Destructive Creation

The book gives great insight into the role of organized efforts at persuasion in establishing and reinforcing much of what we think we know about mobilization for the war.

Business wanted credit for the success of war production, even though most of it was achieved in government owned, government operated (GOGO) or government owned, contractor operated (GOCO) plants. The public sector played a much larger role in planning, directing, and controlling the mobilization effort than business wished the American public to acknowledge.

You can’t understand today’s privatized military without this groundbreaking new book on the history of WWII and the military-industrial complex. Wilson’s political and economic history overturns celebratory myths of American business acumen winning the war. Instead, Wilson shows that the “arsenal of democracy” lay not in the private sector but in the massive public sector of military-owned and military-operated production facilities that churned out planes, tanks, bombs, and materiel. Government production angered American businessmen who had hoped to capture wartime profits and legitimacy. Corporate leaders and their allies resisted government production at every turn and launched political and public relations… show more.