Forbes: How Free Enterprise Saved Civilization

Mired in a prolonged economic Depression and facing a growing world threat, free enterprise and the "extraordinary leadership of a handful of American businessmen" accomplished what "government planning or rationing could not" — make America amazingly victorious over both. That's the message of a new book, "Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II." Steve Forbes highlights two great lessons from it:

First, it tells the largely unknown story of America’s extra­ordinary output of war materials during World War II—output that almost defies imagination. By war’s end the U.S. had manufactured about 70% of all Allied war material, with U.S. factories outproducing everyone else combined.  Ford Motor Co. produced more than Benito Mussolini’s entire Italian economy.

The second thing this book does is emphasize that it was the practice of free enterprise that was behind these production miracles. Countless companies “carried the spirit of free enterprise like a revitalizing force, with the power to meet the needs of total war without losing their identity or creativity or power of self-renewal. … Human ingenuity could solve problems that government planning or rationing could not.”

America's victory was despite New Dealers, not because of them:

So why is it that the astounding achievements of American business during World War II have been virtually erased from popular imagination? Precisely ­because it was business, not government, that performed the miracle. As Herman puts it, “Those … left out of the major decisions about the economy during the war—New Dealers and others—took their revenge by seizing control of the historical message. Business had had nothing to do with the miracle of war production, went the narrative. … It was the vast resources and extended reach of the federal government all along.”

Thankfully Freedom’s Forge sets the record straight, comprehensively and compellingly. Free markets, not big government, are the true source of America’s incredible strength. They enabled us to win World War II, thereby saving Western civilization. And since the war free markets have produced an endless cornucopia of new products and services—and will continue to do so as long as they exist.