Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T10:36:49.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Water powers: the Second World War and the mobilization of hydroelectricity in Canada, the United States, and Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2020

Julie Cohn ,
Matthew Evenden  and
Marc Landry
Julie Cohn
Affiliation:
Center for Public History, University of Houston, 3623 Cullen Blvd, Room 320, Houston, TX 77204-3007, USA E-mail: [email protected]
Matthew Evenden*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z2 E-mail: [email protected]
Marc Landry
Affiliation:
Department of History & Philosophy, University of New Orleans, Liberal Arts Building, 2000 Lakeshore Drive, New Orleans, LA 70148, USA E-mail: [email protected]
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Comparing three of the major hydroelectric power-producing countries during the war – Canada, the United States, and Germany – this article considers the implications of expanding hydroelectricity for war production and strategy, and how wartime decisions structured the longer-term evolution of large technological systems. Despite different starting points, all three countries pursued similar strategies in attempting to mobilize hydroelectricity for the war effort. The different access to and use of hydro in these states produced a vital economic and ultimately military advantage or disadvantage. The global dimensions of hydroelectric development during the war, moreover, demonstrate that this conflict was a turning point in the history of electrification.

Keywords

CanadaenergyGermanyhydroelectricitySecond World WarUnited States
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 123 - 147
Check for updates
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

We would like to thank colleagues in the American Society for Environmental History who first listened to our separate papers and encouraged us to team up. Eric Leinberger prepared the maps and graphs with his usual skill and artistry. Thanks to the library staff at the Bonneville Power Administration for assistance with wartime poster images. We would also like to thank the reviewers, including David Massell, and the JGH editors for their suggestions and questions. Matthew Evenden wishes to acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Faculty of Arts, University of British Columbia.

References

1 Jensen, W.G., ‘The importance of energy in the First and Second World Wars’, Historical Journal, 11, 3, 1968, p. 545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Edgerton, David, ‘Controlling resources: coal, iron and oil in the Second World War’, in Geyer, Michael and Tooze, Adam, eds., Cambridge history of the Second World War, vol. 3; Total war: economy, society and culture at war, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 135.Google Scholar

3 Timothy Mitchell, Carbon democracy: political power in the age of oil, London: Verso, 2011.

4 Hughes, Thomas, Networks of power: electrification in Western society, 1880–1930, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.Google Scholar

5 Hausman, William J., Hertner, Peter and Wilkins, Mira, Global electrification: multinational enterprise and international finance in the history of light and power, 1878–2007, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 221–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Cohn, Julie, The grid: biography of an American technology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017Google Scholar; Evenden, Matthew, Allied power: mobilizing hydro-electricity during Canada’s Second World War, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hirt, Paul, The wired northwest: the history of electric power, 1870s to 1970s, Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2012Google Scholar; Kleisl, Jean-Daniel, Electricité suisse et Troisième Reich, Lausanne: Éditions Payot, 2001Google Scholar; Lagendijk, Vincent, ‘Ideas, individuals and institutions: notion and practices of a European electricity system’, Contemporary European History, 27, 2, 2018, pp. 202–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lagendijk, Vincent, Electrifying Europe: the power of Europe in the construction of electricity networks, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lévy-Leboyer, Maurice and Morsel, Henri, eds., Histoire de l’électricité en France, tome deuxième, 1919–1946, Paris: Fayard, 1994Google Scholar; Maier, Helmut, ‘Systems connected: IG Auschwitz, Kaprun, and the building of European power grids up to 1945’, in Vleuten, Erik Van Der and Kaijser, Arne, eds., Networking Europe: transnational infrastructures and the shaping of Europe, 1850–2000, Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2006, pp. 129–58Google Scholar; Massell, David, Quebec hydropolitics: the Peribonka concessions of World War Two, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011Google Scholar; Stier, Bernhard, Staat und Strom: die politische Steuerung des Elektrizitätssystem in Deutschland, 1890–1950, Ubstadt-Weiher: Regionalkultur, 1999Google Scholar.

7 Laakkonen, Simo, Tucker, Richard P., and Vuorisalo, Timo, eds., The long shadows: a global environmental history of the Second World War, Corvallis, OR: Portland State University Press, 2017Google Scholar; Chris Pearson, ‘Environments, states and societies at war’, in Geyer and Tooze, Cambridge history, pp. 220–43.

