America boomed... but now it's bust. The Great Depression explodes
across America. Social upheaval,
poverty, drought. It's time for America
to fight back. The American spirit is forged in the fires of
the Great Depression. We are pioneers...
and trailblazers. We fight for freedom. We transform our dreams
into the truth. Our struggles
will become a nation. Captioning presented by<font color="#0000FF">
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> The 1920s is boom time
in America. Money flows
and oil wells explode. Though farmers are struggling,
cities expand. Skyscrapers go higher
than the stock market. Aspirations run wild for cars and suburban housing projects
like Hollywoodland. By 1929, more money is spent on
advertising than on education. We got a little
carried away with consumerism and capitalism
and it bit us in the butt. The boom is built on credit. In 1929, $6 billion of goods
are bought on credit, but 80% of Americans have
no savings at all. Some stocks are
valued at 50 times what they're really worth. A giant bubble
just ready to burst. By October 1929, the inevitable happens. The stock market loses 12 times
more money in three weeks than the US
government uses in a year. The entire country
could've gone down-- and almost did, from an
economic point of view. For a year after
the stock-market crash, America's economy teeters on
the edge of the abyss. December 1930. The streets of New York
are quiet. It's been a year since
the stock-market crash of 1929, but only 2% of the population
own stocks. The other 98%
get on with their lives. Until today. This man is about to shake
America's confidence in its banks to its very core. He's put his money
in his local bank, The Bank of United States, a bank that has only hours
left to exist. But a newspaper article
questions his bank's stability. This is the moment that begins
a chain reaction that will shake
the whole country's economy... yet we don't even know
the man's name. But his story was recorded
by "The New York Times." ( man )
A small merchant
in the Bronx went to a branch of
the Bank of United States and asked bank officials to
dispose of his stock in the institution. Good day, sir,
how may I help you ? Yes, I'd like to withdraw
my shares from the bank. I beg your pardon, sir ? Bank regulations are virtually
nonexistent at the time. Bad real-estate investments mean the bank has only
kept itself afloat by cooking the books. Good day, sir,
how may I be of assistance ? I'd like to sell
my shares. Well, the stock is a good
investment, sir. I would advise
against the sale. I want my money. The last thing the bank needs
is to hand out all its cash. We almost witnessed
that fairly recently and I've seen what can go on,
and I've seen travesty. ( man )
He departed and apparently
spread a false report that the bank had
refused to sell his stock. By mid-afternoon, a considerable crowd had
gathered outside the bank, estimated at between 20,000
and 25,000 persons. ( all shouting ) This is the day
worry turns to panic. Would the banks go the same way
as the stock market ? Hysteria spreads like wildfire. $2 million are withdrawn
from this branch alone. Even though all the anxious
depositors who asked for their money before closing time
were given it... the crowd became restless. A squad of police were
sent in to control them. The trouble spreads to
other branches. By the next morning, the Bank of United States
has collapsed. Confidence in US banks
disintegrates. In the last 60 days
of 1930, 600 banks shut. Banks close in wave after
wave across the country. By 1933,
there are 28 states without a single bank open. Unlike today, the federal
government does not bail out the banks. Unemployment goes
from 4 million in 1930 to 12 million in 1932. Every day, 1,000 homes
are repossessed. 200,000 vagrant
children wander the country. 34 million Americans have
no source of income. It was an American tragedy,
the Depression was, and it took
American ingenuity to lift America out of it. The fight back
starts here. Vast building projects, publicly funded...
privately built. This is
Frank "Hurry Up" Crowe. He's already built six dams
on time and under budget. And now he has his eye
on something even bigger: the Colorado River. ( "Frank Crowe" )
I was wild to build this dam, the biggest dam ever built
by anyone, anywhere. The Colorado River is one of the most powerful rivers
in the world. Every second,
twice as much water tears through these canyons than
goes over Niagara Falls. Frank Crowe's
plan is to harness it. The water and hydroelectricity will transform the whole
of the Southwest. March 4, 1931. The government gives
the go-ahead to build the Hoover Dam. ( man )
The Hoover Dam, even before they started
building it, it became a metaphor. People saw it as a statement
of America's fortitude, of our ingenuity,
of our talent for hard work and for our willingness
to transform the environment around us. The Hoover Dam will cost nearly
$1 billion in today's money. Frank Crowe is offered
a 2.5% cut of the dam's profits if he gets the job
done quickly. It should take
six years to build, but Frank says it can be
done in four. 42,000 men come from across
the country looking for jobs on the biggest construction
site in America. Frank Crowe takes 5,000 men willing to work harder
and faster than anyone else. It'll be survival
of the fittest. Men are ready to
do anything for work. There's a large can-do
attitude in the United States, and it comes from the fact
that over the centuries, there has been
a lot of adversity, and we have usually
triumphed. First it was the triumph of developing this whole
vast continent. Putting in railroad lines, putting in all the civil
engineering to support it, putting in Hoover Dam. These were all incredible
