In this paper I show inter alia that, by one barely known but official measure, imports of goods into the United Kingdom towards the end of the Second World War were more than twice the best-known measure. The lower measure is that found in the historical British national accounts and in the Bank of England's A millennium of macroeconomic data. That invaluable compendium in fact has both these measures, and indeed another one also, but this is not clear, and there is no proper explanation of the differences between these series. The differences matter. What I will show to be the most obvious, though not the only legitimate, measure of wartime goods imports suggests that real imports were higher at the end of the war than in the 1930s, and higher as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP). By contrast the national accounts figures show an absolute real-terms fall, and a larger still fall as a proportion of GDP. This really mattered in an economy already exceptional for its high imports. In this paper I clarify the nature of the different measures of imports and how they have resulted in a radically different understanding of the British war effort.

中文翻译：

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1939-45 年英国战时进口的消失：统计、意识形态和史学核算

在本文中，我除其他外表明，根据一项鲜为人知但官方的衡量标准，第二次世界大战结束时英国的货物进口量是最知名衡量标准的两倍多。较低的衡量标准是在英国历史国民账户和英格兰银行千年宏观经济数据中发现的。事实上，那本无价的纲要既有这两种衡量标准，实际上也有另一种衡量标准，但这一点尚不清楚，也没有对这些系列之间的差异做出适当的解释。差异很重要。我将展示的最明显但不是唯一合法的战时商品进口衡量标准表明，战争结束时的实际进口高于 1930 年代，并且占国内生产总值 (GDP) 的比例也更高。相比之下，国民账户数据显示实际绝对值下降，占国内生产总值的比例下降幅度更大。对于一个因高进口而已经非常特殊的经济体来说，这确实很重要。在本文中，我阐明了不同进口措施的性质，以及它们如何导致对英国战争努力的截然不同的理解。