8 Gutmann, Martin, ‘The nature of total war: grasping the global environmental dimensions of World War II’, History Compass, 13, 5, 2015, p. 252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Evenden, Allied power, p. 11.

10 Historical statistics of the United States from colonial times to 1970, series S, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1975, p. 820.

11 Ibid., pp. 18, 20.

12 Statistisches Handbuch von Deutschland, 1928–1944, Munich: Franz Ehrenwirth, 1949, p. 335.

13 Herzig, Thomas, ‘Wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Aspekte der deutschen Elektrizitätsversorgung 1880 bis 1990’, in Fischer, Wolfram, ed., Die Geschichte der Stromversorgung, Frankfurt-am-Main: Verlags- und Wirtschaftsgesellschaft der Elektrizitätswerke, 1992, p. 130Google Scholar.

14 Evenden, Allied power.

15 Way, W. R., ‘Power-system interconnection in Québec’, Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, 61, 1942, pp. 841–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Archives Hydro-Québec, Montréal (henceforth AHQ), fonds Shawinigan Water and Power Company, box 3994, file 3857, Contract between Aluminum Company of Canada Ltd and the Shawinigan Water and Power Company, 15 March 1940; AHQ, fonds Montréal Light, Heat and Power Consolidated Collection, box 3910, J. S. Norris (president, Montréal Light, Heat, and Power) to the Shawinigan Water and Power Company, 17 July 1940.

16 Bothwell, Robert and Kilbourn, William, C. D. Howe: a biography, Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, Ltd, 1979Google Scholar; Kennedy, J. de N., History of the Department of Munitions and Supply, Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1950Google Scholar; Bothwell, Robert, ‘“Who’s paying for anything these days?” War production in Canada, 1939–1945’, in Dreisziger, N. F., ed., Mobilization for total war: the Canadian, American and British experience, 1914–1918, 1939–1945, Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1981, pp. 59–69Google Scholar.

17 Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (henceforth LAC), Department of Reconstruction and Supply fonds, RG 28, vol. 54, file 1-1-98, Order-in-Council P.C. 4129, 23 August 1940.

18 MacFarlane, Daniel, Negotiating a river: Canada, the US, and the creation of the St. Lawrence seaway, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014, pp. 21–47Google Scholar.

19 Massell, David, ‘“As though there was no boundary”: the Shipshaw Project and continental integration’, American Review of Canadian Studies, 34, 2, 2004, pp. 187–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Federal Water Power Act of 1920, 16 U.S.C. 791a.

21 Funigiello, Philip J., Toward a national power policy: the New Deal and the electric utility industry, 1933–1941, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973Google Scholar.

22 ‘Address of Governor Franklin Roosevelt’, Municipal Auditorium, Portland, Oregon, 21 September 1932, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/msf/msf00530 (consulted 29 August 2019); Funigiello, Toward a national power policy; McCraw, Thomas K., TVA and the power fight, 1933–1939, Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 1971Google Scholar.

23 Funigiello, Toward a national power policy; McCraw, TVA and the power fight.

24 Ibid.

25 National Association of Railroad and Utility Commissioners, ‘Report of the Committee on Generation and Distribution of Electric Power’, Proceedings, Washington, DC, 1938, p. 656, as cited in Funigiello, Toward a national power policy, p. 229.

26 Quote in ‘Sees utilities set for defense task’, New York Times, 10 August 1940, p. 39. See also Thomas P. Swift, ‘Utilities geared to aid defense’, New York Times, 5 June 1940, p. 41; Thomas P. Swift, ‘Defense is theme of utility session’, New York Times, 2 June 1940, p. 57; Thomas P. Swift, ‘Utilities pledge aid for defense’, New York Times, 6 June 1940, pp. 43, 48; ‘Defense of nation in war discussed’, New York Times, 16 January 1941, p. 15; H. S. Bennion, ‘Electric power in American industry’, Military Engineer, 32, 186, 1940, pp. 393–6; M. W. Smith, ‘War emergency power from present systems’, Electrical World, 112, 3, 1939, pp. 45–94.

