Download or read book Destructive Creation written by Mark R. Wilson and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-08-03 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, the United States helped vanquish the Axis powers by converting its enormous economic capacities into military might. Producing nearly two-thirds of all the munitions used by Allied forces, American industry became what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "the arsenal of democracy." Crucial in this effort were business leaders. Some of these captains of industry went to Washington to coordinate the mobilization, while others led their companies to churn out weapons. In this way, the private sector won the war—or so the story goes. Based on new research in business and military archives, Destructive Creation shows that the enormous mobilization effort relied not only on the capacities of private companies but also on massive public investment and robust government regulation. This public-private partnership involved plenty of government-business cooperation, but it also generated antagonism in the American business community that had lasting repercussions for American politics. Many business leaders, still engaged in political battles against the New Deal, regarded the wartime government as an overreaching regulator and a threatening rival. In response, they mounted an aggressive campaign that touted the achievements of for-profit firms while dismissing the value of public-sector contributions. This probusiness story about mobilization was a political success, not just during the war, but afterward, as it shaped reconversion policy and the transformation of the American military-industrial complex. Offering a groundbreaking account of the inner workings of the "arsenal of democracy," Destructive Creation also suggests how the struggle to define its heroes and villains has continued to shape economic and political development to the present day.

Download or read book Arsenal of Democracy written by Charles K. Hyde and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-04 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout World War II, Detroit's automobile manufacturers accounted for one-fifth of the dollar value of the nation's total war production, and this amazing output from "the arsenal of democracy" directly contributed to the allied victory. In fact, automobile makers achieved such production miracles that many of their methods were adopted by other defense industries, particularly the aircraft industry. In Arsenal of Democracy: The American Automobile Industry in World War II, award-winning historian Charles K. Hyde details the industry's transition to a wartime production powerhouse and some of its notable achievements along the way. Hyde examines several innovative cooperative relationships that developed between the executive branch of the federal government, U.S. military services, automobile industry leaders, auto industry suppliers, and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union, which set up the industry to achieve production miracles. He goes on to examine the struggles and achievements of individual automakers during the war years in producing items like aircraft engines, aircraft components, and complete aircraft; tanks and other armored vehicles; jeeps, trucks, and amphibians; guns, shells, and bullets of all types; and a wide range of other weapons and war goods ranging from search lights to submarine nets and gyroscopes. Hyde also considers the important role played by previously underused workers-namely African Americans and women-in the war effort and their experiences on the line. Arsenal of Democracy includes an analysis of wartime production nationally, on the automotive industry level, by individual automakers, and at the single plant level. For this thorough history, Hyde has consulted previously overlooked records collected by the Automobile Manufacturers Association that are now housed in the National Automotive History Collection of the Detroit Public Library. Automotive historians, World War II scholars, and American history buffs will welcome the compelling look at wartime industry in Arsenal of Democracy.

Download or read book Mobilizing U S Industry in World War II written by Alan L. Gropman and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents: Mobilization activities before Pearl Harbor day; education for mobilization; interwar planning for industrial mobilization; mobilizing for war: 1939-1941; the war production board; the controlled materials plan; the office of war mobilization & reconversion; U.S. production in World War II; balancing military & civilian needs; overcoming raw material scarcities; maritime construction; people mobilization: Rosie the RiveterÓ; conclusions. Appendix: production of selected munitions items; the war agencies of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

Download or read book Detroit s Wartime Industry written by Michael W. R. Davis and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as Detroit symbolizes the U.S. automobile industry, during World War II it also came to stand for all American industry's conversion from civilian goods to war material. The label "Arsenal of Democracy" was coined by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in a fireside chat radio broadcast on December 29, 1940, nearly a year before the United States formally entered the war. Here is the pictorial story of one Detroiter's unique leadership in the miraculous speed Detroit's mass-production capacity was shifted to output of tanks, trucks, guns, and airplanes to support America's victory and of the struggles of civilians on the home front.

Download or read book Industrialists in Olive Drab written by John Hallowell Ohly and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Economics of World War I written by Stephen Broadberry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-29 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique volume offers a definitive new history of European economies at war from 1914 to 1918. It studies how European economies mobilised for war, how existing economic institutions stood up under the strain, how economic development influenced outcomes and how wartime experience influenced post-war economic growth. Leading international experts provide the first systematic comparison of economies at war between 1914 and 1918 based on the best available data for Britain, Germany, France, Russia, the USA, Italy, Turkey, Austria-Hungary and the Netherlands. The editors' overview draws some stark lessons about the role of economic development, the importance of markets and the damage done by nationalism and protectionism. A companion volume to the acclaimed The Economics of World War II, this is a major contribution to our understanding of total war.

