The Effect of World War 2 on the United States Economy and the Home Front

The Effect of World War II on the United States Economy and the Home Front

April 29, 2013

Times were tough in the 1930’s. Families had to make sacrifices to feed their kids and sometimes parents would not be able to eat due to the fact they only had enough food for the children. The Great Depression was a horrible time for the United States. Once President Roosevelt took office in 1933 America was a mess. It had been Four years since the infamous day that changed America for ever, the day known as “Black Tuesday.” President Roosevelt came into office with the promise to try to change the already beat up U.S. economy. Roosevelt did his best to keep his promise by implanting “a ‘New Deal’ which would essentially reconstruct American capitalism and governance on a new basis.” The New Deal was a great idea; it gave Americans a sense of hope, a sense that Roosevelt would finally put America back in the grace of economic greatness. The New Deal was not an overnight success; it took many years for the minimal results to be shown, and in 1938 the reforms from the New Deal dwindled out without the bang that Roosevelt and his administration thought it would be. Even after the New Deal era was over there was still a 13.3 percent Unemployment rate, out of the working class Americans, which comes out to be roughly 5.3 million unemployed working class Americans.

In 1939 World War II unleashed its evil across Europe, with power house Nazi Germany taking over and invading neighboring countries. At the beginning of the War the United States worked as a neutral country, not picking sides just sitting back and waiting to seeing what was going to happen. Roosevelt tried his best to keep American involvement out of Europe he even said "[t]his nation will remain a neutral nation." (Quoted in Kennedy p.426), but Roosevelt added "I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well. . . . Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or close his conscience" (Quoted in Kennedy p.426). The thought that FRD even said this makes it easier for us to believe that even he knew one day America’s time would come and they too would have to enter the Great War.

World War II could not have happen at a better time for the United States. With the help of FDR’s New Deal the American economy was just an impulse away from being back the thriving economy they once had. In 1939 President Roosevelt made the decision that as a neutral country it would be best to invest money into the defense programs just in case the United States decided or was forced to enter the war (Shmoop Editorial Team). “Roosevelt carefully and deliberately prepared the country for a worst-case scenario. By the spring of 1940, he convinced Congress to increase defense spending, enlarge the army,