ABSTRACT
The Ministry of Economic Warfare came into being on 3 September 1939, springing fully-armed from the brow of the Foreign Office rather as the goddess Pallas Athene did from Zeus. To continue the metaphor, MEW was assumed to have been born with a good deal of knowledge and wisdom, bearing a powerful weapon that would shorten the war against Germany: an enemy that (to mix metaphors), even if it were ‘no Achilles with a single vital spot . . . is vulnerable and can be bled to death if dealt sufficient wounds’.1 Nevertheless, during the early stages of the war this particular goddess was generally ignored not only by her irascible parent, but by the whole panoply of Whitehall gods – from the Cabinet to the Service Ministries to the Joint Planning Staff – despite their peacetime acceptance of the importance of planning for economic warfare. It was, as Morton wrote to MEW’s official historian in May 1945, as if a fireproof curtain had fallen on the outbreak of war.2
