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21 plus terms and conditions apply. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, the story of a pivotal battle during World War II. But this battle wasn't fought on a tiny island in the Pacific or in the hedgerows of France, but in factories across America. Here to tell the story of the arsenal of democracy is AJ Boehm.
Take it away, AJ. People should really understand what life was like, not just in America, but all over the world in the 1930s. 20% unemployment, millions and millions of people living below the poverty line.
People, you know, of all generations who couldn't find work, couldn't find food, couldn't support their children. And during that time, the American military really faded into oblivion. We were not investing in our military for a number of reasons. One, we didn't have any money to spend on the military. Two, there was an extraordinary movement away from militarism. So a lot of people of all ages could remember World War I, parents who had lost children, people who had lost brothers and sisters and just the immense amount of destruction and death. And of course, we went into the 1920s and had a rip-roaring time and drank a lot of booze and did a lot of dancing. But by the 1930s, when people were really struggling and they couldn't support their kids, they really did not want their government spending money, tax dollars on military equipment of any kind. We can't feed our children.
Why would we be spending money on tanks and airplanes? People should also recall 1932 slash early 1933, two very important new leaders came to power virtually at the same time. FDR in America.
I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who solemnly swears. And Adolf Hitler in Germany. And during the early days of Hitler's regime, he did a couple of things that, you know, I hesitate to compliment him because, you know, for all the obvious reasons, probably the most, you know, horrible man who's ever walked the planet in modern times. But he pulled Germany out of the depression in certain ways that didn't happen in America.
Unemployment fell away, the factories were churning, the economy was improving. And one of the ways he did that was to secretly begin secretly and then not so secretly begin building a giant military and most importantly, the first operational air force. And as he was doing this, nobody in America was really paying attention because we thought, we're not going to have a war. We're not going to have to fight this guy.
It's not going to happen. The anti-war movement was so strong that huge numbers and surveys taken of Americans believe that we never should have gotten involved in World War I to begin with. We had these great big oceans on either side of the United States. And keep in mind, the bomber aircraft didn't really exist at this time. And airplanes themselves were sort of new in warfare.
They were used in World War I, but not in any major strategic way. They didn't have a lot of range at that time. So it was hard for Americans to understand how we could be able to do that. And so we were able to do that. And we were able to do that. To understand how we could be attacked.
Nobody thought it was really possible. So there was this isolationist movement. Even after Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, there was a huge movement in America for people to say, we don't want anything to do with this.
This is not our problem. It was incomprehensible to them that we could be involved in World War II. And the two most important Americans leading that movement were Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford. France has now been defeated.
And despite the propaganda and confusion of recent months, it is now obvious that England is losing more. And I have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot win this war for England, regardless of how much assistance we send. That is why the America First Committee has been formed. Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford headed up what was called at the time the America First Committee. And that was an anti-war, anti-Roosevelt parade that traveled the country, even in 1941, getting people on board, selling out arenas, saying, hey, let's not get involved in this war.
It's going to be a disaster if we do. Henry Ford was known to be an anti-Semite, so a lot of people were dubious of what his intentions were. They thought he was a Nazi.
He had received a special medal from the German government and refused to give it back, even when he was criticized for it. Here's Professor Jonathan Sarno speaking to the Jewish Learning Institute in Brooklyn, New York, on Ford's anti-Semitism. Every Ford dealer would distribute Henry Ford's newspaper, known as the Dearborn Independent. And for 91 straight issues, the Dearborn Independent targeted Jews, the world's foremost problem, as he said. And then Henry Ford repackaged those articles into a series of volumes entitled The International Jew.
These books were sent free to every library in America and were very widely distributed. The city, modern music, new government programs, and whatever it was he blamed on the Jews. If there's one thing you can say about Henry Ford, yes, he was definitely an anti-Semite. But I don't think he was in any way a Nazi, as he was accused at the time. What he was was very much a pacifist. He thought that there was absolutely no reason for the United States to get involved in a war.
Lindbergh, the other member, also misunderstood. They called him a Nazi, and he wasn't. And he was less of a pacifist than Henry Ford was, because once the war began, both of these figures, ironically, both of them became very key figures in us defeating the Nazis in the end. World War II became really a contest of mass production and of horsepower, of weapons mounted on wings and wheels.
It was a mechanized war. We must be the great arsenal of democracy. When we come back, more of this remarkable story here on Our American Stories.
