The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War

by A. J. Baime

  [>] “There rages in him”: Burlingame, Henry Ford, p. 120; see also Lacey, Ford, p. 178.

  [>] “Jewish Jazz—Moron Music”: See Lacey, Ford, p. 1 of photo insert, for a photograph of the newspaper.

  [>] “Does Jewish Power”: The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem (Eastford, CT: Martino Publishing, 2010), p. 125.

  [>] “Mr. Ford’s wishes in carrying:” Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews (New York: PublicAffairs, 2003), p. 103.

  [>] “I wish I could send some”: Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 263; see also Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, p. 185.

  [>] “No one can charge that”: Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, p. 235.

  [>] “I have responsibility but”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 91.

  [>] “I can’t even face people”: Ibid., p. 98.

  [>] “Why doesn’t Mr. Ford take”: Lacey, Ford, p. 292.

  [>] “Well, by this time”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 96.

  [>] “Please be advised”: Dominguez, Edsel, p. 2.

  [>] “It’s his business”: Carol Gelderman, Henry Ford: The Wayward Capitalist (Beard Books, 1981), p. 209.

  [>] “The next time you see”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 119.

  [>] “Make it a long stay”: Sorensen, with Williamson, My Forty Years with Ford, p. 309.

  [>] “You know, gentlemen”: William C. Richards, The Last Billionaire: Henry Ford (New York: Scribner’s, 1948), p. 160.

  6. The Ford Terror

  [>] “During the thirty years”: Harry Bennett, as told to Paul Marcus, Ford: We Never Called Him Henry (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1987), p. 1.

  [>] “I could use a man”: Ibid., p. 6.

  [>] “a pretty tough lot”: Ibid.

  [>] “There may be a lot”: Ibid., p. 15.

  [>] “Mr. Ford was a dead shot”: Ibid., p. 74.

  [>] “I am Mr. Ford’s”: John McCarten, “The Little Man in Henry Ford’s Basement,” The American Mercury, May 1940, p. 7.

  [>] “If Mr. Ford told me”: Robert Lacey, Ford: The Men and the Machine (Boston: Little, Brown, 1986), p. 363.

  [>] “peanuts for a salary”: Bennett, Ford: We Never Called Him Henry, p. 110.

  [>] The Casting Director: Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords: An American Epic (San Francisco: Encounter, 2002), p. 132.

  [>] “The Castle”: Bennett, Ford: We Never Called Him Henry, p. 143.

  [>] “They’re a lot of tough bastards”: McCarten, “The Little Man in Henry Ford’s Basement,” p. 10.

  [>] “You couldn’t get”: Laurence Sheldrick, oral history, pp. 36–37, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “I can replace factories”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 123.

  [>] “Later on, the guy”: Ibid.

  [>] “Let them fail”: Carol Gelderman, Henry Ford: The Wayward Capitalist (Washington, DC: Beard Books, 1981), p. 313.

  [>] “Henry Ford is the only American name”: Anne O’Hare McCormick, “The Future of the Ford Idea,” New York Times, May 22, 1932, p. SM1.

  [>] “the Mussolini of Detroit”: Keith Sward, The Legend of Henry Ford (New York: Atheneum, 1972), p. 369.

  [>] “whose particular genius”: Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth, 1933–1962 (New York: Scribner’s, 1963), p. 17.

  [>] “If Henry Ford would”: “Edsel Ford,” file 680, Franklin Roosevelt Papers, “President’s Personal File,” FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  [>] “Well, he took up”: William C. Richards, The Last Billionaire: Henry Ford (New York: Scribner’s, 1948), p. 382.

  [>] “Ford Motor Company employees”: “Ford Raises Wages $19,500,000 a Year,” New York Times, December 4, 1929, p. A1.

  [>] “That’s no good”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 91.

  [>] “Edsel Ford is more”: Lacey, Ford, p. 334.

  [>] “the most powerful”: McCarten, “The Little Man in Henry Ford’s Basement,” p. 9.

  [>] “There are about eight hundred”: Nevins and Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth, p. 150.

  [>] “I think it was just fear”: Roscoe Smith, oral history, p. 75, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “Go like hell”: Gelderman, Henry Ford, p. 319.

