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On June 5th, 1944, my great-uncle Jim, known to everyone in the community as Uncle Jim, was eating all the ice cream he could eat on a dock in England. It had happened only once before in his entire life that he had been allowed to eat all the ice cream he could. He had been 6, and he was too sick to attend a church social he had been looking forward to. His mother made him ice cream. This was his only thought on that night, and he knew, from that alone, that he would die the next day on a French beach.
We don't always do a good job of telling the truth about history. Sometimes the realities we create at one moment in time are not always as palatable in another moment. Because of that, we make legends out of one person's actions for perhaps the wrong reasons and we gloss over or ignore the more definitive factors. Inside I will discuss it more.
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Now, perhaps more than ever in the thirty or so years of my lifetime, the American nation is thinking about the Great Depression and wondering if this generation, softened as it is, could persevere through those kind of conditions. It is very common for people to look back on those dark days and call on what few vocabulary words they remember. Many folks look at the New Deal, and they lionize Franklin D. Roosevelt for his economic policies and how they saved the nation. It is not my intention to tarnish anyone's legacy, but I do intend to create more focused lines of thought that will help people understand some of the ugly/beautiful realities of our past in a more reasonable light.
First, FDR was not that effective in ending the Great Depression. A lot of folks will debate this, with good arguments on both sides, and many folks from that generation are unwilling to question FDR, but the end reality is that the New Deal was not that effective in ending the Great Depression and may have prolonged it. The New Deal came into effect near the end of the GD, with a variety of plans being proposed from 1933 through 1936. The broad idea of the New Deal was that big business had too much power, and that protecting labor elements and increasing government regulation of business through price control and corporate taxation would create a more balanced relationship between business and labor. The end result would be a reduced division of wealth between the rich and poor and a an expansion of the middle class. By 1950, the United States had recovered and grown by unprecedented size with unprecedented speed but the New Deal had very little to do with it. If FDR is to be commended for his actions during the Great Depression, then the acclaim is won by his ability to make people feel better, to make people proud of themselves again, and to manipulate the government bureaucracy.
The United States economy did stabilize in 1937 and 38, but there are very few indicators that can clearly establish that the New Deal policies had much to do with it, and just as many that show the New Deal may have prolonged the Great Depression by several years. There are many indicators that will support the idea that the New Deal increased and cemented the division of wealth in the country. There are also many economists that support that the government intervention and price controlling prevented the U.S. economy from taking advantage of improving global trends as early as 1934-35.
So, why did the U.S. economy start to improve in 1937? The answer is World War II. By 1937 the economies of Europe can see conflict coming. When Chamberlain took over in Britain, his policy was highlighted by appeasement of Hitler's policies in eastern Europe and a buildup of the British military. With these things in sight, the relatively weak situation of the dollar made the U.S. and attractive place for wealthy Europeans to invest their money and that meant a vast influx of gold to the U.S. (studying gold movements as economic indicators is fascinating and almost unerringly accurate). In influx of money and the resource situation of the U.S. certainly stabilized the American economy.  The real turning point between stabilization and improvement was Munich in 38. Hitler was aggressive towards the Sudetenland, the mountainous, western region of Czechoslovakia. This comprised most of Czech industrial base, nearly a million people, and the only terrain boundary between Hitler and southeastern Europe. The Brits and French met in Munich to negotiate with Hitler and the Italians over the fate of the Sudetenland. Chamberlain failed miserably. He agreed to let Hitler have the territory if he made no further aggressive moves and allowed international negotiating bodies to determine the situation of other disputed territories. Chamberlain essentially told the Czechs they were on their own and went back to Britain proclaiming "peace in our time". The next year, Chamberlain told the Poles that the Brits would back them against Germany, Germany invaded in September and that was that.
 The ultimate reality of the Great Depression, and in many ways the New Deal, is that the United States economy was saved by the outbreak of World War II. The only allied country with the resources, work ethic, and determination to mobilize half the planet into a modern, mechanized, multi-front war was the United States. Ford, General Motors, and the American farmer won World War II and pulled the nation out of depression, there can be no doubt. D-Day would be the start of the test. Were the tactics sound? Were the men and material up to the task? Essentially, what was our nation made of?
The success of D-Day represents the turning point in American history from that of isolationist independence to world power. No, the war was not over, but it was both figuratively and literally the American arrival in Europe. The goal of D-Day was to cut off and defend the Cotentin Peninsula while allied forces (VII Corps) moved against Cherbourgh to capture the port. With the port in possession the allies would be able to land massed armor and, with air superiority, get into open field running to Paris and beyond. The rest is, as they say, history.
America rebuilt the world after the war, and the vast wealth and comfort of our daily lives are owed to the success of D-Day. It is owed, in its entirety, to the women who built the machines on the homefront and the men who, with their friends dead and dying around them, formed ad hoc units to scale the cliffs and assault German positions along the great Atlantic Wall and fell from the skies to carry death and dismay to the enemy.
It is, frankly, insufficient to say "Thank You" to the veterans of that generation and of that great and terrible day. Regardless, that is exactly what each and every one of us must do. We owe, in every way, our lives to these people. We owe them our most sincere gratitude. The other day I saw an 19 year-old kid pretend to take notes on his laptop in class while he was actually playing Tetris. I thought, looking at this kid piss away a Hell of a good learning opportunity, we all take a lot for granted. I was not always the student I am today. I have pissed away a lot of good opportunities. We are all lucky we didn't have to grow up as fast as those guys on Omaha did.
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"Now, perhaps more than ever in the thirty or so years of my lifetime, the American nation is thinking about the Great Depression and wondering if this generation, softened as it is, could persevere through those kind of conditions."
No Sir!