Why am I passionate about this?
As a scholar, I take pleasure in developing novel interpretations and arguments and persuading colleagues and readers of their merits. Over the past two decades, I’ve advanced a new macroeconomic narrative for the United States. In earlier publications, I argued that the Depression years were the most technologically progressive of the twentieth century. Behind the backdrop of double-digit unemployment, potential output grew rapidly, an increase that helped enable the country to produce prodigious amounts of WWII armaments. It also, I maintain, established most of the supply side foundations for the golden age (1948-73). The conventional wisdom tends instead to credit U.S. postwar economic dominance to experience manufacturing military durables.
Alexander's book list on U.S. mobilization for World War II
Why did Alexander love this book?
The historiography of the Second World War is littered with stylized facts which are either wrong or only partly true.
One is that the U.S. economy was almost completely demilitarized during the 1930s. This is largely true insofar as ground and air forces are concerned. It was not true for the Navy. As a former undersecretary of the Navy Roosevelt had a soft spot for sea power. So did important leaders in the legislature.
The two Vinson-Trammel Acts passed in the 1930s allowed the US to build up to treaty limits. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, U.S. naval power ranked only slightly behind that of the Royal Navy, and ahead of the Japanese (although not in the Pacific).
Moreover, the U.S. possessed an industrial infrastructure and an experienced workforce in both government and private shipyards that was capable of rapidly building multiple ships. Heinrich provides an excellent…
1 author picked Warship Builders as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
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