So many scholars helped with individual chapters or problems both literary and archival, I can’t list them all, but certain ones deserve special mention: Max Boot, Carlo D’Este, Victor Davis Hanson, Tim Kane, Richard Langworth, Andrew Roberts, Alex Rose, and Mark Wilson of the University of North Carolina–Charlotte.
My editor at Random House, Jonathan Jao, not only read and edited early drafts with an expert eye, but inadvertently contributed to the book’s birth in 2009 by asking me what I really wanted to write about after Gandhi & Churchill. My agents Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu relished the project from the start almost as much as I did. My parents, Arthur and Barbara Herman, read chapters, sent research materials, and reminisced about life in home front America in ways that helped to make the book more authentic.
My most important debt however, is to my wife, Beth. She understood the importance of this book almost from the moment I started working on it, and put up with the piles of books, diagrams, and back issues of American Machinist, Business Week, and Fortune that threatened to devour our house. She read early drafts of chapters, and I couldn’t have completed Freedom’s Forge without her. She has stuck with me through thick and thin.
That is why the book is lovingly dedicated to her.
APPENDIX B
JOINING THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY
The following is an excerpt from Your Business Goes to War by Leo Cherne (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942, pp. 50–53).
Typical Facility Conversions
Lists of typical conversions should be taken only as guides. Whether or not your plant can be converted to turn out a specific military product is an engineering problem which requires an engineering answer based on the size, facilities, and the other productive resources of your business. Each plant must be surveyed individually before it can be decided whether conversion to war output is possible. The following list of conversions which have already been carried out is suggestive.
Peacetime Products
Adding machines
Agricultural implements
Automatic lead pencils
Automobile accessories
Automobile bodies
Automobile cranks, brakes, rods, etc.
Automobile engines and motor cars
Automobile loading devices
Automobile steering gears
Automobiles
Automotive specialties
Batteries, sparkplugs, radio parts, roller skates
Boats and lighters
Bottle caps, bottlers, dairy and packers’ machine closures, cork insulation
Bottle coolers and dispensers
Box toes
Buses and trolleys
Business machines and appliances
Canners’ machinery
Canning and cooking apparatus
Cans and food containers
Cash registers and business machines
Casters, wheels, and furniture hardware
Clamps, magneto couplings, etc.
Coin-operated vending machines and ice-cream freezers
Commercial steel castings
Conveyors, excavators, stokers, chain belts
Cooling systems and equipment
Cork and glass products
Cotton mill machines (looms)
Cranks, ball
Die casting (non-ferrous)
Drop forgings
Electric cleaners, clothes washers, etc.
Electric elevators
Electric equipment
Electric fans, dryers, heaters, motors
Electric refrigerators
Electric storage batteries
Electric utility outdoor equipment
Electric welded pipe
Enameled steel stamping, specialties and signs
Fabricated basic-steel products
Fabricated piping and air-conditioning equipment
Fire sprinklers and alarms
Fireworks and toys
Flexible shafts, electric household appliances, electric shavers, etc.
Gas-stove burners, valves and lighters
Glass moulds
Hardware
Heating and cooling systems
Household appliances
Jewelry
Lawn mowers
Linoleum and floor coverings
Locomotive type boilers
Matches
Metal fabricators and enameling
Metal household specialties
Milling and drilling machines,
precision lathes, dial indicators and gauges
Mimeograph brand products
Mining machinery
Motor cars
Motor cooling equipment
Office furniture
Oil well and drillers’ supplies
Pipe fittings and valves
Pipe organs
Plumbing and sanitary fixtures
Portable machinery, agricultural implements, hydraulic presses, sawmill machines
Postal meters
Precision instruments
Printing presses
Pullman cars
Pumps and woodworking machinery
Pumps, meters, valves
Radio-phonographs
Radio vibrators, antennae
Rail and wire products
Railroad cars
Railroad locomotives
Railway signals
Razors
Rolled copper plate
Rolled steel products
Roller skates, wheels, keys, etc.
Sash doors and blinds
Screens-steel sash, dies, pulleys
Screw-machine products, milling machines and hair-clipping machines
Sheet-metal novelties
Shoe and harness machines
Shoes, men’s
Silk ribbons (also silk goods)
Springs and metal stampings
Steel-lead containers
Steel products
Steel vaults
Stoves, sheet-metal products, etc.
Textile machines
Textile trimmings, etc.
