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Reviewed by Pennell Paugh
May 15, 2023 (San Diego) -- Craig Nelson makes a convincing argument that Franklin Delano Roosevelt not only saved America from the Great Depression, but was also responsible for the U.S. winning World War II in his new novel V is for Victory, which will be released May 23.
Most scholars agree that industry was the deciding factor in the war, but Nelson, who wrote bestselling books, Pearl Harbor and Rocket Men, scrutinizes the idea with an expert’s eye. FDR’s administration created an explosive expansion of industry, national infrastructure, and government-business cooperation. Using FDR’s phenomenal managerial talent, he overwhelmed our enemies with weapons, despite jealousies, back-fighting and lack of communication between America’s Army, Navy and private enterprise.
Nelson reminds the reader that FDR took office to overcome unemployment, poverty, and starvation. Unsure how to act, he tried lots of programs. Fortunately, many worked. Reading the book, pages fly by. I could imagine a narrator of an old news reportage in the 1940s, spouting facts in quick succession. To give an idea of his writing style, here is an excerpt:
The key reasons how the arsenal of democracy could be made
and why America alone could make it can be seen in the history of
Ford Motor. After being repeatedly told by his father that horseless
carriages would never sell, Henry Ford quit his job at Edison Illu-
minating in 1899 to build Detroit’s first automotive factory, soon to
be joined by John and Horace Dodge, Ransom Olds, David Buick,
and Louis Chevrolet. Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its time; Ford
Motor’s breakthrough innovation was not the invention of the car
(Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler had done that in 1885); or the
invention of the assembly line (patented by Ransom Olds in 1901); or
the use of interchangeable parts (pioneered by Samuel Colt’s armory
in manufacturing pistols); but the combining of all these efforts into
a factory that was a machine in and of itself.
The company’s innovations began when machinist Walter Flan-
ders revealed to Ford how Singer Sewing Machine used precision-
engineered interchangeable parts arranged across an assembly line to
reduce inefficiencies in workflow. A product’s parts were assembled
into a whole, not from individual humans tinkering, Geppetto-like,
with the formfitting tools of hammers and files, but from precise
machining that produced parts accurate to the hundredth of an inch,
making each element as precisely the same as the Industrial Age
could make them.
The ramped-up war effort helped alleviate those who were unemployed. It gave them jobs, put food on their tables and persuaded Americans they had a leader they could trust. It was a time when Americans opposed rearmament. The country had recently suffered losses in WWI. Huge numbers had died or been wounded. So, FDR began production on the sly.
In 1938, he told military chiefs that he wanted a 10,000-plane Air Force and then siphoned money from other programs to pay for them. By 1940, the U.S. was producing more planes than Germany.
While most historians emphasize big names like Marshall, Eisenhower, and Patton, Nelson concentrates on relatively obscure patriotic dollar-a-year men, including Donald Nelson, Bill Knudsen, and Edward Stettinius Jr.
Nelson lists some of the miracles what these men accomplished. They made America’s war industry not only provide for us, but for allies as well. Hyperproduction continued after the war was over, making it possible for the U.S. to help rebuild the world. It also gave birth to one of the first affluent, consumer societies in which, for a generation, the majority of Americans were middle-class.
The book provides an up-close picture of events. Historical figures are depicted as real characters. Relations between countries have shadows and tensions that I hadn’t known about, and quotes from FDR give the reader an idea how he managed to get everyone to work together. He often told lies and conned others, but he always conveyed hope and a belief that they would overcome the hurtles that lay ahead. People followed and often worshipped him.
From the last paragraphs of the book cheered me up. The author reminds us of our potential as a nation. Don’t turn our backs to the world. Join together within America and with other countries, to make ourselves truly great again. United, we really are able to solve the unsolvable. And the only thing we need to fear, is fear itself.
Craig Nelson is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Rocket Men, as well as The Age of Radiance (a finalist for the PEN Award), The First Heroes, Thomas Paine (winner of the Henry Adams Prize), and Let’s Get Lost (short-listed for W.H. Smith’s Book of the Year). Nelson was vice president and executive editor of Harper & Row, Hyperion, and Random House, where he oversaw the publishing of twenty national bestsellers.
He is a graduate of UT Austin, and attended the USC Film School, the UCLA writing program, and the Harvard-Radcliffe publishing course. As a historian he has written about Pearl Harbor, the race to the Moon, the nation’s founding, and the nuclear era. Massively researched from scratch, his books are eye-opening and definitive accounts of historically profound moments.
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