That’s over $15T in today’s dollars—just about our current national debt.
Not quite.
Depending on how you figure it, $1 billion in 1941 equates to about $115 billion today, in terms of the nation's GDP.
In today's terms, US debt in 1941 was about $7 trillion, or less than half of today's.
By war's end in 1945 it rose to $18 trillion of today's money, or about 20% higher than today.
So the $1 billion of 1941 dollars was a substantial sum -- especially to the Soviets, whose wage scales were somewhat lower.
But in terms of the total cost of the war, it was a drop in the bucket.
And in today's terms, far less than an Obama "stimulus" and about the level of a mid-sized bailout for a big Democrat contributor.