3 - War of the factories

Summary

The war of the factories was essential to the outcome of the war. The Second World War represented a repurposed, albeit temporary, redirection of the international economy for military and industrial purposes. The Soviet Union had made itself into the world's third leading heavy industrial power behind the USA and Germany and its emphasis was emphatically military. If one accepts the default definition of globalization as an increase in cross-border flows of goods and services, capital and labour, then the mobilization for war initiated a sort of militarized, non-market globalization process that remarkably bears many of the hallmarks of the post-1980s second wave of globalization. The statistical volumes of trade, capital or labour flows are indeed trenchant indicators of globalization, but qualitative alterations in the organization of production, the exchange of knowledge, relationships between producers, subcontractors and suppliers were also highly significant, many of which started during the Second World War and had a significant impact on the post-war period.