World War II brought about tremendous changes in the United States, in many ways shaping how Americans would come to see themselves and how they would want to be seen by the rest of the world. Some of these ideological changes were a continuation of the New Deal. Others were direct results of the war. But one thing we can say is that by the end of the war, the country was very different.
For starters, World War II strengthened the Federal Government of the United States. This always happens when a country goes to war, but World War II brought about even more governmental intervention and control than we had seen in WWI. It was like the New Deal on steroids, like federal agencies like the War Production Board, War Manpower Commission, and Office of Price Administration took unprecedented control of the economy.
There was massive rationing of food, and supplies, entire industries were completely taken over by the government, the federal government fixed wages, rents, prices, and especially production quotas. Like, if you're looking to buy a 1942 Model Ford or Chrysler, good luck, because there weren't any. The government told those car makers not to create new models that year.
So basically FDR was president for life and controlled all the industries I mean HOW DID THIS COMMUNIST END UP ON THE DIME? Well, the answer is that while it might have sucked not to have a 1942 Ford, most people were happy just to be working after the Great Depression. Unemployment dropped form 14% in 1940 to 2% in 1943. Of course 13 million Americans were serving in the military in some capacity so that helped employment.
But in general the war kicked the American economy into overdrive, like, by 1944 American factories were producing an airplane every five minutes and a ship every day. US gross national product went from 91 billion to 214 billion during the war.
Why did this happen? Well that's controversial, but primarily because of federal spending. Government expenditures during the war were twice the amount they had been in the previous 250 years. Combined. Although a lot of this was financed with debt, much of the war was paid for with taxes. Like the federal government began the practice of withholding taxes from paychecks, for instance, a practice that I became familiar with when working at Steak N Shake discovering that instead of being paid like I don't know a hundred dollars a week I was being paid -30 dollars a week because I had to declare my tips. Because my dad made me.
Before WWII only 4 million Americans even paid federal income taxes, but after the war, 40 million did. Also big business got even bigger during the war because of government contracts. Cost-plus contracts guaranteed that companies would make a profit and the lion's share of contracts went to the biggest businesses. So by the war's end the 200 biggest American corporations controlled half of America's corporate assets.
And all of this government spending also spurred development. Like, defense spending basically created the West Coast as an industrial center. Seattle became a shipping and aircraft-manufacturing hub, and California got 10% of all federal spending. And Los Angeles became the second largest manufacturing center in the country, meaning that it was not in fact built by Hollywood, it was built by WWII.
All of this was pretty bad for the South, by the way, because most of this industrialization happened in cities, and the South only ha two cities with more than half a million people.
And organized labor continued to grow as well, with union membership soaring from around 9 million in 1940 to almost 15 million in 1945. besides union-friendly New Deal policies, the government forced employers to recognize unions in order to prevent labor strife and keep the factories humming so that war production would not decrease.
And, from a human history standpoint, one of the biggest changes is that many of the workers in those factories were women. You've probably seen this picture of Rosie the Riveter and while there wasn't actually a riveter named Rosie, or maybe there was, but- SHE'S AN AMALGAM. But my 1944 women made up 1/3 of the civilian labor force in addition to the 350 thousand who were serving in the military. And the type of women who were working changed as well. Married women in their 30s outnumbered single women in the workforce.
But the government and the employers both saw this phenomenon as temporary, so when the war was over, most women workers, especially those in high paying industrial jobs, were let go. This was especially hard on working class women who needed to work to survive and had to return to lower paid work as domestics or in food services or, God forbid, as teachers.