Lee Habib here again. Our American Stories tries to tell the stories of America's past and present to Americans. And we want to hear your stories too. They're some of our favorites. Send them to us. Go to our americanstories.com and click the Your Stories tab.
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Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. There's an efficient way to get caught up on a lot of news. It's called The 7 from The Washington Post. It's a newsletter and podcast. Whether you're reading or hit play, you get seven stories you need to know and you can consume it all in just a few minutes. The 7 is out every weekday morning by 7 a.m eastern. I'm Hannah Jewell. I'm one of the writers and I host the show. Find The 7 podcast wherever you're listening. The newsletter link is waiting for you in the show notes. 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treatments to i've got a complicated project no problem we make the complex simple and i can even help schedule a professional measure and install i didn't realize you did that yeah we can also send you samples fast and free wow i mean i always thought i needed a designer to come to my home but scheduling is always a nightmare not with blinds.com we're on your schedule and there's no haggling no pressure no hidden fees either hmm i just might have to do more oh okay whatever you need how about you tell me what you had in mind okay then so the first room we're looking at is for guests coming over lines.com has covered over 25 million windows all backed by a 100 satisfaction guarantee shop lines.com now and get up to 40 off with minimum purchase rules and restrictions may apply and we return to our american stories and aj bain sharing the story of how america geared up for world war ii when we last left off we learned what america was like before the war simply put we weren't only unprepared but we didn't want war chief among those voices were henry ford and charles linberg a great irony of the story considering what happens next here again is aj bain in world war one you began to see horses replaced with motor vehicles you began to see airplanes flying but for the most part it was still guys with guns in trenches in the mud duking it out the more soldiers you could send to the front lines the better off you were by the time world war ii started hitler had already revolutionized the whole program i'm going to give you a quote this is britain's spymaster william stevenson his code name was intrepid he confided in franklin russevelt before the united states had joined the war he said quote the fuhrer is not just a lunatic he's an evil genius the weapons in his armory are like nothing in history his propaganda is sophisticated he has torn up the military textbooks and written his own and i think the easiest way to really put that in perspective how do we really understand what that meant i think what it meant was hitler had come out of world war one he was wounded in that war and when he rose to power full of vitriol he understood the idea of henry ford what henry ford had successfully done on assembly lines in america what does that mean it doesn't mean just wow the model t is incredible the genius of henry ford wasn't the model t it was the factory that could build the model t in massive numbers that is what hitler realized could revolutionize warfare in the future it was the factory it was the mechanical object that the factory could build that's what was going to win wars in the future before everybody else is thinking about these things and the united states is mire in the great depression thinking that there's no way that any of this is going to involve them hitler was making all that happen and what that meant was trucks tanks and airplanes and the moment he released all of that over poland this idea of blitzkrieg which meant ground forces weapons in the air all coordinated to deliver instant and sudden mass attack he was thought of as invincible you have to put yourself in the shoes of americans at the time what a shocker this was the idea that airplanes could be so sophisticated the screaming sound of the dive bombers the detonation of the bombs this just terrified people and that terror itself was a weapon here's arthur al herman courtesy of the national world war ii museum with more what i want you to do is to put yourself in the oval office in may of 1940 you're the president of the united states and your military advisors have told you and your own guts your own instincts told you that your country is going to be at war and it's going to be a war unlike anything the united states has ever fought before of something which your own military advisors themselves admit that they're totally unprepared for and you know that's true you know for example sitting there in the oval office that right now you united states has the 18th largest army in the world 18th 18th just ahead of holland argentina has a bigger army than you do hungary has a bigger army than you do you've got an air force which consists of about about 1500 machines and i use that word machines because that's what they are we're talking about if you throw together all of the fighters obsolete trainers biplanes and so on you come up with a force of about 1500 aircraft now 1500 aircraft that's what the german luftwaffe is flying every day you've got a situation in which you have no defense industry it was all dismantled after world war one hounded out of business by congressional investigations into what we call the merchants of death cold and rennington and general electric and sparey and these other companies dupont and so they just got out they said that oh we're not going to get involved this business anymore the contracts aren't worth this to us dupont which had been the largest manufacturer of gunpowder in the world in 1918 by 1940 it shrunk to two percent of its revenues no defense industry the army's chief of staff general george marshall has said to you mr president if adolf hitler lands five divisions on the atlantic coast there's nothing we can do to stop him he can go from here to the rockies war is coming you're not prepared you have nothing what do you do it was a pretty dismal christmas in 1940 for a lot of americans because war was on our doorstep there was a lot of uncertainty four days after on december 