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

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The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War Page 37

by A. J. Baime


  [>] “Looks like a sick man”: Sorensen, personal account, p. 918.

  [>] “change his attitude”: Ibid.

  [>] “Discord over handling”: Ibid., p. 919.

  [>] “I feel I can be helpful”: Sorensen, My Forty Years with Ford, p. 321.

  [>] “The best thing for me”: Sorensen, personal account, p. 920.

  [>] “If you go, I go”: Sorensen, My Forty Years with Ford, p. 321.

  [>] “He didn’t complain”: Henry Dominguez, Edsel: The Story of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Son (Detroit: Society of Automotive Engineers, 2002), p. 313.

  [>] “Kanzler doesn’t know”: Ibid.

  [>] “I expect you to keep”: Sorensen, personal account, p. 989.

  [>] “We must expect Henry Ford”: Sorensen, My Forty Years with Ford, p. 324.

  [>] “I didn’t even know”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 152.

  [>] “I think he willed”: William Clay Ford, oral history, Automobile in American Life and Society, pp. 11–12.

  [>] “As we drove through”: Dominguez, Edsel, p. 313.

  [>] “very well composed”: Sorensen, personal account, p. 926.

  [>] “My dear Mrs. Ford”: Franklin Roosevelt, letter to Mrs. Edsel Ford, May 26, 1943, file 680, Franklin Roosevelt Papers, “Personal File,” FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  [>] “heartfelt sympathy”: Ibid.

  [>] “When the plant shut down”: Dominguez, Edsel, p. 316.

  [>] “That last year he lived”: Sorensen, personal account, p. 927.

  [>] “What Is a Boy?”: Ibid., p. 760.

  [>] “totally at sea”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 158.

  [>] “My dear Mr. President”: Morgenthau, memo to FDR, May 25, 1943, p. 213, “Ford Motor Company, Foreign Funds Control,” box 636, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  [>] “the good work that you”: Ibid.

  [>] “There would seem to be”: “Report of Investigation of Ford, Societe Anonyme Francaise, Machinery Suppliers, Inc., Matford S.A., Fordair S.A.,” p. 68, “Foreign Funds Control,” box 135, record group 131, Office of Alien Property, National Archives, College Park, MD.

  [>] “Probably the loss”: “Death of Edsel Ford Poses Problems of Management, Taxes,” Wall Street Journal, May 27, 1943, p. 1.

  [>] “Well, Harry, you know”: Harry Bennett, as told to Paul Marcus, Ford: We Never Called Him Henry (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1987), p. 287.

  [>] “Now, we aren’t going”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 154.

  [>] “I just can’t get over”: Ibid.

  [>] “Harry, do you honestly”: Bennett, Ford: We Never Called Him Henry, p. 292.

  [>] “I never know where”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 158.

  [>] Impossible: Sorensen, My Forty Years with Ford, p. 324.

  [>] “You, Mr. Ford”: Dominguez, Edsel, p. 321; Robert Lacey, Ford: The Men and the Machine (Boston: Little, Brown, 1986), p. 403.

  [>] “Most of us were”: Sorensen, My Forty Years with Ford, p. 326.

  [>] “You’ve got a job now”: Ibid.

  [>] “Charlie, everything is”: Sorensen, personal account, p. 932.

  [>] “My Dear Mr. Ford”: Walter Hayes, Henry: A Life of Henry Ford II (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), p. 12.

  [>] “He was a saint”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 156.

  25. Operation Tidal Wave: August 1, 1943

  [>] “We flew through sheets”: Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), p. 191.

  [>] “Get up! Get up”: James Dugan and Carroll Stewart, Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943 (New York: Bantam, 1963), p. 76.

  [>] “more killing power”: Ibid., p. 82.

  [>] “I looked around in”: Duane Schultz, Into the Fire: Ploesti, the Most Fateful Mission of World War II (Yardley, UK: Westholme, 2007), p. 104.

  [>] “For days, you could”: “Ploesti: A Pilot’s Diary,” American Heritage, October-November 1983.

