. Conditions were severe. In Leningrad, under German siege, over a million people died of starvation and disease. Many factory workers were teenagers, women and old people. Despite harsh conditions, the war led to a spike in Soviet nationalism and unity. Soviet propaganda toned down socialist rhetoric of the past as the people now rallied by a belief of protecting their motherland against the evils of German invaders. Ethnic minorities thought to be collaborators were forced into exile.
Religion, which was previously shunned, became a part of Communist Party propaganda campaign in the Soviet society.
China suffered the second highest number of casualties of the entire war. Civilians in the occupied territories had to endure many large-scale slaughters, including the Nanking Massacre. In a few areas, Japanese forces also unleashed newly developed biological weapons on Chinese civilians leading to an estimated 200,000 dead [6]. Tens of thousands are thought be have died when Nationalist troops broke the levees of the Yangtze to stop the Japanese advance after the loss of the Chinese capital, Nanking. Millions more Chinese died because of famine during the war.
Millions of Chinese moved to the Western regions of China to avoid Japanese invasion. Cities like Kunming ballooned with new arrivals. Entire factories and universities were often taken along for the journey. Japan captured major coastal cities like Shanghai early in the war; cutting the rest of China off from its chief source of finance and industry.
The city of Chongqing became the most frequently bombed city in history. [7]
Though China received aid from the United States, China did not have sufficient infrastructure to properly arm or even feed its military forces, let alone civilians. Much of the aid was also funneled away through corruption.
Communist forces led by Mao were generally more successful at getting support than Nationalists. Based mainly in Northern China, they worked with local villages to counter the overstretched Imperial Army with guerrilla tactics.
In occupied territories under Japanese control, civilians were treated harshly.
With the massive demands of manpower for the British Indian Army fighting in European, African and Burmese theaters of war, there was a shortage of able bodied men for agriculture. Further military restrictions -the British were afraid Bengali plains might fall into Japanese hands, so cultivation of border areas was prevented, all rice stocks were moved back towards Calcutta), and there was forced procurement of rice for the war effort in Europe. This led to severe food shortages, culminating in the Bengal famine in 1942 in which an estimated 3 million to 7 million Indians are said to have perished. At the time, this famine was considered as bad an atrocity as the Germans starvation of the Polish Jews and was in purely numerical terms a much larger catastrophe. It has been found that a number of images found in holocaust museums around the world as pictures of people starved to the bone are actually mislabeled photographs of Bengali civilians under British rule. In recent years, the famine has been explained as a combination of a natural drought as well as the military restrictions but reliable records of whether there was any natural element to the famine are not be found.
With the British recruiting Indian soldiers in large numbers as well as the Japanese recruiting Indian expatriates into the Indian National Army (INA), a state of civil war existed on the east Indian border with Indians killing Indians. This, in turn, led to civilians who supported either the British or the INA rioting against each other.
Canada joined the war efforts on September 10, 1939. This was only 9 days after Britain joined, Canada wanted to show its independence. Many Canadian men joined the war efforts, so with the men absent from home and with industries pushing for more production, the Canadian government needed women to work in the war effort.
At this time of war many supplies were needed and there was a low supply of goods. Women took the initiative to recycle and salvage in order to come up with needed supplies. They gathered recycled goods, handed out information on the best methods to use that one may get the most out of recycled goods and organized many other events to decrease the amount of waste. Volunteer organizations led by women also, prepared packages for the military overseas or for prisoners of war in Axis countries.
With World War II came the dire need for employees in the workplace, without women to step in the economy would have collapsed. “By autumn 1944 the number of women working full-time in Canada’s paid labour force was twice what it had been in 1939, and that figure of between 1,000,000 and 1,200,000 did not include part-time workers or women working on farms.”[8] Women had to take on this intensive labour and while they did this they still had to find time to make jams, clothes and other such acts of volunteering to aid the men overseas.
Germany had not fully mobilized in 1939, nor even in 1941. Not until 1943 under Albert Speer did Germany finally redirect its entire economy and manpower to war production.
Although Germany had about double the population of Britain (80 million versus 40 million), it had to use far more labour to provide food and energy. Britain imported food and employed only a million people (5% of labour force) on farms, while Germany used 11 million (27%). For Germany to build its twelve synthetic oil plants with a capacity of 3.3 million tons a year required 2.4 million tons of structural steel and 7.5 million man-days of labour. (Britain imported all its oil from Iraq, Persia and North America). To overcome this problem, Germany employed millions of forced laborers and POWs; by 1944, they had brought in more than five million civilian workers and nearly two million prisoners of war—a total of 7.13 million foreign workers.
For the first part of the war, there were surprisingly few restrictions on civilian activities. Most goods were freely available in the early years of the war. Rationing in Germany was introduced in 1939, slightly later than it was in Britain, because Hitler was at first convinced that it would affect public support of the war if a strict rationing program was introduced. The Nazi popularity was in fact partially due to the fact that Germany under the Nazis was relatively prosperous, and Hitler did not want to lose popularity or faith. Hitler felt that food and other shortages had been a major factor in destroying civilian morale during World War I which led to the overthrow of the Kaiser and other German monarchies at the end of the war. However, when the war began to go against the Germans in Russia and the Allied bombing effort began to affect domestic production, this changed and a very severe rationing program had to be introduced. The system gave extra rations for men involved in heavy industry, and lower rations for Jews and Poles in the areas occupied by Germany, but not to the Rhineland Poles.
According to a 1997 post by Walter Felscher to the Memories of the 1940's [sic] electronic mailing list:
The amounts available under rationing were sufficient to live from, but clearly did not permit luxuries. Whipped cream became unknown from 1939 until 1948, as well as chocolates, cakes with rich crèmes etc., and meat, of course, could not be eaten every day. Other items were not rationed, but simply became unavailable as they had to be imported from overseas: coffee in particular which throughout was replaced by substitutes made from roasted grains. Vegetables and local fruit were not rationed; imported citrus fruits and bananas were unavailable. In more rural areas, farmers continued to bring their products to the markets, as large cities depended on long distance delivery. Because coffee was scarce, people created a substitute for it made from roasted ground down barley seeds and acorns. Many people kept rabbits for their meat when meat became scarce in shops, and it was often a child’s job to care for them each day.
Women were idealized by Nazi ideology and work was not felt to be appropriate for them. Children were expected to go to houses collecting materials for the production of war equipment. The German industry used forced labour, called Arbeitseinsatz from the countries they occupied.
| Year | 1937 | 1938 | 1939 | 1940 | 1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Domestic production | 9,928 | 9,862 | 10,324 | 9,107 | 8,245 | 9,999 | 9,422 | 8,784 | 6,445 |
| Imports | 2,173 | 2,546 | 1,634 | 1,860 | 2,517 | 2,581 | 1,183 | 874 | 268 |
| All rice | 12,101 | 12,408 | 11,958 | 10,967 | 10,762 | 12,580 | 10,605 | 9,658 | 6,713 |
Source: Cohen, Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction (1949) p 368-9
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