Saturday August 2, 1941. Silk Threads.

As the Today In World War Two History blog informs us, on this day in history the U.S. Office of Production Management restricted sales of silk to the United States government and also restricted the sales of rayon and steel. All were vital war materials, with the spider produced silk and synthetic rayon critical for parachutes.

Silk threads made from wartime salvaged silk.

This brings up one of the common tropes of the 1940s, that being GI's trading cigarettes and nylons for dates.  It shows up in movies all the time.  The interesting thing now, of course, is that "nylons" are pretty much a think of the past, I think.

This must reflect a change in the standards of dress. When women wore skirts or dresses nearly daily, nylons were a way of smoothing out the appearance of their legs for formal occasions.  Now, as women dress like this much less often, they seem to have gone by the wayside.  

I don't know the history of nylons or their predecessor silk stockings, but I wonder if the current situation isn't a return to an earlier standard. Even when women wear skirts now, I don't think they wear nylons very often.  They were likely a pain and their disappearance, for the most part, probably isn't missed much.

Silk was missed along with nylon for its civilian clothing use. Wool and cotton were the big fabrics of the era, but silk was common in some things, such as wedding dresses.  The trop of a parachute being taken for fabric for a wedding dress is another common one from the era.

On the same day, the U.S. extended Lend Lease to the Soviet Union.  

It would take some time for U.S. military products to reach the Soviet Union, but by the end of the war a massive amount of war material of all types was provided to the USSR.  We've dealt with this elsewhere, but the Red Army would not have been the same fighting force it was in the second half of the war without U.S. and British materials.  The Soviets received materials in every category, and its motorization can be largely attributed to Detroit.

Studebaker trucks on their way to the Soviet Union, traveling through Iran, 1943.

The United Kingdom called upon Iran and Afghanistan to expel German citizens.

The British were concerned about German advances in the Caucasus. It was theorized by the British that if the Germans continued to advance as they were, they'd end up taking the area to the north of Iraq and effectively be able to encircle, at some point, the British in the Middle East, although this may frankly have been a bit of over extended speculation.

Iran had declared itself neutral in the war but it was somewhat hostile to the British for traditional reasons.  It refused the British request.

Afghanistan, which actually had been flirting with the Germans, complied with the request and backed off its previous positions, which were geared towards trying to expand its territory and gain access to the sea. 

The Germans confiscated Norwegian radios.