  [>] “When you go 200 miles”: Philip Ardery, Bomber Pilot: A Memoir of World War II (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1978), p. 97.

  [>] “the most complete and detailed”: Schultz, Into the Fire, p. 84.

  [>] “Now the object of this operation”: “USAAF Training Film for Ploesti Part I,” available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCbwzdTE1Zw (accessed October 18, 2013).

  [>] “[Gerstenberg] was a dedicated”: Schultz, Into the Fire, p. 64.

  [>] “mathematical probabilities”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952), p. 187.

  [>] “We dreaded this mission”: Schultz, Into the Fire, p. 93.

  [>] “If you do your job”: Ibid., p. 95.

  [>] “It is unclear what”: Dugan and Stewart, Ploesti, p. 3.

  [>] “A cold chill went down”: Schultz, Into the Fire, pp. 109–10.

  [>] “If this is the correct turn”: Dugan and Stewart, Ploesti, p. 131.

  [>] “In the distance toward”: Schultz, Into the Fire, p. 142.

  [>] “everything but the kitchen sink”: Dugan and Stewart, Ploesti, p. 161.

  [>] “a bedlam of bombers”: Ardery, Bomber Pilot, p. 106.

  [>] “We had to shoot our way in”: Dugan and Stewart, Ploesti, p. 161.

  [>] “I could see Gooden”: Ibid., p. 165.

  [>] “Another shell exploded”: Schultz, Into the Fire, p. 126.

  [>] “The bomber crashed”: Dugan and Stewart, Ploesti, p. 125.

  [>] “Planes fell in flames”: Stephen E. Ambrose, The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew B-24s over Germany 1944–1945 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 213.

  [>] “What was your overall”: Dugan and Stewart, Ploesti, p. 208.

  [>] the official tallies: Ibid., p. 211.

  [>] “but I am certain that”: Ibid.

  26. The Detroit Race Riot of 1943: Summer 1943

  [>] “23 Dead in Detroit”: “23 Dead in Detroit Rioting,” New York Times, June 22, 1943, p. 1.

  [>] “The whole school”: Robert Lacey, Ford: The Men and the Machine (Boston: Little, Brown, 1986), p. 407.

  [>] “We . . . were allowed the run”: “A Super Existence: The Boyhood of Henry Ford II,” Michigan Quarterly Review 25, no. 2, Spring 1986.

  [>] “Father told me to start”: Henry Dominguez, Edsel: The Story of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Son (Detroit: Society of Automotive Engineers, 2002), p. 322.

  [>] “That’s amazing, when”: Ibid.

  [>] “The whole place was”: Ibid.

  [>] “the fat young man”: Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords: An American Epic (San Francisco: Encounter, 2002), p. 163.

  [>] “I am green”: Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for the World (New York: Penguin, 2003), p. 495.

  [>] “All these people”: Walter Hayes, Henry: A Life of Henry Ford II (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), p. 7.

  [>] “I hope that somehow”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 161.

  [>] “like a cryptographer”: Ibid.

  [>] “Nothing pleased me so”: Charles Sorensen, personal account, p. 935, acc 65, box 69, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “When Mr. Henry Ford II”: Anthony Harff, oral history, p. 83, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “Something had to be”: Sorensen, personal account, p. 962.

  [>] “Harry Bennett is the dirtiest”: Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 498.

  [>] This thing killed my: Robert Coughlin, “Co-captains in Ford’s Battle for Supremacy,” Life, February 28, 1955.

  [>] “What do you want to quit”: William F. Pioch, oral history, pp. 80–81, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “In Detroit today”: “The Ford Heritage,” Fortune, June 1944.

  [>] “I decided that I”: Sorensen, personal account, p. 974.

  [>] “Everyone’s nerves were”: Harry Bennett, as told to Paul Marcus, Ford: We Never Called
Him Henry (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1987), p. 273.

  [>] “the rising tide”: Edward Jeffries, Detroit and the “Good War”: The World War II Letters of Mayor Edward Jeffries and Friends (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), p. 48.

