Victory in '42?

Out of Washington came a new hope: Victory in 1942.

For five months President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill had prepared their peoples for a dirty year of defeats, drudgery, sacrifices, casualties. This year was to be the year of dogged holding-on; 1943 was to be the year of attack.

But now optimism swirled up, as swiftly and intangibly as the crest of a breaker. Churchill's last broadcast had sounded almost triumphant; U.S. cartoonists, editors, columnists seized on every Russian skirmish as another great blow to Hitler. Chicago, for some Illinoisy reason, was pervaded with high optimism. Lots of people thought the war was being won.

What the people felt was paralleled in Washington's high places. More & more nonmilitary officials threw off the gloom of early 1942, began to see it as a year of hope. The optimism was freighted with ifs, checked with maybes, throttled with per-haps's--but it was there.

Over the Hump? The great hope sprang out of war production. U.S. industrial genius had triumphed beyond belief. WPB had suddenly discovered that its first big job was done. The spadework was over in munitions-making, in getting the many new plants built, in converting the old ones. No one had guessed how much war material the new plants would make-- and how fast.

Of U.S. arms production, WPB Chair-man Donald M. Nelson spoke: "[The U.S.] is actually doing things today which were truly unthinkable a year ago. It is executing programs which sounded utterly fantastic no more than six months ago " Out the window went WPB's long-term plans for factories that would not produce arms until later. The war effort had succeeded in establishing the full priority of things military over things civilian, but now priorities were being established among military items. For the first time U.S. priorities were apparently being dictated not by the general object of beating the enemy, but by a specific grand strategy --the strategy of all-out effort in 1942.

Nelson decentralized his staff, turned production over mostly to the Army & Navy, set up a new all-important committee to feed the war machine with raw materials, keep the present lines moving at top speed. To move the produce and to get around the shipping bottleneck, WPB worked toward a huge new fleet of air transports. Now 1943 and 1944 were far away and 1945 was never.

Downhill Road? In England, chafing for action, the news about WPB was greeted exuberantly. Cried London headlines: U.S. PLAN IS NOW FOR SWIFT VICTORY; WIN IN 1942. Winston Churchill said that the United Nations could now see the top of the ridge beyond which lay the road to victory.

Washington kept its fingers crossed. The U.S., still getting used to the shock of being at war, held its hope in check, like a wish that might be lost if it were spoken aloud. But all eyes were on the summer and the new hope: the nation would at least try to win in 1942.

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