Arsenal of Democracy: The American Automobile Industry in World War II (Great Lakes Books Series)

Having lived through this era, I found it very interesting. It brought back many memories, even days of working at the Willow Run Bomber Plant.

The level of organization, engineering know how, and production of the US auto industry in World War 2 is hard for Americans to imagine today. During the covid-19 pandemic Americans fail to grasp the potential to make massive amounts of testing equipment, personal protective equipment, and and other products that would win a war against a pandemic virus. Yet in World War 2 the US auto industry treated the war as a solvable production problem and solve it they did.Russia, Britain, and Germany had less than half the level of productivity of American industry and Japan was much farther behind. Enormous mobilization and standardization of designs helped achieve economies of scale and the engineers, management and workers found ways to make manufacturing more productive.A good complementary book is The Rise And Fall Of American Growth by Robert J Gordon, which explains the great productivity growth speed-up of American industry before, during, and after WWII. World War 2 probably sped up productivity growth by applying great pressure to companies to increase productivity making lots of very challenging parts and products.

The subject material of the book is actually quite interesting. For example that the automobile industry got to be quite good in making aircraft, and more particularly aircraft engines. On the other hand, the automobile industry did not have as big or decisive a role in making tanks or armored vehicles. Vignettes about some of the folks in the industry (Ford) were also kind of interesting. The downside is that the prose in the book is kind of wooden, and numbers come and go, sometimes repeated, often with little context. It is hard to keep one's attention.

An OK book, talks a lot about what mose already know. It is a pretty high level book but does not get into the main challenges and how industry worked with, and at times against the Roosevelt administration, or how strikes came into play. There is so much more to this topic than what was contained in this book.

I thought the book was very well researched. The story telling was good. You got a real sense of that war time urgency with all of the aspects of production; labor, matériel, and engineering coming together in a way that probably could never happen again. I find this aspect of ww2 to be a fascinating adjunct to the story of the war.

Good detail of complicated processes companies went through tobe the most inovative and productive in producing airplanes an wheeled and tracked vehicles.

Very thorough, detailed book, with many, many production statistics, which will be of much interest to readers who desire such details.

Boring! Dry as dust. Practically unreadable. Nothing but dates, schedules, production numbers by the month, not to mention acronyms and abbreviations till you want to throw this book through the window. Reads like an annual report interrupted by very rare and very brief moments of interest. I really don't care who was appointed head of what in June, 1942 and then replaced two months later by somebody else who was replaced 6 months after that, etc., if you get my meaning. Vastly outdone by another "Arsenal of Democracy" book by A.J. Baime which is 100 times better and very readable.