The Wall Street Crash of 1929 followed one of the most dramatic economic booms that America and the world had ever seen. As everything was going so well, millions people decided to invest in the stock market. Banks were prepared to lend money to people investing in stocks as the stock market kept going up. Therefore people borrowed more and more money that caused stock prices to skyrocket to unrealistic highs. The rapidly rising share prices just gave people more confidence and persuaded more people to borrow money to invest (read more…)

The Nazis came to power during the great depression. In fact, without the Wall Street Crash it is unlikely that Hitler would have ever got into power. However once Hitler got into power he dramatically increased his control. However, after the great depression, how did he strengthen his control over Germany?

When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 he was not content with the power he had (read more…)

I have been trying to find some quality books or textbooks about the great depression. Considering the importance of the great depression in history, there is not a staggering amount of books regarding the period. However I have compiled a list of what I have discovered so far and I would welcome any comments or suggestions of other titles (read more…)

In 1933 when Hitler came to power over 6 million Germans were unemployed. Hitler’s most important task was to solve this problem. As during his election campaign, he had promised he German people “work and bread” and now he had to deliver (read more…)

Confronted with The Great Depression, France behaved quite differently, compared with other nations. It was very confidant in its strong economy until (read more…)

Great Britain was relatively healthy during the great depression. There are many reasons why the UK was able to so well (read more…)

Germany was the worst hit country by the great depression. However the man who ended the great depression in Germany was to eventually take Germany into another World War and back to economic chaos (read more…)

Hoover failed to solver the crisis in America and therefore was replaced by Roosevelt in 1932. Roosevelt pledged for “A New Deal for the American people” (read more…)

Out of all of the four biggest industrial nations of the age (USA, Germany, UK and France), France was the last to feel the effects of the great depression. The main reason for this is the undervaluation of the French Franc (read more…)

The UK was another key force in the global economy. The British economy was not as swiftly and violently crushed as Germany’s but Britain did suffer a notable decline (read more…)

The country worst hit by the great depression was Germany. Its very weak economy couldn’t deal with the slow withdrawal of American capital. It is worth mentioning that Germany was still paying reparation from World War One, which made its situation all the more precarious. Before the crash, the German economy had been balanced on a knife-edge (read more…)

The Great Depression badly affected the American people because there wasn’t a welfare system for unemployed workers (read more…)

Unemployment during the great depression was at one of the highest levels ever in history. In America the unemployment rate reached nearly 25% at its peak. This graph shows the percentage of Americans unemployment from just before the Wall Street Crash in 1929, to the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939 (read more…)

The end of The Great Depression took place around 1934. In the USA the economy began a slow turnaround as unemployment fell to 21.7% and GNP rose 7.7%. It was in 1934 that Sweden became the first country to fully recover from the Great Depression (read more…)

There are quite a few causes of the Great Depression but the most significant are the long-term factors. The massive cost of World War One had damaged the world’s strongest economies, leaving them debt ridden and weak. Consumer debt also increased dramatically in the 1920’s leading up to the great depression, with the extensive use of credit to buy cars and the vast increase in home mortgages (read more…)