Sadly, it was not the development of television or air-conditioning that brought an end to the Great Depression in the United States, but the onslaught of the bloodiest war in the entire history of mankind. When American industry assumed the roll as “the arsenal of democracy” (FDR’s term) the nation went back to work – but that alone was not the end of the Great Depression. The European war, and the business opportunities it created, presented the necessary reasons for the Federal Government to disentangle itself from the affairs of American businesses. Slowly but surely FDR’s alphabet agencies began to fall away and when that happened government ceased to be as burdensome to the job creators as it had been previously. However, FDR’s high taxation rate still remained – and that even grew higher as the war raged. World War Two proved to be a bitter-sweet stimulant to the U.S. economy: by the time it was over 418,500 Americans, both military and civilian, would be dead.
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