[gfactor]

But if somebody was looking up from the bottom of the Depression it may have seemed that government was the answer.

not that wartime govt spending ended up solving the depression.

[JLS]

Exactly, I am glad you are one of those who know that that the recovery started in 1933/34 and by 1937 GDP was about at the 1929 level. Then the Fed increased the tax on finanical intermediation causing a second recession in the same decade. It was of course very short lived although it was a steep recession.

By almost any definnition 1937 and certainly 1933 were before WWII government spending came along. Good of you to point that addition problem with popular cultural myths of the 20th Century.