Shipbuilding
Cox and Ellis _World War I Databook_ gives the
following stats (in millions of tons) for US
Production of merchant shipping during the war
years
1914 1915 1916 1917 1918
0.16 0.16 0.38 0.82 2.60
Corresponding figures for Britain were
1.68 0.65 0.61 1.16 1.35
And for Japan (the only other significant builder)
0.09 0.05 0.15 0.35 0.49
So in 1918 the US accounted for close to 60% of
_all_ Allied shipbuilding. But in addition to this
she made significant indirect contributions. Frex,
she refused to export American steel to Japan
unless the ships built with it were sent to the
Atlantic or Mediterranean, which meant
considerably more Japanese ships in those theatres
(where the U-Boats were) than had America remained
neutral. And American intervention led to that of
several other states, mostly in Latin America but
also including China, whose declaration of war
owed much to US influence. Many of these countries
had German merchant ships "stranded" in their
ports, which now became available to the Allies.
Iirc there were over 40 in Brazil alone. In
addition, in March 1918 (Stephenson - he doesn't
explain what legal excuse was given) Britain and
the US requisitioned around 130 Dutch merchant
ships in their ports. This was a substantial boost
at a time when the U-Boat campaign was at its
deadliest. US support also made it easier to
"twist the arms" of neutral merchantmen and keep
them coming to Allied ports, when the U-Boat
threat might otherwise have kept them away.
[Incidentally the Cox/Ellis figures may be
conservative. David Stephenson's _1914-1918_ gives
US 1918 production as "over 3 million tons", but
even the lower figure says enough about the
importance of America's contribution in this
area.]
Naval
The most important aspect of this was in
destroyers, which were desperately needed for
convoy escorts. By the end of June 1917 there were
(Massie - _Castles of Steel_) 28 US destroyers on
this duty and by the end of July 37. Stephenson
quotes Lord Jellicoe as stating "after the war"
that without the US Navy it would have been
impossible to introduce convoys in 1917, and at
all events transatlantic convoying was not
introduced until the US ships became available in
late June. (Even this was only for homeward bound
ships - it was not extended to outward bound ones
until August) This was particularly important as
most British oil was from the US and Caribbean
(see below), and by April 1917 it was in
critically short supply. Inability to convoy could
have had disastrous results, as in 1917 sailing
"independently", ie _not_ in a convoy, was getting
very close to suicide. John Terraine (_Business In
Great Waters_) notes that in May-July 93% of all
independents were sunk, and in August-October 83%,
as against only 1.23% of convoyed ships. As
Terraine observes, "Comment is superfluous". Yet
even so, lack of sufficient escorts meant that
even at the end of 1917, only 50% of merchantmen
(though 90% of ocean going ones) were being
convoyed, climbing to 90% of all ships by Nov
1918. This would certainly have been a lot harder,
and from the looks of things impossible, without
the US.
Rather annoyingly, Massie doesn't indicate when or
where Jellicoe made his statement, but his 1934
book _The Submarine Menace_ is as likely as
anywhere.
Admiral Sims, _Victory at Sea_ Ch 3, is a bit less
emphatic, but not much. "I do not wish to say that
the convoy would not have been established had we
not sent destroyers for that purpose, yet I do not
see how otherwise it could have been established
in any complete and systematic way at such an
early date." In Ch 4 he goes further, stating "In
tonnage of merchant ships convoyed, the work of
the British navy was far greater than ours. Yet
the help which we contributed was indispensable to
the success that was attained. For, judging from
the situation before we entered the war, and
knowing the inadequacy of the total Allied
anti-submarine forces even after we had entered,
it seems hardly possible that, without the
assistance of the United states Navy, the vital
lines of communication of the armies in the field
could have been kept open, the civil population of
Great Britain supplied with food, and men and raw
materials sent from America to the Western Front.
