War of the Factories
War of the Factories
This chapter evaluates how both regimes of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany put Fordism to use during World War II. William Werner's ascent to the commanding heights of Nazi Germany's wartime industrial complex illustrates how the state-led pursuit of mass production that began in the 1930s intensified under the conditions of total war. With greater force than before, the Nazi regime sought to bind industry to the war economy. The bureaucracy of the armaments began telling firms what to produce, how to produce, and whom to hire. Werner's career, then, sheds light on a crucial but little-explored realm of the Nazi war economy: the institutional interface that bridged the ministries and the shop floors. Like the Nazi war machine, the Soviet armaments industry had to find ways to achieve, in the words of William Werner, “higher output with fewer skilled workers.” How this worked can be illustrated by looking, once more, at Gaz.
Keywords: Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fordism, World War II, William Werner, mass production, Nazi war economy, Nazi war machine, Soviet armaments industry, Gaz
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