  [>] “Henry had a way”: Richard Bak, Henry and Edsel: The Creation of the Ford Empire (New York: Wiley, 2003), p. 161.

  [>] “the dirty little secret”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 111.

  [>] “all right”: “Edsel Ford Stricken Ill on Maine Train,” Daily Boston Globe, September 15, 1931, p. 4.

  [>] “Who is this man Bennett”: Charles E. Sorensen, with Samuel T. Williamson, My Forty Years with Ford (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006), p. 256.

  [>] “I don’t want you to go”: Nevins and Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth, p. 140.

  [>] “This is Ford property”: Sward, The Legend of Henry Ford, p. 391.

  [>] General Motors paid $1 million: Ed Cray, Chrome Colossus: General Motors and Its Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), p. 288.

  [>] “Labor unions are the worst”: Roger Burlingame, Henry Ford: The Greatest Success Story in the History of Industry (New York: Signet, 1956), p. 101; see also Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 145.

  [>] “a strong, aggressive man”: Sorensen, with Williamson, My Forty Years with Ford, p. 259.

  [>] “If you want to fight”: Henry Dominguez, Edsel: The Story of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Son (Detroit: Society of Automotive Engineers, 2002), p. 278.

  [>] “If it takes bloodshed”: Lacey, Ford, p. 370.

  [>] “They picked up my feet”: Victor G. Reuther, The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the UAW (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), p. 202.

  [>] “My head was like”: Bak, Henry and Edsel, p. 225.

  [>] “I do not know how many times”: Gelderman, Henry Ford, p. 330.

  [>] “Oh my God, he looked”: Reuther, The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the UAW, p. 202.

  [>] “The end of my spine”: Lacey, Ford, p. 356.

  [>] “There is a cameraman”: Sward, The Legend of Henry Ford, p. 394.

  [>] “His soul bled”: Lacey, Ford, p. 379.

  [>] “It was like a family”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 96.

  7. Danger in Nazi Germany

  [>] “The German Air Force is”: “Goering Flaunts Air Force Threat,” New York Times, March 2, 1938, p. 10.

  [>] “Is there going to be”: Normal Beasley, Knudsen: A Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947), p. 189.

  [>] “Nobody could afford it”: Ibid., p. 90.

  [>] Earlier in the 1930s, Opel had: Simon Reich, The Fruits of Fascism: Postwar Prosperity in Historical Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 111; see also Reinhold Billstein, Karola Fings, Anita Kugler, and Nicholas Levis, Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors, and Forced Labor in Germany During World War II (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), p. 1; Edwin Black, “Hitler’s Carmaker: How General Motors Helped Jump-start the Third Reich’s Military Machine,” The Jewish Journal, November 30, 2006; Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth (New York: Scribner’s, 1963), p. 99.

  [>] “scared stiff”: Beasley, Knudsen, p. 164.

  [>] “Airplanes! Airplanes!”: Ibid.

  [>] “Where is Goering?”: Ibid., p. 192.

  [>] “It would be difficult”: Sumner Welles, The Time for Decision (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944), p. 119.

  [>] “Not that I know of”: Beasley, Knudsen, pp. 193–95.

  [>] 35,000 planes per year: Ibid., p. 195.

  [>] That Goering knows: Ibid.

  [>] “as big a loss as”: “Frank Burke Dies; Famous Spy-Catcher in First World War; Seized Dr. Albert’s Brief Case,” newspaper clipping, box 1032, stack 270, row 69, compartment 69, shelf 6, “Foreign (Occupied) Area Reports” (entry 368B), Records of the Operations Branch of the Administrative Services Division of the Adjutant General’s Office (record group 407), Na
tional Archives, College Park, MD.

  [>] “rigged with microphones”: V. Y. Tallberg, oral history, p. 87, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “According to the official”: Schneider report, p. 31, box 1032, stack 270, row 69, compartment 69, shelf 6, “Foreign (Occupied) Area Reports” (entry 368B), Records of the Operations Branch of the Administrative Services Division of the Adjutant General’s Office (record group 407), National Archives, College Park, MD (hereafter “Schneider report”).

