title: Commercial-military partnership in wartime: Britain’s war economy and planning for the Second Front, 1941-1944
Creators: name: Thomas-Llewellyn, Jacob
Publisher: name: University of Reading
Year: 2023

description: By the winter of 1943, Britain’s war industry had reached a saturation point. The 
nation’s factories and plant, which had been resurrected from the Great Depression,
were close to exhaustion. Whilst Britain and its Empire were well endowed with natural 
resources, vital global sea lines of communication immediately became a target for a 
potent Kreigsmarine, threatening access to strategic materials and finished goods.
Contrary to some popular interpretations, Britain’s war production effort was, from 
1940, not one of general plenty. Shortfalls in war materiel and strategic resources were 
only satisfied with imports from the Empire and the United States. The Allies eventually 
developed a mastery in matching resources with demands, yet, from the initiation of 
hostilities, the British Government, initially under the direction of Neville Chamberlain 
and then Winston Churchill, recognised that Britain’s ability to arm its forces and 
support her Empire depended on applying resources judiciously. 
The First World War had laid bare the enormous costs of modern global 
warfare, but the demands and consumption of materials and labour in World War 2 
(WW2) were of a different magnitude entirely from 1914-1918. In order to confront the 
Axis powers, Britain and her allies had to recalibrate their warfighting techniques. This
transition in doctrine and economics required the concurrent accumulation of 
experience on operations and the expansion of the national war industries. 
With the Axis powers entrenched on the European continent, immediately 
following Dunkirk the Allied planning staffs realised that to defeat National Socialism 
any re-entry into Europe would require the development of a substantial amphibious 
capability. Owing to inter-war financial restrictions and a general neglect of the study 
of amphibious techniques, Anglo-American forces, despite some significant WWI 
experience, had only a weak grasp of the demands of this specialist and seemingly 
elusive niche area of warfare.
 The result was that they were compelled to undertake 
a number of high risk global operations to acquire a proficiency in forcing and 
sustaining an opposed land entry from the sea. From these operations however, the 
 
1 The British had demonstrated their ability to plan and execute complex amphibious operations in 
WWI. In 1917, Operation HUSH was the first detailed planning for a combined formation level
amphibious assault force, including armoured vehicles, to be landed on the Belgian coast, see Fuller, 
J.F.C, Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier, London: Ivor Nicholson &amp; Watson, 1936, p.117. Allied planning staffs quickly learnt on-the-job and incrementally gained the necessary 
knowledge to execute large scale multinational amphibious landings. During the 
course of this accelerated learning experience, the combined staffs determined that to 
sustain their mechanised forces, specialist logistic solutions would have to be rapidly 
developed. From the broad range of developed solutions of prefabricated (artificial) 
mobile ports and robust undersea fuel pipelines that could be deployed immediately 
after the conclusion of any break-in battle provide case studies which help exemplify 
the potency of the Allied amphibious capability. 
Inspiring leadership, sound management, radical technical innovation, resource 
allocation, multinational diplomacy and interoperability and harnessing of national 
industrial bases all played a critical part in sustaining an assault force into North West 
Europe. Identifying metrics which allow performance to be judged remains challenging 
but by analyzing a broad set of technical and operational criteria a more nuanced and 
accurate appraisal can be conducted. 
Yet behind such large and complex projects, there inevitably existed inter-service rivalries and friction between individuals. Added to this were the wartime 
constraints of limited access to suitable construction sites, labour and materials, 
Additionally, constricted schedules placed significant pressure on the civil-military 
partnerships which left limited the ability to adequately trial equipment before its 
operational deployment. 
This theses will illustrate that there existed a subtle contest, one bitterly fought 
in the corridors of power between competing government departments, where service 
chiefs defended their self-proclaimed fiefdoms and to a lesser extent amongst the 
industrialists who were compelled to jockey for position in their endeavors to secure 
resources.