Mobilizing the Americans: Technology and the Iceberg

Abstract

The USA became renowned during the war as the Arsenal of Democracy in the profusion of material supplies of all kinds but it began the war as the least prepared of all major combatant nations. What role did the management of Tame Problems play in reducing the US to a state of military inertia in the first instance and then turning it around to the point where it seemed that the number of troops, tanks, trucks and assorted technologies of war stationed in the south of England in early 1944 might actually sink the entire country?¹