Скачать или смотреть How One Mechanic Built the Tank That Saved America

Discover the untold story of how one immigrant mechanic transformed America’s factories into the Arsenal of Democracy and built the tank that saved the free world. When William S. Knudsen, a Danish-born auto genius who rose from a bicycle repairman to president of General Motors, was called by President Roosevelt to prepare the nation for war, he faced an impossible task: produce thousands of modern tanks faster than anyone thought possible. In 1941, as generals despaired over the United States’ meager 300 outdated tanks per month, Knudsen stood at a chalkboard and proposed a radical idea—treat tanks like cars. What followed was an industrial revolution that turned America’s automobile plants into war machine factories, creating the legendary M4 Sherman: not the best tank of World War II, but the one that could be built, maintained, and replaced faster than Germany could destroy it. Through simplification, standardization, and mass production, Knudsen and his team achieved the impossible—producing over 49,000 Shermans that rolled across North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany, proving that quantity has a quality all its own. Based on declassified documents, production records, and firsthand accounts, this documentary reveals how Knudsen’s mechanical genius and industrial philosophy reshaped modern warfare, turning factory workers into front-line heroes and proving that America’s greatest weapon wasn’t any single machine—but the power to build them by the thousands. Learn how a man who earned one dollar a year in government service outproduced Hitler’s engineers, changed the course of the war, and showed that wars are won not just by generals, but by mechanics who understand how to build victory.