How did the new deal prepare the us for wwII?

Answer 1

Sorry, but the preceding answers are nonsense, or at least their notion that the New Deal strengthened the U.S. economy, industry, etc. In fact, Roosevelt's program was a disaster!

The REAL economic situation of late 1930s American is strikingly portrayed in the opening pages of Amity Schlaes's new book *The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression*. She describes a scene that seems at first to fit the BEGINNING of troubles (in 1929), then reveals that it actually took place in 1937! The point (sketched out in the rest of the book) is that things were hardly any better after Roosevelt's first term of office than when he first took office. His New Deal program-s -- not really one consistent program, but an ever changing hodge-podge of experiments-- left the economic climate unpredictable and unstable. In that situation those with the money to INVEST (which the country needed for a sustained recovery) dared not do so.

Schlaes actually goes back well before the Depression to show where the various 'activist government' ideas came from, then to show how Herbert Hoover, FAR from passively sitting back, attempted a number of interventions himself... not as far-reaching as FDR's, but still very activist, and many of them very similar to what Roosevelt later enacted.

But the basic point is still the same -- these programs did NOT work (and anyone who lived through these years knows this). The common wisdom is actually that war spending (beginning with weaponry made for Britain) finally brought us OUT of the Depression.

Not quite, according to Schlaes, who credits the final turn around, not to simple spending, but to the fact that FDR's administration finally began to listen to some of the things business people had been trying to tell them for the previous DECADE! As the business environment began to stabilize (less government meddling) the economy finally turned around.
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So, going back to your original question -- the New Deal did NOT prepare us by strengthening the economy to enable us to better build for the fight. Perhaps the way in which this period DID "prepare" people is that they were so used to deprivation that the attendant costs of war (e.g., shortages) were familiar and bearable in service of a "cause".

That's more a matter of the Depression itself preparing people than the New Deal; however, since the New Deal involved an activist government (with all its programs), then responding to something like government rationing wouldn't be so difficult.

Related to this, in the course of the 1930s the SIZE of the federal government had grown tremendously (surpassing state and local expenditures, which it had not done before). I'm not sure running a larger bureaucracy for DOMESTIC programs necessarily makes it easier to shift to a MILITARY build-up, but maybe.

One other help -- the same voice the encouraged the people in the darkness of the Depression (for FDR's radio talks DID encourage people's hope, even if his PROGRAMS did not give much basis for it!)

Answer 2

The answer from Johnny Wraith is good, I might add something else.

The secret plant at Oak Ridge Tennessee would not have been possible without the hydroelectric dams of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The Hanford plant in Washington drew its power from the Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams.

Without these two plants, the gadgets dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki might never have been possible.

Answer 3

It started up the economy from the Great Depression, gave us back our industrial strength so we could fund Europe with soldiers and weapons, put Hitler and his Axis down!