The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War
Baime previously wrote on racing and the auto industry in Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans (2009). Here he explores the role of Detroit and the Ford Motor Company in the mammoth effort to transform the auto industry into munitions factories that produced the thousands of planes, tanks, and artillery that would be the deciding factor in the effort to defeat Nazi and Japanese aggression in WWII. At the core was an epic battle between father and son, the cantankerous industrialist Henry Ford, who despised war, and his sensitive son, Edsel, who could never emerge from his father’s shadow. It’s hard to imagine the massive scale and scope of the Willow Run plant built by the Fords for the express purpose of putting out “a bomber a day” or the idea that government and industry could ever again come together with such singular intent and purpose. Yet the war effort at home was not accomplished without a great deal of conflict of will, adversity, and sacrifice, which Baime details with great care and empathy for his principal subjects. --David Siegfried