In a book review in the Wall Street Journal, Arthur Herman brings Edsel Ford out of obscurity as he tells the story of Detroit during its "Arsenal of Democracy" phase as it stopped producing cars during World War II and started making armaments.
If anyone remembers Edsel Ford today, it is because of the Ford Edsel, the car created in 1957, 14 years after its namesake's death. It was one of the biggest flops in car-industry history. The only son of automotive wizard Henry Ford has deserved a better legacy, and A.J. Baime has given it to him. Although billed as a history of how the Detroit auto industry geared up to arm the United States, "The Arsenal of Democracy" is a touching and absorbing portrait of one the forgotten heroes of World War II.
The Ford Motor Co. was not the biggest producer of war munitions and materiel during the war—that honor belongs to General Motors—but it did make 390,000 tanks and trucks, 27,000 tank and aircraft engines, and thousands of aircraft parts, engine superchargers, sheets of aluminum and armor plate, gun mounts, antiaircraft fire directors, and machine tools, as well as more than 8,000 four-engine bombers, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Jeeps. Most if not all those military contracts were signed by Edsel Ford as president of Ford Motor Co., sometimes in opposition to his father's wishes. In short, Edsel Ford was instrumental in turning America's automobile industry into the "arsenal of democracy" that FDR described in a fireside chat almost a year before Pearl Harbor, as the possibility of war loomed.
When war did come Edsel would champion what turned out to be Ford Motor Co.'s two iconic contributions to the war effort, jeeps and B-24 bombers.
