With the advent of World War II the
automobile industry was converted into the ‘arsenal of democracy.’1
From 1942 to 1945 companies manufactured no cars or auto parts; instead, the
industry produced tanks, trucks, jeeps, bombs, steel helmets, planes, and small
arms ammunition.2 This episode has been well studied, but the period
immediately before the conflict and the transition to wartime production has
been neglected been overlooked. The automobile industry’s conversion to the
production of war materials was neither voluntary nor expedient.
Barton J. Bernstein has argued that
the automobile industry resisted the transformation into democracy’s arsenal.3
According to Bernstein, the industry was still on the defensive from the
Depression, suspicious of the Roosevelt government, and wished to avoid the WWI
epithet “merchants of death.” Instead of wartime responsibility, “auto
producers contended that their equipment could not be used for armaments and
that partial conversion was impossible.”4 This was particularly true
of Henry Ford, who initially refused to produce airplane engines for the
British Royal Air Force. In 1940, with the specter of Nazism on one side of
America and Japan’s aggression on the other, FDR called for increased
production of armaments with a goal of 50,000 airplanes. On May 28, the
President appointed General Motors chairman William S. Knudsen to the
newly-created National Advisory Defense Committee (NADC), but this did little
to hasten the conversion. Knudsen moved slowly, defending partial conversion of
the industry as sufficient for war production. John Rae observed that automobile
companies had no need to change from production for an emerging civilian market
to war materials for the government. Both government and industry assumed that
with “the continuation of depression conditions, there was ample excess plant
capacity and labor, so that wartime needs could be met without disturbing the
normal course of the economy,” and when World War II arrived, “both government
and industry had to learn their production roles from scratch.”5
Just a month before Pearl Harbor, the industry was barely restricted – only
thirteen auto manufacturers held defense contracts.6 And of those
who held defense contracts, only part of their production power was dedicated
to the war effort. “Even after Pearl Harbor,” wrote Bernstein “the industry
continued to resist conversion to war production.”7
On February 22, 1942, the production
of automobiles ceased, and American industry conducted total war against the
Axis powers. When conversion was accomplished, the results surpassed
expectations. John Rae noted that as the world’s greatest concentration of
capital, “the American Automobile industry outstripped all others in the total
volume of production and the diversity of its output.”8 Instead of
cars, automobile factories accepted government contracts to produce,
“completely novel and uniform products; artillery and shells, gun mountings,
machine guns, fire-control systems, small-arms ammunition, fuses – all the
complex equipment of twentieth century war.”9
By December 1942, the industry had
formed the Automotive Council for War Production to organize the resources of
the automobile firms and maximize efficiency and production. Larry Lankton has
pointed out that “working together, the auto manufacturers and the military
struck a delicate balance between producing the best weapons and producing the
most weapons.”10 General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler all contributed
to the war effort in different ways. Chrysler produced 22,000 tanks (to
Germany’s 24,000), Ford 288,000 of the novel Jeep, and General Motors assigned
120 plants to defense work.11 At the end of 1943, General Motors
reported that every defense contract was in production, on schedule, and
yielding more output than the government had considered possible.12
The company delivered approximately $12 billion worth of military material
during the war years, and they had never made two-thirds of the items before.13
Ed Cray, in his history of General
Motors entitled Chrome Colossus,
concluded that “if the corporation ever had a supreme moment, a period of unqualified
contribution to the commonweal, it was during the war years of 1940 though
1945.”14 Small companies such as Packard, Studebaker, Bantam, Mack,
and Willys-Overland also contributed to the war effort. James Flink summarized
that “before the war had ended the American automobile industry had produced
for the military 4,131,000 engines, including 450,000 aircraft and 170,000
marine engines, 5,974,000 guns and 27,000 completed aircraft.”15
Automobile makers and the military created a feedback loop of innovation and
production. The military would suggest improvements, and auto companies would
make changes in production. A 1950 work on the Automotive Council for War
Production Freedom’s Arsenal reported:
“Ingenuity on the part of the automotive engineers was
outstanding . . . to cut down on welding operations one
company adapted huge presses – formerly used to stamp out automobile body
panels – to the forming of armor plate. These presses eliminated 64 inches of
welding in two places on the tank hull.”16 Flink concluded that
“American superiority in mass-production techniques – techniques developed in
the automobile industry – was indeed the main reason for the Allied victory.”17
In May 1940, Franklin Roosevelt
challenged American industry to produce fifty thousand airplanes. The
production of airplanes proved to be the automobile industry’s most formidable
wartime operation. Airplanes, wrote Rae, were “items that few automobile men
had ever seen, let alone manufactured.”18 Further complications
arose because the airplane industry opposed any foothold for potential
competitors, and the industries had divergent philosophies; the airplane
industry aimed for quality, and the automobile industry aimed to produce in
quantity. Nevertheless, “these difficulties caused less trouble than might have
been expected especially because both industries were staffed by men who
realized that there was a vital job to be done.”19 The automobile
industry began by producing Rolls-Royce engines. By the fall of 1940, the
industry produced fuselages, wing sections, and various airplane parts.20
Output for 1942 alone was 47,000 aircraft. Chief in this effort was Ford’s
Willow Run Plant near Ypsilanti, Michigan. Built distant from any labor force,
the plant became a “social disaster.” Makeshift shacks were built to house the
workforce. In addition, Ford experienced a shortage of materials and trained
labor. Willow Run became known as Will-it-Run. “As late as September, 1943,”
wrote Rae “the Air Force was seriously considering asking the government to
take charged of Will-It-Run.”21 During the dispute, Walter Reuther
suggested that idle plants be devoted to aircraft manufacturing that included
government, the automobile companies and the UAW. He claimed that five hundred
airplane could be manufactured a day. The provocative suggestion never
materialized. Finally, by late 1943, Willow Run began to produce four- and five
hundred B‑24 bombers a month.
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