Vintage work crew photos

[mklotz]

I once read that this was largely a propaganda exercise to foster the idea that those on the home front were contributing to the war effort. Apparently in the UK, very little of it was actually used, and there are supposed to be mountains of it, buried for recovery in case they ever really need it. In London in the early 1960’s there were still many buildings and churches with the remnants of cut off steel fences that hadn’t been repaired. Being so vast, and having such good mineral resources etc, it is hard to imagine the USA ever being in a position where melting down someone’s donated aluminium cooking pot would make much of a difference.

I've read that too and had the same thought. There came a point in the war where we were building a Victory ship and dozens of war planes along with untold other armaments every day. That's easily thousands of tons of metals required on a daily basis. A couple of pounds of pots and pans and rusty fences would be the proverbial drop in the bucket.

Remember that at the start of the war there was a strong, and outspoken isolationist spirit in the USA. Pearl Harbor silenced those folks but didn't necessarily change their outlook, particularly so relative to the war in Europe. No doubt Roosevelt remembered how sneaky he had to be with the Lend-Lease program to aid the UK and that prompted him to decide that involving the populace in the effort was essential.

Washington may well have felt that convincing people to participate in the war effort was an essential element in sustaining a fight that was going to go on for a very long time. It's long been true that "The first casualty of war is truth." so a little (admittedly white) lie about collecting metal was not going to upset the government.