FDR’s New Deal didn’t bring an end to anything. WWII ended the Great Depression in America. Quickie chart on three key economic numbers during the Great Depression:
Year * Unemployment Rate * Top Tax Rate * Annual GDP
1930..... 8.7... 25%... $97.4 (billions)
1931... 15.9... 25%... $83.8
1932... 23.6... 63%... $67.6
1933... 24.9... 63%... $57.6
1934... 21.7... 63%... $61.2
1935... 20.1... 63%... $69.6
1936... 16.9... 79%... $78.5
1937... 14.3... 79%... $87.8
1938... 19.0... 79%... $89.0
1939... 17.2... 79%... $89.1
1940... 14.6... 81%... $96.8
1941..... 9.9... 81%... $114.1
1942..... 4.7... 88%... $144.3
Reach you own conclusions.
Even FDR Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau admitted the New Deal had failed. “We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work,” he declared in 1939. “We have never made good on our promises...I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started...And an enormous debt to boot!”
I am no fan of New Deal socialism. However, FDR didn’t take office until March 4, 1933. After that, the highest tax rate went up, but those other measures of economic health improved, even before 12/7/41. I’m not trying to give the Brain Trust credit (evidently neither did Morgenthau). But at least the economic cycle during the first two FDR administrations was on a more favorable path than between October 1929 and FDR’s inauguration.
If your work force is 56 million men and you draft 12 million of them into the Army, then shoot half a million of those, yes your unemployment numbers are going to look swell. WWII only ended unemployment though. It did nothing to improve private production, which is the measure of a healthy economy.
The war contracts didn't cure the Depression either. "War production" is only a euphemism for what is actually massive capital consumption. Think about it. You grab vast amounts of raw materials and labor and use them to produce machines which you take to some muddy field in Europe and blow up. Does that sound like production or consumption?
You want to know what really ended the Depression? It was the death of FDR and the demise of his administration.
Oh and BTW beware of GDP numbers from the period. GDP is measured by summing up quantities and prices. When the government is engaged in price fixing on a vast scale, which they were during the war, stats like GDP are simply pure fiction.
good facts