27 ‘Southeast to pool power for defense’, New York Times, 26 May 1941, p. 17; ‘Rationing of power faces southeast due to wide, long extended drought’, Christian Science Monitor, 27 May 1941, p. 17; ‘Power rationing plan ready for southeast’, Wall Street Journal, 7 June 1941, p. 3; Raymond Daniell, ‘Drought dims lights in Dixie to save power’, Washington Post, 15 June 1941, p. 16; Opinions and decisions of the Federal Power Commission, with appendix of selected orders in the nature of opinions, vol. 2, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1943, pp. 990–9.

28 Müller, Hans, Gesetz zur Förderung der Energiewirtschaft vom 13. Dezember 1935 (RGBl. I S. 1451), Berlin: Franz Vahlen, 1936Google Scholar.

29 Lawaczeck, Franz, Elektrowirtschaft, Munich: Lehmann, 1936Google Scholar.

30 Stier, Staat und Strom, pp. 486–7.

31 Petzina, Dieter, Autarkiepolitik im Dritten Reich: der nationalsozialistische Vierjahresplan, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1968CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Ibid., pp. 83, 89.

33 Maier, Helmut, Erwin Marx (1893–1980): Ingenieurwissenschaftler in Braunschweig, und die Forschung und Entwicklung auf dem Gebiet der elektrischen Energieübertragung auf weite Entfernungen zwischen 1918 und 1950, Stuttgart: Verlag für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik, 1993, p. 262Google Scholar.

34 Maier, ‘Systems connected’, pp. 129–58.

35 Gillingham, John, Industry and politics in the Third Reich: Ruhr coal, Hitler and Europe, London: Methuen, 1985, p. 81Google Scholar.

36 Petzina, Autarkiepolitik im Dritten Reich, p. 102.

37 Gillingham, Industry and politics, p. 81.

38 Maier, Erwin Marx, p. 274.

39 ‘Einheitliche Energiewirtschaft: zur Ernennung des neuen Generalbevollmächtigten’, Neue Freie Presse, 14 January 1939.

40 ‘Verordnung zur Sicherstellung der Elektrizitätsversorgung’, Reichs-Gesetzblatt, 163, 1939, p. 1607.

41 ‘Erlaß des Führers und Reichskanzlers über den Generalinspektor für Wasser und Energie’, Reichs-Gesetzblatt, 96, 1941, p. 467.

42 Kitchen, Martin, Speer: Hitler’s architect, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015, p. 132Google Scholar.

43 Hornung, Ela, Langthaler, Ernst, and Schweitzer, Sabine, ‘Forced labour in agriculture’, in Echternkamp, Jörg, ed., Germany and the Second World War, vol. 9.2, German wartime society 1939–1945: exploitation, interpretations, exclusion, trans. Cook-Radmore, Derry, Smerin, Barry, Stoker, Julie, and Wilson, Barbara, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 685Google Scholar. Maier, ‘Systems connected’, pp. 143–4.

44 ‘Defense of nation in war discussed’.

45 Christine Plaff, ‘Safeguarding Hoover Dam during World War II’, Prologue Magazine, 35, 2, 2003, https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2003/summer/hoover-dam-1.html (consulted 29 August 2019); Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich (henceforth BHSTAM), Oberste Baubehörde 12812 (Luftschutz-1943-1944), ‘Bericht über den Luftangriff auf Talsperren in der Nacht zum 17. Mai 1943’, 17 June 1943; Maier, Erwin Marx, pp. 301–7.

46 LAC, House of Commons fonds, RG 14, accession 1997–98/628, box 8, vol. 24, E-5–E-6, War Expenditures Committee, Subcommittees nos. 2 and 3, 5 November 1943; Massell, ‘“As though there was no boundary”’.

47 Campbell, Duncan C., Global mission: the story of Alcan, Montréal: Alcan, 1985, p. 272Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., pp. 260–2; ‘Report of the Joint Subcommittees Nos. 2 and 3 of the Special Committee on War Expenditures’, Journals of the House of Commons, session 1943–1944, 26 January 1944, pp. 734–8.

49 LAC, Privy Council Office fonds, RG 2, 7C, vol. 4, Minutes of the War Committee of Cabinet, 21 May 1941.

50 Campbell, Global mission, p. 251.

51 Aluminium statistics from the Pechiney Collection, cited in Bertilorenzi, Marco, The international aluminum cartel, 1886–1978: the business and politics of a cooperative industrial institution, New York: Routledge, 2016, p. 229Google Scholar.

