The Ministry of Munitions

In the Second World War Lord Beaverbrook consciously modelled the way he ran the Ministry of Aircraft Production on David Lloyd George’s conduct of the Ministry of Munitions in the First World War. In the public mind the Ministry of Munitions had been the administrative success story of the earlier war. The saga of an unorthodox politician and dynamic businessmen achieving the apparently impossible in output had irresistible appeal to Beaverbrook. In 1940–1, secure in Winston Churchill’s favour, he commandeered resources and exhorted and harried his staff in his drive rapidly to expand production of aircraft. ¹