  [>] “How do you feel about”: V. Y. Tallberg, oral history, pp. 84–85, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “[Dr. Albert] said that if”: Ibid., p. 84.

  [>] “There’s going to be a war”: Ibid., p. 101.

  [>] “Government orders do not”: Schneider report, p. 27.

  [>] “I am a great admirer”: Mira Wilkins and Frank Ernest Hill, American Business Abroad: Ford on Six Continents (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964), p. 270; see also Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth, 1933–1962 (New York: Scribner’s, 1963), p. 95.

  [>] “The Government of the Reich”: Wilkins and Hill, American Business Abroad, p. 272.

  [>] Sales of cars, trucks, and: Research Findings About Ford-Werke Under the Nazi Regime, numerous authors (Dearborn, MI: Ford Motor Co., 2001), p. 18.

  [>] A number of American companies: Ibid., appendix A.

  [>] “No one who is in the public”: Wilkins and Hill, American Business Abroad, p. 277.

  [>] “the Reich was able to extort”: Schneider report, p. 4.

  [>] “We had not only one visit”: V. Y. Tallberg, oral history, p. 50, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] gave Hitler a gift: Schneider report, p. 1; see also “Ford and GM Scrutinized for Alleged Nazi Collaboration,” Washington Post, November 30, 1998, p. A01.

  [>] “What kind of building”: V. Y. Tallberg, oral history, p. 91, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “They were machining parts”: Ibid., p. 92.

  [>] Henry’s seventy-fifth birthday: “Ford Is Given Nazi Medal on 75th Birthday,” Washington Post, July 31, 1938.

  [>] “humanitarian ideals”: Max Wallace, The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), p. 146.

  [>] “I question the Americanism”: “Nazi Honor to Ford Stirs Cantor’s Ire,” New York Times, August 4, 1938, p. 13.

  [>] “no sympathy on my part”: “Ford for US as Refugee Haven; Denies Sympathy with Nazism,” New York Times, December 1, 1938, p. 12.

  [>] “Do you really want to get”: Harry Bennett, as told to Paul Marcus, Ford: We Never Called Him Henry (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1987), p. 1.

  [>] Charlie Sorensen agreed to: Schneider report, p. 6.

  [>] Gallup poll taken in 1939: Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 146.

  [>] “Whatever the political”: Johannes Reiling, Deutschland, Safe for Democracy? (Erlangen: Nuremberg University Press, 1997), pp. 400–401.

  [>] “should not be considered the business”: “Ford and GM Scrutinized for Alleged Nazi Collaboration,” Washington Post, November 30, 1998, p. A01.

  [>] “Our enemies should take note”: “The Meaning of ‘Blitzkrieg,’” New York Times, April 5, 1940, p. 19.

  [>] “That is what will happen”: Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Avon, 1970), p. 303.

  8. Fifty Thousand Airplanes: Spring 1940

  [>] “If Roosevelt took this”: Charles Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), p. 437.

  [>] “I have seen war on land”: Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 7.

  [>] “We Americans treat our Army”: Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), p. 76.

  [>] “It was born of the belief”: Ibid., p. 123.

  [>] “But the new element”: “Text of President Roosevelt’s Message on National Defense Expansion,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 17, 1940, p. 7.

  [>] “Well, to be realistic”: H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (Military Classics, 1949), p. 165.

  [>] “I remember the dismay”: Sumner Welles, The Time for Decision (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), p. 149.

  [>] “You know, you and I”: Meacham, Franklin and Winston, p. 27.

  [>] “Good morning”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 26.

  [>] “Who among us, except”: Donald M. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy: The Story of American War Production (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1946), p. 85.

  [>] “Every Cabinet member present”: “Grave Congress Hears Roosevelt’s Arms Plea,” Washington Post, May 17, 1940, p. 4.

  [>] “These are ominous days”: “Text of President Roosevelt’s Message on National Defense Expansion,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 17, 1940, p. 7.

  [>] “The President came straight”: Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Airpower: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 80.

  [>] “The President was sure”: Henry H. Arnold, American Airpower Comes of Age: General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold’s World War II Diaries (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2004), p. 71.

  [>] “Pounding away at Germany”: Sherry, The Rise of American Airpower, pp. 78–79.

