Belsley, G. Lyle Papers

Executive Secretary, War Production Board, 1942-1945

The papers of G. Lyle Belsley consist of bound reports on U.S. defense production and other economic aspects of World War II, and printed materials that are also related to the war.

Size: 2.8 linear feet.
Access: Open.
Copyright: No donation of copyright was received with this collection. Documents created by employees of the U.S. Government in the course of their official duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents in the collection presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: C. Warren Ohrvall (1972); Randy Sowell (2024).

Gilbert Lyle Belsley was born in Roanoke, Illinois, on January 5, 1905. He attended Pomona College, receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees at that institution, and later earned a doctorate in economics and public administration at the Robert S. Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government. Belsley began his career in the federal government as an official with the U.S. Personnel Classification Board in 1928, and later served as director of personnel at the Farm Credit Administration. During World War II, Belsley was the executive secretary of the War Production Board. After the war, he held administrative posts at a number of federal agencies, including the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Security Resources Board, and the Federal Civil Defense Administration, before his retirement in 1966. Belsley died in Alexandria, Virginia on April 9, 1993.

The papers of G. Lyle Belsley consist of bound reports on U.S. defense production and other economic aspects of World War II, and printed materials that are also related to the war. Most of the collection is comprised of a series of 262 weekly summaries of progress in the defense industry. The summaries were printed with various titles, including Defense Progress and (after January 1942) War Progress, and were issued by the National Defense Advisory Commission from August 1940 to March 1941, by the Office of Production Management from March 1941 to January 1942, and by the War Production Board from January 1942 to October 1945. They contain statistics, charts, and other information concerning a variety of war-related subjects, including War and Navy Department contracts, employment in the defense industry, imports and exports, prices, labor disputes, merchant shipping, supplies of strategic materials, plans for postwar reconversion, the munitions program, the resources of Axis nations, and the production of airplanes, ships, and tanks.

Most of the other reports in Belsley’s papers were issued by the War Production Board and also deal with the economic effects of the conflict, with reference to such specific issues as the Gross National Product, material supply estimates, regional impacts, and plans for demobilization and reconversion to a peacetime economy. The printed materials consist of historical booklets about U.S. military campaigns in the European and Pacific theaters.