Tools, dies, jigs, fixtures, gauges, and special machines
Vacuum cleaners
Valves, cocks
Washing and ironing machines
Watches
Watch bracelets
Wheelbarrows and road scrapers
War Products
Automatic pistols
Artillery shell
Combat wagons and gun carriages
Ammunition components
Shell, 37m/m
Airplane parts
Fuze, P.D., M52
Airplane type combat tank engines
M.C. mounts
Machine guns
Artillery projectiles—shell
Cartridge cases 75m/m
Bullet cores
Fuze, B.C., M58
Pontoon bridges
Mounts, tripod, cal . .50
Mine anti-tank, metal parts
Scabbards
Machining, 75m/m H.E. shell
Artillery shell
Ammunition boxes
Fuze, P.D., M51 (metal parts)
Gas-mask canisters
Bomb fuzes
Fuze, P.D., M56
Fuze, anti-tank mine
Shell, R.F., H.E. 40m/m
Tripods for anti-aircraft guns
Mounts T2, 90m/m
Helmets
Shell, 3″ M42B2
Shot, S.A.P., 37m/m, M74
Casing, burster, M6
Booster, M22
Machining, artillery shell
Mounts, tripod, M.G., cal . .50
Recoil mechanisms for 3″ A.A. guns
Cartridge cases, 105m/m howitzer
Flares, A.C., parts, M26
Airplane parts
Fuze, P.D., M48 (metal parts)
Shell, 75m/m, M48 (M)
Demolition bombs and torpedo parts
Anti-tank mine
Armor-piercing projectil
es
Bomb bodies
Artillery ammunition components
Signals, A.C.
Fuze, percussion, no. 253
Fuze, percussion, M31 (metal parts)
Burster, M7 for bomb
Cartridge cases, 37m/m
Sighting devices, cal . .30 rifles
Fuze, T.S.R., M54
Fuze, B.D., M58
Machining shrapnel
Machining, 75m/m artillery shell
Track shoe links on tanks
Aircraft cartridge signals
Shell, 105m/m Case cartridge, 105 howitzer
Anti-tank mines, H.E.
Gauges
Fuze, B.D., M58
Light combat tanks
Light combat tanks
Airplane landing wheels
Bomb containers
Machining 155m/m shell
Hand grenades
Saddle frames
Machining artillery shell
81m/m machine mounts
Bomb mechanisms
Navigation compasses
Gun—howitzer parts. Recoil mechanisms for 155 m/m howitzers
Forgings for 105m/m howitzer
Machining artillery shell
Fuze, percussion no. 253, 20m/m
Bomb fuzes and parts
Fuze, bomb, M103
Artillery shell
Artillery shell forgings
Machining 155m/m shell
Machining artillery shell
Primers, percussion, M23A1
Metal components for ammunition
3″ anti-aircraft gun forgings
Metal parts for boosters
Cartridge cases, 37m/m, M17
Fuze, P.D., M52
Projectiles, ball, 20m/m
Links, for 20m/m gun M1
Shot, A.P., 20m/m
Helmet linings
Silk, parachute, pyrotechnics
Gas-mask parts
Ammunition adapters and boosters
Forgings, 75m/m H.E. shell
Shell, 105m/m (M)
Metallic belt links
Mounts, tripod
Ammunition belts
Gauges, manufacturing 37m/m guns
Gas-mask parts
Shell, 20m/m H.E. (metal parts)
Anti-tank mine H.E., M1
Mechanical time fuzes
Booster, M22
Ammunition carts for machine guns
The major key to your ability to produce on munitions is your machine tool equipment. If you have machine tools which are scarce, your chances of getting into war production should be good. Following is a list of the machine tools most needed for work on war prime and subcontracts:
Horizontal boring machines 4″ bar and up
Vertical boring machines 54″ and up
Radial drills 15″ column and up
Jig borers All sizes
Gear-grinding machines All sizes
Thread-grinding machines All sizes
Hobbing machines All sizes
Engine lathes 36″ and up
Turret lathes Chucking Type and 2½″ bar and up
Multiple spindle automatic screw machines 3″ bar and up
Milling machines (vertical or horizontal) No. 2 and up
Thread-milling machines All sizes
Planers 72″ and up
Die sinkers All sizes
Reciprocating table surface grinders grinding periphery of solid wheel For work 12″ wide by 12″ high and up
Cylindrical grinding machines (est.) 24″ work dia. and up
Planer type milling machines For work 48″ wide by 48″ high and up
Vertical shapers (not slotters) All sizes
Gear shapers, plane (Int.) 54″ and up
NOTES
PROLOGUE
1. Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat (New York: Norton, 1968), 40–43.
2. John Lukacs, The Duel: The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1990), 64.
3. C-9x, May 13, 1940, in Warren Kimball, ed., Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, Vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 37.
4. Kimball, Churchill and Roosevelt, Vol. 1, 37.
5. William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953), 198, 200.
6. Report of the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, U.S. Congress, Senate, 74th Congress, Second Session, February 24, 1936, 3–13.
