The Great Depression After The 1929 Financial Crash | Impossible Peace | Timeline

hi everyone welcome to this timeline documentary just before you watch i want to tell you about my new history channel it's called history hits it's like the netflix for history it's got hundreds and hundreds of history documentaries on there and interviews with some of the world's best historians we're adding new stuff all the time for example today i'm filming in this one of the few remaining lancaster bombers for a show about the dambusters raid in 1943. if you want to know more about history hit follow the information uh just below this video or search online for history hits and make sure you use the code timeline to get a special introductory offer now enjoy this show two world wars tore the heart out of the 20th century they are a rent in the fabric of history the world lurched into the tear with high hopes and mixed feelings but as the twenties went on some knew that careless optimism was leading to a terrible crash and an impossible piece as paris lurched into 1929 it seemed on the surface for those with long pockets that the party would go on [Music] the american writer robert mcalman was there surrounded by artists and writers and hangers on he glimpsed beneath the glass with rare perception their wraiths all of them mcaulman said they aren't people god knows what they've done with their realities this is a new day all gods are dead all wars fought and all faiths shaken according to scott fitzgerald on october the 3rd 1929 gustav stressman the chancellor and a level-headed hope for the success of the weimar republic suddenly died plunging germany's future into uncertainty during his lifetime he was lauded abroad and hated at home in many ways but i i think at the very least his significance is that he's a great pro pragmatist once he is gone there's a kind of precarious void really that happens and that's when we get also into these kind of sequences of the abuse of executive powers um and the the change of chancellors that never really stops until hitler is appointed in its obituary the time said of stressmen that because of his leadership germany is now prospering and has an important place in the affairs of europe stressman knew better just before his death he said that the german economy is doing well only on the surface germany is in fact dancing on a volcano if the short-term loans are called in by america stressman said most of our economy will collapse [Music] and because of the wall street crash that is exactly what happened [Music] soviet russia's otaki quarantined it from the worst of the global depression but not from misery in the first three years of stalin's five-year plan beginning in 1929 the population of moscow grew by 50 swollen by 26 million peasants who voluntarily under duress shifted creating the proletariat the revolution needed to fulfill the marxist prediction arguably the october revolution the bolgivic revolution was not the most important event in the first 20 or 30 years of the 20th century because the majority of the population their life didn't change much peasants were now toiling in factories in 1929 the red army had 90 tanks four years later it had 4 700. the major change came with the with collectivization force collectivisation and uh rapid industrialization after 1929. on the 21st of december joseph stalin celebrated his 50th birthday and the birth of an unparalleled cult of personality stalin is an immensely slippery figure just as you start to think you understand stalin and what's going on he slips through your fingers and and he shifts and he shape-shifts again italy also promoted a cult of personality but its hero was obliged to seek an accommodation with the old centers of power mussolini doesn't enjoy absolute power in italy so the king is still in place and will remain in place until mussolini is ousted from power and there is also the catholic church led by the pope who are autonomous and exert quite a lot of influence on italian society early in 1929 protocols were signed at the lateran palace defining and formalizing the relationship between fascist italy and the vatican the historic document was signed at the lateran by the duchy and cardinal gaspari the papal secretary of state the treaty of the lateram means much for internal peace and harmony in italy by the latter impact fascism made catholicism the official state religion but the church gave away more it made fascism the state and in a referendum on march the 24th more than eight and a half million italians voted yes in support of the regime [Music] only 135 000 voted no mussolini was now prime minister and also head of eight ministries was no personality cult in britain which had always found ordinary people more appealing stanley baldwin's government campaigned under perhaps the least inspiring political slogan ever promoted safety first it was the first election in which all women aged over 21 were able to vote it was nicknamed the flapper election and safety first lost out to labor's promise we can conquer unemployment which they couldn't [Music] in december two motions were put at the annual conference of the indian national congress one was a modest demand for dominion status backed by veteran congress member motilan in 1929 there is this congress held and there the tension really explodes multilal nehru and gandhi say you know india should move by steps to greater self-government by first gaining dominion status like the white settler colonies of australia and new zealand and canada the second motion was a ferocious demand for independence now jointly sponsored by subas bose who would become india's first prime minister