The Great Depression
The Great Depression of 1930–1933 was the worst economic catastrophe of the twentieth century, reducing US industrial output by nearly 50 percent and driving unemployment to 25 percent in the United States and 30 percent in Germany. The US Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of June 1930 triggered retaliatory trade barriers that shrank global trade by roughly 65 percent between 1929 and 1934, deepening the crisis worldwide. Bank failures cascaded across Europe: Austria's Creditanstalt collapsed in May 1931, triggering a banking crisis that swept Germany and forced Britain off the gold standard in September 1931. In Germany, where unemployment reached 6 million, the Depression destroyed the Weimar Republic's already fragile political centre, driving desperate voters toward the Communist Party and the NSDAP. The Depression fundamentally discredited laissez-faire capitalism and created the political conditions for radical parties of left and right across the industrialised world.
- Year: 1930 CE
- Category: Economic
