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Brad De Long wrote:
<p>"American trucks gave mobility to the Russian army in the last year
or so of the war."
<p>glb:
<p>I wonder how many of those trucks were war booty confiscated from the
Germans.
<p>American trucks, built at Ford in Nazi-occupied France and in Ford's
German plants gave <u>a lot</u> 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.
<p>From Charles Higham's book:
<p>Edsel Ford, in a meeting in Dearborn in December 1940 with Gerhardt
Westrick (ITT chief in Germany),
<p> "refused to build aircraft engines for England
and instead built supplies of the
<br> 5-ton military trucks that were the backbone of
German army transportation."
<br> (p.156)
<p>From Ford's 60 acre factory at Poissy, north of Paris, Ford out-produced
the Vichy auto plants supplying Hitler.
<br>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 <u>US
taxpayers</u>.
<p>At the same time, SKF ball bearings were found in Luftwaffe aircraft
shot down over England.
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