Background
Koistinen, Paul Abraham Carl was born on March 27, 1933 in Wadena, Minnesota, United States. Son of Alfred Kaleb and Hilma Effina (Torstrom) Koistinen.
(Prolific munitions production keyed America's triumph in ...)
Prolific munitions production keyed America's triumph in World War II but so did the complex economic controls needed to sustain that production. Artillery, tanks, planes, ships, trucks, and weaponry of every kind were constantly demanded by the military and readily supplied by American business. While that relationship was remarkably successful in helping the U.S. win the war, it also raised troubling issues about wartime economies that have never been fully resolved. Paul Koistinen's fourth installment of a monumental five-volume series on the political economy of American warfare focuses on the mobilization of national resources for a truly global war. Koistinen comprehensively analyzes all relevant aspects of the World War II economy from 1940 through 1945, describing the nation's struggle to establish effective control over industrial supply and military demand—and revealing the growing partnership between the corporate community and the armed services. Koistinen traces the evolution of federal agencies mobilizing for war—including the National Defense Advisory Commission, the Office of Production Management, and the Supply Priorities and Allocation Board-and then focuses on the work of the War Production Board from 1942-1945. As the war progressed, the WPB and related agencies oversaw the military's supply and procurement systems; stabilized the economy while financing the war; closely monitored labor relations; and controlled the shipping and rationing of fuel and food. In chronicling American mobilization, Koistinen reveals how representatives of industry and the armed services expanded upon their growing prewar ties to shape policies for harnessing the economy, and how federal agencies were subsequently riven with dissension as New Deal reformers and anti-New Deal corporate elements battled for control over mobilization itself. As the armed services emerged as the principal customers of a command economy, the military-industrial nexus consolidated its power and ultimately succeeded in bending the reformers to its will. The product of exhaustive archival research, Arsenal of World War II shows that mobilization meant more than simply harnessing the economy for war-it also involved struggles for power and position among a great many interest groups and ideologies. Nearly two decades in the making, it provides an ambitious and enormously insightful overview of the emergence of the military-industrial economy, one that still resonates today as America continues to wage wars around the globe.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700613080/?tag=2022091-20
(In the years following World War I, America's armed servi...)
In the years following World War I, America's armed services, industry, and government took lessons from that conflict to enhance the country's ability to mobilize for war. Paul Koistinen examines how today's military-industrial state emerged during that period—a time when the army and navy embraced their increasing reliance on industry, and business accelerated its efforts to prepare the country for future wars. Planning War, Pursuing Peace is the third of an extraordinary five-volume study on the political economy of American warfare. It differs from preceding volumes by examining the planning and investigation of war mobilization rather than the actual harnessing of the economy for hostilities; and it is also the first book to treat all phases of the political economy of wartime during those crucial interwar years. Koistinen first describes and analyzes the War and Navy Departments' procurement and economic mobilization planning-never before examined in its entirety-and conveys the enormity of the task faced by the military in establishing ties with many sectors of the economy. He tells how the War Department created commodity committees to carry on the work of World War I's War Industries Board, and how both military and industrial powers strove to protect their mutual interests against those seeking to avoid war and to reform society. Koistinen then describes the American public's struggle to come to terms with modern warfare through the in-depth explorations of the work of the House Select Committee on Expenditures in the War Department, the War Policies Commission, and the Senate Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry. He tells how these investigations alarmed pacifists, isolationists, and neo-Jeffersonians, and how they led Senator Gerald Nye and others to warn against the creation of "unhealthy alliances" between the armed services and industry. Planning War, Pursuing Peace clearly shows how the U.S. economy was both directly and indirectly planned based on knowledge gained from World War I. By revealing vital and previously unexplored links between America's World Wars, it further illuminates the political economy of twentieth-century warfare as a complex and continually evolving process.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700608907/?tag=2022091-20
(Although the military-industrial complex became familiar ...)
Although the military-industrial complex became familiar to most Americans during the Cold War, Paul Koistinen shows that its origins actually go back to the dawn of this century. Mobilizing for Modern War, the second of an extraordinary five-volume study on the political economy of American warfare, highlights the emergence of this pivotal relationship. In this volume, Koistinen examines war planning and mobilizing in an era of rapid industrialization and reveals how economic mobilization for defense and war is shaped at the national level by the interaction of political, economic, and military institutions and by increasingly powerful and expensive weaponry. Covering the Gilded Age and Progressive Era through the Spanish-American War and World War I, Mobilizing for Modern War shows how a partnership evolved between government and business to prepare for and conduct modern warfare. This partnership was an extension of Progressive regulatory reforms, but it had to include a professionalized army and navy in order to handle the new technology of war. Koistinen traces the origins of the military-industrial complex to the emergence of a modern navy at the turn of the century, when building a new fleet of steel, armor, and ordnance required a production team of political leaders, naval officers, and businessmen. A similar team was brought together again between 1915 and 1918 as the War Industries Board to mobilize the economy for World War I, and it became the model for subsequent industrial mobilization planning. Koistinen shows how mobilizing for World War I left an indelible imprint on twentieth-century life. By accelerating the emerging Progressive political economy, it strengthened the cooperative planning ethic within business and government and introduced the concept of industrial preparedness, carried out largely under military leadership. Relating events of this period to what preceded and followed, Koistinen convincingly argues that in this century warfare has shaped the nation's social institutions and ideology even more than reform. Mobilizing for Modern War is marked by outstanding research and cogent analysis and yields fresh insights not only about the conduct of conflict, but also about war's effects on peacetime affairs.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700608605/?tag=2022091-20
Koistinen, Paul Abraham Carl was born on March 27, 1933 in Wadena, Minnesota, United States. Son of Alfred Kaleb and Hilma Effina (Torstrom) Koistinen.
Bachelor in History, English, University California Berkeley, 1956. Master of Arts in History, University California Berkeley, 1959. Doctor of Philosophy in History, University California Berkeley, 1964.
From reader to associate instructor University California, Berkeley, 1959—1962. From assistant professor to professor department history California State University, Northridge, 1963—2003, professor emeritus, since 2003. Visiting scholar United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, 1979, United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1982, German History Institute, Augsburg, 1994.
Associate editor American National Biography, 1989—1999. Board editors, patron Pacific History Review, Los Angeles, since 1977. Consultant Center for National Securities Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1991.
Consultant, participant video World War II, Breadlines to Boomtimes, 3 vols., Los Angeles, Monterey, 1994. Lecturer in field; referee for publications and grants for scholarly publications and organizations. With United States Army, 1956-1958.
(Although the military-industrial complex became familiar ...)
(In the years following World War I, America's armed servi...)
(Prolific munitions production keyed America's triumph in ...)
Member of Inter-University Seminar on the Armed Forces and Society, World World War II Studies Association (committee on bibliography), Peace History Society, Organization American Historians, American History Association.
Married Carolyn Miriam Epstein, September 17, 1961. Children: David Joshua, Janice Hilma.