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Freedom's Forge

Page 41

by Arthur Herman


  52. Beasley, Knudsen.

  53. Kuhn, GM Passes Ford; Beasley, Knudsen, 128.

  54. Beasley, Knudsen, 132.

  55. Hounshell, American System, 264–65.

  56. Memo by Alfred Sloan, July 29, 1925, quoted in Hounshell, American System, 263.

  57. Richard Crabb, Birth of a Giant: The Men and Incidents That Gave America the Motor Car (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1970), 398.

  58. “How the Chevrolet Company,” 66.

  59. Hounshell, American System, 266.

  60. Kuhn, GM Passes Ford; Hounshell, American System, 266.

  61. Beasley, Knudsen, 139.

  62. Crabb, Birth of a Giant, 404–6.

  63. See Beasley, Knudsen, 219–21.

  64. Detroit News, May 3, 1937, quoted in Beasley, Knudsen, 177.

  CHAPTER TWO: THE MASTER BUILDER

  1. Mark Foster, Henry J. Kaiser: Builder of the American West (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 9.

  2. Kaiser Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley: Los Angeles Evening Express, December 13, 1948.

  3. John Gunther, Inside U.S.A. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947), 65.

  4. Foster, Kaiser, 13.

  5. Foster, Kaiser, 16.

  6. Kaiser Papers: “Notes for Speech to Kaiser-Frazer Dealers, Willow Run, January 10, 1949,” Carton 61, Folder 7.

  7. Kaiser Papers: “Facts about Henry J. Kaiser,” pamphlet (Oakland: Kaiser Co., September 19, 1946).

  8. Beasley, Knudsen, 29.

  9. Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams—The Early Years, 1903–1940 (New York: Little, Brown, 2001), 36, 39.

  10. Kaiser Papers: “Notes for Speech to Kaiser-Frazer Dealers.”

  11. Foster, Kaiser, 22.

  12. Foster, Kaiser, 23.

  13. Kaiser Papers: “50 Year Book,” n.p., n.d., Carton 295.

  14. John B. Rae, The Road and Car in American Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971).

  15. Quoted in Stephen Adams, Mr. Kaiser Goes to Washington: The Rise of a Government Entrepreneur (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 17.

  16. Foster, Kaiser, 29.

  17. Kaiser Papers: Questions and Answers about Henry J. Kaiser, p. 48.

  18. Albert Heiner, Henry J. Kaiser: Western Colossus (San Francisco: Halo Books, 1991), 21–22.

  19. Heiner, Kaiser, 22.

  20. Kaiser Papers; Clay Bedford interview, quoted in Heiner, Kaiser, 41.

  21. Foster, Kaiser, 32.

  22. Author’s interview with Peter Bedford, October 17, 2010.

  23. Quoted in Heiner, Kaiser, 47.

  24. Heiner, Kaiser, 29.

  25. Kaiser Papers: Alonzo Ordway to Neal Fellom, January 31, 1967, Carton 257.

  26. Quoted in Adams, Mr. Kaiser Goes to Washington, 2.

  27. Joseph Stevens, Hoover Dam: An American Adventure (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 4–5, 48.

  28. Reis interview, quoted in Heiner, Kaiser, 48.

  29. Stevens, Hoover Dam, 42.

  30. “Earthmovers I,” Fortune, August 1943, 104–5.

  31. Stevens, Hoover Dam, 40–41.

  32. “Earthmovers I,” 145.

  33. Donald E. Wolf, Big Dams and Other Dreams: The Six Companies Story (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 29.

  34. Stevens, Hoover Dam, 79.

  35. “Earthmovers I,” 211–14.

