A Call to Arms
A Call to Arms

Author: Maury Klein

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-07-16

Total Pages: 916

ISBN-13: 1608194094

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The colossal scale of World War II required a mobilization effort greater than anything attempted in all of the world's history. The United States had to fight a war across two oceans and three continents--and to do so, it had to build and equip a military that was all but nonexistent before the war began. Never in the nation's history did it have to create, outfit, transport, and supply huge armies, navies, and air forces on so many distant and disparate fronts. The Axis powers might have fielded better-trained soldiers, better weapons, and better tanks and aircraft, but they could not match American productivity. The United States buried its enemies in aircraft, ships, tanks, and guns; in this sense, American industry and American workers, won World War II. The scale of the effort was titanic, and the result historic. Not only did it determine the outcome of the war, but it transformed the American economy and society. Maury Klein's A Call to Arms is the definitive narrative history of this epic struggle--told by one of America's greatest historians of business and economics--and renders the transformation of America with a depth and vividness never available before.

Warhogs
Warhogs

Author: Stuart D. Brandes

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-12-14

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 0813189683

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The Puritans condemned war profiteering as a "Provoking Evil," George Washington feared that it would ruin the Revolution, and Franklin D. Roosevelt promised many times that he would never permit the rise of another crop of "war millionaires." Yet on every occasion that American soldiers and sailors served and sacrificed in the field and on the sea, other Americans cheerfully enhanced their personal wealth by exploiting every opportunity that wartime circumstances presented. In Warhogs, Stuart D. Brandes masterfully blends intellectual, economic, and military history into a fascinating discussion of a great moral question for generations of Americans: Can some individuals rightly profit during wartime while others sacrifice their lives to protect the nation? Drawing upon a wealth of manuscript sources, newspapers, contemporary periodicals, government reports, and other relevant literature, Brandes traces how each generation in financing its wars has endeavored to assemble resources equitably, to define the ethical questions of economic mobilization, and to manage economic sacrifice responsibly. He defines profiteering to include such topics as price gouging, quality degradation, trading with the enemy, plunder, and fraud, in order to examine the different guises of war profits and the degree to which they have existed from one era to the next. This far-reaching discussion moves beyond a linear narrative of the financial schemes that have shaped this nation's capacity to make war to an in-depth analysis of American thought and culture. Those scholars, students, and general readers interested in the interaction of legislative, economic, social, and technological events with the military establishment will find no other study that so thoroughly surveys the story of war profits in America.

Mobilizing for Modern War
Mobilizing for Modern War

Author: Paul A. C. Koistinen

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13:

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In this volume, Koistinen examines war planning and mobilizing in an era of rapid industrialization and reveals how economic mobilization for defense and war is shaped at the national level by the interaction of political, economic, and military institutions and by increasingly powerful and expensive weaponry.

U.S. Army Mobilization and Logistics in the Korean War
U.S. Army Mobilization and Logistics in the Korean War

Author: Terrence J. Gough

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9781410224699

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In view of their crucial importance to military success, mobilization and logistics deserve thorough attention from historians. Although the Army's ability to mobilize has improved in recent years, much remains to be done, and the Korean War experience can provide valuable insights. Planners involved in the attempt to perfect current automated manpower mobilization systems need to prepare for possible strains and even collapse of those systems. In an emergency, we may have to rely on manual methods such as those that saw us through the Korean War. Industrial preparedness also has received increased emphasis and support in the last decade. But in this area, as well, there is much to be learned from the Korean War's partial mobilization. Finally, we can study with profit the problems encountered in supplying the large forces that we fielded in Korea. Planners who deal with theater logistics could benefit from detailed analysis, solidly grounded in original sources, of those problems and the solutions devised for them during the war. This monograph should provide impetus to examine Korean War mobilization and logistics. Through a discussion of the available literature, the author presents an overview of the most pertinent issues addressed thus far. He then suggests how future investigators might elaborate on particular points, and offers topics that warrant further research. WILLIAM A. STOFFT Brigadier General, USA Chief of Military History