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WWII ended the Great Depression in America.

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.

You raise some goods points. Like I said, we can reach our own conclusions, but the overriding facts speak for themselves.

Actually, there were 16 million men (and 350K women) who were either drafted or joined the military during WWII. However, all 16 million didn't enter military service in one year. But the military employment factor was central to a rapid economic recovery.

In addition. The war effort on the home front saw record levels of Americans going back to work, with millions of women leading the way and getting a job for the first time in their lives. The US work force reached 98.8% employment during the war by manufacturing hundreds of thousands of vehicles -— tanks, jeeps, half tracks, etc. -— along with building ships, subs and planes of all shapes and sizes. Not to mention millions of firearms, billions of rounds of ammunition and other miscellaneous products to support the armed forces.

WWII provided the stimulus that pulled America out of the economic downturns of the 1930`s and eventually ended the Great Depression.

It was only natural after WWII the size of the federal government shrunk as a percentage of GDP. Sadly, never again would the federal bureaucracy in WashDC ever be confused with the smaller government that existed prior to WWII, with spending per GDP in the range of 10% level, or less. Following WWII the federal government remained a huge part of the overall American economy and remains so until this day.