  [>] “The United States must build”: Arnold, Global Mission, p. 265.

  [>] “You’d have the Germans”: Mira Wilkins and Frank Ernest Hill, American Business Abroad: Ford on Six Continents (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964), p. 316.

  [>] “clouds of airplanes”: Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy, p. 74.

  [>] “We hear now that the Army”: “Defense Plans of President Disclosed,” Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1940, p. 1.

  [>] “hysterical chatter”: “Lindbergh Sees No Dangers,” Christian Science Monitor, May 20, 1940, p. 6.

  [>] “What is America but beauty”: Arthur Herman, Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II (New York: Random House, 2012), p. 13.

  [>] “They are unanimous”: “Roosevelt Talk Fails to Reply on NRA, AAA,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 1, 1936, p. 1.

  [>] “First, Knudsen. Second, Knudsen”: Norman Beasley, Knudsen: A Biography (New York: Whittlesey House, 1947), p. 230.

  [>] “Mr. Knudsen, the President”: Ibid., p. 234.

  [>] “This country has been good”: Michael W. R. Davis, Detroit’s Wartime Industry: Arsenal of Democracy (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2007), p. 8.

  [>] “They’ll make a monkey out”: Beasley, Knudsen, p. 235.

  [>] “Can you build those fifty thousand”: “Profiles: Production Man-1,” The New Yorker, March 8, 1941; see also Ed Cray, Chrome Colossus: General Motors and Its Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), p. 316.

  [>] “tanks, airplanes, engines”: Beasley, Knudsen, p. 236.

  [>] “The effective defense of this country”: Herman S. Wolk, Cataclysm: General Hap Arnold and the Defeat of Japan (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2010), p. 36.

  [>] “Your responsibility and my responsibility”: Beasley, Knudsen, p. 242.

  [>] “speed, speed, and more speed”: “Knudsen Asks Auto Makers to Step Up Defense Work,” Pittsburgh Press, December 7, 1940, p. 1.

  [>] “Our immediate problem”: Beasley, Knudsen, p. 254.

  [>] “nothing was ever impossible”: Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy, p. 80.

  9. “Gentlemen, We Must Outbuild Hitler”: Spring to Fall 1940

  [>] “England’s battles, it used:” Victor G. Reuther, The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the UAW (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), p. 228.

  [>] “obsessed with the European”: Charles So
rensen, personal account, p. 733, acc 65, box 69, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “dimmed the power behind”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 229.

  [>] “The people are looking”: “‘People’s Leader’ Criticized by Ford,” New York Times, April 29, 1938, p. 14.

  [>] “They don’t dare have a war”: “Ford Says It’s All a Bluff,” New York Times, August 29, 1939.

  [>] “to safeguard your interests”: Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth (New York: Scribner’s, 1963), p. 277.

  [>] “You realize, of course”: Dr. Heinrich Albert, letter to Edsel Ford, July 11, 1940, acc 6, box 248, “1940: FMC Subsidiary, Cologne,” Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “Of course those trucks”: V. Y. Tallberg, oral history, p. 96, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “under the restrictions”: Dr. Heinrich Albert, letter to Edsel Ford, July 11, 1940.

  [>] “four Belgian employees were”: Secretary of State Cordell Hull, cable to the office of Edsel Ford, May 14, 1940, Edsel B. Ford Office Papers, acc 6, box 152, “General Correspondence, 1940,” Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “pyrotechnic eloquence”: Mira Wilkins and Frank Ernest Hill, American Business Abroad: Ford on Six Continents (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964), p. 2.

  [>] “very often not all the truth”: Treasury Department investigation files, p. 26, “Foreign Funds Control,” box 135, record group 131, Office of Alien Property, National Archives, College Park, MD.

  [>] “Our trucks are in very large demand”: Ibid., p. 26.

  [>] “In order to safeguard”: Ibid., p. 27.

  [>] “Glad you are safe”: Ibid., p. 20.

  [>] “I also appreciate your great effort”: Ibid., p. 30.

  [>] “The history of our company”: Maurice Dollfus to Edsel Ford, August 15, 1942, photostat in Treasury Department investigation files, “Foreign Funds Control,” box 135, record group 131, Office of Alien Property, National Archives, College Park, MD.