Who Made Up The National Defense Advisory Commission

You’ve probably seen the grainy black-and-white photos. Men in double-breasted suits standing around a massive conference table, cigarette smoke hanging in the air, maps pinned to the walls. They look like central casting for "The War Effort." And in a way, they were.

But the National Defense Advisory Commission (NDAC) wasn't a room full of generals. Day to day, it wasn't even a room full of politicians. Even so, it was a room full of industrialists. And understanding who they were — and why they were there — tells you more about how America actually won World War II than any battle map ever could.

What Was the National Defense Advisory Commission

Let’s get the timeline straight. May 28, 1940. France is collapsing. Britain is staring down the Blitz. Now, the U. S. Army ranks 17th in the world, somewhere between Portugal and Bulgaria. Consider this: roosevelt needs to turn the American economy into a war machine yesterday*, but he can’t just nationalize the factories. That’s not how the U.S. Consider this: works. He needs the captains of industry to volunteer.

So he creates the NDAC by executive order. No Senate confirmation. No new bureaucracy built from scratch. Just seven men, borrowed from the corner offices of the country’s biggest corporations, handed the keys to the rearmament program.

It wasn't a commission in the investigative sense. It was an operating body. They didn't advise; they ran things. Each commissioner took a portfolio — raw materials, industrial production, employment, price stabilization — and reported directly to the President. They kept their private salaries (a dollar a year from the government, hence the "dollar-a-year men" nickname) and their corporate ties. That last part caused no end of headaches later.

The Legal Fiction That Made It Work

Technically, the NDAC sat inside the Council of National Defense, a dormant World War I body Roosevelt reactivated. Here's the thing — the Council was the "official" entity; the Commission was the engine. This distinction mattered because the Council included Cabinet secretaries (War, Navy, Interior, Agriculture, Labor, Commerce). The Commission excluded* them. Roosevelt wanted speed, not interdepartmental turf wars. He got speed. He also got chaos.

Why It Mattered — And Why It Was Weird

Here’s the thing most textbooks skip: the NDAC was a constitutional improvisation. had no ministry of economic warfare. Practically speaking, the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse and the power to raise armies. No central planning ministry. Worth adding: the U. S. It says nothing about the President handing the industrial base to a GM executive.

But in 1940, nobody sued. Nobody filibustered. The crisis was too visible.

The Commission mattered because it bridged the gap between "we need 50,000 planes a year" (Roosevelt’s famous, possibly improvised number) and "here’s how you retool a car plant to build B-24s." The government knew what* it needed. These men knew how to make it.

They also knew each other. Knudsen knew Stettinius. Gifford knew Henderson. Also, they’d sat on trade association boards together. Plus, they’d fought labor battles together. That social capital — call it the old boys' network if you want — let them make decisions in hours that would have taken a formal agency months.

The downside? They brought their blind spots with them. Labor relations. Antitrust concerns. In practice, racial discrimination in hiring. The NDAC’s record on those isn't just mixed; it’s often actively bad. But we’ll get to that.

Who Made Up the Commission — The Seven Men

Roosevelt announced the first seven members on May 29, 1940. And a eighth was added weeks later. Here’s the roster, what they did, and where they came from.

William S. Knudsen — Chair, Industrial Production

The big name. Danish immigrant. In practice, started on the floor of a bicycle factory. But rose to run Chevrolet, then all of General Motors. By 1940, he was arguably the most knowledgeable mass-production engineer on the planet.

Knudsen didn’t want the job. In practice, roosevelt told him the country needed him in Washington. He told Roosevelt he belonged in Detroit. Knudsen took a leave of absence from GM — unprecedented for a sitting CEO — and moved into the Willard Hotel.

His portfolio was the whole ballgame: converting civilian industry to military output. He famously carried a slide rule in his pocket. He brought a engineer’s mindset: standardize parts, simplify designs, measure everything. He also brought GM’s management culture: weekly reports, strict deadlines, zero tolerance for "it can't be done.

Edward R. Stettinius Jr. — Industrial Materials

U.S. That's why steel. Consider this: chairman of the board at 39. Here's the thing — the ultimate insider — his father had been a partner at J. P. Plus, morgan. Stettinius knew where every ton of steel, copper, and aluminum lived in the American supply chain.

His job: make sure the raw stuff got to the factories Knudsen was converting. Sounds simple. It wasn't. The U.S. had plenty of ore, but not enough smelting capacity, not enough rail cars, not enough ships to move it. Stettinius spent months on the phone with railroad executives, mine owners, and British purchasing agents trying to untangle a logistics nightmare he’d inherited.

He later became Secretary of State. That tells you how highly Roosevelt rated his administrative chops.

Walter S. Gifford — Communications & Utilities

President of AT&T. The telephone network was the nervous system of the war economy. Gifford’s commission ensured long-distance lines stayed open, that new defense plants got phone service before they got electricity, that the Bell System’s research arm (Bell Labs) prioritized military projects — radar, encryption, the first digital computers.

Gifford was quiet, methodical, and deeply skeptical of government waste. Now, he ran his section like a regulated utility: predictable, boring, essential. Practically speaking, you don't notice it until it fails. It didn't fail.

