Red gold: Copper and the U.S. mobilization campaign, 1950–3

Abstract

This paper examines U.S. planners’ persistent efforts to secure an adequate supply of a vital metal, copper, during the Korean War, and the numerous obstacles that plagued them. Their initial efforts to mobilize without imposing a disruptive, draconian control scheme quickly proved inadequate, all but forcing planners to adopt a much more regimented Controlled Materials Plan (CMP). The inability of U.S. planners to secure a strong supranational control regime through the International Materials Conference undercut efforts to coordinate international mineral allocation, exacerbated U.S. shortages, and spawned ill‐conceived compromises that eroded the effectiveness of the CMP. Finally, Truman's domestic opponents, never entirely reconciled to a rigid control regime, used the copper shortage to further weaken mobilization planning. In the end, the preparedness campaign, despite some remarkable successes, failed to achieve many of its goals due, in part, to a global copper shortage that Senator Burnet Maybank's Joint Committee on Defense Production called ‘perhaps the most serious material limiting factor on fulfillment of defense goals’.