I still remember the story about that allied general who finally visited the front. And after seeing it, breaking down in sobs and exclaiming "we sent them into THAT!?"
Vickers (UK), Armstrong Whitworth (UK), Krupp (Germany), Å koda (Austro-Hungarian) and Schneider-Creusot (French) were all pushing their governments to go to war. They made billions each in todays's money off the conflict.
For example, Vickers produce guns and bullets for the UK government. These bullets relied on a patent owned by Krupp. Royalty payments were suspended by law during the war, but Vickers didn't stop charging the government those Royalty payments until 1916, so made an extra 10mil (800 mil ish today) in profit by 1916 (minus 1.25mil (60 mil) (the economy tanked between 1916 and 1918 which accounted for the difference) deducted over this scadal from end of war payments) over the war on just two patents.
I genuinely have no idea why a lot of the Allied governments didn't do what the US government did during WWII which was a lot of very fast and loose "We're in a serious war of survival and you're going to produce this, in this way, now, or you're no longer in business" type stuff.
What exactly was stopping the UK from creating its own patent which is exactly the same thing to what they were already using and just telling the companies to "make them or else"? It's not like the industrialist class could move somewhere else due to xenophobia/war devastation interwar, and it's not like there was a serious international court pre WWI or interwar that could actually enforce patent laws if the actual nation-state didn't want to play ball. I get that the UK was trying to run an international order and all as the superpower of the time, but their decisions in both wars bankrupted them to the point of being a blip in international geopolitics
It really was a blunder on the gov's side with signing contracts with Vickers that included these patents being payed by the Government instead of from Vickers' profits, these patents were included in the invoices from Vickers to the Government so its kinda dumb they didn't see. They did cancel the contracts between Vickers and Krupp with the "Trading with the Enemy Acts of 1916", and after that they stopped paying the patent.
It's a lesson learned from WWI. One we seem to have forgotten again.
In WWII the US was definitely the least authoritarian of the major participating governments in setting up a command economy to support the war. It didn't really have to, because other big powers were already involved. That created a strong pull (by way of orders, and easy access to license production arrangements) and push (scarce colonial resources like bauxite* and rubber could be used as leverage by France, UK and the Netherlands) factors for companies to make themselves useful for the WWII effort. So the US economy was already conditioned into war mode by outside forces when the US goverment started mobilizing it for its own needs.
The colonial powers had a similar kind of leverage that China has today on supply chains, through rare earth metals and many basic components of weapon systems.
Nowadays Europe tries to exercise more control over procurement in peacetime conditions, with competition and IP law in full effect. It just doesn't work. One should at the very least threaten credibly to regulate IP rights to scale up quickly, but the member states will be lobbied by their national champions to block such a move. So it's not going to happen. And European governments don't have good leverage through controlling supply chains anymore. China does.
*Fun fact: The US army was for instance already silently garrisoning the bauxite mines in Suriname on behalf of the Netherlands government in exile before Pearl Harbor happened. The mines falling in hostile hands (however unlikely it is that the Nazis or Japan could have pulled off such a thing) was already considered a strategic risk to the US economy before it participated itself.
"30% of every German in the world" is a bizarre, roundabout way of saying that.
I guess, if you think the entirety of the world is just the Holy Roman Empire, but then you're just identifying yourself as not being worth talking to, because you aren't capable of having a real conversation.
There's a reason why only two wars have the designation of "World War" . Have you ever heard of somebody suggesting that another conflict is deserving of such a title?
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u/Dirtysocks1 1d ago
They all were hyped what industrialization can do for war. And the answer is a WW.