the younger generation naru and both say you know the time for that is over now we want swaraj which meant full independence the phrase was poor naswaraj full independence so the future was stirring in some parts of the world and the past hanging on in others a drenching from a big burst bubble was threatening the global economy and the twenties were done the flapper era ends wrote wallis stegner a harvard academic and journalist in grimness bewilderment and anger british prime minister ramsey macdonald was starting to show the signs of mental collapse that would cause a contemporary to recall that when he rose to speak in parliament no one knew what he was going to say and when he did say it nobody understood it in 1930 the british prime minister wrote my head won't work other countries were also in less than reliable hands spain was drifting into a republic phase in the wake of the dictatorship from 1923 to 1930 of primo de rivera a military man whose adroitness as a ruler was perhaps best assessed by his remark that had i known in my youth that i would one day have to govern this country i would have spent more time studying and less fornicating in germany's 1928 election the right-wing parties had lost ground and the nazis attracted a poultry 2.6 of the popular vote but disaster was just around the corner a moderate coalition ceased to function and power shifted to the president paul ludwig hans anton von berneckendorf and von hindenburg [Music] in march hindenburg relying on clause 48 of the weimar constitution appointed germany's first presidential cabinet [Music] [Applause] in the june state election in saxony nazi support jumped to 14 the party's focus had shifted from the crude anti-semitic tirades of the early 20s to the urgent need for leyden's rom and complaint about the shambles of weimar democracy which only national socialism could solve how didn't matter it just could it was i regret to say the fascist leaders who understood the power of film it was people like mussolini it was people like oswald mosley in england and above all it was hitler in germany they understood how important it was to communicate with people to give a theatrical performance in one day the national socialists advanced from 2.6 of the vote and 12 seats to 18.3 and 107 seats the day was september the 14th 1930 almost six and a half million germans voted for hitler in the main the vote had swung across from the bourgeois parties of the centre and the right roughly a quarter of those who voted nazi had never voted before confronted by hitler's success money panicked and about half of germany's currency reserves went flying out of the country it's often been said that a lot of the people who later become nazis are not the generation who fight during the first world war in germany but the generation who are just too young to have seen combat on december the 5th all quiet on the western front had its german premiere at the mozart hall in berlin [Music] barely 10 minutes after it had begun the performance was interrupted when the national socialist propaganda chief joseph goebbels walked noisily out of the theater this was the signal for nazi activists in the audience to release white mice stink bombs and itching powder into the crowded auditorium fights broke out with the thugs unimaginatively chanting jews out jews out and screeching you then film on december the 11th the supreme film censorship board revoked its decision to pass the film on the grounds that it was detrimental to german prestige frank pease president of the hollywood technical directors association agreed with goebbels and also called for all quiet on the western front to be banned it will he said go far to raise a race of yellow streaks slackers and disloyalists but the threat to american society came not from an anti-war novel whose author incidentally was catholic not jewish but from an economic disaster that was starting to infect every industrial power and would become the badge of the decade it's with the coming of the depression i think that people start to feel that they're living in a pre-war era rather than a post-war era [Music] liberalism comes under huge attack of course after the 1929 economic crisis when the economic aspect of that edifice comes crashing down and then the masks fall one of the things that happens as a result of the depression after the wall street crash of course is that every government thinks to itself what's my priority my priority is trying to make things better for my population in 1930 44 of the american population was still classified as rural more than 45 million were without indoor plumbing and almost all of the rural population was without electricity [Music] in november 1930 the farmer who received 1.35 a bushel for his wheat last year now got 75 cents and it had been a searing summer of drought so he had little to sell in any case staggering damages to crops have been suffered in kansas and other wheat states where grains have been stunted and literally burnt up by the successive weeks of blistering heat day after day of blazing sun has resulted in [ __ ] stalks that may never bear heat depths too are mounting daily water is being hauled for miles to many farms in a desperate effort to save a part of the crop but the toll in ruined farms is the worst in the history of the nation bank closures in the months at a new mark 236 the record would not survive in december 328 went under small banks can't have a diverse portfolio if you have a small bank in the middle of the of the corn belt the banker looks out of his window all he sees is corn people coming in to borrow money from him or grow corn now the price of corn collapses [Music] he's in trouble the response to the crisis was more knee-jerk than well considered and president hoover could not reign in the excesses of congress in applying 1930's smoot-hawley tariff bill erecting forbidding barriers to trade the most notorious piece of legislation passed in the herbert hoover period is a smooth hawley tariff which massively raises tariffs which is an effort to try and protect the american home market but all it really does is spark retaliation from a european bloc a british empire block and so you're getting then very early on a huge trade war and that was precisely the wrong move to make at a time when trade is faltering exchange is faltering people are buying much less in terms of production putting in a strong protectionist law which is then going to trigger retaliatory measures from other countries it has the effect of putting not just the american economy but the entire western world's economy into nosedive smoot hawley signed into law on june 17 1930 raised u.s tariffs on over 20 000 imported goods henry ford called it economic stupidity and more than a thousand economists signed a petition asking the president to veto the bill the value of european exports to the u.s was 1 334 million dollars in 1929 in 1930 it was 390 million dollars botanatri tariffs impacted on trade in the other direction u.s exports to europe fell from 2 341 million dollars in 1929 to 784 million dollars in 1932 hoover signing smoot hawley into law was seen as the moment in which according to political writer walter lipman he surrendered everything for nothing he accepted the mischievous product of stupidity and greed why did he sign i think he was a good president his problem was that he was president when the great depression hit and he like many others didn't know really what to do you know should they cut taxes was that the way to to try and get the economy going gained should they put up trade barriers congress was certainly pushing for trade barriers to try and protect american industries in american production and i think who like a lot of people didn't know what to do and he really floundered smoot hawley did not arrest the slide into depression ford cut its working week from five days to three and the lights went out on neighborhood banks there was a dispute over a mortgage and mrs grace jones and her family find themselves in the open but they're not discouraged and carry on just as though they had walls surrounding them hoover described the american banking system as the element most sensitive to fear [Music] it was never a robust system with an average of 500 failures a year throughout the 1920s but in 1930 fear stumbled towards panic and in the last 60 days of 1930 600 banks closed their doors 1352 for the year it has to be understood that of america's 25 000 banks only 751 had branches the others were according to carter glass woodrow wilson's treasury secretary run by little corner grocery man calling themselves bankers if the scale of the depression was seismic its effect logically depended on the strength of the structures it shook and across europe these were far from robust revolving door governments military takeovers and authoritarian regimes controlled countries from the baltic to the balkans by december industrial production had fallen by 30 in the usa 25 in germany 30 in britain 5 million were unemployed in america 4.5 million in germany 2 million in britain the 1929 crisis shatters the belief in the ability of a liberal economic system based on mobility and trade to sustain itself in fact it plays in the hand of the enemies of liberalism both on the left and the right countries are terribly adept because they are always money that they all probably even be from before the period of the depression but now in the depression the creditors are coming and they want their money and you have to pay so cuts have to be done and and these cats tend to be painful berlin streets were filled with entrepreneurial desperados trafficking matches loose cigarettes parmesan shoe shines shoe laces rag pickers bag carriers car door openers panhandlers ursats barbers and doorway sex and britain's ambassador complained that this depression is the stupidest and most gratuitous in history investment didn't take place and businesses began to contract and as they contracted they laid off workers and these workers of course could not spend revolution may not have been in the air but the fear of revolution was and the soviet football team scheduled to play a friendly international was denied entry into england on account of fears that the visit might be exploited by soviet propaganda there was a real fear of international communism in the 1920s and 1930s and it was not entirely misplaced i mean the soviet government was a very curious hybrid on the one hand it behaved like an ordinary government it signed treaties and trade agreements and it had ambassadors with with various exchange of ambassadors with various people but it was also headquarters the common tune communist international which was dedicated to creating revolution soviet peasants meanwhile did not slide silently into collectivization the secret police the checker reported 402 revolts in january 1930 1048 in february and 6528 in march almost 14 000 riots and revolts involving two and a half million peasants in 1930 and the apparatus of the state effective if not efficient had closed 80 percent of soviet village churches by the end of 1930 it was becoming one of the observable phenomena of the age that ruthless totalitarian regimes could get things done in contrast to the instability inherent in gym crack by democratic coalitions a fine example of which was