In other words, I think I am justified in saying
that without the coöperation of the American navy
the Allies could not have won the war. Our forces
stationed at Queenstown actually escorted through
the danger zone about 40% of all the cargoes which
left North American ports - -." Just what was at
stake here, Sims had indicated in Ch 1, "So far as
I could learn there was a general belief in
British naval circles that this [German] plan
would succeed. The losses were now approaching a
million tons a month; it was thus a matter of very
simple arithmetic to determine the length of time
the Allies could stand such a strain. According to
the authorities the limit of endurance would be
reached about November 1, 1917; in other words,
unless some method of successfully fighting
submarines could be discovered almost immediately,
Great Britain would have to lay down her arms
before a victorious Germany. - - - The Kaiser and
his associates had figured the war would end about
July 1st or August 1st; and English officials with
whom I came into contact placed the date at
November 1st - always provided, of course, that no
method were found for checking the submarine. "
Curiously, I had run into that November 1st date
before, but in connection with _France_. Philip
Knightley, in _The First Casualty_, asserted that
the French government had accepted it as France's
last day in the war, if America did not enter. But
afaicr (it's a long time since I read TFC) he didn
't give a cite for the claim. Clearly, this date
proved over-pessimistic as far as Britain was
concerned, since it assumed that losses would
continue at the April 1917 level, but in the
absence of the USN, and with convoying seriously
delayed, these would certainly have been far worse
than OTL.
US participation also allowed a drastic tightening
of the blockade, with neutral nations' imports
being strictly "rationed" in a way that had not
been attempted whilst America was one of their
number. The US declaration of war gave the allies
near dictatorial control over world trade. As HP
Willmott notes, in Feb-Mar 1917 the amount of
neutral shipping calling at British ports dropped
to 37% of the January level - but by July had
recovered to 80% of it. The reason was that with
US intervention (plus other states coming in with
her) there just weren't enough neutral countries
left to keep shipping lines in business. It was a
case of doing business with the Allies , pretty
much on the Allies terms, or going out of
business. With Germany cut off by blockade, and
the number of neutrals now so much reduced, the
Allies were simply "the only game in town".
Raw Materials.
I've had more trouble getting precise figures in
this area, but it was a lot. Stephenson notes that
French steel imports from the US in 1918 were
thirty times as much as in 1913, and petroleum
imports ten times. Regrettably, he doesn't
indicate what the 1913 figures were, but the
increase sounds substantial. And according to
Matthew Yeomans (_Oil; Anatomy Of An Industry_)
the US in 1917 was producing 335 million barrels
of oil, 67% of the world total, of which about one
quarter was going to Europe, so that the US
supplied 80% of total Allied oil needs.
And in 1917 those needs were getting serious.
Massie notes that at the peak of the U-Boat
campaign, sinkings of tankers had reduced Britain'
s six-month reserve of fuel oil to only eight
weeks by April. This threatened disaster, as not
only the RN's best Dreadnoughts, but its new light
cruisers and _all_ its destroyers - essential not
only for convoy escort but as a protective screen
to shield the capital ships from submarine
attack - were oil-burners. Things were so tight
that the Grand Fleet was ordered to cruise at only
three-fifths of its normal speed, to conserve
fuel, and when the first US Dreadnoughts came to
Scapa Flow in December 1917, they were
old-fashioned coal burners - because the RN
_still_ couldn't spare any fuel oil for the more
modern ones. According to Sims (Ch 1) "The German
U-boats were making a particularly successful
drive at tankers with the result that England had
the utmost difficulty in supplying her fleet with
this kind of fuel. It is indeed impossible to
exaggerate the seriousness of the oil situation.
"Orders have just been given to reduce to
three-fifths speed, except in cases of emergency"
I reported to Washington on June 29th, referring
to scarcity of oil. "This simply means that the
enemy is winning the war." It was lucky for us
that the Germans knew nothing about this
particular disability. Had they been aware of it,
they would have resorted to all kinds of
manoeuvres in the attempt to keep the Grand Fleet
constantly steaming at sea, and in this way they
might so have exhausted our oil supply as possibly
to threaten the actual command of the surface.
Fortunately for the cause of civilisation, there
were certain important facts which the German
Secret Service did not learn."
I've not been able to find much info about steel,
beyond a comment in the _Life and Letters of
Walter Hines Page_ that the armies in France were
fighting on "American steel" and a remark in
Stephenson that US credits to France were used
mainly to buy "wheat and steel".
Food.
According to Ambassador Page and others, Britain
was in April 1917 within six weeks of running out
of wheat, so again a long delay in introducing
convoys could have been serious. And in 1918 the
Food Administration enabled the US to export three
times the normal amounts of breadstuffs, meats and
sugar. Presumably most of this went to Allied
countries. Stephenson refers to US supplies having
seen France and Italy through a "subsistence
crisis" in early 1918.
Admiral Sims cabled Navy Secretary Josephus
Daniels on April 14, 1917, "Mr Hoover informs me
that there is only sufficient grain supply in this
counry for three weeks. This does not include the
supply in retail stores." If this is correct (and
Hoover in particular was likely to have known) it
suggests that even few _weeks_ delay in US
intervention (surely possible assuming no
Zimmermann Telegram, or even just a slightly more
stubborn President Wilson) could have put Britain
in quite serious trouble.
