Combined Raw Materials Board

The Combined Raw Materials Board was a joint United States and United Kingdom wartime body created in January 1942 to coordinate raw-material development, purchase, allocation and use. The United States National Archives records it as abolished on 31 December 1945. It represented constructive alliance statecraft inside a wider wartime system. It was not a supranational authority over every Allied government or domestic agency.

Mandate and operation

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill announced the Board on 26 January 1942. Their statement assigned it work on the best and speediest development, expansion and use of raw materials under the jurisdiction or control of the two governments. This established its principals and declared purpose.

The United States National Archives locates the Board's records within the War Production Board record group. Wartime reports and the Board's annual-report record show work on requirements, commodities, production and supply. Recommendations and combined planning informed national procurement and allocation, but domestic agencies retained legal and operational authority.

Consultation with Canada and other Allies did not by itself create equal formal membership. The Board must also remain distinct from the Combined Production and Resources Board, Combined Food Board, Munitions Assignments Board and shipping machinery. Similar membership and wartime purpose did not merge their mandates.

Strategic significance

The Board sought to expand supply, coordinate scarcity and support Allied production. These were positive and defensive measures that enabled military and economic denial elsewhere. Its existence alone does not prove that a specific commodity shortage was relieved or that one Board recommendation caused an allocation outcome.

Rosen's institutional study and Coakley and Leighton's logistics history provide the wider administrative setting. Commodity-level effectiveness requires minutes, reports and national implementation records. The defensible conclusion is that the Board coordinated alliance resources while preserving national authority.

See also

Economic statecraft · Lend-Lease (1941-1945) · United States Board of Economic Warfare (1941-1943) · Total economic mobilisation · Allied preclusive purchasing in neutral Europe (1941-1944)

Sources

1. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, Statement on Raw Materials, Munition Assignments and Shipping Adjustment Boards, 26 January 1942.
2. United States National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the War Production Board, including the Combined Raw Materials Board.
3. War Production Board, *War Production in 1944* (1945).
4. Combined Raw Materials Board, second annual report, reviewed in *Nature* (1944).
5. S. McKee Rosen, *The Combined Boards of the Second World War: An Experiment in International Administration* (Columbia University Press, 1951).
6. Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, *Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940-1943* (United States Army Center of Military History, 1955).