Known and Unknown events of WW1 & 2

German Pre-war economy 1933–1939. The Nazis came to power in the midst of Great Depression. The unemployment rate at that point in time was close to 30%. Hitler appointed Hjalmar Schacht, a former member of the German Democratic Party, as President of the Reichsbank in 1933 and Minister of Economics in 1934.

Russia Economy The command economy forges ahead during WWII, with labor mobilized on an epic scale and productivity increased with forced overtime. Military output reaches staggering proportions, propped up by Allied aid under the lend-lease scheme. Rapid industrialization has turned the USSR into a power capable of defeating Hitler, but military strength gives a false impression of the nation, weakened by shortages

For the United States, World War II and the Great Depression constituted the most important economic event of the twentieth century. The war’s effects were varied and far-reaching. The war decisively ended the depression itself. 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. 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 organized labor movement, strengthened by the war beyond even its depression-era height, became a major counterbalance to both the government and private industry. 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. Similarly, the substantial increases in personal income and frequently, if not always, in quality of life during the war led many Americans to foresee permanent improvements to their material circumstances, even as others feared a postwar return of the depression. Finally, the war’s global scale severely damaged every major economy in the world except for the United States, which thus enjoyed unprecedented economic and political power after 1945.