Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Detroit's Wartime Industry: Arsenal of Democracy
    Detroit's Wartime Industry: Arsenal of Democracy
    Detroit's Wartime Industry: Arsenal of Democracy
    Ebook183 pages1 hour

    Detroit's Wartime Industry: Arsenal of Democracy

    By Michael W. R. Davis

    1/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateNov 7, 2007
    ISBN9781439619025
    Detroit's Wartime Industry: Arsenal of Democracy
    Author

    Michael W. R. Davis

    Author Michael W.R. Davis is a veteran automotive journalist and historian, as well as an author of six previous Arcadia photographic histories. Though he is a Chevrolet historian, Davis spent 25 years with Ford Motor Company before returning to journalism, authoring and serving as the executive director of the Detroit Historical Society for five years. In addition to holding degrees from Yale and Eastern Michigan Universities, Davis is a member of the Society of Automotive Historians and a trustee of the National Automotive History Collection at the Detroit Public Library, a main source of many of the images in this book.

    Read more from Michael W. R. Davis

    Related to Detroit's Wartime Industry

    Related ebooks

    Wars & Military For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      G.t. 350r Revival

      May 10, 2019

      G.t. 350r Revival
      8 min read

    • Article

      Opposing View

      Dec 14, 2021

      Opposing View
      2 min read

    • Article

      History Repeats in Ukraine

      Jul 12, 2022

      History Repeats in Ukraine
      1 min read

    • Article

      Long Walks

      Mar 1, 2022

      Long Walks
      4 min read

    • Article

      M10 & M10A1 TANK DESTROYER

      Mar 18, 2021

      M10 & M10A1 TANK DESTROYER
      3 min read

    • Article

      Sepp Dietrich’s Diamonds

      Oct 1, 2021

      Sepp Dietrich’s Diamonds
      3 min read

    • Article

      Berlin’s Battle Scars

      Jul 28, 2020

      Berlin’s Battle Scars
      2 min read

    • Article

      Majestic Mounts

      Jul 27, 2021

      Majestic Mounts
      10 min read

    • Article

      Auxiliaries

      Nov 25, 2022

      Auxiliaries
      13 min read

    • Article

      Before Rosie the Riveter…

      Feb 4, 2022

      Before Rosie the Riveter…
      4 min read

    • Article

      1994–95 First Chechen War

      Jul 12, 2022

      1994–95 First Chechen War
      1 min read

    • Article

      My Six-month Furlough

      Aug 31, 2021

      My Six-month Furlough
      13 min read

    • Article

      Rebel States To World Power

      Oct 19, 2021

      Rebel States To World Power
      10 min read

    • Article

      War Drums On Main Street

      Oct 19, 2021

      War Drums On Main Street
      1 min read

    • Article

      Tom Landry’s Touchdown

      Dec 21, 2021

      Tom Landry’s Touchdown
      9 min read

    • Article

      Beyond Measure

      Jul 6, 2021

      Beyond Measure
      4 min read

    • Article

      What’s In A Name?

      Jun 29, 2021

      What’s In A Name?
      1 min read

    • Article

      Carriers at War

      Apr 5, 2022

      Carriers at War
      1 min read

    • Article

      Wwii

      Jan 23, 2020

      Wwii
      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘True To Their Country’

      Aug 18, 2020

      ‘True To Their Country’
      15 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Detroit's Wartime Industry

    1/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Detroit's Wartime Industry - Michael W. R. Davis

      (JKW).

      INTRODUCTION

      The genesis of Detroit’s Wartime Industry: Arsenal of Democracy began with a telephone call from Macomb County Community College, northeast of Detroit, right after Thanksgiving 2006. Could I deliver a lecture on the Arsenal of Democracy as part of a four-month-long exhibition and program series on World War II that the college was sponsoring beginning in February?

      After brief consideration I assented but then asked, Why me? Because, they told me, I included sections on the Arsenal of Democracy in each of my three previous Arcadia photographic histories about General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford.

      May 10, 1940, the day that German forces invaded the Low Lands of Holland and Belgium, was my ninth birthday, so my firsthand memories of World War II are dim at best. And, rather than of Detroit in the war, those memories are from my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, which was only peripherally involved, like most other cities, with war industries.

