RE: This is like saying gasoline does not power an internal comubustion engine.
So, if WW II is to gasoline as the economy is to the engine, how do we get out out of our current economic stagnation if we were to learn from history?
WW II was, in fact, what got us out of the Great Depression.
Recall that the war was going on for over two years before we got involved.
And, from 1939 forward, Britain and France were buying large quantitities of U.S. armaments -- artillery, trucks, tanks, airplanes, etc. Lend-lease was enacted in January, 1941, whereby the U.S. government started buying armaments and "leasing" them to the UK. After Barbarossa and before Pearl Harbor, we were also started shipping large quantities of armaments to the USSR.
The result was hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs and millions of support jobs. Real jobs in the private sector. Not the temporary jobs created by the WPA and the CCC.
The thing to takeaway from the history of the post-depression era is that a.) it took somebody else getting involved in a war, which b.) created jobs in our private sector.
It doesn't have to be a war. Anything that stimulates activity in the private sector will serve. Like drilling for oil and gas, offshore and onshore and on public lands. Like opening mines, instead of closing them. Allowing timber to be harvested from public lands. Allowing the auto industry to manufacture automobiles that people want and can be manufactured efficiently.
The list goes on and on. But one thing is clear: if the federal government were to end their regulatory regime and start encouraging business rather than threatening it, the effect would be akin to a world war.