| | Nah, Krugman isn't pure evil. He actually seems to believe this rubbish he spouts. What he said here is actually the mainstream belief, even though building war material and then having it blown up is only slightly more advanced than digging holes and filling them back up again. It's the broken window fallacy writ large.
The reality is that the Great Depression lingered on until after that bastard Roosevelt died. The return of prosperity didn't occur until after WWII ended (if you define prosperity as producing goods and services civilians want or need, rather than the artificial measures of production counting war materials produced, and employment counting soldiers and support staff). The capital stock of civilian goods was worn out and used up during WWII -- people got poorer during that time period.
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“What saved the economy and the New Deal [during the Great Depression] was the enormous public-works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.” 