Download or read book A Consumers Republic written by Lizabeth Cohen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-12-24 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life. Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its economic objectives and became synonymous with patriotism, social equality, and the American Dream. Material goods came to embody the promise of America, and the power of consumers to purchase everything from vacuum cleaners to convertibles gave rise to the power of citizens to purchase political influence and effect social change. Yet despite undeniable successes and unprecedented affluence, mass consumption also fostered economic inequality and the fracturing of society along gender, class, and racial lines. In charting the complex legacy of our “Consumers’ Republic” Lizabeth Cohen has written a bold, encompassing, and profoundly influential book.

Download or read book Freedom s Forge written by Arthur Herman and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SELECTED BY THE ECONOMIST AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR “A rambunctious book that is itself alive with the animal spirits of the marketplace.”—The Wall Street Journal Freedom’s Forge reveals how two extraordinary American businessmen—General Motors automobile magnate William “Big Bill” Knudsen and shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser—helped corral, cajole, and inspire business leaders across the country to mobilize the “arsenal of democracy” that propelled the Allies to victory in World War II. Drafting top talent from companies like Chrysler, Republic Steel, Boeing, Lockheed, GE, and Frigidaire, Knudsen and Kaiser turned auto plants into aircraft factories and civilian assembly lines into fountains of munitions. In four short years they transformed America’s army from a hollow shell into a truly global force, laying the foundations for the country’s rise as an economic as well as military superpower. Freedom’s Forge vividly re-creates American industry’s finest hour, when the nation’s business elites put aside their pursuit of profits and set about saving the world. Praise for Freedom’s Forge “A rarely told industrial saga, rich with particulars of the growing pains and eventual triumphs of American industry . . . Arthur Herman has set out to right an injustice: the loss, down history’s memory hole, of the epic achievements of American business in helping the United States and its allies win World War II.”—The New York Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . It’s not often that a historian comes up with a fresh approach to an absolutely critical element of the Allied victory in World War II, but Pulitzer finalist Herman . . . has done just that.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A compulsively readable tribute to ‘the miracle of mass production.’ ”—Publishers Weekly “The production statistics cited by Mr. Herman . . . astound.”—The Economist “[A] fantastic book.”—Forbes “Freedom’s Forge is the story of how the ingenuity and energy of the American private sector was turned loose to equip the finest military force on the face of the earth. In an era of gathering threats and shrinking defense budgets, it is a timely lesson told by one of the great historians of our time.”—Donald Rumsfeld

Download or read book A Call to Arms written by Maury Klein and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-07-16 with total page 916 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The colossal scale of World War II required a mobilization effort greater than anything attempted in all of the world's history. The United States had to fight a war across two oceans and three continents--and to do so, it had to build and equip a military that was all but nonexistent before the war began. Never in the nation's history did it have to create, outfit, transport, and supply huge armies, navies, and air forces on so many distant and disparate fronts. The Axis powers might have fielded better-trained soldiers, better weapons, and better tanks and aircraft, but they could not match American productivity. The United States buried its enemies in aircraft, ships, tanks, and guns; in this sense, American industry and American workers, won World War II. The scale of the effort was titanic, and the result historic. Not only did it determine the outcome of the war, but it transformed the American economy and society. Maury Klein's A Call to Arms is the definitive narrative history of this epic struggle--told by one of America's greatest historians of business and economics--and renders the transformation of America with a depth and vividness never available before.

Download or read book American Industry in War Time written by and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Warhogs written by Stuart D. Brandes and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Puritans condemned war profiteering as a "Provoking Evil," George Washington feared that it would ruin the Revolution, and Franklin D. Roosevelt promised many times that he would never permit the rise of another crop of "war millionaires." Yet on every occasion that American soldiers and sailors served and sacrificed in the field and on the sea, other Americans cheerfully enhanced their personal wealth by exploiting every opportunity that wartime circumstances presented. In Warhogs, Stuart D. Brandes masterfully blends intellectual, economic, and military history into a fascinating discussion of a great moral question for generations of Americans: Can some individuals rightly profit during wartime while others sacrifice their lives to protect the nation? Drawing upon a wealth of manuscript sources, newspapers, contemporary periodicals, government reports, and other relevant literature, Brandes traces how each generation in financing its wars has endeavored to assemble resources equitably, to define the ethical questions of economic mobilization, and to manage economic sacrifice responsibly. He defines profiteering to include such topics as price gouging, quality degradation, trading with the enemy, plunder, and fraud, in order to examine the different guises of war profits and the degree to which they have existed from one era to the next. This far-reaching discussion moves beyond a linear narrative of the financial schemes that have shaped this nation's capacity to make war to an in-depth analysis of American thought and culture. Those scholars, students, and general readers interested in the interaction of legislative, economic, social, and technological events with the military establishment will find no other study that so thoroughly surveys the story of war profits in America.

