[Vaquero]

It took FDR a ‘planned ‘ war to improve the economy. It was rigged.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Except this implies that FDR was successful with saving the economy, and he wasn’t, since he indeed made the Depression worse and long-lasting. It took over 2 decades to recover. - fieldmarshaldj

It took FDR a ‘planned ‘ war to improve the economy. It was rigged.

The New Dealers' War:

FDR and the War Within World War II
by Thomas Fleming

FDR’s nostrums didn’t work in actuality because, tho FDR made his political career out of blaming Hoover for the depression and FDR’s own inability to get out of it, FDR’s policies were the same policies that got the US into the depression in the first place - and worse.

WWII did stop the depression, because it stopped the New Deal. FDR himself said that “Doctor New Deal” had to give way to “Doctor Win-the-war.”

Freedom's Forge:

How American Business Produced Victory in World War II
Arthur Herman

clarifies two things:

1. the timing of the effect of WWII on the US economy, and
2. the timing of the US logistics “miracle.”

Both trace to the efforts of FDR to keep Britain from coming to terms with Hitler (which, Churchill did not shy away from telling FDR, could have put the Royal Navy under Hitler’s command). FDR installed (what was then not called a “czar”) in charge of military production readiness. He knew from his experience at the Navy during WWI that it took time to get tooled up for military production, and upon the May, 1940 Fall of France he asked Bernard Baruch to ramrod the effort. Baruch demurred on grounds that he was too old. FDR asked who should do the job, and Baruch emphatically nominated Chevrolet exec Bill Knudsen.

The long pole in the logistic tent was machine tools, and secondly factory buildings. Asked about the necessary lead time, Knudsen estimated 18 months. During that time, FDR was tapping into any reserves he could lay hands on and shipping them to Britain. At the end of the 18 months, coincidentally (?) Pearl Harbor was attacked. By then the military inventory of the US was very thin indeed - but Knudsen had done his work. So the pipeline got filled during 1942, and from then on the US was a the logistical powerhouse.