1942: How the Americans collected scrap metal for the war industry

However, one of the most important materials for military needs was scrap. The construction of a tank alone required an average of about 18 tons of metal, and what can we say about ships - there it is needed hundreds of times more.

The work of collecting recyclables was done ambitious. Scrap metal reception centers organized competitions among themselves, women carried aluminum pots and pans, farmers gave away their old tractors, and forged fences were dismantled everywhere on city streets. Even the historical guns of the Civil War era were involved. It seems that there was not a single indifferent citizen in the country who did not seek to make any contribution to the collection of materials necessary for a military victory.

To raise a patriotic spirit in one of the cities of Texas, they made a bust of Hitler, in which the locals threw dishes.

The famous animator Walt Disney donated two large Bambi sculptures for military purposes, which, as they say, would be enough to create 10,000 incendiary bombs or one 75-millimeter artillery piece.

They tried to attract people throughout the country in every way to the delivery of recyclables. As Kentucky Governor Kin Johnson said on October 2, 1942, steel needed for the war industry cannot be made without scrap metal, just like cookies without flour or fruit water with ice cream without ice cream itself.

In fact, the benefits of recycling centers for military production were a drop in the bucket. But the true goal of the government was not at all in this, but in raising morale and strengthening patriotic unity. All this agitation for the widespread collection of scrap metal was supposed to arouse in citizens a sense of ownership in the victory over a common enemy.