challenges. There are two stages
to building the dam. First, divert the river
around the work site. Second,
build the colossal wall. To divert the raging Colorado, four massive tunnels
are drilled through 3 miles of solid rock. Each tunnel is as wide
as a four-lane highway and as tall as
a five-story building. A million and a half
gallons of water can flow through
here every second. The Hoover Dam
was a statement about what America was all about. Nothing is too big
to take on. And we're gonna
change this country. If Frank Crowe
was in a hurry before, now the pressure
is doubled. Time and money. The tunnels can only be dug
when the river is low. That's only
four months a year. And the money ? There's a $3,000 fine
for every day the project
falls behind schedule. The clock is ticking. Frank's answer
is as bold as he is. Gigantic mobile drilling rigs. Four stories of scaffolding
mounted on the backs of trucks. Up to 30 men drill into
the rock around the clock, 24 hours a day. They move ten times faster
than normal drilling. Temperatures hit
140° in the tunnels. Frank just pushes harder. The drilling crews compete
against each other. Which will drill
the furthest every day ? As drill man Marion Allen
puts it: ( "Marion Allen" )
It didn't make any
difference what you did, but you had to beat
that other crew. Deadly fumes
pump out of the trucks. They build up in the tunnel. They get into
the men's lungs, into their blood. You men,
get him out of here. Carbon monoxide poisoning
claims hundreds of men. ( "John Gieck" )
I went to work
down there one night, and there was 17 men
in my crew. The next morning, myself and three others
was all that was left. All the rest
was taken out sick. It was rough. Crowe has only
one working rule. ( "Frank Crowe" )
To hell with excuses--
get results. But the drive to get
results quickly will have
deadly consequences. Men desperate to keep
their jobs make mistakes, like trying to clear rubble before the blasting
is finished. You are having to
dynamite areas and you have to dig out. There's machinery,
but you're still using a lot of pick and shovel. Treacherous work. A miner's wife
remembers one worker desperate to keep his job. ( "Erma Godbey" )
Everybody was trying to
work in the tunnels. This man was
so anxious to work that he just went into
the tunnel too quick. Just as he
put his shovel in, there was a delayed blast. The company says
96 men died. The workers
claim it's hundreds. The tunnels are finished
11 months ahead of time. But that's just the beginning
of the Hoover Dam. The hardest job
is yet to come: building the biggest concrete
structure on Earth. ( narrator )
Frank Crowe is driving ahead
the building of the Hoover Dam, the biggest engineering project
America has ever seen. He's driving his men hard. The crews work
day and night. A sea of concrete
rises in the canyon, as thick as two football fields
laid end to end. 5,000 men,
50,000 machines and tools, the best engineers alive, enough materials to fill
a train 1,000 miles long. This is the 1930s equivalent of putting
a man on the moon. 6.6 million tons of concrete
have to be poured. That's enough to lay a 4-foot-wide sidewalk
around the Earth. How to pour that
much concrete and get it
where it's needed ? Frank Crowe designs the most
sophisticated cable system ever built. Giant bottom-opening
buckets. They pour
the concrete into molds exactly where it is wanted. Concrete was invented by
the Romans 2,000 years ago, but the Hoover Dam is the first
large concrete dam in history. Today virtually all dams
are made of concrete. It's malleable
and it's strong. It's the world's favorite
building material for any structure. Frank is up
against the clock, and he has a big problem. The curing concrete
generates heat. If the dam were constructed
in a single, continuous pour, it would put out enough heat to bake half a million loaves
of bread every day for three years. But worse, the dam would
take 125 years to harden. Frank Crowe's got
no time for that. Backs against the wall, we figured out
who we were. We worked our way
out of that Depression. The secret of cooling
the concrete lies within the dam itself. 582 miles of 1-inch pipes
carry ice-cold water from the very
river the dam is taming. ( James )
No one had ever
thought of this before, and those pipes are still
in the Hoover Dam today. ( men cheering ) Frank "Hurry Up" Crowe
lives up to his name. The Hoover Dam is completed
on September 30, 1935, two years
ahead of schedule. Frank receives a bonus worth over $4 million
in today's money. For those workers to have
built something as monumental and as challenging
as Hoover Dam was, it was an astonishing feat
of construction and I think it gave us
all a sense of the possible. 1936. The Hoover Dam is the largest hydroelectric power-producing
facility in the world. Each of the 17 generators weighs more than
four jumbo jets. Together, they can
supply power to 750,000 people in booming cities
like Los Angeles. The dam creates Lake Mead, the biggest
reservoir in America, big enough to flood the entire
state of New York under a foot of water. It helps California
produce more food for the United States
than any other state. The Hoover Dam workers make
something else boom as well. A little town 30 miles away where they go to
drink and gamble. Its name ? Las Vegas. As the wife of one
Hoover Dam worker puts it: ( "Lillian Whalen" )
When men worked in such
dangerous surroundings, you couldn't blame a lot of
fellas for sort of letting
their hair down. They were having fun. 1930. 5,000 people
live in Las Vegas. Then the dam workers
arrive. Then the tourists. Then the gambling. Now, over 37 million people come every year
to party in Las Vegas. After 70 years, the Hoover Dam