29th 1940 russevelt gave a speech the largest radio audience in all of history gathered to hear the speech and why because the big question on everyone's mind all over the world was will the united states get involved in this war because that meant basically would there be any contest was nazi journalman he going to roll all over europe uncontested and turn the entire continent into nazified germany which is what most americans believed was going to happen all the world wanted to know what was fdr going to do was he prepared to stand up to hitler and if he was going to stand up to hitler how was he going to do it and so on december 29th 1940 a few minutes before 9 p.m he wheeled himself in his wheelchair into the diplomatic reception room on the first floor of the white house he was wearing his favorite harvard tie and a gray wool suit there was all this recording equipment and off he goes and he gives the speech that pretty much changes the world this is not a fireside chat on war this is a talk on national security because the nub of the whole purpose of your president is to keep you now and your children later and your grandchildren much later out of a last ditch war for the preservation of american independence never before since jamestown and clemouth rock as our american civilization been in such danger as now the nazi masters of germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life and thought in their own country but also to enslave the whole of europe and then to use the resources of europe to dominate the rest of the world he begins to unravel for american people the way that the united states could step up against hitler to stand up to hitler whether that meant joining the war or not the cost that i advocate involves the least risk now and the greatest hope for world peace the people of europe who are defending themselves do not ask us to do their fighting they ask us for the implements of war planes the tanks the guns which will enable them to fight for their liberty and for our security if the united states a democratic nation could put together our government our military and our free enterprise into one fighting force nobody could stop us i want to make it clear that it is the purpose of the nation to build now with all possible speed every machine every arsenal every factory that we need to manufacture our defense material we have the men the skill the wealth and above all the will so i appeal to the owners of plants to the managers to the workers to our own government employees to put every ounce of effort into producing these munitions swiftly and without stent we must be the great arsenal of democracy the arsenal of democracy could supply the guns the tanks the ships the airplanes to our allies who are fighting germany and losing and ultimately if we got involved in the war we would be prepared to win when we come back more of this remarkable story the arsenal of democracy's story here on our american stories there's nothing like sinking into luxury anibay sofas combine ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price anibay has designed the only fully machine washable sofa from top to bottom the stain resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash perfect for anyone with kids pets or anyone who loves an easy to clean spotless sofa with a modular design and changeable slip covers you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style whether 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sick with waterborne diseases sponsor a child at worldvision.org slash water for kids and help ensure access to life-changing essentials like clean water hi this is debbie your blinds.com design consultant oh wow a real person yep i'm here to help you with everything from selecting the perfect window treatments to i've got a complicated project no problem we make the complex simple and i can even help schedule a professional measure and install i didn't realize you did that yeah we can also send you samples fast and free wow i mean i always thought i needed a designer to come to my home but scheduling is always a nightmare not with blinds.com we're on your schedule and there's no haggling no pressure no hidden fees either i just might have to do more okay whatever you need how about you tell me what you had in mind okay then so the first room we're looking at is for guests coming over lines.com has covered over 25 million windows all backed by a 100 satisfaction guarantee shop lines.com now and get up to 40% off with minimum purchase rules and restrictions may apply i was struggling for the past year and a half two years with trying to lose weight i just can't get rid of the stubborn weight in my legs and in my belly while everyone is unique and will have varied results here are extraordinary experiences from independent body affiliates and actual belvital users there's nothing more frustrating than knowing that you're eating well but it's not working hormone imbalances were preventing these women from losing weight now there's a comprehensive plan to help with belvital i just noticed changes immediately that stubborn scale finally moved in this first week i lost five pounds just after one week i'm down six pounds and all of my bloating is gone i just finished the belvital program i have lost 15 pounds and i have never failed better i've noticed inches just shed every week that i go through i've lost 13 pounds and 16 inches from all around my body i feel like an entirely different person i don't know if i've i don't know if i've ever felt this good get hormone health for women at belvital.com this will change everything and we return to our american stories and the story of the making of as roosevelt coined it the great arsenal of democracy when we last left off we learned that despite a large amount of americans thinking we'd never get involved in the war roosevelt saw things differently and set about convincing the american public and our business leaders to start building the tanks planes and guns for our european allies and eventually us here again are aj baim and arthur l herman so how do you get all of these companies and all of these people to pitch in and build this arsenal of democracy this is a democratic nation in a totalitarian nation the leader of that country would just order everyone to do it and murder or jail