7. Francis Walton, The Miracle of World War II: How American Industry Made Victory Possible (New York: Macmillan, 1956).
8. Duncan Ballantine, U.S. Naval Logistics in the Second World War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947), 29.
9. W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1955), 104.
10. A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1966), 185.
11. Quoted in Frank Friedel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), 311.
12. Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1, 104.
13. Life, November 30, 1942, 124.
14. Richard Holl, From the Boardroom to the War Room: America’s Corporate Liberals and FDR’s Preparedness Program (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2005), 41.
15. Holl, From the Boardroom, 78.
16. David Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor (Chicago: Dee Publishing, 2001), 70.
17. Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, Vol. 2 (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1964), 17.
18. Norman Beasley, Knudsen: A Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947), 228.
19. Stanley Weintraub, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Marshall: Three Generals Who Saved the Country (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 106.
20. Beasley, Knudsen, 229.
21. Walter Millis, Arms and Men: A Study in American Military History (New York: Putnam, 1956), 270.
22. John Morton Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries, Vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965); Beasely, Knudsen, 229–30.
23. Kimball, Churchill and Roosvelt, Vol. 1, 40.
24. Bernard Baruch, Baruch: The Public Years (New York: Henry Holt, 1957), 273.
25. Holl, From the Boardroom, 46; R. Elberton Smith, The Army and Economic Mobilization (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1991), 37–38.
26. Beasley, Knudsen, 230.
27. The Goebbels Diaries 1939–1941 (New York: Putnam, 1982), entry for June 14, 1941, 414.
CHAPTER ONE: THE GENTLE GIANT
1. Beasley, Knudsen, 1.
2. Beasley, Knudsen, 1.
3. Christy Borth, Masters of Mass Production (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1945), 60.
4. American National Biography (hereafter cited as ANB) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), Vol. 12, 843.
5. Beasley, Knudsen, 2.
6. Beasley, Knudsen, 3–4.
7. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 40.
8. Detroit Public Library: Knudsen Collection, Part 4, Box 1: Keim Mills, May 1, 1940.
9. ANB, 843.
10. Beasley, Knudsen, 28.
11. James Fink, “William Signius Knudsen,” in George May, ed., The Automotive Industry 1920–1980 (New York: Facts on File, 1989).
12. David Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production 1800–1932 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 221–22.
13. Hounshell, American System, 223; Charles Sorensen, My Forty Years with Ford (New York: Norton, 1956), 45.
14. Hounshell, American System, 230–31.
15. Beasley, Knudsen, 41.
16. Beasley, Knudsen, 42,
17. Beasley, Knudsen, 52–53.
18. Beasley, Knudsen, 59–60; Hounshell, American System, 264.
19. Knudsen, “How the Chevrolet Company Applies Its Own Slogan to Production,” Industrial Management 76 (August 1927), 65–68.
20. Allan Nevins, Ford: Expa
nsion and Challenge, 1915–1933 (New York: Scribner, 1954–63), 255.
21. Beasley, Knudsen, 54.
22. Borth, Masters of Mass Production.
23. Beasley, Knudsen, 56.
24. ANB, 843.
25. Nevins, Ford: Expansion and Challenge.
26. Beasley, Knudsen, 62–63.
27. Beasley, Knudsen, 94.
28. Beasley, Knudsen, 107.
29. Beasley, Knudsen, 109.
30. Malcolm Bingay, Detroit Is My Own Home Town (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1946), 50.
31. Alfred P. Sloan, Adventures of a White-Collar Man (New York: Doubleday, 1941), 8.
32. Alfred P. Sloan, My Years with General Motors (New York: Doubleday, 1964).
33. Walter Chrysler, Life of an American Workman (New York: Dodd and Mead, 1950), 143.
34. Lawrence Gustin, Billy Durant: Creator of General Motors (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1973), 91.
35. Gustin, Durant, 115–16, 185–89.
36. Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 27.
37. Gustin, Durant, 208.
38. Sloan, My Years with General Motors.
39. Sloan, Adventures, 134.
40. See “Organization Study,” in Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962), 133–42.
41. David Farber, Sloan Rules: Alfred Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 50.
42. Beasley, Knudsen, 113; Sloan, Adventures, 138.
43. Life, March 31, 1941, 107.
44. Sloan, Adventures, 140.
45. Life, March 31, 1941, 107.
46. Arthur Kuhn, GM Passes Ford, 1918–1938 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986), 112–13.
47. Beasley, Knudsen, 115.
48. Life, March 31, 1941.
49. J. Smith, Reminiscences, quoted in Nevins, Ford: Expansion and Challenge, 16.
50. Beasley, Knudsen, 119.
51. “How the Chevrolet Company Applies Its Own Slogan to Production,” Industrial Management 76 (August 1927), 65–68.
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