Postwar Economics
The Democracies React to the Depression
The Great Depression
Policies in the Postwar World
- Despite its many successes, the New Deal failed to end the Great Depression.
- Postwar disillusionment turned unto despair in Europe.
- Misery and hopelessness made ground for extremists who promised radical solutions.
- The Great Depression began in the summer of 1929.
- In 1931, the Federal Reserve increased the interest rate once more, which cause people to invest less and made businesses and banks to fail.
- Without support from the United States, Germany suffered.
- In 1932 and 1933, global world trade sank to its 1900 level.
- The Great Depression spread misery from the industrial world to Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
- The war affected economies all over the world.
- Britain and France both owed huge war debts to the United States.
- Britain faced serious economic problems in the 1920s.
- In 1926, a general strike lasted nine days and involved about three million workers.
- On Easter 1916, a group of Irish nationalists launched a revolt against British rule.
- The Easter Rising was quickly suppressed, but it stirred wider support for the Irish cause.
- The Irish Republican Army began a guerrilla war against British forces and their supporters.
- Most of Ireland became the self-governing Irish Free State. The largely Protestant northern counties remained under British rule.
- The IRA fought for decades against this division.
Policies in the Postwar World
Politics in the Postwar World
- France emerged from the World War I plagued with political divisions and financial scandals.
- Several parties from communists to conservatives competed for power. These parties differed on many issues.
- A series of coalition governments ruled France.
- The United States emerged from World War I in fairly good shape.
- It suffered relatively few casualties and little property loss.
- The Liberal party traditionally represented middle-class business interests.
- As the Liberal party faltered, the middle class began to back the Conservative party.
- The Conservative party held power during much of the 1920s.
- After a massive strike of workers in 1926, Conservatives passed legislation limiting the power of workers to strike.
Postwar Economics
The Democracies React to the Depression
- The French economy recovered fairly rapidly.
- However, economic swings did occur still, adding to an unstable political scene.
- Europe made a recovery during the 1920s.
- In contrast to Britain and France, the U.S. emerged from the war as the world's leading economic power.
- As long as the American economy prospered, the global economy remained stable.
Chapter 28 Section 2
- Even though the governments of Britain, France, and U.S. tried to find ways to life the Depression, none of their methods provided a quick fix.
- Britain set up a coalition government made up of leaders from all three of its major political parties.
- By 1931, one in every four workers was unemployed.
- By the mid-1930s, France also felt the effects of the Great Depression.
The Western Democracies Stumble
Ilyas Nazarov
Policies in the Postwar World
The Great Depression
The Democracies React to the Depression
3rd
- Britain, France, and the Untied States were the three Western democracies.
- They ruled the Paris Peace Conference and boosted hopes from democracy.
- The most pressing issues were finding jobs for veterans and rebuilding lands damaged in war.
- During the 1920s, the Labour party surpassed the Liberal party in Britain.
- The Labour party gained support by promoting a gradual move in socialism.
- However, fear of radicals and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia set off a "Red Scare".
- This caused some domestic unrest.
- Police rounded up suspected radicals and expelled them from the U.S.
- Millions of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe came to the U.S. between 1890 and 1914.
- An economic crisis began in the U.S. in the 1920s that spread to the rest of the world.
- Farmers, miners and other suppliers of raw materials suffered.
- Better technologies allowed factories to make more products faster, which led to overpopulation.
March 1, 2013
- Leon Blum's Popular Front government tried to solve labor problems but could not satisfy more radical leftists.
- Herbert Hoover believed that the government should not intervene in private business matters.
- The new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt argued that the government had to take in active role in combating the Great Depression.
Postwar Foreign Policy
The Great Depression
Postwar Foreign Policy
The Democracies React to the Depression
- Even though it outlawed war, the Kellogg-Briand Pact had no way of enforcing the ban.
- In 1931, the League vigorously condemned Japan's invasion of Manchuria without the use of military action.
- Because of this, dictators saw that the League had a weakness and began to pursue aggressive foreign policies.
- France's chief concern after the war was securing its borders against Germany.
- France built massive fortifications called the Maginot Line.
- France also strengthened its military sought alliances with other countries.
- France's goal was to keep the German economy weak.
- British leaders wanted to relax the Treaty of Versailles' harsh treatment of Germany because they feared that if Germany became too weak, then the Soviet Union and France would become too powerful.
- Meanwhile, a crisis in finance was brewing.
- The Federal Reserve raised interest rates in 1928 to slow the run on the stock market.
- However, the higher interest rates made people nervous about borrowing money and investing.
- In the autumn of 1929, financial panic set in.
- Stock prices crashed and wiped out the fortunes of many investors.
- In the 1920s, many people worked for peace.
- Treaties at Locarno, Switzerland settled Germany's disputed borders with France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
- These treaties became the symbol for a new era of peace.
- The Kellogg-Briand Pact was sponsored by the United States, and almost every nation signed it.
- Because of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the great powers pursued disarmament, which is the reduction of armed forces and weapons.
- The League of Nations encouraged cooperation.
- Eventually, Germany and the Soviet Union also joined the League.
- FDR introduced the New Deal, which was a combination of economic and social programs.
- Under the New Deal, new laws regulated the stock market, government programs created jobs, and a new Social Security system provided pensions for the elderly.
- In 1934, huge winds and eroded topsoil from the drought created the Dust Bowl.
- The storms destroyed crops, land, and equipment.
Countries in the League of Nations
Easter Rising
WWI Cartoon
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact
Map of WWI Nations at War
Effects of the Dust Bowl
Herbert Hoover
Unemployment in Britain
1926 Strike