In the summer of 1945, as the Second World War drew to a close, the American economy was on the verge of an uncertain future.
Since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s call in the late 1940s for the United States to serve as an arsenal of democracy, American industry has intensified to meet the challenge. The US factories built to mass-produce automobiles had been reorganized to produce planes, engines, pistols and other supplies at unprecedented rates. At the height of its war effort in late 1943 and early 1944, the United States produced almost as much ammunition as all of its allies and enemies combined.
On the home front, the massive mobilization effort during the Second World War had put the Americans back to work. Unemployment, which had reached 25 percent during the The Great Depression, which hovered at 14.6 percent in 1939, fell to 1.2 percent in 1944, a record level in the history of the country.
A new assembly line at Detroit Tank Arsenal operated by Chrysler, which has produced 28-ton tanks using mass production methods.
Gordon Coster / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images
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Even before the end of the war, American trade, military and government officials began to debate the question of the conversion of the country from military production to civilian production. In 1944, Donald Nelson of the War Production Board (WFB) proposed a plan that would convert inactive factories into civilian production. Powerful military and commercial leaders backed down and large-scale retraining plans were postponed.
READ MORE: How Detroit Factories Reorganized During WWII To Help Defeat Hitler
But with the end of the war and the return of millions of men and women in uniform, the country’s military economy was not necessarily ready to welcome them again. As Arthur Herman wrote in his book Forge of Freedom: How American Businesses Won Victory in World War IIAmerican companies at the time were still “focused on producing tanks and planes, not shingle homes and refrigerators.”
Americans were ready to spend
View of the assembly line and workers at the Studebaker auto manufacturing plant in South Bend, Indiana, 1946.
Bernard Hoffman / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images
Some economists have even predicted a new crisis of mass unemployment and inflation, arguing that private companies could not generate the massive amounts of capital necessary to operate war factories inflated in peacetime. A report published in mid-1945 by Senator James Mead of New York adopted this view, arguing that if the war in the Pacific ended quickly, “the United States would be largely unprepared to tackle high unemployment ladder”.
But history has proven that the pessimists were wrong. Most returning veterans have had no trouble finding employment, says Herman. The American factories that had proved so essential to the war effort quickly mobilized in peacetime, rising to meet the needs of consumers who had been encouraged to save their money in anticipation of such a boom in l ‘after war.
Photos: Rationing during the Second World War
In the summer of 1945, the Americans lived under wartime rationing policies for more than three years, including limits on commons such as rubber, sugar, gasoline, fuel oil, coffee, meat, butter, milk and soap . At the same time, the US government’s Office of Price Administration (OPA) has encouraged the public to save money (ideally by buying war bonds) for a better future. In his book A consumer republic: the politics of mass consumption in post-war America, Lizabeth Cohen reported that in 1945 Americans saved an average of 21% of their personal disposable income, up from just 3% in the 1920s.
READ MORE: 8 Unusual wartime conservation measures
With the end of the war, American consumers were anxious to spend their money on everything from expensive items like homes, cars and furniture to appliances, clothing, shoes and everything in between. American factories answered their call, starting with the automotive industry. Sales of new cars quadrupled between 1945 and 1955, and by the late 1950s about 75% of American households owned at least one car. In 1965, the domestic auto industry peaked, producing 11.1 million new cars, trucks and buses, and representing one in six jobs in the United States.
People bought houses and filled them with appliances
Residential construction companies have also mobilized to take advantage of a similar surge in housing demand, as loans from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the GI Bill have allowed many veterans to return (but not to all) to buy a house. Companies like Levitt & Son, based in New York, have successfully applied mass production techniques from the automotive industry to house construction. Between 1946 and the early 1960s, Levitt & Son built three residential communities (including more than 17,000 homes), finishing up to 30 homes per day.
Aerial photo taken in 1947 of the new homes in Levittown, New York, built by William Levitt and Sons.
Cliff de Bear / Newsday RM / Getty Images
Buyers of new homes needed devices to fill these homes, and companies like Frigidaire (a division of General Motors) responded to this need. During the war, Frigidaire’s assembly lines went into the construction of machine guns and B-29 propeller assemblies. After the war, the brand expanded its home appliance business, introducing revolutionary products such as washers and dryers, dishwashers and garbage cans.
Driven by growing consumer demand and the continued expansion of the military-industrial complex as the Cold War deepened, the United States reached new heights of prosperity in the years after World War II. Gross National Product (GNP), which measured all goods and services produced, soared to $ 300 billion in 1950, from just $ 200 million in 1940. By 1960, it had surpassed $ 500 million, making states -Unite the richest and most powerful countries. nation in the world.
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