Economic Consequences of U. S. Mobilization for the Second World War

This book challenges the widespread belief that World War II was an engine of long‑term U.S.

economic growth.

Drawing on detailed evidence for 1941–1948, Alexander J. Field shows that between 1941 and 1945 manufacturing productivity actually declined, held back by shifts in the output mix, severe resource shocks such as the loss of natural rubber and constraints on petroleum, and the disruptions of a shortage economy.

Learning by doing and rapid expansion of war production only partly offset the productivity drag from intermittent idleness, input hoarding, and the forced move into products in which U.S.

firms had little prior experience.

Field argues that wartime command‑economy interventions distorted human and physical capital accumulation, temporarily shut down much basic research and civilian product development, and that America’s economic dominance by 1948 rested more on the country’s pre‑war productive potential than on any growth miracle generated by the war itself.