52 Hydro One Corporate Records, Toronto, Ontario (henceforth HO), Executive Office, GSI Collection, Official Records, file 505.12, ‘World War II priorities and controls’, file 6 of 17, accession 91.029, ‘General survey of power needs and possible service of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission during the war years’, 2 October 1939.

53 LAC, RG 25, series G2, vol. 3561, file 1268-K-4C, pt 1, LAC, ‘Exchange of notes relating to further utilization of water for power purposes at Niagara Falls between Canada and the United States of America’, 27 October 1941; Holden, Otto, ‘Ogoki diversion’, Engineering Journal, 27, 1944, pp. 347–52Google Scholar.

54 Evenden, Allied power, pp. 69–102.

55 LAC, RG 28, vol. 251, file 196-11-2, Department of Munitions and Supply, The Power Controller, ‘Order no. P.C. 5 (power shortage areas), dated at Montréal, the 20th Day of September, 1942’.

56 LAC, RG 28, vol. 31, file: ‘History of Power Control, Department of Munitions and Supply’, ‘Memorandum re: operations of the power control’, n.d.

57 ‘Production of newsprint and magazine paper frozen’, Windsor Daily Star, 31 October 1942; LAC, RG 28, vol. 257, file 196-11-2, Order no. P.C-C (The Beaver Wood Fibre Company), 23 September 1942; LAC, RG 28, vol. 257, file 196-11-2, Order no. P.C-B (Ontario Paper Company Limited Power Limitation), 23 September 1942.

58 Louis Elliott, ‘Meeting power demand during war’, Mechanical Engineering, 64, 12, 1942, p. 873.

59 ‘WPB order stops power projects’, New York Times, 22 August 1942, p. 15; Wartime production achievements and the reconversion outlook: report of the chairman, Washington, DC: War Production Board, 1945, p. 40; Historical statistics, pp. 74–85, 824.

60 Annual report of the Tennessee Valley Authority, for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1940, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1940, p. 84; Annual report of the Department of the Interior for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1939, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, p. 383.

61 Tennessee Valley Authority Act 1933.

62 Historical statistics, pp. 74–85, 824.

63 Ibid., p. 821; Electric power requirements and supply in the United States, 1940–1945: war impact on electric utility industry, Washington, DC: Federal Power Commission, 1945, p. 2.

64 Philip Sporn, ‘A plan for maintaining power supply in a destructive emergency’, speech to the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Washington, DC, 21 January 1948, reprinted in Sporn, Philip, Vistas in electric power, New York: Pergamon Press, 1968, p. 955Google Scholar; Cisler, Walker L., ‘Electric power and national defense’, Electrical Engineering, 67, 4, 1948, pp. 319–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Shortages of reserve capacity tax systems’ capabilities’, Electrical World, 128, 21, 1947, pp. 74–7; Lyman, W. J., ‘Determination of required reserve generation capacity’, Electrical World, 127, 19, 1947, pp. 92–5Google Scholar; Phillips, H. W., ‘Determination of reserve requirements for interconnected system’, Edison Electric Institute Bulletin, 14, 4, 1946, pp. 117–20Google Scholar.

65 Electric power statistics, 1920–1940, Washington, DC: Federal Power Commission, 1941, pp. 2, 42, 70, 92, 106, 112.

66 Heston, W. C., ‘Kilowatt-hours pooled for war’, Electrical West, 92, 3, 1944, pp. 51–3Google Scholar.

67 Annual report of the Secretary of the Interior, for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1940, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1940, p. 128.

68 Ibid.

69 Pitzer, Paul C., Grand Coulee: harnessing a dream, Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1994, p. 250Google Scholar; Hirt, Wired northwest; Nash, Gerald, The federal landscape: an economic history of the twentieth century west, Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1999Google Scholar.

70 Heston, ‘Kilowatt-hours’, p. 52.

71 Cohn, The grid, pp. 99–120.

72 Israel Putnam, ‘Wartime prices that fell: gas and electricity’, Public Utilities Fortnightly, 40, 3, 1947, pp. 151–62; ‘Why power curtailment is necessary’, Tuscaloosa News, 5 November 1941, p. 6; ‘Black-outs must continue so factories can run full-time’, Tuscaloosa News, 26 November 1941, p. 6.

73 ‘F.P.C. waives policy on power connections’, New York Times, 17 October 1942, p. 20.

