Someday—and that someday would come soon, Truman could only hope—thousands of government-owned factories, building war materiel, would have to stop producing. As soon as the war ended, the federal government was set to cancel billions of dollars’ worth of war contracts almost instantly, and in fact, this process had already begun. Unemployment was predicted to skyrocket. Millions of soldiers would return from overseas with money earned fighting, money they would want to spend, which would only fuel further inflation.
