# Major Employers During WWII?



## sabrina (May 22, 2009)

What were some of the major employers (vehicle, distributing, miscellany) pre- and during WWII? Just throw some out there. I need to choose one to research for the current chapter.


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## Colin1 (May 22, 2009)

Packard


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## Amsel (May 22, 2009)

Brown and Root in the Houston ship channel built a shipyard and US Navy vessels including destroyers. Brown and Root also built the Corpus Christi Naval Station during the war. They employed and still do, many people in Southeast Texas.


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## evangilder (May 23, 2009)

Anything to do with manufacturing war material, or transportation. Think of how much was transported via rail in those days. There were no interstate highways, so the fastest way to get men an material across country was by rail.


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## syscom3 (May 23, 2009)

"Kaiser" employed 10's of thousands in the shipyards. Same with the major shipyards on the east coast with the likes of Bethlehem Steel, US Steel, Republic Steel being major builders or suppliers.

GM employed 100's of thousands in a multitude of war plants. The same with Ford and Chrysler.

Douglas Aircraft and Boeing also employed 10's of thousands in aircraft plants.


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## Colin1 (May 23, 2009)

So
transport and distribution of already-manufactured war material. Sorry, guess I misunderstood the question


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## Kiwikid (May 23, 2009)

General Electric Corporation through it's subsidiary GEI was the biggest US employer in the Nazi armaments industry.

GEC owned AEG and OSRAM which both employed slave labour from Nazi concentration camps. Through ownership of AEG, GEC also owned EMW which developed the V-2 rocket. 

GEC raised Wall Street loans to it's subsidiary GEI for a light bulb factory, but diverted funds through Lisbon and Switzerland to fund building the Mittlewerk V-2 factory. 

During the war GEC also profiteered from a Tungsten Carbide licensing partnership with Krupp Industry. Through subsidiary Carballoy GEC charged the Allies ten times more for Tungsten Carbide exports from Portugal than it charged to the Axis powers. 

GEC also made extremely large cash donations to the Nazi party beginning in 1939. Through meetings with Werner von Braun and General Dornberger GEC purchased information for the WAC Corporal project under a scheme called Project ORDCIT.


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## Kiwikid (May 23, 2009)

General Motors must have made a heap from building tanks ?

Kaiser shipyards would have made a fortune with shipyards churning out Liberty ships ? 

Boeing grew fat on the B-17 and B-29.


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## Amsel (May 23, 2009)

Kellogg Brown Root, Inc. -- Company History


> Securing Contracts in the 1930s and 1940s
> 
> Despite the promising beginning that Brown Root had shown during the 1920s, two calamities struck at the end of the decade which had a profound effect on the company. In 1929, Dan Root, Herman and George Brown's brother-in-law, died, the same year that the stock market crash precipitated the Great Depression, sending the country into a deleterious decade-long economic slide. The death of Root, who had been instrumental in the formation of the company ten years earlier, caused the company to take stock of its situation. The Brown brothers purchased Root's interest in the company and then incorporated as Brown Root, Inc. that same year, marking a new beginning for the company on the eve of the devastating economic climate of the 1930s.
> 
> ...


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## Graeme (May 23, 2009)

syscom3 said:


> Douglas Aircraft and Boeing also employed 10's of thousands in aircraft plants.



Just read that the peak workforce for Curtiss in 1942 was 42,000.


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## pbfoot (May 23, 2009)

Beyween Curtiss and Bell aircraft in Niagara Falls/Buffalo there were 50,000 workers but I think the claim to fame here was the Electrochemical industry or abrasives chances are if you had a grinding wheel or any abrasive tool in North America it was made in Niagara , IMHO the most important industry in WW2 without abrasives you have no tools or machine capabilty


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