The United States had outproduced and outfought its enemies. By mid-1945 the US Navy was bigger than all the world’s other navies combined, and US bombers had devastated Berlin, Dresden, Tokyo, and Yokohama. As the war ended, more than 60 percent of all the world’s heavy aircraft were American. No enemy bombers ever hit the US mainland. Both because of its productive power and because it was untouched by warfare, the US economy in 1945 reigned supreme. It now accounted for more than half of the world’s manufacturing capacity. It held two-thirds of the total financial reserves available, providing it with the world’s only stable currency and therefore the one in which all global trade was denominated.