  [>] “racial characteristics”: Ibid., p. 45.

  [>] “It will either blow”: Ibid.

  [>] “Let’s go out and kill”: Richard Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front 1941–1945 (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003), p. 327.

  [>] “fresh meat”: Ibid.

  [>] “Jesus, but it was”: Ibid.

  [>] “There were about 200”: Ibid.

  [>] “Not even in the South”: Walter White, A Man Called White (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), p. 226.

  [>] “Word got around pretty”: Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, p. 328.

  [>] “The domestic scene is”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 444.

  [>] “disperse and retire”: “Roosevelt’s Proclamation,” Daily Boston Globe, June 22, 1943, p. 1.

  [>] “Not long afterward”: White, A Man Called White, p. 228.

  [>] “We have no definite”: “Troops Restore Calm in Detroit; Death Toll 28,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 23, 1943, p. 2.

  [>] “It is blood on your hands”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, p. 446.

  [>] “This rioting was”: Sorensen, personal account, p. 948.

  [>] “When the army leaves”: “Troops Restore Calm in Detroit; Death Toll 28,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 23, 1943, p. 2.

  27. “The United States Is the Country of Machines”: Fall 1943

  [>] “We’ll not capitulate”: Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945 Nemesis (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), p. 685.

  [>] “I’m nearly dead”: Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 237.

  [>] “tired, with dark rings”: Ibid., p. 236.

  [>] “God-awful”: Ibid., p. 276.

  [>] “a flexible productive”: Donald M. Nelson, memo to Franklin Roosevelt, May 31, 1943, container 229, Harry L. Hopkins Papers, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  [>] “Donald Nelson has”: Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries (New York: Popular Library, 1948), p. 290.

  [>] “Get the planes off”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 261.

  [>] According to a top-secret: “Total Deliveries, Cumulative,” container 240, Harry L. Hopkins Papers, “War Production Board Reports: Aircraft Branch,” FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  [>] “When can you start?”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952), p. 197.

  [>] “It’s the best handling”: Charles Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), p. 744.

  [>] “What alarmed us most”: Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Avon, 1970), p. 377.

  [>] “The day raids by American”: Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, p. 435.

  [>] “Don’t let them fool”: Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 378.

  [>] “Man’s desire to be”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, p. 473.

  [>] “I think about a hundred”: H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (Military Classics, 1949), p. 469.

  [>] “I want to tell you”: Meacham, Franklin and Winston, p. 264.

  [>] “If there was any”: Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 799.

  [>] “This is my personal”: American Airpower Comes of Age: General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold’s World War II Diaries, edited by Major General John W. Huston (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 2002), p. 132.

  28. Ford War Production Exceeds Dreams: Winter 1943 to Spring 1944

  [>] “Detroit, where they stand”: Richard Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front 1941–1945 (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003), p. 146.

  [>] “Declaration by 3 Allied Powers”: “Text of Declaration of 3 Allied Powers,” Detroit News, December 6, 1943, p. 1.

  [>] “We have concerted”: Ibid.

  [>] “Ford is making”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 362–63.

  [>] “The Toughest Fords”: Advertisements collected in V. Dennis Wrynn, Detroit Goes to War: The American Automobile Industry in World War II (Minneapolis: Motorbooks International, 1993).

  [>] “Announcing the New”: The advertisement is pictured in Jeffrey D. Shively, Cadillac: It Came Out Fighting (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2008), no page number.

  [>] “They know how to manage”: Ed Cray, Chrome Colossus: General Motors and Its Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), pp. 318–19.

  [>] “I invented the modern”: Richard Snow, “It’s Still Henry Ford’s World,” Bloomberg, July 29, 2013.

  [>] “Long lines of huge”: “B-24 Bombers Roll Off Lines at Willow Run,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1943.

  [>] “Willow Run Performing”: “Big Bomber Output Rate Hinted Vast,” Hartford Courant, February 6, 1944, p. A1.

  [>] “Ford War Production Exceeds”: “Ford War Production Exceeds Dreams,” Christian Science Monitor, May 21, 1942, p. 13.