Psychology
US intervention made a big diference to the
_outlook_ for the allies. From then on,
essentially the worst that could happen was a
somewhat less than total victory. Whatever might
befall in the way of U-Boats and/or German
offensives, the governments and peoples in the
Allied countries (and especially in Britain) knew
that all they had to do was _survive_ and sooner
or later the US could win the war by sheer weight
of men and material. For many reasons, of course,
they might not regard this as wholly satisfactory,
but the public were were now confident that
outright _defeat_ was no longer on the agenda.
This made it much easier to maintain morale and
turn down any German peace feelers.
Without the US, that certainty does not exist.
OTL, General Pétain, frex, famously observed that
he would "wait for the Americans and the tanks".
But if the Americans aren't coming, and curtailed
imports of steel and petroleum make the tanks more
problematical, what alternative strategy would he
have?
The timing of the US declaration of war was also a
major morale boost for Britain, coming as it did
in what proved to be the worst month of thw U-boat
campaign. With our food threatening to run out,
and no US intervention to reassure us about the
future - -.
Finance
I've seen various figures quoted for total US
credits to the Allies in 1917-18, but my scruffy
old (1929) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ gives a
figure of $9.5 billion, and is probably as
reliable as anything. This was all spent in the
US[1] presumably on raw materials. I haven't seen
a breakdown of _exactly_ what it was spent on (has
anyone?) But would guess that foodstuffs, steel
and especially oil figured prominently.
It was also vital for maintaining Allied credit in
the US, which by 1917 was looking distinctly
shaky. In October 1916 a British Treasury
Committee (JM Keynes was one of its members), set
up to report on how long Britain could go on
spending in America at the current rate, did so in
tones of less than ringing confidence -
"Our financial agents tell us in effect that, by
the use of every available device, and possibly at
the cost of postponing payments by bank
overdrafts, we shall still be solvent on 31st
March [1917]. They cannot tell us how this result
is to be achieved, but they hope and believe it
will be possible".
Patrick Devlin, who (in _Too Proud To Fight -
Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality_) quotes this report,
goes on to note that the French were in the same
bind. "France had in October [1916] completely
exhausted her gold and dollar resources, and in
order to finance her American expenditures for the
next six months needed at least £40,000,000 [about
$200 million at 1916 exchange rates] from the
British Treasury in addition to the sums already
promised." The other Allies were even more
dependent. Earlier in the year Keynes had observed
that Britain had "- - only one ally in this war -
France. The rest are pensioners"
Burton K Hendrick (_Life and Letters of Walter
Hines Page_) says -
"Page's papers show that Mr Balfour, in the early
stages of American participation, regarded the
financial situation as the thing which chiefly
threatened the success of the Allied cause. So
much greater emphasis has been laid on the
submarine warfare that this may at first seem
rather a misreading of Great Britain's peril. Yet
the fact is that the high rate of exchange and the
depredatory U-Boat represented almost identically
the same danger. The prospect that so darkened the
horizon in the spring of 1917 was the possible
isolation of Great Britain. England's weakness, as
always, consisted in the fact that she was an
island, that she could not feed herself with her
own resources and that she had only about six
weeks supply of food ahead of her at any one time.
If Germany could cut the lines of communication
and so prevent essential supplies from reaching
British ports, the population of Great Britain
could be starved into surrender in a very brief
time, France would be overwhelmed, and the triumph
of the Prussian cause would be complete. That the
success of the German submarine campaign would
accomplish this result was a fact that the popular
mind readily grasped. What it did not so clearly
see, however, was that the financial collapse of
great Britain would cut those lines of
communication quite as effectually as the
submarine itself. The British were practically
dependent for their existence upon the food
brought from the United States, just as the Allied
armies were largely dependent upon the steel which
came from the great industrial plants of this
country. If Great Britain could not find the money
with which to purchase these supplies, it is quite
apparent that they could not be shipped. The
collapse of British credit therefore would have
produced the isolation of the British Isles and
led to a British surrender, just as effectively as
would the success of the German submarine
campaign - -"
"- - - The matter that was chiefly pressing at the
time of the Balfour visit was the fact that the
British balances in the New York banks were in a
serious condition. It should always be remembered,
however, that Great Britain was financing not only
herself, but her Allies, and that the difficult
condition in which she now found herself was
caused by the not too considerate demands of the
nations with which she was allied in the war. Thus
by April 6, 1917, Great Britain had overdrawn her
account with JP Morgan to the extent of
$400,000,000 and had no cash available with which
to meet this overdraft. This obligation had been
incurred in the purchase of supplies, both for
Great Britain and for the Allied governments; and
securities, largely British-owned stocks and
bonds, had been deposited to protect the bankers.
