According to contemporary comparisons, in the mid-1930s America’s productivity advantage over its European rivals was in excess of 2 : 1 in most branches of manufacturing, widening to as much as 4 : 1 or even 5 : 1 in the production of motor vehicles and radios.13 What is more surprising, from our early twenty-first-century perspective, is Germany’s marked inferiority relative to Britain.
