How Chrysler helped win World War II

Chrysler's role as a tank manufacturer during World War II is chronicled in a new, six-minute documentary featuring its role as a supplier of military weapons to Europe during the war.

The release of "Automakers and the Arsenal of Democracy" was timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt's historic "Arsenal of Democracy" radio broadcast on Dec. 29, 1940.

"The people of Europe ...do not ask us to do their fighting," Roosevelt told the nation on that day. "They ask us for the implements of war...which will enable them to fight for their liberty and for our security."

The short video provides viewers with a look at Chrysler's wartime production, which included trucks and tanks; aircraft parts and components; guns, ammunition, rockets and bombs; and a variety of other goods and materials that were a vital part of military operations.

It took just 13 months for the U.S. government and Chrysler to build a plant to make tanks, according to company historian Brandt Rosenbusch.

Chrysler built M3 Grant tanks, used by the British to fight the Germans and Italians in North Africa, and later the superior Sherman tank as one of the primary military suppliers for the Allied war effort.

America wasn't the only country that enlisted automakers to build weapons. Fiat, for example, built tanks and airplanes for the Italian military. Fiat became Chrysler's controlling shareholder in June, 2009, when the automaker emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The global automaker has been renamed Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.