  36. Interior Papers: Ickes to Kaiser, March 23, 1936, quoted in Foster, Kaiser, 60.

  37. Stevens, Hoover Dam, 245.

  38. Stevens, Hoover Dam, 246–48.

  39. Foster, Kaiser, 64.

  40. Quoted in Adams, Mr. Kaiser Goes to Washington, 41.

  41. Friedel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 295.

  CHAPTER THREE: THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

  1. James Mauro, Twilight at the World of Tomorrow (New York: Ballantine Books, 2010), 217–18.

  2. David Gelernter, 1939: The Lost World of the Fair (New York: Free Press, 1995), 37.

  3. Gelernter, 1939, 19–20.

  4. Beasley, Knudsen, 222–23.

  5. David Halberstam, The Reckoning (New York: Morrow, 1986), 378.

  6. Life, May 31, 1941, 119.

  7. Beasley, Knudsen, 197.

  8. Douglas Haskell, “To-morrow and the World’s Fair,” Architectural Record, August 1940.

  9. Sloan, Adventures, 206.

  10. Gelernter, 1939.

  11. Mauro, Twilight, 172.

  12. Geoffrey Hellman, “Design for Living–III,” New Yorker, February 22, 1941, 29–31.

  13. Mauro, Twilight, 177.

  14. Gelernter, 1939, 24–25.

  15. Sloan, Adventures, 207–8.

  16. Beasley, Knudsen, 202.

  17. Knudsen Papers, Subseries A: Box 4, correspondence 13–16.

  18. Mauro, Twilight, 291.

  CHAPTER FOUR: GETTING STARTED

  1. Beasley, Knudsen, 234.

  2. Russell Buhite and David Levy, FDR’s Fireside Chats (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), May 26, 1940, 159; Beasley, Knudsen, 231.

  3. Interview with Martha Knudsen McKenney, quoted in M.W.R. Davis, Detroit’s Wartime Industry: Arsenal of Democracy (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2007), 8.

  4. Farber, Sloan Rules, 205.

  5. Albert Blum, “Birth and Death of the M-Day Plan,” in Harold Stein, ed., American Civil-Military Decisions: A Book of Case Studies (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1963), 77.

  6. Beasley, Knudsen, 235.

  7. Thomas Fleming, The New Dealers’ War: F.D.R. and the War within World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 161.

  8. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate Biography (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), 160.

  9. Beasley, Knudsen, 237.

  10. New York Times, May 28, 1940.

  11. Beasley, Knudsen, 238.

  12. Beasley, Knudsen, 238.

  13. Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: Norton, 1995), 190.

  14. Walton, Miracle of World War II, 41.

  15. See chart in Alan L. Gropman, The Big “L”: American Logistics in World War II, “Industrial Mobilization,” 75.

  16. Walton, Miracle of World War II, 25.

  17. Burnham Finney, Arsenal of Democracy: How Industry Builds Our Defense (New York: Whittlesey House, 1941), 142–43.

  18. John Paxton, “Myth vs. Reality: The Question of Mass Production in WWII,” Economic and Business Journal: Inquiries and Perspectives (Vol. 1., No. 1, October 2008), 91–93; Mark Harrison, “Resource Mobilization for World War II, the USA, UK, USSR, and Germany, 1938–45,” Economic History Review, Vol. 41, No. 2 (1988), 184.

  19. The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, Vol. 3 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), 393.

  20. Secret Diary, Vol. 3, entry for June 2, 1940, 194–95.

  21. Thomas Fleming, The New Dealers’ War, 85–86.

  22. Secret Diary, Vol. 3, entry for June 30, 1940, 223.

  23. Dwight Tuttle, Harry L. Hopkins and Anglo-American-Soviet Relations 1941–45 (New York: Garland, 1983), 41–42.

  24. Baruch, Memoirs, Vol. 2, 283.

  25. Jesse Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars (New York: Macmillan, 1950), 66.

  26. Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars, 271–75; Bascom Timmons, Jesse H. Jones: The Man and the Statesman (New York: Holt, 1956), 295.

  27. Timmons, Jones, 296.

  28. Gropman, The Big “L,” 12–13.

  29. Holl, From the Boardroom, 72.

  30. Gropman, The Big “L,” 12.

  31. Harrison, “Mobilization for World War II,” 9–10.

  32. Beasley, Knudsen, 90.

  33. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 49.

  34. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, Vol. 2 (Boston: Little Brown, 1934), 1831.

  35. Beasley, Knudsen, 245–46.

  36. Harry C. Thomson and Lida Mayo, The Ordnance Department: Procurement and Supply (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1960, 2003), 45–46.

  37. Robert G. Albion,
Forrestal and the Navy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 44–47.

  38. Time, June 12, 1940, 18–19.

  39. Knudsen Papers: Speech to General Motors Key City Club, September 1937.

  40. Finney, Arsenal of Democracy, 27–28.

  41. Beasley, Knudsen, 247.

  42. Time, June 17, 1940, 17.

  43. Henry Stimson, Diary, entry for October 4, 1940, 18.

  44. Holl, From the Boardrooom, 53.

  45. Minutes of the Advisory Commission-Council on National Defense (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1946), 1–2.