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Sidney Hillman — Labor

Here’s the outlier. Hillman wasn't a CEO. And he was the president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, a founder of the CIO, and a close FDR ally. His inclusion was a political signal: labor gets a seat at the table.

His portfolio: "Labor Problems.Which means he did some of that. On top of that, he also clashed constantly with the industrialists on the Commission who saw unions as a nuisance. In practice, " Vague, huge, explosive. He was supposed to prevent strikes, set wage policies, integrate Black workers into defense plants. Hillman’s presence didn't stop the wildcat strikes of 1941-42, but it gave the White House a channel to labor leadership that didn't exist in 1917.

Leon Henderson — Price Stabilization

A New Deal economist. Now, not a businessman. He’d run the SEC’s enforcement division. Roosevelt put him in charge of keeping inflation from eating the war effort alive.

Henderson hated the job. He had no staff, no legal authority, and a mandate to "jawbone" prices down while the government pumped billions into the economy. He tried voluntary compliance. It failed.

The final seat on the board belonged to William J. Knudsen, the former president of General Motors who had been summoned from the automotive plant to serve as the commission’s de facto coordinator. Consider this: knudsen’s reputation rested on his uncanny ability to translate abstract production targets into concrete schedules that factories could follow without hesitation. In practice, his role blended engineering oversight with diplomatic negotiation; he served as the conduit between the War Production Board, the individual commissioners, and the myriad private contractors that supplied everything from rivets to radio tubes.

From the outset, the commission operated under a delicate balance of authority and autonomy. That said, stettinius, with his intimate knowledge of raw‑material flows, often butted heads with Gifford, whose insistence on uninterrupted telecommunication services sometimes conflicted with the urgent need to repurpose rail lines for troop movements. Hillman, meanwhile, pressed for rapid wage adjustments in plants that were still being retooled for wartime output, while Henderson warned that any sudden surge in labor costs could destabilize the price‑control regime he was trying to enforce.

The friction among the members was not merely personal; it reflected the broader tensions of a nation mobilizing on a scale never before attempted. Factories that had once produced automobiles now had to meet output quotas that seemed fantastical in peacetime. The commission’s meetings, held in a modest conference room on the 12th floor of the Department of Commerce building, were often a study in compromise. Consider this: stettinius would present a detailed chart of ore shipments, only to have Gifford interject that the same rail corridors were needed for moving finished artillery pieces to the ports. Hillman would demand a standard wage increase for workers in the newly converted aircraft factories, while Henderson would caution that such a move could trigger a cascade of price hikes that the government was barely able to contain.

Despite these frictions, the commission achieved several decisive breakthroughs. That's why hillman’s persistent advocacy secured a commitment from the Office of War Information to feature labor leaders in wartime broadcasts, thereby improving morale and reducing the incidence of unsanctioned walkouts. Think about it: gifford coordinated the rapid rollout of a dedicated telephone backbone linking the major defense plant sites in the Midwest and the West Coast, ensuring that command orders could be transmitted without the delays that had plagued earlier campaigns. On top of that, in the first half of 1942, Stettinius negotiated a reciprocal agreement with the British Ministry of Supply that secured additional ship capacity for the trans‑Atlantic flow of steel, a move that dramatically reduced the bottleneck that had threatened the construction of Liberty ships. Henderson, after a series of public hearings and a vigorous press campaign, succeeded in persuading Congress to pass the Emergency Price Stabilization Act, which granted the Office of Price Administration limited but enforceable authority to cap non‑essential goods.

The cumulative effect of these coordinated efforts was evident in the statistics that began to emerge later that year. Think about it: industrial output rose at a rate of 12 percent quarterly, the number of aircraft assembled per month doubled, and the tonnage of steel delivered to the front lines increased by 30 percent compared with the previous year. While occasional strikes still occurred — particularly in the textile and steel sectors — the commission’s structured channels for dialogue helped to contain them within manageable parameters.

By the war’s end, the commission’s membership had evolved. Knudsen, having overseen the conversion of the automotive industry into a wartime production powerhouse, was appointed Secretary of the Army, where he continued to apply his logistical expertise. Because of that, stettinius, having earned Roosevelt’s confidence through his handling of material logistics, was tapped to replace Cordell Hull as Secretary of State, a testament to the trust placed in his administrative acumen. Practically speaking, gifford retired from AT&T in 1945, his legacy living on in the expanded role of the Bell System in post‑war communications infrastructure. Hillman returned to his union roots, later playing a central role in the founding of the AFL‑CIO, while Henderson returned to academic life, publishing influential studies on macroeconomic stabilization that would inform post‑war economic policy.

In hindsight, the commission represented a novel experiment in collaborative governance, bringing together industrialists, labor leaders, economists, and telecommunications magnates under a single strategic umbrella. Its success rested not on the brilliance of any single individual but on the willingness of its members to listen, to negotiate, and to subordinate sectoral interests to the collective imperative of victory. The mechanisms they forged — standardized reporting, inter‑agency liaison offices, and a transparent conduit for grievances — became enduring features of American wartime administration and, after 1945, served as templates for subsequent periods of national mobilization.

The story of the commission concludes not with a single triumphant moment, but with a sustained rhythm of adjustment and cooperation that enabled the United States to transform its industrial base, sustain a global coalition, and ultimately emerge from the conflict as the world’s preeminent economic power.