War, everybody says, is hell. But many Americans do not really
believe this truism, especially when the war in question is
World War II. Of course, for the men who had to endure the
horrors of combat, the war was terriblejust how terrible,
hundreds of thousands of them did not live to say. But the great
majority of Americans never experienced the fighting directly.
It was something that went on overseas, and government censors
kept reports of its brutal realities from the public. For many
Americans, at the time and since, World War II actually seemed
to be a fine thing, mainly because, as the hackneyed expression
has it, the war got the economy out of the depression in which
it had wallowed for more than a decade. During the Great
Depression, many people had despaired over whether the economy
would ever again operate satisfactorily. Then, the mobilization
for war coincided with what appeared to be a great economic
boom. By 1944, all the usual indicators of economic well-being
signaled that the economy was enj