  [>] “She was a strange”: Charles Sorensen, personal account, p. 881, acc 65, box 69, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “We have been ahead”: Charles Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), p. 772.

  [>] “Bring the Germans”: David Lanier Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), p. 351.

  [>] “That Ford is producing”: “Observational Report Made by Curtiss-Wright Representatives, June 1944,” acc 435, box 52, “Willow Run Bomber Plant,” vol. 14, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “John’s the smartest”: Henry Dominguez, Edsel: The Story of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Son (Detroit: Society of Automotive Engineers, 2002), p. 325.

  [>] “The offer came as a complete”: Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords: An American Epic (San Francisco: Encounter, 2002), p. 165.

  [>] “I had a terrible time”: Dominguez, Edsel, p. 325.

  [>] “At first, I didn’t”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 165.

  [>] “The FBI man was actually”: Ibid., p. 164.

  [>] “Nobody invited Mr. Bennett”: Ibid., p. 147.

  [>] “That is the way to win”: Sorensen, personal account, p. 979.

  [>] “He’s doing fine”: Ibid., p. 963.

  [>] The boy can take it: Charles E. Sorensen, with Samuel T. Williamson, My Forty Years with Ford (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006), pp. 328–29.

  [>] “First, get your grandfather”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 166.

  [>] “He seemed to sit around”: Harry Bennett, as told to Paul Marcus, Ford: We Never Called Him Henry (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1987), p. 303.

  [>] “Is someone else taking”: Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals, p. 774.

  [>] “I hope there was no one”: Ibid., p. 816.

  [>] “Henry Ford Fires Sorensen”: “Sorensen Out as Ford Chief of Production,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 5, 1944.

  [>] “I guess there’s something”: Sorensen, My Forty Years with Ford, p. 330.

  [>] “For months the world-straddling”: “The Winner,” Time, March 13, 1944.

  [>] “He was a hard-boiled:” Sorensen, My Forty Years with Ford, p. xii.

  [>] “For myself, I have”: Sorensen, personal account, p. 1020.

  29. D-Day: Winter to Spring 1944

  [>] “In this poignant hour”: FDR’s D-Day prayer, June 6, 1944, available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAUDj6yQx9U (accessed October 23, 2013).

  [>] �
��Nothing in war history”: Jorg Friedrich, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940–1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), p. 126.

  [>] “The picture that greeted”: Ibid.

  [>] “What can the USA”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 240.

  [>] “Blazing fires everywhere”: Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries (New York: Popular Library, 1948), p. 591.

  [>] “Berlin was a kind of”: Edward R. Murrow, In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow 1938–1961 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), p. 76.

  [>] “We really clobbered”: Jay A. Stout, Fortress Ploesti: The Campaign to Destroy Hitler’s Oil (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2003), p. 102.

  [>] “Along the Kaiserdamm”: Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, p. 599.

  [>] “absolute failure”: Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945 Nemesis (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), p. 645.

  [>] “I could see the omens”: Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Avon, 1970), p. 435.

  [>] “the enemy has succeeded”: Stout, Fortress Ploesti, p. 190.

  [>] “Flying Box Car”: Stephen E. Ambrose, The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew B-24s over Germany 1944–1945 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 80.

  [>] “Postwar France must”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952), p. 264.

  [>] presentation of the Army-Navy: “Army-Navy ‘E’ Flag Presentation,” acc 435, box 51, “Ford–Willow Run Bomber Plant,” vol. 4, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, MI.

  [>] “It is certainly with mixed”: Ibid.

  [>] “It is just another proof”: Ibid.

  [>] “Heavy bomber production”: Container 236, Franklin Roosevelt Papers, “Map Room File,” FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  [>] “May was a great month”: “War Production Reports: War Progress,” June 10, 1944, container 254, Harry L. Hopkins Papers, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  [>] “Operations of our Air Forces”: Container 236, Franklin Roosevelt Papers, “Map Room File,” FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY.

 

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