the government put together in france by andre tajir who was obliged to patch together a cabinet of 33 members prompting radical leader eduard de ladier to say it's not a cabinet it's a tribe some political leaders did not even have the power to form fragile coalitions 1930 was the year of perhaps the best known event in the indian campaign for independence until gandhi it had been very much a small club of liberal elites petitioning the british gandhi brought a very different conception of what indian nationalism could be he made it a mass movement the salt tax cost the average indian at most 15 cents a year but salt was an essential of life and the british had the monopoly gandhi was really a genius of manipulating mass media if you like he was a genius of speaking to many different audiences monopoly was the point and a good point it was in rousing popular support gandhi's salt march was a success if you look at the way he constructed his march he was very careful to choreograph it he designed the uniforms of all the marchers he wanted them to look like a kind of universal uh procession not just carrying political insignia he sent his followers in advance to villagers to whip up excitement so that when he came there were crowds cheering and then his great coup was to invite foreign film crews to film him [Music] government studiously ignored the march but gandhi had made his point gandhi was was able to take potential weakness the fact that indians were unarmed the fact that indians didn't have military or even material power to fight the british and turn that weakness into a form of power against the british thousands of nationalists crowd the great tent to hear the farewell message of gandhi leader of the demands for india's independence its echoes were heard in london recently during the imperial conference and there may be fireworks as 1930 closed the poet wh saw this britain he could have found the same scene almost anywhere smokeless chimneys damaged bridges rotting dwarves and choked canals tramlines buckled smash trucks lying on their side across the rails power stations locked deserted since they drew the boiler fires pylons falling or subsiding trailing dead high-tension wires [Music] [Music] writing in 1951 the poet stephen spender recalled that from 1931 onwards in common with many other people i felt hounded by external events it was the year that no cowards cavalcade opened the character fanny asked in her song 20th century blues in this strange illusion chaos and confusion people seem to lose their way what is there to strive for love or keep alive for in the spring of 1931 chaos arrived in austria its largest and most reputable bank was credit and stunt baron louie the rothschild chaired a board that included representatives of the bank of england and major american banks in the spring it failed and set in motion a cascade of events that no one was able to stop [Music] when news of the problem reached london harry siepmann an adviser to the governor of the bank of england said this i think is it and it may well bring down the whole house of cards in which we have been living harry was right one of the characteristics of the decades after the end of the first world war is i think a strong sense of people had endings and of crisis crisis of capitalism ends of empire somehow or other civilization under threat panic is a component of every crisis if vienna was insolvent then what would berlin as international players tried to find a way of stabilizing the situation in austria german banks came under pressure and with about a billion dollars of short-term credits advanced to germany by american banks its system two was at risk down came the house of cards in the first three weeks of june germany lost half of his gold reserves and the shock waves from the crisis rattled banks in hungary romania poland and spain on june the 20th president hoover announced that the u.s would forego repayments from britain france and italy for 12 months if they in turn would forego reparations due from germany but herbert hoover and all his men having consulted widely in congress and with the british were found to have made an omission as inexcusable as it was incomprehensible they had neglected to tell the french and france whose economy was strong and whose central bank was sitting on the second largest gold reserve in the world was furious france and the us argued and negotiated and germany continued to hemorrhage gold on july the 7th the americans and french reached agreement but whilst they had been arguing the horse had bolted on july the 8th germany's third largest bank informed the reichsbank that it could not meet its liabilities but the reichsbank having lost so much gold could not bail out to the donut bank without sparking a disastrous run on the currency gold ridge france was in a position to help and made a loan offer contingent on a number of political demands ranging from banning nationalist demonstrations to halting construction of new warships the central bank was not empowered to comment on let alone act on such demands on sunday july the 12th the german government announced that it was rejecting what every german newspaper called political blackmail who would offer the leadership that might hold this irrational slide as one economic historian put it the british couldn't and the americans wouldn't as late as december with the grip of depression tightening american lawmakers stated that it was against the policy of congress that any indebtedness of foreign countries to the united states should in any means be cancelled or reduced in the context of the world's economic crisis it was said sir ron lindsey britain's