The sad saga of the Office of Defense Mobilization.
By now everyone understands the key to America’s successful mobilization in World War Two was unleashing the drive, energy, productivity, and innovation of our private sector to solve a national security crisis. It’s one reason why so many people, including people in Congress and the current administration, are turning to my book, Freedom’s Forge, for inspiration as they grapple with the problem of reigniting America’s defense industrial base today.
At the time it was an American president, Franklin Roosevelt, who saw the right path forward: letting the private sector take the lead despite his New Deal and progressive instincts. That decision—contrary to the recommendations of his leading advisors—set the direction and tempo of the entire mobilization, as he turned the initiative over to General Motors CEO Bill Knudsen and his business colleagues.
It was FDR’s successor Harry Truman who decided to try another way: a top-down, centralized model, with the government telling industry what and how to produce the weapons we needed, rather than the other way around.
The culmination of this effort was the Office of Defense Mobilization, set up in 1950. The result? A major procurement mess during the Korean War. It also triggered a national economic crisis that rocked Truman’s presidency to its foundation—and left a toxic legacy for defense procurement that we’re still trying to clean out today.
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