Author: Albert J. Baime Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN: 0547719280 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 389
Book Description
Chronicles Detroit's dramatic transition from an automobile manufacturing center to a highly efficient producer of World War II airplanes, citing the essential role of Edsel Ford's rebellion against his father, Henry Ford.
Author: Charles K. Hyde Publisher: Wayne State University Press ISBN: 0814339522 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
Examines the role of the American automobile industry in producing vehicles, weapons, and other war products during World War II. 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.
Author: Julian Zelizer Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com ISBN: 1458760456 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 546
Book Description
It has long been a truism that prior to George W. Bush, politics stopped at the water's edge - that is, that partisanship had no place in national security. In Arsenal of Democracy, historian Julian E. Zelizer shows this to be demonstrably false: partisan fighting has always shaped American foreign policy and the issue of national security has always been part of our domestic conflicts. Based on original archival findings, Arsenal of Democracy offers new insights into nearly every major national security issue since the beginning of the cold war: from FDR's masterful management of World War II to the partisanship that scarred John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, from Ronald Reagan's fight against Communism to George W. Bush's controversial War on Terror. A definitive account of the complex interaction between domestic politics and foreign affairs over the last six decades, Arsenal of Democracy is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of national security.
Author: Michael W. R. Davis Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 9780738551647 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 132
Book Description
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.
Author: Arthur Herman Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks ISBN: 0812982045 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 434
Book Description
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
Author: Jacques S. Gansler Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262072998 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 449
Book Description
The author describes the transformations needed in government and industry to achieve a new, more effective system of national defense.
Author: Roger Daniels Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 0252097645 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 681
Book Description
Having guided the nation through the worst economic crisis in its history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt by 1939 was turning his attention to a world on the brink of war. The second part of Roger Daniels's biography focuses on FDR's growing mastery in foreign affairs. Relying on FDR's own words to the American people and eyewitness accounts of the man and his accomplishments, Daniels reveals a chief executive orchestrating an immense wartime effort. Roosevelt had effective command of military and diplomatic information and unprecedented power over strategic military and diplomatic affairs. He simultaneously created an arsenal of democracy that armed the Allies while inventing the United Nations intended to ensure a lasting postwar peace. FDR achieved these aims while expanding general prosperity, limiting inflation, and continuing liberal reform despite an increasingly conservative and often hostile Congress. Although fate robbed him of the chance to see the victory he had never doubted, events in 1944 assured him that the victory he had done so much to bring about would not be long delayed. A compelling reconsideration of Roosevelt the president and campaigner, The War Years, 1939-1945 provides new views and vivid insights about a towering figure--and six years that changed the world.
Author: Gavin J. Bailey Publisher: Edinburgh Studies in Anglo-Ame ISBN: 9780748647477 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Through a series of case studies, Gavin J. Bailey reveals new details of how Britain used American aircraft and integrates this with broader British statecraft and strategy. He challenges conceptions that Britain was strategically reliant on the US and reveals a complicated, asymmetrical dependency between the wartime allies.
Author: Seth G. Jones Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1538170779 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 74
Book Description
China's defense industrial base is operating on a wartime footing, while the U.S. defense industrial base is largely operating on a peacetime footing. Overall, the U.S. defense industrial ecosystem lacks the capacity, responsiveness, flexibility, and surge capability to meet the U.S. military's production and warfighting needs. Unless there are urgent changes, the United States risks weakening deterrence and undermining its wartime capabilities. China is heavily investing in munitions and acquiring high-end weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than the United States. China is also the world's largest shipbuilder and has a shipbuilding capacity that is roughly 230 times larger than the United States. One of China's large shipyards, such as Jiangnan Shipyard, has more capacity than all U.S. shipyards combined.
Author: Albert J. Baime
Author: Charles K. Hyde
Author: Julian Zelizer
Author: Michael W. R. Davis
Author: Arthur Herman
Author: Jacques S. Gansler
Author: Roger Daniels
Author: Gavin J. Bailey
Author: Seth G. Jones
Author: Survey Graphic