ambassador in washington an exhibition of irresponsibility buffoonery and ineptitude surviving inflation deflation stagnation required resourceful resilience and a loosening of a previously rigid morality crime pilfering petty pilfering every sort of sorry survival strategy became widespread [Music] a fact of life that found its way into weimar music cabaret cinema [Music] brits lang's 1931 film m which is a film about the search for a serial child murderer and ultimately this murderer played by peter laurie is not caught and dealt with by the police but by a criminal's court i think in many ways that speaks again to a lot of things that are popular or are sources of anxiety and weimar and that is based on a sense that law and order is collapsing extremism street thuggery was a real threat and bruning's decree of december the 7th 1931 banned the wearing of uniforms so the brown shirts in white shirts like so many well-drilled public servants and with bottle tops as badges paraded their threat to law and order the brown shirts the storm tylerum or sa and their leader and steron wanted power by violence the party machine sought power at the ballot box in 1931 the machine won through and 500 members of the sa were purged in 1934 the tension would flare again and be the death of earnstrom on september the 21st rather than borrow money great britain abandoned the gold standard whereby the bank of england agreed to pay on demand 113 grains of fine gold in exchange for a pound note the world's most stable currency floated it floated down 30 percent against the dollar [Music] confidence in one of the world's few reliable institutions was at once demolished and the age of anxiety grew more perplexed stumbling on with less and less to believe in [Music] the underlying problems of the british economy with the steeply rising unemployment and with the government running a large budget deficit came home to roost with a crisis over the exchange rate of the pound a flight from sterling a withdrawal from gold from london near imminent banking collapse john maynard keynes the unorthodox and somewhat visionary economist rejoiced at the breaking of our gold fetters which one by one other currencies followed and britain's historic past as banker to the world became a ghastly nightmare as investors around the world fearing that the force elsewhere would mean london being unable to meet its obligations began to withdraw funds in the last two weeks of july britain lost almost half of its gold reserves inevitably a move from dollars to gold followed the swiss national bank transferred some 200 million dollars the national bank of belgium 130 million dollars putting pressure on the american currency by the end of the year one in every 10 american banks had suspended operations money was being pulled back into the relative safety of mattresses strong boxes and holes in the ground the british labor government obliged to consider borrowing proceeded to plan for fiscal tightening in order to secure a loan through jp morgan the dole was to be cut by 10 and taxes raised the deal split the cabinet and the prime minister resigned retaining the premiership by forming a coalition national government with the conservatives his ideological opposites it was the king who asked baldwin point blank whether in this moment of national peril and national crisis he would be willing to serve under mcdonald what answer could a patriotic conservative party leader give to that other than yes [Music] the budget cuts did no good and the loan matched by one from a consortium of french banks was spent in three weeks as unemployment dragged tax yields down while the cost of unemployment benefits soared rising in the uk from 12 million pounds in 1928 to 125 million pounds in 1931. the strain and drain on ramsey mcdonald the prime minister was visible churchill called him the boneless wonder and the fizz is out of him said lloyd george strain may have also contributed to the early death of spanish dictator miguel primo de rivera he lost the support of the king and the military left office and within two months was dead at the age of 16. when the great depression started because of the huge loans that had been taken to pay for all the various public works there was an economic collapse and eventually by january of 1930 he felt that you know he couldn't carry on anymore he literally upped and went almost without warning a broad-based coalition of socialists and middle class republicans with a reform agenda was elected to follow de rivera into power on april the 14th 1931 it's a period of enormous change enormous experimentation enormous progress in many ways but the problem is that this the there is a polarization and there's um the discourse becomes violent and people tends to demonize the opposition so there's intense dialogue among the people who shared their own ideas but there's no dialogue between people who have different ideas and that's the problem the death knell of the spanish monarchy had been sounded in april's provincial elections which having effectively become a plebiscite on royal rule and alfosso the 13th voted republican [Music] the republic was declared and the royal family departed noiselessly into exile thousands of people jammed victoria station to get a look at king alfonso who has taken refuge among his royal british relatives his ex-majesty had to leave spain in a hurry but is he down-hearted he doesn't look it even though he is just plain mr alphonse bourbon but whose republic did they leave behind the republican government faced with the fiscal shambles left by the ambitious bad inept primo de rivera was immediately hampered when j.p morgan canceled