To accept that the war helped the economy is to believe in spending or the breaking of stuff grow the economy, which it doesn’t
Let me ask you, if I break a window, does it help the economy? If you think about it a little bit. A broken window leads to employment for the window fixer, who in turn will have money to buy glass from a factory. The glass maker can then have money to go buy grocery, who helps the farmer. If your answer is yes, then let me ask you. Lets help the economy and break more windows. Lets all go out and break windows to help the economy. Before long, you realize theres something wrong with this “help the economy” plan
See my tag line.
Except that for the case of WWII... we weren’t breaking *OUR* windows, but someone else’s.
Who then had to buy from *OUR* ready-made window shop a replacement window, because their own supplier was bombed out of existence. Of course, we lent him the money to do it, but we charged interest on that, as well.
It helped us quite a bit, after the war.
I have always been amazed by those who continue to insist that a war fixes an economy. I once asked one of these true believers if he could imagine two large family farms bordering each other with each family having six young adult sons and six daughters and with outbuildings, livestock, tractors etc. He said yes he understood farming and he could imagine that. I said okay suppose something happens to start a feud between the two families and they pull out their deer rifles, shotguns etc. and start shooting at each other. One family sends a son over to burn down the other families biggest barn where all the most valuable harvested crops are stored and in the process of burning it he is killed. In retaliation for the barn burning the other family burns down the home of the dead son’s family. After a little while of listening to all this he got the picture finally.
War destroys lives, and property and produces nothing. How can anyone believe it will rehabilitate a wrecked economy? It is equivalent to thinking that the best thing to do if you are sick is to shoot yourself in the foot.