Car Makers and World War II
- Dennis L. Peterson
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
Just before the attack on Pearl Harbor and U.S. entry into World War II, approximately 88 percent of American households had an automobile. The numerous automakers were rolling out new models with bold features and looks in growing quantities. For example, Ford turned out 691,455 new cars in 1941. But the war brought a sudden end to that. In 1942, Ford produced only 160,000 new cars.
President Franklin Roosevelt met with the presidents of U.S. Steel, Sears Roebuck, and Dodge to "pick their brains" about how their various specialties --raw materials, logistics, and production, respectively--could assist with the war effort. He called on the other heads of industry to devote their full production power to the manufacture of military vehicles and war materiel instead of consumer goods to hasten the end of the war and ensure victory. He named William Knudsen, president of General Motors, to be production czar at a salary of $1 a year.
As an incentive stronger than mere patriotism, the government offered manufacturers lucrative contracts for their cooperation. And by January 1942, all car production was frozen by order of the Office of Production Management. By February 22, 1942, the last autos built exclusively for the civilian market rolled off the assembly lines. For a while, the carmakers continued to make such vehicles, but those were reserved for government use, devoted to public safety and other essential government services.
During the rest of the war, only 139 other civilian vehicles were built. Unsold stockpiles were rationed, and to get one, a person had to prove that his trade-in had at least 40,000 miles on it.
These changes put a crimp on a growing civilian population struggling to come out of the Great Depression. Added hardships came when gasoline and tires were rationed, since both fuel and rubber were needed by the military. This was further complicated when the sources of 90 percent of the world's natural rubber were seized by the Japanese forces forging their way across the Far East.
The government's war requirements created headaches for auto producers, too. When they stopped making cars, they had to shut down their plants and retool them to produce military goods. Most of them had never made such goods, so there was a natural learning curve in the process, which took time. It took them about 18 months to return to 100 percent production. Most of them continued to produce vehicles of various sorts and/or at least components of them, but some, both inside and outside the auto industry shifted production to items of a different sort.
Factories that had made hub caps began turning out massive quantities of helmets. General Motors made aircraft parts. Alcoa's aluminum production went toward airplane applications. The Mattatuck Manufacturing Company, which had made upholstery nails, shifted to making cartridge clips for Springfield rifles. Office machine makers and sewing machine manufacturers, such as Remington and Singer, turned out firearms. Even Lionel, known for its toy trains, shifted to making items for warships, including compasses.
Ford, along with Willys and Dodge, produced Jeeps. Ford also made Sherman tanks, and it built what at the time was the world's largest manufacturing facility, Willow Run, designed to produce a B-24 Liberator bomber every hour.
Buick made the Ma8 Hellcat, a tank destroyer, and airplane engines.
DeSoto made wing sections for the Helldiver, a dive bomber.
Packard built V-12 engines for PT boats and Rolls-Royce and Marlin engines for P-40 and P-51 fighter planes.
Studebaker made big trucks.
Nash made aircraft engines and even early helicopters.
Cadillac shifted it production from luxury cars to tanks and the V-8 engines to power them, especially the more than 10,000 M5 Stuart light tanks in various configurations, M8 75mm howitzer carriages, M19 antiaircraft guns, LVT landing crafts, and the P-38 Lightning fighter-bomber.
GM's Fisher Body division built the M10 and the M10A1.
Collectively, all these companies, large and small, became the "Arsenal of Democracy," producing the war materiel and vehicles for not only the needs of the U.S. military but also those of Great Britain and the Soviet Union. They supplied Russia with 360,000 tons of supplies in 1941 alone. By the end of the war, they had sent Russia 400,000 jeeps and trucks, 12,000 tanks and other armored vehicles, and 11, 400 planes. Two-thirds of Russia's vehicles were built in the United States.
The massive changes required of industry to do all this also affected civilians, not only at that time but also into the post-war period. We still see many of the effects today.
Women entered the workforce en masse to replace the men, who were serving in the military. This gave rise to the legendary Rosie the Riveters. By 1943, 30 percent of GM's workforce was female, and 3 million women were engaged in war production.
Along the way, manufacturers found ways to cut the costs of production, speed up their processes, and achieve better quality. They found substitutes for natural rubber and used more plastics. All of these improvements they later, after the war, transferred to the production of civilian goods.
But it took time after the war ended for the Arsenal of Democracy to retool back to civilian production. Old, war-worn cars, long neglected due to rationing, had to be replaced or repaired and reequipped. As servicemen returned from the war and wanted their own cars, long waiting lists developed for as-yet-unbuilt new cars. Civilian production resumed in October 1945, but it took even long for industry to catch up with demand.
But in 1961, nearly two decades following the end of the war, outgoing president Dwight Eisenhower warned of the "military-industrial complex" that World War II and the subsequent Cold War had created. He feared that the close cooperation that had developed between many of the war industries and the government would unduly influence national policy and priorities. What has transpired since his speech proves the law of cause and effect, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When the wrong people are in charge of newer, bigger, more destructive military hardware, they soon develop the urge to try it out. And that means war somewhere.