74 ‘1944 electricity production measured country’s war effort’, Edison Electric Institute Bulletin, 13, 5, 1945, pp. 125–32; E. Falck, ‘Power pooling during war’, Power Plant Engineering, 49, 10, 1945, pp. 84–6.

75 Rolf-Dieter Müller, ‘Albert Speer and armaments policy in total war’, in Bernard R. Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Müller, and Hans Umbreit, eds., Germany and the Second World War, vol. 5.2: Organization and mobilization of the German sphere of power, trans. Derry Cook-Radmore, Ewald Osers, Barry Smerin, and Barbara Wilson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 491–2.

76 Gillingham, Industry and politics, p. 84.

77 Maier, ‘Systems connected’, p. 135.

78 Helmut Maier, ‘Kippenlandschaft, “Wasserkrafttaumel” und Kahlschlag: Anspruch und Wirklichkeit nationalsozialistischer Energiepolitik’, in Günter Bayerl, ed., Umweltgeschichte-Methoden, Themen, Potentiale: Tagung des Hamburger Arbeitskreises für Umweltgeschichte, Hamburg 1994, Münster: Waxmann, 1996, pp. 260–1; Rigele, Georg, ‘The Marshall Plan and Austria’s hydroelectric industry: Kaprun’, in Bischof, Günter, Pelinka, Anton, and Stiefel, Dieter, eds., The Marshall Plan in Austria, New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 2000, p. 351Google Scholar; Marc Landry, ‘Europe’s battery: the making of the Alpine energy landscape, 1870–1955’, PhD thesis, Georgetown University, 2013, pp. 178–212.

79 Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Archiv der Republik (henceforth AT-OeStA/AdR), 04, ‘Bürckel’-Materien 2155, box 88, ‘Bericht über die Energieversorgung der Ostmark’, September 1939(?), pp. 1–2.

80 AT-OeStA/AdR, 04, ‘Bürckel’-Materien 2155, box 88, Alpen-Elektrowerke Aktiengesellschaft Wien, ‘Geschäftsbericht über das erste Geschäftsjahr 1938’, p. 5.

81 Margit Reiter, ‘The “myth” of Kaprun: forced labour at the Tauern power plant in Kaprun and how postwar Austria dealt with it’, Contemporary Austrian Studies, 11, 2003, pp. 260–1.

82 Rigele, ‘Marshall Plan’, pp. 323–56.

83 Reiter, ‘“Myth” of Kaprun’.

84 Hans Umbert, ‘Towards continental dominion’, in Kroener, Müller, and Umbreit, Organization and mobilization, p. 264.

85 Maier, ‘Systems connected’, pp. 143–4.

86 Müller, ‘Albert Speer’, p. 493.

87 Milward, Alan, The Fascist economy in Norway, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972, pp. 171–208Google Scholar.

88 Boldorf, Marcel, ‘Seizure or purchase? French deliveries for German Purposes in World War II, 1940–44’, in Frøland, H. O., Ingulstad, Mats, and Scherner, Jonas, eds., Industrial collaboration in Nazi-occupied Europe: Norway in context, London: Palgrave, 2016, pp. 139–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Milward, Fascist economy, p. 200.

90 Kleisl, Electricité Suisse et Troisième Reich, p. 21.

91 Müller, ‘Albert Speer’, p. 493.

92 Hornung, Langthaler, and Schweitzer, ‘Forced labour in agriculture’, p. 685.

93 Maier, ‘Systems connected’, p. 131.

94 Georg Boll, Geschichte des Verbundbetriebs, Frankfurt-am-Main: Verlags- u. Wirtschaftges. d. Elektrizitätswerke m.b.H. VWEW, 1969, p. 99.

95 Herzig, ‘Wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Aspekte’, pp. 141–2.

96 Overy, Richard, War and economy in the Third Reich, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, pp. 359–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 Stier, Staat und Strom, pp. 486–8.

98 Overy, Richard, The bombers and the bombed: Allied air war over Europe, 1940–1945, New York: Viking, 2013, pp. 132–3Google Scholar.

99 United States Strategic Bombing Survey, ‘German electric utilities industry report’, Utilities Division, 13 October 1945.

100 Maier, ‘Systems connected’, pp. 144–5.

101 Rigele, ‘Marshall Plan’, pp. 323–56.

102 Hausman, Hertner, and Wilkins, Global electrification, pp. 233–61.