An arsenal of democracy

In the early 1930s, Walter and Victor Reuther visited relatives in Germany. Witnessing fascism, they were left with deep impressions of Hitler’s Third Reich and his rise to power. As war clouds darkened, soon Nazi troops were marching into Paris.

In 1940, a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, Walter Reuther, then vice president in charge of the UAW’s General Motors Department, drafted a program to convert the auto industry into defense production. In his study, “500 Planes a Day,” Reuther wrote: “The plane, from certain points of view, is only an automobile with wings.”

A true visionary, Reuther knew fighter planes were needed to defend Great Britain against Nazi bombings. But he also knew defense production would help prepare the United States if we were brought into the war and would put many laid-off workers back on the job in a struggling economy.

On Dec. 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, the UAW International Executive Board adopted a no-strike pledge to help in the war effort. It was later reaffirmed by the membership and adopted by many other unions.

Jennifer John

‘Roll the union in!’

Folk singer Pete Seeger wrote this song in the early days of World War II
to help boost morale on the home front:

I was standing ’round a defense town one day
When I thought I overheard a soldier say:
“Ev’ry tank in our camp has that UAW stamp,
And I’m UAW, too, I’m proud to say.”

CHORUS:
It’s the UAW-CIO, makes the army roll and go;
Turning out the jeeps and trucks and airplanes ev’ry day.
It’s the UAW-CIO, makes the army roll and go,
Puts the wheels on the U.S.A.

There’ll be a union label in Berlin
When those union boys in uniform march in;
And rolling in those ranks there’ll be UAW tanks.
Roll Hitler out and roll the union in!

“The UAW-CIO makes the army roll and go …”