A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II

The colossal scale of World War II required a mobilization effort greater than anything attempted in all of the worlds 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 nations 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 Kleins A Call to Arms is the definitive narrative history of this epic struggle--told by one of Americas greatest historians of business and economics--and renders the transformation of America with a depth and vividness never available before.