  46. Beasley, Knudsen, 254; Smith, The Army and Economic Mobilization, 130.

  47. Beasley, Knudsen, 254–55.

  48. Stimson, Diary, July 25, 1940, 36; August 14, 1940, 87.

  49. Stimson, Diary, May 1941.

  50. Quoted in Farber, Sloan Rules, 225.

  51. Beasley, Knudsen, 295.

  CHAPTER FIVE: CALL TO ARMS

  1. Alistair Cooke, The American Home Front (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006), 246.

  2. John B. Rae, Climb to Greatness: The American Aircraft Industry, 1920–1960 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968), 104.

  3. Edward Stettinius Jr., Lend-Lease: Weapon for Victory (New York: Macmillan, 1944), 14.

  4. James Winchester, ed., American Military Aircraft: A Century of Innovation (New York: Metro Books), 282–83.

  5. Stettinius, Lend-Lease, 23; Finney, Arsenal of Democracy, 56–57.

  6. Richard Thruelson, The Grumman Story (New York: Praeger, 1976), 112.

  7. Walton, Miracle of World War II, 419.

  8. Cooke, American Home Front, 247.

  9. Stettinius, Lend-Lease, 23.

  10. Rae, Climb to Greatness, 103.

  11. Kenneth Clark, The Other Half: A Self-Portrait (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 17.

  12. Stettinius, Lend-Lease, 25.

  13. Stettinius, Lend-Lease, 26.

  14. Stettinius, Lend-Lease, 28.

  15. Smith, The Army and Economic Mobilization, 130–31.

  16. Industrial Mobilization for War (History of the War Production Board and Predecessor Agencies, 1940–45) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), Vol. 1, 42.

  17. Burns Memo, June 13, 1940, G-4/31733, and Smith, The Army and Economic Mobilization, 130.

  18. Industrial Mobilization, Vol. 1, 41.

  19. Beasley, Knudsen, 248.

  20. Jacob Vander Meulen, Building the B-29 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 13.

  21. Stimson, Diary, August 2, 1940, 55.

  22. Beasley, Knudsen, 249.

  23. Beasley, Knudsen, 250.

  24. Walton, Miracle of World War II, 129.

  25. John Colville, On the Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries, 1939–October 1941 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1985), 225–26.

  26. Stimson, Diary, July 23, 1940, 29.

  27. Stettinius, Lend-Lease, 48.

  28. Craven and Cate, Vol. 6, Men and Planes, 399.

  29. Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, 183.

  30. Industrial Mobilization, Vol. 1, 51.

  31. Stimson, Diary, July 25, 1940, 36.

  32. Fortune, April 1941, 40.

  33. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 63.

  34. Donald Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946), 123; Beasley, Knudsen, 283.

  35. Borth, Masters of Mass Production.

  36. Minutes, AC-CND, August 9, 1940, 57; Stettinius, Lend-Lease, 54.

  37. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 65.

  38. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 65.

  39. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 194.

  40. Eliot Janeway, Struggle for Survival (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1951), 169.

  41. Michael Green and James Brown, M4 Sherman at War (Minneapolis: Zenith Books, 2007), 20.

  42. Beasley, Knudsen, 329.

  43. Beasley, Knudsen, 330.

  44. Life, March 31, 1941.

  45. Green and Brown, Sherman at War, 20.

  46. Stettinius, Lend-Lease, 55.

  47. Beasley, Knudsen, 264.

  48. Beasley, Knudsen, 264; Sorensen, Forty Years with Ford, 275.

  49. Sorensen, Forty Years with Ford, 275–76.

  50. Robert Higgs, Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 39–40.

  51. Beasley, Knudsen, 265.

  52. James Ward, The Fall of the Packard Motor Company (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995, 15.

  53. Ward, Packard, 15.

  54. Walton, Miracle of World War II, 89.

  55. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy, 81.

  56. Ward, Packard, 44–45.

  57. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy, 226–27.

  58. David Fisher, A Race on the Edge of Time (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988), 268.

  CHAPTER SIX: ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY

  1. Knudsen Papers: Speech to Army Ordnance Association, October 8, 1940; Time, October 21, 1940, 23.

  2. Quoted in Heiner, Kaiser, 61.

  3. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 115.

  4. Adams, Mr. Kaiser, 74–75; Secret Diary of Harold Ickes, Vol. 2.

  5. Adams, Mr. Kaiser, 79.

  6. Adams, Mr. Kaiser, 8.

  7. Knudsen Papers: Speech to Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, August 22, 1940.

  8. Kaiser Papers: Calhoun to Kaiser, July 22, 1940, Carton 127, Folder 11.

  9. Jonathan Utley, Going to War with Japan 1937–1941 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 121–22.

  10. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 68.

