Introduction

Number of Sheep, all breeds,              Main Wool Mfg. Nations, 1914

Worldwide, 1914

Tables Reconstructed from Wool, Stanley Hart, 1917

It is easy from the table above to see why Germany and Austria-Hungary became desperate for wool during World War I. With fewer than 20 million sheep, probably producing rather less than 5 pounds of wool each, together they could outfit an army of fewer than 1 million men –provided they kept nothing back for civilian use. And yet the armed forces of Austria-Hungary numbered some 9 million men, and those of Germany 13.67 million men, in total between 1914 and 1918. Not all of them fought, and they did not all serve at once. But both countries had imported most of the wool their factories had manufactured into textiles before the war, and although German wool-buyers had been active in Australia and other wool markets before the war, accumulating a stockpile, this was rapidly depleted. Imports of new supplies were not accessible once the British blockaded German ports in early 1915.

Other nations in other wars faced similar problems. Wool was a strategic commodity in wartime, and control of it, or the lack of it, was a pressing problem when wars--and armies--got bigger and bigger

Graph: Number of soldiers outfitted in successive wars; Crimea to World War II