No one in Europe would think of World War II as an enormous stimulus project. Only certain Americans would think of it that way. The current Administration is putting out statements claiming that without the stimulus of World War II, Roosevelt would have been defeated in the election of 1940 and replaced by Wendell Wilkie. He would have left office with 15% unemployment.
The truth is that World War II didn’t see so much the growth of stimulus as the growth of government. The U.S. government employed 5% of the workforce in military support roles and 11% in the military.
This was Adolf Hitler’s kind of thinking — socialism. Let the federal government do it. Very ironic.