The War Within World War II: The United States and International Cartels

(Hardback)

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This encompassing study traces the issues of international cartels from the early days of World War II through the occupation of Germany and Japan. It focuses attention on the Justice Department's Economic Warfare Section as it utilized its resources in uncovering economic and strategic information that could be used in the war effort, such as the selection of economic bottlenecks for bombing. Maddox examines how cartels such as I. G. Farben, Carl Zeiss, the Steel Cartel and others worked to harm U.S. strategic interests, and he details how cartel agreements allowed the Japanese to acquire critical technologies and strategic materials. Using newly released Justice Department records, this thorough investigation of decartelization captures the debate over implementation of the policy issues. These exposures by both the Justice Department and the Kilgore Committee ultimately helped stimulate debate over the economic treatment of enemy nations in the postwar period. Despite an Allied decision in Potsdam to apply decartelization and deconcentration policies to Germany and Japan, the decartelization policy ran into difficulty in Germany with blatant attempts by the American Military Government to subvert it. Events in Japan followed a similar path. After first taking on the zaibatsu and other cartel-like business practices, policy would be reversed.

Reviews

The material describing the workings of the cartels and the patent pools alone is enough to make this work a valuable addition to academic and research libraries. Accessible to upper-division undergraduate students and up.-Choice
This book will serve as a good reference for economic and business historians....will serve as a reference to those interested in the inter-war and post-war formation of US policy on international collusion.-EH.NET
"This book will serve as a good reference for economic and business historians....will serve as a reference to those interested in the inter-war and post-war formation of US policy on international collusion."-EH.NET
"The material describing the workings of the cartels and the patent pools alone is enough to make this work a valuable addition to academic and research libraries. Accessible to upper-division undergraduate students and up."-Choice

Author Bio

ROBERT FRANKLIN MADDOX is Professor of History at Marshall University./e He is the author of two books, The Senatorial Career of Harley Martin Kilgore and America and World War I: A Selected Annotated Bibliography of English Language Sources with David Woodward. The author of numerous articles and reviews he is a past president of the West Virginia Historical Association.