"American trucks gave mobility to the Russian army in the last year or so of the war."
glb:
I wonder how many of those trucks were war booty confiscated from the Germans.
American trucks, built at Ford in Nazi-occupied France and in Ford's German plants gave a lot of mobility to the Wermacht prior to and after the US entered the war; up to a third of Hitler's mobility according to one source.
>From Charles Higham's book:
Edsel Ford, in a meeting in Dearborn in December 1940 with Gerhardt Westrick (ITT chief in Germany),
"refused to build aircraft engines for England and instead built supplies of the
5-ton military trucks that were the backbone of German army transportation."
(p.156)
>From Ford's 60 acre factory at Poissy, north of Paris, Ford out-produced the
Vichy auto plants supplying Hitler.
In 1940 the Poissy plant began making aircraft engines for the Germans. The RAF
hit the Poissy factory (probably didn't get clearance from above) but Ford was
paid "reparations"; apparently US factories producing for the German military
were paid reparations for war damages by the US taxpayers.
At the same time, SKF ball bearings were found in Luftwaffe aircraft shot down over England.
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