Book Review: Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in WWII, by Arthur Herman

Leading into our Munich event on defence manfuacturing, here is Resilience Media's Book Review of 'Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in WWII' by Arthur Herman

Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in WWII, by Arthur Herman (Penguin Random House, 2012) opens in a geopolitical landscape that looks eerily familiar: a rising superpower, global supply chain instability, and a Western defence industrial base that isn’t properly resourced or prepared for a conflict.

Herman’s prescient historical work was written before the Russian invasion of Crimea and is about a period that predates NATO, yet it provides a blueprint today for how the Western industrial base could be mobilised. The book tells the story of two industrialists – William ‘Big Bill’ Knudsen and Henry J Kaiser. Knudsen mobilised the auto industry; Kaiser revolutionised shipbuilding. Together they wrangled, inspired, and led American business leaders to build the ‘arsenal of democracy’ which provided the Allies with enough military supplies to win World War II.

The book opens with the isolationist national political landscape, a rapidly growing mass manufacturing industry, a military industrial complex crippled by government regulation, a diminished military, and the threat of imminent war. When all of these facts coalesce for FDR’s administration, they reach out to experts – titans of industry – and ask for their support to supply more war materiel than ever seemed possible. Herman’s thesis is that it was made possible due to the confluence of the unique American market economics as well as the advent of mass production.

What the book alludes to but does not explore is the War Economy and how federal contracts, price controls, and strategic planning were critical to industry success. Given it was published in 2012, it also doesn't ask the question ‘If NATO partners had to rearm overnight, would they be able to?’

Extensively researched, occasionally footnoted, immensely readable, Herman’s authority as a scholar of American military history is evident; this book is on the Department of Defense’s reading list. The crossover with the business genre also introduces Herman to another audience: that of American industry, startups, and national security policymakers. Private industry isn’t the only part of the equation; strategic government oversight played an enormous role in Freedom’s Forge, but one that is not explored by Herman.

Written like a thriller, Herman weaves the narrative of Knudsen and Kaiser in an accessible fashion. The core themes of Herman’s book find strong relevance today. The West finds itself attacked by adversaries in an a-symmetric and a non-traditional way, and America has budgeted $880bn to its Department of Defense, with Anduril and Palantir replacing Ford and General Motors on the NYSE. Would today’s corporate titans – Silicon Valley CEOs, defence primes, advanced manufacturing firms – respond to a call to action and a wartime economy as effectively as Knudsen and Kaiser did?

As we look to history for clues and lessons for a very uncertain future, this book is essential reading. While it isn’t a roadmap, it is a warning. If NATO members are serious about building a modern arsenal of democracy, they need to bring corporate ambition and government strategy closer. When industry was given the opportunity to innovate for a mission, they rose to that challenge in a unique and exceptional way. The book has plenty of insights to understand how that can happen again now.

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Inspired by Freedom’s Forge, Resilience Media has partnered with the US Defense Innovation Unit to bring you ‘The Future of Defence Tech Manufacturing & Innovation’ event this week in Munich. It will encourage military, startups, investors, and industry to look at how to prepare NATO for global conflict.