The money was now coming due; if the obligations
were not met, the credit of Great Britain in this
country would reach the vanishing point. Though at
first there was a slight misunderstanding about
this matter, the American government finally paid
this overdraft out of the proceeds of the First
Liberty Loan. This act saved the credit of the
Allied countries - - - The first danger that
threatened, the isolation and starvation of Great
Britain, was therefore overcome .- - -"
Page himself wrote to President Wilson on March
5 -
"The inquiries which I have made here about
financial conditions disclose an international
situation which is most alarming to the financial
and industrial outlook of the United States.
England has not only to pay her own war bills, but
is obliged to finance her Allies as well. Up to
the present time she has done these tasks out of
her own capital. But she cannot continue her
present extensive purchases in the United States
without shipping gold as payment for them, and
there are two reasons why she cannot make large
shipments of gold. In the first place, both
England and France must keep the larger part of
the gold they have to maintain issues of their
paper at par; and in the second place, the German
U-Boat has made the shipping of gold a dangerous
procedure even if they had it to ship. There is
therefore a pressing danger that the
Franco-American and Anglo-American exchange will
be greatly disturbed; the inevitable consequence
will be that orders by all the Allied governments
will be reduced to the lowest possible amount, and
that trans-Atlantic trade will practically come to
an end - - Great Britain and France must have a
credit in the United States which will be large
enough to prevent the collapse of world trade and
the whole financial structure of Europe. If the
United states declares war against Germany, the
greatest help we could give Great Britain and its
Allies would be such a credit - - - Of course we
cannot extend such a credit unless we go to war
with Germany. But is there no way in which our
government might immediately and indirectly help
the establishment in the United States of a large
Franco-British credit without violating armed
neutrality? - - - The pressure of this approaching
crisis , I am certain, has gone beyond the ability
of the Morgan financial agency for the British and
French governments. The financial necessities of
the Allies are too great and urgent for any
private agency to handle - - . It is not
improbable that the only way of maintaining our
present pre-eminent trade position and averting a
panic is by going to war with Germany. The
submarine has added the last item to the danger of
a financial world crash. There is now an
uncertainty about our being drawn into the war; no
more considerable credits can be privately placed
in the United States. In the meantime a collapse
may come."
(Interestingly, this letter was written a month
_before_ the US entered the war. It looks as if,
four days after the publication of the Zimmermann
Telegram, British officials were getting certain
enough of US intervention to confide in Page about
what had hitherto been closely guarded secrets.
Judging from Wilson's efforts to pass Armed Ship
Bills and the like, they may have been surer of it
than he was. Nor is it at all certain that Page's
letter had much effect on the President. A few
months later he remarked that "Page is really an
Englishman and I have to discount whatever he says
about the situation in Great Britain." )
Hew Strachan (_The First World War_) puts it
differently, but comes to much the same
conclusion, noting that "By 1st April 1917 Britain
had an overdraft in the United States of $358
million and was spending $75 million a week. The
American entry to the war saved the Entente - and
possibly some American speculators - from
bankruptcy."
Stephenson doesn't go quite so far, saying that -
"By the time the United states entered the war in
April 1917 London had enough gold and securities
remaining to finance just three more weeks of
purchases and only advances from Morgans enabled
the Treasury to meet its obligations in the United
States. Although the British could still have
covered their dollar requirements without American
intervention they would have had enormous
difficulty in continuing to bankroll their
allies."
Quite why the difference between Page and
Stephenson I don't know. Possibly Page just didn't
distinguish as much as Stephenson between Britain'
s own needs and her need to support her allies,
considering the one just as essential as the
other. But that's only a guess.
[1] This was a condition of the loans, and would
cause some financial headaches later. Britain, in
turn, had been making extensive credits to other
Allies, but had neglected to impose a similar
requirement. So this money did not "come back"
into Britain to help us in repaying the US.
In short, I suspect that discussion of campaigns
in late 1918 or 1919 is probably academic. The
effects of continued US neutrality look so major
that it's most unlikely the war would still be
going on then.