Download or read book American Industry in War and Transition 1940 1950 written by United States. War Production Board and published by . This book was released on 1945 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Labor s Great War written by Joseph A. McCartin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since World War I, says Joseph McCartin, the central problem of American labor relations has been the struggle among workers, managers, and state officials to reconcile democracy and authority in the workplace. In his comprehensive look at labor issues during the decade of the Great War, McCartin explores the political, economic, and social forces that gave rise to this conflict and shows how rising labor militancy and the sudden erosion of managerial control in wartime workplaces combined to create an industrial crisis. The search for a resolution to this crisis led to the formation of an influential coalition of labor Democrats, AFL unionists, and Progressive activists on the eve of U.S. entry into the war. Though the coalition's efforts in pursuit of industrial democracy were eventually frustrated by powerful forces in business and government and by internal rifts within the movement itself, McCartin shows how the shared quest helped cement the ties between unionists and the Democratic Party that would subsequently shape much New Deal legislation and would continue to influence the course of American political and labor history to the present day.

Download or read book Advertising at War written by Inger L Stole and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012-11-16 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advertising at War challenges the notion that advertising disappeared as a political issue in the United States in 1938 with the passage of the Wheeler-Lea Amendment to the Federal Trade Commission Act, the result of more than a decade of campaigning to regulate the advertising industry. Inger L. Stole suggests that the war experience, even more than the legislative battles of the 1930s, defined the role of advertising in U.S. postwar political economy and the nation's cultural firmament. She argues that Washington and Madison Avenue were soon working in tandem with the creation of the Advertising Council in 1942, a joint effort established by the Office of War Information, the Association of National Advertisers, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies. Using archival sources, newspapers accounts, and trade publications, Stole demonstrates that the war elevated and magnified the seeming contradictions of advertising and allowed critics of these practices one final opportunity to corral and regulate the institution of advertising. Exploring how New Dealers and consumer advocates such as the Consumers Union battled the advertising industry, Advertising at War traces the debate over two basic policy questions: whether advertising should continue to be a tax-deductible business expense during the war, and whether the government should require effective standards and labeling for consumer products, which would render most advertising irrelevant. Ultimately the postwar climate of political intolerance and reverence for free enterprise quashed critical investigations into the advertising industry. While advertising could be criticized or lampooned, the institution itself became inviolable.

Download or read book American Industry in the War written by United States. War Industries Board and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Arsenal of World War II written by Paul A. C. Koistinen and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 678 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prolific munitions production keyed America's triumph in World War II but so did the complex economic controls needed to sustain that production. Artillery, tanks, planes, ships, trucks, and weaponry of every kind were constantly demanded by the military and readily supplied by American business. While that relationship was remarkably successful in helping the U.S. win the war, it also raised troubling issues about wartime economies that have never been fully resolved. Paul Koistinen's fourth installment of a monumental five-volume series on the political economy of American warfare focuses on the mobilization of national resources for a truly global war. Koistinen comprehensively analyzes all relevant aspects of the World War II economy from 1940 through 1945, describing the nation's struggle to establish effective control over industrial supply and military demand—and revealing the growing partnership between the corporate community and the armed services. Koistinen traces the evolution of federal agencies mobilizing for war—including the National Defense Advisory Commission, the Office of Production Management, and the Supply Priorities and Allocation Board-and then focuses on the work of the War Production Board from 1942-1945. As the war progressed, the WPB and related agencies oversaw the military's supply and procurement systems; stabilized the economy while financing the war; closely monitored labor relations; and controlled the shipping and rationing of fuel and food. In chronicling American mobilization, Koistinen reveals how representatives of industry and the armed services expanded upon their growing prewar ties to shape policies for harnessing the economy, and how federal agencies were subsequently riven with dissension as New Deal reformers and anti-New Deal corporate elements battled for control over mobilization itself. As the armed services emerged as the principal customers of a command economy, the military-industrial nexus consolidated its power and ultimately succeeded in bending the reformers to its will. The product of exhaustive archival research, Arsenal of World War II shows that mobilization meant more than simply harnessing the economy for war-it also involved struggles for power and position among a great many interest groups and ideologies. Nearly two decades in the making, it provides an ambitious and enormously insightful overview of the emergence of the military-industrial economy, one that still resonates today as America continues to wage wars around the globe.

Download or read book Manufacturing Advantage written by Lindsay Schakenbach Regele and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ultimately, the book reveals the complex link between government intervention and private initiative in a country struggling to create a political economy that balanced military competence with commercial needs.