In May 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Office of War Mobilization (OWM) to more effectively coordinate America’s mobilization efforts during World War II. In order to accomplish this mission, Roosevelt gave the OWM and its director, James F. Byrnes, significant power over America’s wartime economy, so much so that people often called Byrnes “the assistant president.”
In January 1942, more than a year before Roosevelt created the OWM, a well-publicized Senate report found that America’s mobilization program was plagued by waste, inefficiency, and political self-interest, and recommended reorganizing the entire effort into a single authority. Immediately after this report, Roosevelt created the War Production Board (WPB), which he hoped would effectively coordinate all aspects of America’s wartime procurement and production. But because its director, Donald M. Nelson, was not a decisive leader and lacked authority over important segments of the U. S. economy, such as rubber, petroleum, labor, and the military, the effectiveness of the WPB was limited from the beginning.
Roosevelt created the OWM because he realized that if he did not create an agency with more authority than the WPB, it would be extremely difficult for the United States to maximize its industrial and economic resources for wartime use. The OWM did not replace the WPB, but Byrnes quickly replaced Nelson as the real director of America’s mobilization efforts and the WPB became one of OWM’s subordinate agencies.
Byrnes, a former U. S. senator from South Carolina and Supreme Court justice, had exceptional political and administrative skills, which played a large part in the success of the OWM. Byrnes ensured that the OWM did not encroach on the jurisdiction of other agencies or become too involved in the details of wartime production and procurement, choosing instead to set larger national goals and coordinate the activities of the agencies under the OWM. But the fact that his office was located in the White House was an important reminder that his decisions carried full presidential authority.
America’s mobilization program was initially poorly organized, but in part because of the efforts of the OWM, American wartime production rose steadily after mid-1943, so that by 1944, the United States was producing 60 percent of all Allied munitions and 40 percent of the world’s arms. The OWM formally ended in October 1944 when Congress reconstituted it as the Office of War Mobi-FizATioN and Reconversion (OWMR).
Further reading: Herman Miles Somers, Presidential Agency: OWMR, the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950).
—David W. Waltrop
World History
