Freedom's Forge

Herman covers American industrial mobilisation for the Second World War through two figures: William Knudsen, the Danish immigrant who ran General Motors production and was recruited by Roosevelt to organise war output, and Henry Kaiser, the construction contractor who built Liberty ships and applied mass production methods to shipbuilding.

The operational content is the interesting part. Herman documents how Knudsen worked by convening industry, allocating subcontracts across many small firms rather than concentrating them, and refusing to nationalise or to direct production by command. He shows Kaiser's shipyards cutting Liberty ship construction time from months to weeks through prefabrication, welding instead of riveting, and hiring and training workers with no prior industrial experience, including large numbers of women and Black workers. The aggregate numbers are the argument: American output of aircraft, ships, tanks and munitions exceeded all the Axis powers combined within about three years.

Herman's thesis is that this happened because the government contracted with private industry on commercial terms and left the production decisions to industrial managers, rather than through central planning. That is a real argument supported by the case, and it is also an ideological position that shapes what the book covers. Herman gives thin treatment to the War Production Board's actual allocation powers, to price controls, to rationing, to the labour movement's role, and to the massive public capital investment through the Defense Plant Corporation. Economic historians would say the mobilisation was far more directed than Herman presents. Read it for the production detail and treat the political conclusion as contested.