THE GREAT DEPRESSION

The Great Depression

Table of Contents

Introduction2

Discussion3

Causes of the Great Depression3

The Great Depression Impact on World8

Great Britain9

Germany11

France12

Conclusion15

The Great Depression

Introduction

As majority of the historians believe that the Great Depression is spread over a long time period of history from the stock market collapse of USA in October 1929 till the hit on the US Naval fleet at Pearl Harbor on Hawaiian island in the month of December of 1941. Yet a chorus of dissenters within the historians would debate that tough times actually initiated in the middle years of 1920 on the Great Plains and on southern farms. Few historians do believe that hard times, did not become universal or "great" before "Black Thursday," 29th Coctober, 1929 when the stock market of New York crashed.

Many historians do believe that the actual hard period hadn't begun immediately after the stock market crash. This debate illustrates the fact that one of the greatest seismic shocks in our nation's history, about which one would think there would not be much disagreement, is a source of contention among historians, economists, and other social scientists who commonly describe, analyze, and interpret. What these arguments show is that the Depression's effects were not uniform but eccentric, diverse, and complex.

According to Roomer (1992), many Americans suffered serious financial misery even before the crash of Wall street stock market; especially labours, farmers, women and people from minority races. Few were lucky not to be influenced by the Great depression like Japan.It was evident that those with few reliable resources and limited opportunities were infected to a greater degree than those who had a economic failure.

Those who were more vulnerable experienced privation, tight budgets, and unemployment years before their more fortunate middle anti upper-class fellow citizens on Main Street and Wall Street. The stock market crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression.The participation of USA in world war 2 lifted the nation from the Great depression not the New Deal(Rommer 1992).

Discussion

Causes of the Great Depression

A serious global economic depression took place throughout the 1930s and its effects in the United States were catastrophic and widespread. The extent of the Great Depression in the United States can be expressed in numbers. The nation's gross national product (GNP) a measure of the total value of the economy was $104.4 billion before the crash in 1929. By 1933 it had shrunk to $74.2 billion, The GNP per capita in those same years plummeted from $857 to $590, the latter being lower than in the years 1907-1911, so that the economic growth since 1911 suddenly disappeared, as if by magic (Friedman 1970).

Unemployment statistics are even more mind numbing. By 1933, depending on the estimate upon which one consults and there was an ideological twist to these figures that were, after all, estimates; at least 20 percent, and more likely 25 percent, of able bodied persons were unemployed and looking for work. For African Americans, the figures were much worse, at least two, and sometimes more than three, times as high as for ...