Prolific munitions production keyed America's triumph in World War
II but so did the complex economic controls needed to sustain that
production. Artillery, tanks, planes, ships, trucks, and weaponry
of every kind were constantly demanded by the military and readily
supplied by American business. While that relationship was
remarkably successful in helping the U.S. win the war, it also
raised troubling issues about wartime economies that have never
been fully resolved.
Paul Koistinen's fourth installment of a monumental five-volume
series on the political economy of American warfare focuses on the
mobilization of national resources for a truly global war.
Koistinen comprehensively analyzes all relevant aspects of the
World War II economy from 1940 through 1945, describing the
nation's struggle to establish effective control over industrial
supply and military demand-and revealing the growing partnership
between the corporate community and the armed services.
Koistinen traces the evolution of federal agencies mobilizing
for war--including the National Defense Advisory Commission, the
Office of Production Management, and the Supply Priorities and
Allocation Board-and then focuses on the work of the War Production
Board from 1942-1945. As the war progressed, the WPB and related
agencies oversaw the military's supply and procurement systems;
stabilized the economy while financing the war; closely monitored
labor relations; and controlled the shipping and rationing of fuel
and food.
In chronicling American mobilization, Koistinen reveals how
representatives of industry and the armed services expanded upon
their growing prewar ties to shape policies for harnessing the
economy, and how federal agencies were subsequently riven with
dissension as New Deal reformers and anti-New Deal corporate
elements battled for control over mobilization itself. As the armed
services emerged as the principal customers of a command economy,
the military-industrial nexus consolidated its power and ultimately
succeeded in bending the reformers to its will.
The product of exhaustive archival research, Arsenal of World
War II shows that mobilization meant more than simply harnessing
the economy for war-it also involved struggles for power and
position among a great many interest groups and ideologies. Nearly
two decades in the making, it provides an ambitious and enormously
insightful overview of the emergence of the military-industrial
economy, one that still resonates today as America continues to
wage wars around the globe.
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