What Were the Causes of the Great Depression?

The Great Depression refers to the economic crisis that originated in the United States between 1929 and 1933 and later spread to the entire capitalist world, including capitalist countries such as the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan.

Great Depression

(Economic crisis that originated in the United States between 1929 and 1933)

The general effects of the Great Depression led to:

1. Improved the government's participation in economic policies, that is, Keynesianism;

2. Strengthened economic nationalism in the form of tariffs;

3. Right-wing thoughts are rising. The Great Depression, relative to other single reasons, is the most able to explain why politics in continental Europe and Latin America gradually became right-wing between 1932 and 1938.

4. In order to get rid of the Great Depression, Germany and Japan embarked on the road of external aggression and expansion and the road of fascism.

5. The rise of dictators such as Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo, indirectly caused the outbreak of World War II.

6. Provided a favorable period for the industrial development of the Soviet Union.

This economic depression started with falling agricultural product prices: first occurred in the price of timber (1928), which was mainly due to the Soviet Union's timber competition; but the greater disaster was the arrival of Canadian wheat in 1929. Production, the United States is forcing down prices of basic cereals from all agricultural origins. Regardless of Europe, the Americas or Australia, the agricultural recession was further exacerbated by the financial collapse. Especially in the United States, a speculative fever caused a large amount of funds to be withdrawn from Europe. Then, in October 1929, a panic Wall Street stock market crash . 1931 French banker

Wall Street throbbing at Black Thursday (1929)

The loan to the Austrian bank was recovered, but this was not enough to repay the debt.

The catastrophe brought the system of many countries in Central and Eastern Europe to bankruptcy: it caused German bankers to postpone repayment of foreign debt for self-insurance, and it also endangered British bankers who invested heavily in Germany. The shortage of capital has brought about a sharp decline in exports and domestic consumption in all industrialized countries: the absence of a market will inevitably close factories, the less the goods, the less the goods will be transported, which will inevitably endanger the shipping industry and shipbuilding industry. In all countries, the consequences of the recession are mass unemployment: 13.7 million in the United States, 5.6 million in Germany, and 2.8 million in the United Kingdom (the largest figure in 1932). The Great Depression also had a significant impact on Latin America, causing foreign investment and merchandise exports to be lost in an area almost completely dominated by European and American bankers and businessmen and entrepreneurs.