you if you didn't follow orders franklin roosevelt was working against all of his instincts leaving this as a bottoms-up voluntary system that used the creative energies and drives the free market system instead of trying to do a top down directed command war economy there were in roosevelt's camp advisors who very much thought that the soviet model would be the way to go in terms of mobilizing for war in america it was different this took a lot of convincing because it was really not in a lot of american's best interest alfred sloan who was the head of general motors he didn't want to set aside building chevrolet's and buick's and oldsmobiles and cadillacs to start making tanks so how do you get everybody on board well if you're franklin roosevelt what you do is you pick up the phone and you call your chief fundraiser bernard baruch and baruch says to him the man you need to call is big bill newtson president of general motors now bill newtson was a motor city legend he was a man who had together with henry ford really invented the modern automotive assembly line production one guy turns the screw but he doesn't put the bolt on the next guy puts the bolt on every single person had a highly specific job and the idea was you could create a factory that used human labor and turn it into a giant machine a factory could function like a clock right on time and highly specific and it would function to spit out the product you were trying to make each one exactly like the one before and the one after and by doing so you could create a massive number at a very low price but newtson had also taken that a step farther and he'd created what was called flexible mass production that in other words whatever you were creating when you were talking about cars or planes or refrigerators or anything that you could create a massive number is there anything that you could introduce changes and modifications and improvements without having to shut down the assembly line to retool reassembling the assembly line in order to produce the new product this is the big stumbling block you know you can make model t's from here to doomsday but to make a different kind of car well that was a whole different set of problems newtson solved that in fact it's bill newtson who introduced detroit's annual model changes all owed to him when this idea of forwardism and also you know the industrial revolution when all of that could be applied to warfare the sky was the limit so roosevelt makes the call to detroit newtson can you come to washington help me do this newtson hangs up the phone immediately quits as president of general motors he'd just taken the job three years earlier now this was a move which shocked his family and the family meeting was stormy because they said to him what are you doing you're a republican this is a democrat this is franklin roosevelt for god's sake he's the man who has excoriated you and big corporations like general motors he's blamed you for the depression he's blamed you for our inability to get out of the depression and now you're going to washington to go work for him why are you doing this bill newtson was born in denmark came to this country as a danish immigrant worked his way up from the shop floor and he said to them he said i owe this country everything and when my president calls i go so he well goes to washington looks at the situation he realizes they don't have a clue and so he says to roosevelt look let's do this let me call my friends he said if you give me 18 months my friends and i will find a way to gear up this country for war production without changing anything in the overall function of the economy and you're going to have more planes and tanks and ships you can even imagine it was really about debt spending this idea that at a time of an emergency a government can just create money like ghost dollars from scratch and begin spending it even though it doesn't really exist that was a way to do it and so the federal government started issuing contracts billions of dollars to companies to start building weapons of war and this put the country in amazing amounts of debt but it didn't matter because once those factories started churning and the economy started roaring the country would be able to pay itself back later how were the contracts negotiated it came down to this the secretary of war henry stimpson said famously if you don't pay companies in a democratic nation to work they won't work and he was right all of these companies in a democratic nation in a capitalist countries had to be able to make money doing it so it became a standard government contract that the government would pay a company what it cost that company to build a product of war plus an eight percent profit it was called liberty plus eight percent and that motivated companies to sign these contracts and get on board that was the basic idea and ultimately it was a really rough start but it worked one of the first things he does in the process he makes a call in the summer of 1940 to his pal kt keller at chrysler president chrysler says kt can you make tanks russevelt military leadership realized right away that we had to build tanks and nobody should have better tanks in the united states america because they were motorized vehicles and we had the american auto industry and so ford did a lot to build tank engines believe it or not cadillac the classic great american car the most luxurious american car did all kinds of work in tank production cadillac tanks believe it or not but the company that probably did the most for tank work i think was chrysler kt keller chief executive of chrysler gets this phone call can you build this tank and kt said well i don't know i don't know what a tank looks like but show me one and i'll tell you whether i can make it or not and he goes down to brockford illinois they put him into a tank one of those old lee tanks and they drive him around out there with his chief engineer ed hunt and they step out and they said yeah we can make these how many do you need so they went to work but in the process and bill newtson knew this was going to happen when you got people who were experts in mass production and who understood how to make changes modifications the first things they noticed was is that these kinds of tanks had all kinds of design flaws and problems