With supporters of the free market like you, who needs interventionists?
I know, you mostly support free markets, key word mostly.
However, it wasn't the war that led us out of the depression, but the end of the war when the government mostly allowed the market to take over and relaxed their controls.
War demand is what ultimately brought us out of the economy.
That spike in the early 1940s is because of war demand during a time of high government intervention in the economy.
During the Bush years, we were in two wars and had trillions in tax cuts. According to right wing "ideology", we should have had a sparkling economy.
Instead, only 3 million jobs were created in this country in 8 years. Which were lost at the end of Bush's second term to the tune of 750,000 a MONTH.
The problem is that we no longer supply our own war machine. That was outsourced too.