As Arthur Herman wrote in his book Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II, by the war’s end, Knudsen had gone from the president of GM to “the man who had built the U.S. Knudsen went on to become a lieutenant general in the Army, the first and only civilian American to receive this honor, and those Detroit auto men became heroes in the battle of the assembly lines. “The first half of 1941 is crucial,” Knudsen told a gathering of the most powerful Motor City executives. Soon after, at the New York Auto Show, Knudsen gave a keynote speech that lit the flame of industrial Detroit. So Knudsen gave up one of the most well compensated jobs in the nation to take on a government position at a salary of $1.

William Knudsen was president of General Motors-the largest corporation in history-in 1940 when President Franklin Roosevelt charged him with heading up all military production in the U.S. Knudsen traded his high-paying auto-executive job for a $1 government salary to help lead Detroit's war-production effort. Roosevelt at the White House for the first meeting about the new National Defense Advisory Commission.

William Knudsen, president of General Motors, meeting with President Franklin D.

Us main battle tank of wwii