V IS FOR VICTORY

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.