      I owe much of my initial knowledge of the Arsenal of Democracy to an article on the subject I commissioned from Hugh McCann, a friend and former Newsweek and Detroit News reporter, for a centennial book I produced in 1995 for the Engineering Society of Detroit. Another source was the archive of William S. Knudsen papers that his family donated in 2004 to the National Automotive History Collection (NAHC) at the Detroit Public Library.

      Since I would have to pull together dozens of images for my illustrated talk at Macomb County Community College, it was only a short step to proposing a photographic history book about the Arsenal of Democracy to Arcadia Publishing.

      From several of my previous books, I knew the NAHC photographic collection contained many images of military vehicles and that the Detroit News collection at Wayne State University’s Walter P. Reuther Library could be mined for historical community photographs. To tell the Arsenal of Democracy story fully in Life magazine picture style, I also was able to access images in several widely dispersed corporate and government archives and several private collections.

      As I dug deeper into research on the subject, I learned details about one Detroiter’s unique contribution from 1940 through 1945 to the American war effort: William S. Knudsen was a Danish immigrant with an amazing record of success in the automotive industry, rising from a machinist in a Buffalo metal-working plant to become a top production manager at Ford Motor Company. After a falling out with Henry Ford, he moved to Chevrolet in 1922, where he climbed the ladder to presidency of General Motors in just 15 years.

      Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president of the United States in 1932, and his resulting New Deal administration countering the Great Depression was marked by perpetual conflict with big business, of which General Motors was the biggest. Nevertheless, six weeks after the German invasion of Denmark and Norway, and exactly two weeks after the blitzkrieg against the Low Lands, on May 24, 1940, Roosevelt telephoned Knudsen with a request he come to a meeting at the White House. There Roosevelt asked him to resign from General Motors to head the buildup of U.S. defense production. Knudsen promptly assented.

      I suppose he agreed to this because the Germans had invaded Denmark, his native land, I asked Knudsen’s only surviving child, Martha McKenney. Oh, that wasn’t it, she told me. He called a family meeting to tell us he was leaving General Motors to work for the government. We were dumbstruck by his announcement. Finally I spoke up—I was a 20-year-old college student, the youngest—and asked him why. Her father’s simple explanation: This country has been good to me, and I want to pay it back.

      But there was another question she could not answer. How was it that, of all the people in the country, Roosevelt had called upon a stranger and philosophical adversary who, as it turned out, unquestionably possessed the best credentials in the nation to carry out the formidable task of launching the Arsenal of Democracy? I found the answer in the memoir of another Danish immigrant who became a power in the automotive industry, Charles Sorenson. Sorenson’s My Forty Years with Ford related that when Roosevelt toured Ford’s Willow Run B-24 plant in September 1942, Sorenson had the opportunity to satisfy his own curiosity about Knudsen’s appointment. Roosevelt, he related, told him that Bernard Baruch, an investment banker and noted presidential advisor who directed U.S. war production in World War I, had suggested the name, which the president initially had rejected.

      This account starts with Detroit’s contributions in World War I, a very different effort from that of World War II because there was no interruption of civilian production. Moreover, some historians now are coming to the view that World War II was merely an extension of World War I after a 15-year intermission, a struggle between nationalisms and fading empires in which the United States had little direct interest but was drawn in anyway.

      Detroit and the automotive industry were by no means the only major city and industry constituting the Arsenal of Democracy. Detroit’s importance, however, is encapsulated in the following passage from the military history Web journal Olive-Drab:

      World War II was the first war in which massive numbers of trucks completely changed the equations of mobility for warfare. The production capability of the U.S. automotive industry poured out hundreds of thousands of jeeps, trucks and armored vehicles. This made it possible for the U.S. and its allies to overwhelm the Axis with men and supplies, moving forward at a rate never before possible.

      Particularly in Europe, where the land warfare was most suitable for mobility, the ability to maneuver and supply by truck was a decisive advantage to the Allied armies in World War II. Although the German Army had pioneered mobile warfare in the late 1930s, they never became motorized to the extent of the Allies.

      The automotive industry possesses three key characteristics, often not recognized, that define its irreplaceable role in national defense: (1) mastery of mass production, (2) a network of large and small suppliers, and (3) a huge workforce of experienced production and skilled workers, especially those in critical

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1