Destructive Creation: American Business and the Winning of World War II Mark R.Wilson. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Abstract

Destructive Creation: American Business and the Winning of World War II Mark R. Wilson. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.During World War II, America produced nearly two-thirds of all munitions used by the Allied forces. How this was accomplished in such a comparatively short time is the subject of Destructive Creation. Mark R. Wilson frames his book through two conflicting narratives popular during the war, both of which contain some truth, although both obscure the role of the military as well as civilian and governmental agencies. The first narrative praises patriotic business leaders who retooled their companies in their country's time of need. The second narrative emphasizes how corporations exploited the war emergency to make large profits, thwart smaller businesses and unions, and fight the New Dealers. The reality is somewhere in between, but big business spent a lot of money to promote the first narrative, which was so successful that they were able to leverage their power after the war into creating the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about and which is still so powerful today.Prior to 1941, businessmen were haunted by their problems during the First World War, including the government's coerced procurement of finished goods, takeovers of privately owned enterprises, and formal control of infrastructure, including railroads, telegraph, telephone, and radio. The government also strengthened its regulation of businesses and legislated an eight-hour day.During the Depression, big business came under critical scrutiny because of the high unemployment rate. The government came to the rescue, in the form of various New Deal measures that created public projects including the building of dams, roads, and parks, all of which provided millions of jobs. The low regard with which citizens and the government regarded business extended to the arms trade. In a 1936 Gallup poll, eighty-two percent of those interviewed thought that the manufacture and sale of war munitions for private should be prohibited (32). The Senate's Nye Committee (begun in 1932 with a final report in 1936) investigated war profiteering, called for heavy price and profit controls in wartime, and recommended that the government control munitions production.As it became clear that another war was coming, there was a need to build the nation's arsenal. However, progressives did not want to boost corporate profits, and conservatives did not want the war to reenergize the New Deal; businesses just wanted the government to give them money to produce what the military needed. …