the 60 million loan it had agreed with the now departed regime the stage was set for something but no one could foresee how terrible and bloody that something would be france continued its double life of patchwork coalitions unstable and short-lived side by side with lei's na4 the crazy years of paris between the wars a paris in which josephine baker's signature song jesus which she first recorded in 1931 rang out celebrating the sensation she had caused the white imagination sure is something when it comes to blacks she said in italy the deccinali the festive celebration of 10 years since the march on rome took place in 1931. not everyone was an unqualified fan of el duce giovanni jarati party secretary complained that mussolini wanted the people to believe that he not only conducted the orchestra but also played all the major instruments not surprisingly girati did not last ilduce replaced him with akilestorachi a man he described as a [ __ ] but an obedient one far from the banking crisis and unemployment cues of europe japan's campaign to modernize and industrialize was fettered by the global downturn in a country so dependent on foreign trade and so bereft of natural resources the depression was a prodigious disaster which journalist kk kawakami in the new york times of the 7th of june 1931 said had profoundly affected the mental outlook of the entire nation in what way these are the years that help hitler or enable hitler to get into power these are the years which make a lot of people give up on liberal democracy these are the years the japanese militarists increasingly dominate the japanese government japan moves into manship manchuria or the japanese military move into manchuria in 1931 in defiance of orders from their own civilian government shortly after 10 pm on september the 18th 1931 a bomb exploded alongside the south manchurian railway japanese troops without tokyo's authority had set it and then launched themselves at the chinese claiming that it had been a chinese attack in 1931 the japanese gwandal army a garrison army based in manchuria the northeastern provinces of china launched what was essentially a lightning coup it had been planned by two relatively junior officers but within the space of about five to ten days they managed to occupy large parts of a region that is about the size in france and germany combined the blast was the first bomb of a long war the last would drop on nagasaki on august 9 1945 japanese troops are steadily advancing into manchuria and occupying towns and villages in the wake of the fighting are being enacted the usual scenes of civilian panic a population preyed upon by bended overlords and baptized in military bricken edge crowds the highways and attempts to flee regardless of the fact that japan's coming represents the biggest influence for law and established order in this corner of the globe i think there's general agreement that there's a lot of of the japanese government in tokyo having to act as an apologist for what has happened and they feel they can't go back national imperatives will not allow them to go back manchuria became manchukuo a puppet state with an obedient stooge on the throne henry a weakling whom the japanese had prepared for the job with seven years of women [Music] on september the 22nd 1931 the american minister in china sent a telegram to the secretary of state it is my conviction he wrote that the steps taken must fall within any definition of war but the timidity of the international response to japan's aggression bordered on indifference everyone had other things to worry about japan essentially walks in and takes over manchuria turns it into manchuko which means manchu land and what are you going to do what the united states does is say we're not going to recognize you this is not terribly useful as far as the british are concerned indeed the lord president of the council stanley baldwin a once in future prime minister said all you get from the americans are words big words but just words following the invasion of manchuria the philadelphia record by no means a lone voice declared that the american people don't give a hoot in a rain barrel who controls north china with hindsight we might say that the american people should have cared but at the time they had more immediate problems on their mind it has been estimated that in 1931 in chicago alone the value of lost wages the money that ordinary people would otherwise have been spending on the necessities of life was 2 million dollars each day relief expenditure to cover the deficiency was a mere 100 000 dollars a day chicago's mayor anton chernak told washington that it would either have to send relief to his city or it would have to send troops radio was a strong opiate during the depression in 1931 cbs's advertising revenue was 14.5 million dollars other places looked for other ways of scrambling out of the hole in 1931 governor fred bowser of nevada announced the legalization of gambling in his state and the birth of las vegas but it was going to take more than the spin of a wheel to change the course of times that had grown menacing writing of berlin in the winter of 1931 32 in mr norris changes trains christopher isherwood said that hate exploded suddenly without warning out of nowhere

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Rating: 4.8317084 out of 5

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, great depression, wall street crash, ww2, american history

Id: hFd813RAnd8

Length: 49min 36sec (2976 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/SesshamoNekodearuzo]

it's like a repeat but with a vaaarus and unlimited printing of money to keep the rich rich.