The war’s rapid scientific and technological changes continued and intensified trends begun during the Great Depression and created a permanent expectation of continued innovation on the part of many scientists, engineers, government officials and citizens. The organized labor movement, strengthened by the war beyond even its depression-era height, became a major counterbalance to both the government and private industry.
American industry was revitalized by the war, and many sectors were by 1945 either sharply oriented to defense production (for example, aerospace and electronics) or completely dependent on it (atomic energy). The federal government emerged from the war as a potent economic actor, able to regulate economic activity and to partially control the economy through spending and consumption. The war decisively ended the depression itself. The war’s effects were varied and far-reaching. For the United States, World War II and the Great Depression constituted the most important economic event of the twentieth century.
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