On FDR's Early Reduction in Military Spending

You can chill, neocons. Yes, overall appropriations to the War Department (at least they named it properly back then) did go down from 1931 to 1934. But what the President did was to hide a shitload of military spending in various New Deal programs; the PWA, the WPA, pork-barrel contracting in key electoral districts, etc.. You see, that way Mr. Roosevelt could show the country that he was stimulating the economy while at the same time secretly ratcheting up the war machine. Crafty, this Roosevelt.