Thanks for the kind remarks. The Germans had an ambitious synfuels program that vanished into classified microfilm at the end off the war and was reexamined during the OPEC Energy Crisis of the 1970s. BTW, thanks go out to Jimmy Carter for making everything worse. Anyway...
Oil refining made a big leap, a big buildout, during the war, because the US was supplying itself and all its allies, keeping cargo, convoys, navies, home heating, and to some extent power plants operating, while asking the home front to “keep it under 40”.
It’s no surprise that the interstate hightway system was built after the war — moving wartime production from point to point turned out to be a real hardship during the war years, even with the already-robust rail system, so it was funded under the context of national defense. I remember something about how the Higgins Boats were built and loaded onto the open railcars, and the workers gave them their paint job as the trains rolled to Norfolk — completing the manufacturing aboard an open, moving train.
So, after the war, what do we do with a massively increased industrial capacity, and a massively increased refining capacity, plus a massive increase in domestic oil supply? Everyone buys cars and trucks, and the last of the livery places close down for good. Vacations to the national parks a thousand miles away? Pile in the station wagon and let’s go!
Americans moved out away from where the industrial jobs were and into vast new suburbs, the reverse of what had been going on between the wars, and even before WWI when agricultural jobs started to vanish as a consequence of mechanized agriculture.
Sidebar — He was a Jew-hating racist, but IMHO Henry Ford stands alone in the category of having transformed world society via mass-produced internal combustion vehicles (farming, transportion, and don’t forget the Wright Brothers, who I believe were first to use ICE to build a prototype) and manufacturing and retailing in all sectors. There were others who did this or that, such as electrification (Edison, Westinghouse, Tesla) or communication (Morse, Bell), but *no other one person* has had the impact that Ford has had. The only person I can think of who even has a shot at joining him is Elon Musk, and that’s a wait-and-see.
Geez, I’m still gabby. I must have had too much to drink at breakfast.
What I started to get at, before my little episode there, is, that the supply problem existed for everyone, but the US solved it most effectively. Stalin turned his population into cannon fodder, and relied on Lend-Lease, and blamed all the hardships of the war on the enemy. The Germans were actually innovative and efficient, making more with less than pretty much everyone. Hitler remarked (that recording made surreptitiously in Finland I think it was) about how “monstrous” the Soviet construction of (up to that time) 35,000 tanks was. I think the final tally for tank construction in the USSR was something like 80,000 — but the Germans in their efficiency destroyed something like, or north of, 70,000 of them.
I’m glad we don’t fight wars on that scale anymore.
The Japanese started out with a more capable navy (on paper), had the best naval aviators in the world, better range on their aircraft, better air-launched torpedoes, a much larger army (most of it was in China etc, I think they invaded Manchuria in 1932 or something), and much more experienced as well.
10 weeks after Pearl Harbor, they were humiliated before the world when Doolittle’s raiders dropped a load on Tokyo and took off.
About six months after Pearl, our three remaining, ailing carriers and fearless fliers, destroyed all four of their big decks, hundreds of planes and their best aviators...
Anyway, blah blah blah. ;^)
I toured Ford’s River Rouge plant around 1980. Iron ore went in one end and finished cars rolled out the other. Very impressive.
Love it, SunkenCiv. In the writing business (which I’m in), the “experts” say, “keep it short and to the point.”
But that’s not what the readers want. Readers love it when a writer rambles seemingly off-point to something interesting or humorous. Indeed, the greatest of all American writers, men like H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain would often let go of the steamboat’s helm and drift off course a while. Isn’t this where FR’s true value lies?
NOTE: I’m now reading Mencken’s Notes on Democracy and every page contains gems of insight mixed with his signature rascality.
Actually, FR is much better than a live meeting or Zoom call with the same people it forces each FReeper to spend time “working” their off-the-cuff remarks.
Which is to say, I love your ramblings. Much learned. Don’t know if anybody has written a book about the transformation of America that World War II brought, but it’s one helluva story.