No ingredient of the power with which the Allies inflicted defeat on their enemies in World War II is less in dispute than the overwhelming superiority in the materiel of war that they ultimately developed. Equally evident is the fact that the United States took the lead in producing the great variety and huge quantities of munitions, military equipment, supplies, and services that gave them this superiority. The present volume is a description and analysis of the basic problems, policies, and procedures with which the War Department, in cooperation with almost every other agency of government, was concerned in carrying out a nationwide program of economic mobilization. This work traces the foundations of the achievement in the nation's experience of World War I and the planning for economic mobilization with which the War Department was charged in the period between the two wars. It describes, for each of the major substantive areas of economic mobilization, the nation's transition from a peacetime status through the eighteen-month "defense period" to the achievement of a full-fledged war economy. Before production for war had reached its peak, planning for a return to a peacetime economy began, and the book in its concluding chapters describes this and the operations by which the vast machine was dismantled and reconverted. An "epilogue" chapter reviews and summarizes the effort of economic mobilization as a whole and presents the author's conclusions. The volume concentrates on the basic issues as they appeared at the highest policy-making levels of the War Department-the Office of the Under Secretary of War and the staff divisions of the Headquarters of the Army Service Forces. Nevertheless, in order to show the operational effects of the policies adopted, and in turn the reciprocal effects of operations on policy, the study includes many of the activities of the Army's actual procuring arms and services. These operations are set forth in detail in the volumes of the United States Army in World War II devoted to each of the technical services.

Part I. Introduction. The task and the achievement / Part II. Prewar plans and wartime organization. Background on interwar planning -- War Department procurement planning -- Industrial mobilization planning -- Organization for war / Part III. Determination of Army requirements. Army requirement programs: World War I to Pearl Harbor -- Army requirement programs: Pearl Harbor to war's end -- The methodology of Army requirements determination / Part IV. Army purchasing problems and policies. Survey of Army purchasing: 1940 to 1945 -- Major issues in contract placement -- General policies in contract placement and clearance -- The cost-plus-a-fixed-fee contract -- Pricing in fixed-price contracts -- Multiple-contract pricing review: the company pricing program -- Contract renegotiation: original and basic procedures -- Renegotiation: principles and policy -- The Army and OPA price control -- The Army and small business / Part V. Expansion of facilities for the Army. General aspects of facilities expansion -- Private industrial expansion under tax amortization -- Government finance and owned industrial facilities / Part VI. Production and material controls. Establishment of the priorities system -- Priorities: problems in application and operation -- Material controls in transition -- The controlled materials plan -- Other measures for control and conservation of materials / Part VII. Contract termination and settlement. Contract termination: background and preparations --Termination and settlement procedure -- Contract settlement in operation / Part VIII. Epilogue. The summing up.