V Is For Victory

December 1, 2022

The New York Times best-selling author of Rocket Men, Nelson explains how President Franklin D. Roosevelt prepared the U.S. government, businesses, and a skeptical, Depression-worn public for the country's entry into World War II. That meant diverting raw materials to the war effort, persuading top industrialists to repurpose their factories, and readying citizens for shortages and battle fatalities.

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March 20, 2023
Historian Nelson (Rocket Men) claims in this comprehensive and colorful account that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal kicked off a third American Revolution that pulled the nation out of the Great Depression and tipped the scales toward Allied victory in WWII. As Adolf Hitler’s rise to power unsettled the world, Roosevelt became convinced that the “full-throttle unleashing of American enterprise” was the secret weapon to defeating Nazi Germany. New Deal programs such as the National Recovery Administration gave corporate and government managers experiences working together that were critical to organizing the war effort and laid the groundwork for the American corporate profits to double between 1941 and 1945. In addition to thoroughly debunking Roosevelt’s anti-business reputation, Nelson details how William Knudsen, Henry Ford, and other corporate leaders turned their factories into assembly lines churning out ships, planes, and tanks, and notes that Chrysler produced “more tanks from one Detroit factory than the Nazis produced over the whole of the war.” Light is also shed on the lend-lease and cash-and-carry programs that helped supply Britain and France with military equipment before the U.S. entered the war. Deeply researched and fluidly written, this is a rousing portrait of the partnership between America’s public and private sectors firing on all cylinders.

Starred review from April 15, 2023
A strong argument that "if any one human being is responsible for winning World War II, it is FDR." Most scholars agree that industry was the deciding factor in the war, but Nelson, bestselling author of Pearl Harbor and Rocket Men, gives it his full and expert attention. He points out that one American Revolution established the country in 1776, but another began in 1933 Franklin Roosevelt. His administration created an explosive expansion of industry, managerial expertise, national infrastructure, and government-business cooperation that literally drowned the enemies in weapons. Nelson reminds readers that FDR took office in a nation awash in unemployment, poverty, and starvation. Unsure how to act, he listened to his advisers and launched many expensive programs. The ramped-up war effort helped alleviate unemployment, and the government relief allowed the unemployed to put food on the table and persuaded them that they had a leader who cared about them. Aware that Americans overwhelmingly opposed rearmament, he began on the sly. Beginning in 1938, he told military chiefs that he wanted a 10,000-plane Air Force and then siphoned money from social programs to pay for them. By 1940, the U.S. was producing more planes than Germany, and the Public Works Administration was integral to the financing of the aircraft carriers that helped win the war in the Pacific. While most historians emphasize military icons (Marshall, Eisenhower, Nimitz) Nelson concentrates on relatively obscure civilian figures such as Donald Nelson, Bill Knudsen, and Edward Stettinius Jr., "dollar-a-year patriots who relinquished the comparatively mild civil-service salary that would normally be their due." The industrial miracle they oversaw was far more complex than anyone had predicted, so politicians, generals, and the media at the time have looked down on them, but Nelson doesn't. This hyperproduction continued after the war was over, when the U.S. helped rebuild the world and gave birth to one of the first affluent, consumer societies in which, for a generation, the middle-class made up the majority. A compelling and convincing history lesson.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 1, 2023
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's masterful political and diplomatic skills in maneuvering his reluctant nation to confront the Axis powers in WWII is an oft-told history. Prolific U.S. historian Nelson (Pearl Harbor, 2016) uniquely focuses here on FDR's organizational talent and his marshaling of American industrial might to provide the materiel that gave the Allies what they needed to face Germany and Japan's military juggernaut. In retrospect, the transformation of American production from peacetime goods to munitions, aircraft, and tanks had its roots in New Deal programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, where laborers learned leadership skills and the value of teamwork. Ironically, the plutocrats and industrialists who had opposed such social programs became ardent supporters of Roosevelt's administration, learning to cooperate with government bureaucrats. Roosevelt's demands for decent labor conditions for working people further contributed to both social and industrial aims, including novel ideas like pregnancy leave and childcare. Bitter resistance from the likes of Henry Ford was soon quashed by patriotic unity. All these efforts transformed America into an industrial colossus, the "arsenal of democracy" that lasted into the Cold War years. Nelson's perspective makes this a must-read equally for WWII history buffs and students of supply-chain logistics.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.