for example the fact that the lee tanks was all riveted all riveted armor and said why you have rivets why don't you weld them and the army says no it won't work we use the rivets because the welding is not strong enough it won't hold together under fire trust me trust me rivets is the way to go and builders and says i don't believe that so he went out to detroit got some guys who he knew understood real industrial welding and welded together two giant slabs of iron flew it back showed it to the army and said there try and pull that apart and of course what they discovered was that the welding not only made it easier and faster to produce the tanks but it also made them safer when shells hit riveted armor those rivets would shake loose and you get flying pieces of metal flying around inside the tank that were killing and injuring crewmen and that's why while the first models of the lee tank were all riveted why tanks like shermans are all welded that one factory chrysler built more tanks than all of nazi germany did in the entire war engineers love a challenge if you say to them you make something you've never made before and i'll bet you can't do it by and large it's hard for an engineer not to resist a chance to try to give it a shot to make things as i say they've never made before for example one was a company that made jukeboxes in chicago ran by a guy the name of mike rock ola good regional jukebox maker and then when the war came and the opportunity came to get contracts to make m1 carbines they never made a carbine lives they never fired a carbine in their lives here but here was a challenge and of course what happens is after the war these companies then came back and you applied the lessons they had learned to streamlining and making more efficient their own production this is what happens with rock ola in fact the rock ola machines become so ubiquitous that they become forever identified with the new pop music that's played which is why it's called rock and roll did you know that when we come back more of the story of the arsenal of democracy here on our american stories tired of spills and stains on your sofa wash away your worries with anabay anabay is the only machine washable sofa inside and out where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices that's right sofa start at just 699 enjoy a no risk experience with pet friendly stain resistant and changeable slip covers made with performance fabric experience cloud-like comfort with high resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing the sturdy steel frame ensures longevity and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime shop washable sofas.com for up to 60 percent off site-wide 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15 for 15 off nyx.com and we return to our american stories in the final portion of the story of the making of the arsenal of democracy telling it is aj bame and author l herman let's pick up where we last left off so all the way leading up to war henry ford is the loudest anti-war activist and the loudest anti-fdr activist and he has his only son edsel ford who is pro-fdr and wants to support the war effort is this sort of shakespearean saga edsel ford is very ill dying of cancer and what the ford's concoct after pearl harbor even henry ford the loudest anti-war activist the loudest anti-fdr activist in the country after pearl harbor he says you know what we're in this war there's nothing we can do about it i'm okay let's pitch in let's use our factories to win the war which is what happens you can't make this up edsel ford along with his right-hand man cast iron charlie sorensen who had been pivotal in the original founding the original ford assembly lines and charles sorensen charlie is now an old man and he and edsel ford have this idea the weapon that the allies need the most is the bomber aircraft the heavy bomber the four-engine bomber the airplane that can deliver huge payloads over a target in this new age where you have scientific mechanisms like radar and bomb sites the bomber is the weapon that's going to change the war and defeat the enemy so edsel has this idea to build the largest factory airplane factory in the world and build a b-24 liberator bomber at a rate of one per hour and if they could do this if they could build a factory using the ford genius and fordism at a rate of one per hour there's no way the united states and the allies can lose because with that number of bombers that we can unleash over our enemy enemies that's it game over we will win it's called willow run this is the story of willow run one of the ford farms that virtually overnight became the largest aircraft plant that had ever been built thousands of skilled workers were employed pouring 100 000 yards of concrete erecting 38 000 tons of structural steel setting 10 million bricks fitting miles of piping and running more miles of electric cable to operate the thousands of machines that were to be installed in this truly giant structure you have to understand at that time grumman lockheed boeing we all associate that martin all associate them with the military industrial complex as producers of military aircraft but that's not how they all got started that was part of their business they were all of them in the 20s and 30s producing civilian aircraft civilian airliners and for the military they never thought of them as being real innovators in terms of design and elements i mean they've asked them to build a plane you know make us 50 of these things and these companies would obligingly comply no airplane had ever been really mass produced it had never really happened and certainly not an airplane that could travel 2850 miles an airplane that had four pratt and whitney engines totaling 4800 horsepower that could carry 8 000 pounds of bombs nothing like this had ever been mass produced everybody said it couldn't be done and so they set out to build it now when ford sends their engineers and all their guys out to this tiny consolidated factory in san diego believe it or not there were hundreds of artists artists that ford sent out because there were no blueprints for the parts they're stunned there's no blueprints the thing has 60 miles of wire and the wiring in each airplane was different the artists literally had to reduce the airplane down to its its little