End of the Great Depression
The 1930s were a troubled decade, economically and politically, throughout much of the world. In the United States the stock market crash in 1929 and the economic depression that followed brought widespread unemployment reaching up to 25 percent of the workforce (over twelve million workers) by early 1933. Most other workers experienced pay cuts. President Herbert Hoover (1874–1964), who served during the early years of the Depression (1929–33), made only a limited response. As economic conditions worsened, Americans lost faith in Hoover, and there was considerable social unrest. Franklin Roosevelt (1882–1945) was elected as president in 1932, and when he took office in early 1933, he brought hope with his massive New Deal social and economic recovery programs. But even with Roosevelt's aggressive approach, the depression did not significantly improve. In Europe, the economic hard times led to radical politics, including the rise of Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and the Nazi Party in Germany. Germany and Italy as well as Japan began programs of military expansion, forcefully taking control of other nations.
Finally in September 1939 another world war erupted in Europe, only two decades after the end of World War I (1914–18). This new global war would pit the Allies—primarily the United States, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union—against Germany, Japan, and Italy, the Axis powers.
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