Stimson and others might well have pondered more fully a contemporary adage: "The hand that signs the war contract is the hand that shapes the future." For the fact of the matter was that the war accelerated development of what many later critics, President Dwight Eisenhower among them, called a military-industrial complex. After the war many corporate leaders lost defense contracts. But they had amassed considerable power and prestige in the war years, and they reasserted themselves thereafter with uncommon relish, spending large sums on lobbying, campaign finance, litigation, public
...more
