<P> Beginning in 1940, with the requisitioning of between 100 and 200 French POWs to work as slave laborers, Ford - Werke contravened Article 31 of the 1929 Geneva Convention . At that time, which was before the U.S. entered the war and still had full diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany, Ford - Werke was under the control of the Ford Motor Company . The number of slave laborers grew as the war expanded although Wallace makes it clear that companies in Germany were not required by the Nazi authorities to use slave laborers . </P> <P> When Rolls - Royce sought a U.S. manufacturer as an additional source for the Merlin engine (as fitted to Spitfire and Hurricane fighters), Ford first agreed to do so and then reneged . He "lined up behind the war effort" when the U.S. entered in late 1941 . His support of the American war effort, however, was problematic . </P> <P> Once the U.S. entered the war, Ford directed the Ford Motor Company to construct a vast new purpose - built factory at Willow Run near Detroit, Michigan . Ford broke ground on Willow Run in the spring of 1942, and the first B - 24 came off the line in October 1942 . At 3,500,000 sq ft (330,000 m), it was the largest assembly line in the world at the time . At its peak in 1944, the Willow Run plant produced 650 B - 24s per month, and by 1945 Ford was completing each B - 24 in eighteen hours, with one rolling off the assembly line every 58 minutes . Ford produced 9,000 B - 24s at Willow Run, half of the 18,000 total B - 24s produced during the war . </P> <P> When Edsel Ford died prematurely in 1943, Henry Ford nominally resumed control of the company, but a series of strokes in the late 1930s had left him increasingly debilitated, and his mental ability was fading . Ford was increasingly sidelined, and others made decisions in his name . The company was in fact controlled by a handful of senior executives led by Charles Sorensen, an important engineer and production executive at Ford; and Harry Bennett, the chief of Ford's Service Unit, Ford's paramilitary force that spied on, and enforced discipline upon, Ford employees . Ford grew jealous of the publicity Sorensen received and forced Sorensen out in 1944 . Ford's incompetence led to discussions in Washington about how to restore the company, whether by wartime government fiat, or by instigating some sort of coup among executives and directors . Nothing happened until 1945 when, with bankruptcy a serious risk, Edsel's widow led an ouster and installed her son, Henry Ford II, as president . The young man took full control, and forced out Harry Bennett in a purge of the old guard in 1947 . </P>

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