Planning war, pursuing peace

Planning War, Pursuing Peace is the third in Koistinen's multivolume study on the political economy of American warfare. It differs from preceding volumes by examining the planning and investigation of war mobilization rather than the actual harnessing of the economy for hostilities, and it is also the first book to treat all phases of the political economy of wartime during those crucial interwar years. Koistinen first describes and analyzes the War and Navy Departments' procurement and economic mobilization planning - never before examined in its entirety - and conveys the enormity of the task faced by the military in establishing ties with many sectors of the economy. Koistinen then describes the American public's struggle to come to terms with modern warfare through in-depth explorations of the work of the House Select Committee on Expenditures in the War Department, the War Policies Commission, and the Senate Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry. He tells how these investigations alarmed pacifists, isolationists, and neo-Jeffersonians, and how they led Senator Gerald Nye and others to warn against the creation of "unhealthy alliances" between the armed services and industry.