  11. NDAC Minutes, 29.

  12. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 166–67.

  13. Thomson and Mayo, Ordnance Department, 130–31.

  14. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy, 213.

  15. Beasley, Knudsen.

  16. Stimson, Diary, September 16, 1940, 170.

  17. Beasley, Knudsen, 274.

  18. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 69.

  19. Beasley, Knudsen, 286; Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 70–71.

  20. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 70.

  21. Borth, Masters of Mass Production, 70–71.

  22. Time, November 4, 1940, 71.

  23. Alan Clive, State of War: Michigan in World War II (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976), 34–36.

  24. Stimson, Diary, October 16, 1940, 57.

  25. Craven and Cate, Vol. 6 Men and Planes, 322.

  26. The Nation, November 1940.

  27. Craven and Cate, Men and Planes, 323.

  28. Beasley, Knudsen, 287.

  29. Knudsen Papers: memo of November 18, 1940.

  30. John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (New York: Mariner Books, 1976), 123.

  31. Beasley, Knudsen, 259.

  32. Vander Meulen, Building the B-29, 28.

  33. Sloan, Confessions, 134.

  34. Quoted in Farber, Sloan Rules, 185.

  35. Life, March 1941, 116.

  36. Quoted in Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, 180.

  37. Janeway, Struggle for Survival, 16.

  38. The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, Vol. 3, entry of December 21, 1940, 391.

  39. Beasley, Knudsen, 270–71.

  40. Stimson, Diary, December 19, 1940, 46.

  41. Heiner, Kaiser, 117.

  42. Frederic L. Quirk, Kaiser’s Richmond Yards (National Park Services: Historic American Engineering Record, 2004), 9–10.

  43. Foster, Kaiser, 71–72.

  44. Life, March 31, 1941.

  45. Stimson, Diary, Vol. 32, December 3, 1940, 10.

  46. Stimson, Diary, December 3, 1940, 11.

  47. Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, 228–29; From the Morgenthau Diaries, Vol. 2, 202–3.

  48. Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, 229.

  49. From the Morgenthau Diaries, Vol. 2, 208–9.

  5
0. Lynne Olson, Citizens of London (New York: Random House, 2010), 3.

  51. Stimson, Diary, December 20, 1940, 40.

  52. Stimson, Diary, December 21, 1940, 51.

  53. Knudsen Papers: NAM Speech.

  54. Buhite and Levy, FDR’s Fireside Chats, 171–73.

  55. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York: Harper, 1948), 226; Jesse H. Jones and Carl Pforzheimer, Fifty Billion Dollars (New York: Macmillan, 1951).

  56. Finney, Arsenal of Democracy, 14–15.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: SHIPS, STRIKES, AND THE BIG BOOK

  1. Foster, Kaiser, 71.

  2. Heiner, Kaiser, 120.

  3. Harry Thayer, Management of the Hanford Engineer Works in World War II (New York: American Society of Civil Engineers Press, 1996), 95.

  4. Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) No. CA-326, “Kaiser’s Richmond Shipyards,” 48–50.

  5. Interview with Peter Bedford, October 12, 2010.

  6. Hannay Testimony, U.S. House of Representatives, Production in Shipbuilding Yards, Hearing Part Four, June 30, 1943, 1000–1.

  7. Hannay Testimony, 1015.

  8. Cooke, Home Front, 170.

  9. Kaiser Papers: Oregon Shipbuilding, Carton 9, Folder 19.

  10. Foster, Kaiser, 32–33.

  11. Kaiser Papers: “Quotes from Henry Kaiser’s Speeches,” n.d, Carton 294.

  12. Foster, Kaiser, 75.

  13. John Bunker, Liberty Ships: The Ugly Ducklings of World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1972), 13.

  14. Foster, Kaiser, 75.

  15. Charles H. Coleman, Shipbuilding Activities of the NDAC and OPM, Report 18, Policy Analysis and Records, WPB (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1945) 10–14.

  16. Lane, Ships for Victory, 52–53.

  17. Lane, Ships for Victory, 73.

  18. Lane, Ships for Victory, 77.

  19. Lane, Ships for Victory, 84.

  20. Lane, Ships for Victory, 85.

  21. HAER, 56.

  22. Lane, Ships for Victory, 59.

  23. Beasley, Knudsen, 303.

  24. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy, 132.

  25. Jim Lacey, Keep from All Thoughtful Men (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011), 30.

  26. Langer and Gleason, Undeclared War, 436.

  27. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy, 133.

  28. Steve Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (New York: Free Press, 1993).

 

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