Arthur Herman
Remarkable as it may seem today, there once was a time when the president of the United States could pick up the phone and ask the president of General Motors to resign his position and take the reins of a great national enterprise. And the CEO would oblige, no questions asked, because it was his patriotic duty., Â , In ,Freedomâ€™s Forge, ,bestselling author Arthur Herman takes us back to that time, revealing how two extraordinary American businessmenâ€”automobile magnate William Knudsen and shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiserâ€”helped corral, cajole, and inspire business leaders across the country to mobilize the â€œarsenal of democracyâ€ that propelled the Allies to victory in World War II., Â , â€œKnudsen? I want to see you in Washington. I want you to work on some production matters.â€ With those words, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enlisted â€œBig Billâ€ Knudsen, a Danish immigrant who had risen through the ranks of the auto industry to become president of General Motors, to drop his plans for market domination and join the U.S. Army. Commissioned a lieutenant general, Knudsen assembled a crack team of industrial innovators, persuading them one by one to leave their lucrative private sector positions and join him in Washington, D.C. Dubbed the â€œdollar-a-year men,â€ these dedicated patriots quickly took charge of Americaâ€™s moribund war production effort. , Â , Henry J. Kaiser was a maverick California industrialist famed for his innovative business techniques and his can-do management style. He, too, joined the cause. His Liberty ships became World War II iconsâ€”and the Kaiser name became so admired that FDR briefly considered making him his vice president in 1944. Together, Knudsen and Kaiser created a wartime production behemoth. Drafting top talent from companies like Chrysler, Republic Steel, Boeing, Lockheed, GE, and Frigidaire, they turned auto plants into aircraft factories and civilian assembly lines into fountains of munitions, giving Americans fighting in Europe and Asia the tools they needed to defeat the Axis. In four short years they transformed Americaâ€™s army from a hollow shell into a truly global force, laying the foundations for a new industrial Americaâ€”and for the countryâ€™s rise as an economic as well as military superpower., Â , Featuring behind-the-scenes portraits of FDR, George Marshall, Henry Stimson, Harry Hopkins, Jimmy Doolittle, and Curtis LeMay, as well as scores of largely forgotten heroes and heroines of the wartime industrial effort, ,Freedomâ€™s Forge, is the American story writ large. It vividly re-creates American industryâ€™s finest hour, when the nationâ€™s business elites put aside their pursuit of profits and set about saving the world.
History,Nonfiction,Economics,Business,War,World War II,Military,Military History,War,War,Military Fiction,North American Hi...,American History,Literature,American
Freedom's Forge: How American Business Built the Arsenal of Democracy That Won World War II