tiny parts and draw them so that production engineers could figure out how to build these thousands and thousands of parts that would go into each one of these bombers just as if they were model t's so each bomber would be made of these parts that could be replaced like spare parts when they got shut up in combat there would be spare parts for them because they would be produced one just like the one before that and then they would be just like the one before that and it was very dramatic and it definitely felt to all of them like literally the world was at stake if they didn't figure this out we would all be speaking german every single plane that american pilots flew in that war except one were all pre-war designs all pre-war just waiting for somebody to turn to them and sort of start producing it because we're going to need them and the numbers that you'll be able to produce for us and that's why planes america beat by built by the americans were so good and why they progressively became better and better as the war went on because they were all designed by commercial companies who understood design problems of all kinds that's also one reason why tank for tank american tanks sorry about this were so inferior to axis tanks particularly german tanks because almost all of the armored vehicles the american army used in the world were designed by the army board of ordnance it never occurred to them to go to a company like chrysler or to go to a company like ford or studebaker and say well how would you design a tank the b-24 liberator is still to this day the most mass-produced american military aircraft of all time you also have to imagine is the guy who was behind the building of willow run henry ford's son edsel ford was dying of cancer and he just you know his last remaining wish was to see that this factory would be completed and that we would win the war there's this very dramatic scene when one day all of these people come to the factory and they see the flag at half mast when they get there and they realize that their leader edsel ford had succumbed to cancer and he had died you just have to picture what it was like i get goosebumps and the hair stands up on the back of my neck every time i think about it all these people who worked at that factory described this moment when it was announced that edsel ford had died the largest airplane and factory in the world all of a sudden all the machines shut off all the clanging and banging think about how loud it was in there all of it just stopped and there was a moment of silence and in that moment of silence in this gigantic factory an irishman a tenor began to sing amazing grace and it echoed throughout the factory it's just this moment that i just felt was so special it's that moment where you know when you write these books you don't want people to just understand what happened you want them to understand why it happened but perhaps more importantly you want to feel what it felt like to be in this place in this time and that was the moment where that really comes home in the course of the war at general motors alone 189 business executives senior executives died on the job died of the job of heart attacks died simply wearing themselves out from the kind of work stress environment in which they found themselves in trying to meet those wartime goals in time to achieve those kinds of goals this was a war of sacrifice not just sacrifice on the battlefield but also enormous sacrifices at home in 1940 fdr coined the term the arsenal of democracy and the idea was again if you can join american military free enterprise and government into one fighting force nobody could stop the united states of america we would become undefeatable and in fact the whole theory proved true by the time bombs do drop at pearl harbor our wartime production was already approaching that of nazi germany by the end of 1942 united states is producing more war material than all of the axis put together ford motor company will produce alone will produce more war material than fascist italy did during the entire war and by the end of 1943 the united states is producing war more material than great britain great britain dazi germany and imperial japan 300 000 planes two and a half million machine guns 90 000 tanks two and a half million trucks 41 billion rounds of ammunition by 1944 the united states was producing eight aircraft carriers a month the fact of the matter is is that none of this war production effort could have come together without the leadership leadership first of all of bill newtson the motor city legend who when he picked up the phone and said can you make us aircraft engines you didn't say no to bill newtson and then finally leadership from the business leaders who who were taking enormous chances you have to remember converting over your plant from producing refrigerators to machine guns well you don't sell a lot of machine guns to your refrigerator customers if war didn't come or if we lost the war the resources that you would have lost in producing for the ordinary civilian economy for your normal profits for the normal course of your business would be lost forever it was also to a war of dedication of dedication at home for those working on the assembly lines for those who planned out those assembly lines and who took on the challenge that bill newtson had given them and who had said i know you've never made this before we desperately need it and those men coming back and saying yeah bill i think we can i think we can do it and they did and a special thanks to aj baim author of the arsenal of democracy also a special thanks to arthur l herman the story of america's great arsenal of democracy here on our american stories there's nothing like sinking into luxury anibay sofas combine ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price anibay has designed the only fully machine washable sofa from top to bottom the stain resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash perfect for anyone with kids pets or anyone who loves an easy to clean spotless sofa with a modular design and changeable slip covers you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style whether you need a single chair love seat or a luxuriously large sectional anibay has you covered visit 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