still supplies power to the people of Nevada,
Arizona, and California. One Las Vegas hotel has
the biggest flashlight on Earth. 40 billion candlepower. You can read
a newspaper 10 miles out in
space by its light. 1934. Darkness falls
across America. The worst environmental disaster
in American history. Dust storms hit New York,
Chicago and Boston. In Manhattan, the streetlights
come on at midday. A monstrous dust storm
1,800 miles wide from the Great Plains
to the Atlantic Ocean. The air turns to Earth. The storm carries 3 tons of dust
for every American alive. Ships stop off
the Eastern Seaboard, not sure what is happening. The cloud reminds the captain of
the ship "The Deutschland" of the sands of
the Sahara blowing out to sea. But now the clouds are devouring
the Statue of Liberty. Dust storms were born out
of a 100 million-acre dead zone 2,000 miles away in Oklahoma, Texas,
Kansas and Colorado. The Great Plains had once been the most fertile
grasslands on Earth. The topsoil was 6 feet deep, but it has been plowed up
and used up by four generations of farmers. Now the sun
has dried it up. What really
did the farmers in was an environmental cataclysm that involved an extended
drought, high winds, and the loss of millions and
millions of tons of topsoil. It was almost as though the heavens themselves had
turned against the farmers. By 1930,
the rains virtually stop. The lighter organic matter, the best soil, is literally
gone with the wind. The tiny particles of
soil are suspended in the air. Then a freakish phenomenon
happens. Static electricity builds
between the Earth and the dust. Like a magnet, the static electricity sucks up
more and more dust, feeding itself,
growing in size and power. A monster is created. The dust is lifted up to
10,000 feet. Powered by high-altitude winds, the monster rips across
the country looking for prey. ( narrator )
April 14, 1935. Lamar, Colorado. Louise Walton, once a
Broadway dancer and an actress. She gives up the glamour to breathe the clean, dry air
of the prairies. The doctors say
her lungs need it. Louise thrives on
the Southern Plains, and so did her six-year-old
daughter Jeanne... until recently. Their rural dream has
become a nightmare. 49 dust storms in
the last three months. But today the air is
crisp and clear. Jeanne has just
got out of hospital with respiratory problems
because of the dust storms. Early that morning,
600 miles north, a cold front from Canada had hit a warm
high-pressure front-- perfect conditions to create
the winds for a dust storm. But this is not
just any duster. By the time it passes
Bismarck, North Dakota, it's the biggest, strongest
dust storm ever seen in America. The cold front drives the storm
south across the prairies. It's heading straight
for Louise and Jeanne's place at 65 miles per hour. It grows
more and more powerful. It produces enough
static electricity to power New York City. By the time the storm
reaches Lamar, Colorado, it is 200 miles wide. The temperature plunges. 2:40 p.m. Jeanne finds herself looking
into the heart of the storm. ( wind whistling ) Mommy ! Jeannie ? ( "Jeanne Walton" )
It was like I was
caught in a whirlpool. All of a sudden,
it got completely dark. I couldn't see a thing. Mommy ! ( clattering ) ( glass breaking ) The dust clouds
contain over 300,000 tons of Great Plains topsoil. People tie
themselves to ropes before going to a barn just
a few hundred feet away. Cattle die, and when they are cut open, their stomachs
are full of sand. ( Al )
There are these
memories of people that go for
days and days and days holed up inside of their
little ranch houses, and they never
see the light of day because the dust
is so severe and it's so thick,
over hundreds of miles. For days, they don't
see light. The tiny dust particles drill
into the child's lungs. She comes down
with dust pneumonia, the brown plague. The Red Cross set up
six emergency hospitals in Kansas, Colorado, and Texas to deal with the rise of
respiratory infections. Louise Walton had come to
Colorado for the air, and now doctors tell her that
her little girl could die of it. There is an exodus
of Biblical proportions underway on the Great Plains. By 1936, farmers
are losing $25 million a day. ( Al )
Farming is no longer
a possibility. The Great Depression takes hold. Their mortgage comes due,
they can't pay it-- they're not growing crops. They lose the family farm,
they lose their identity. A century before,
a half a million people had gone west on these same
trails looking for hope. Now 250,000 of them are fleeing
the Dust Bowl in despair. But not everyone has
the choice to leave. Jeanne and Louise survive
Black Sunday and stay put. 2/3 of Dust Bowlers
stick it out. They have nothing left but their
determination and will. ( man's voice on radio ) Radio is one of
the few things to bring comfort
to those who stay. It connects them to the rest
of the country. By 1935,
a network of stations with 10,000-watt transmitters
links the country together. The same voice can be
heard from coast to coast. Radios become the country's most
popular household item. By 1934, there are over
18 million radio sets. 40% of America lives
in isolated rural communities, but now they can get local
news and weather, farm prices,
and be part of national events. America was built for
the introduction of radio. This is a vast land. It has a lot of
different layers to it as you go across
the country. America was learning
about itself through news from
across the country and around the world. ( man )<i>
Germany is rearming.</i> Regular news reports
bring international events straight into American homes. Little do Americans realize
that news from so far away will change America forever. <i>... will tie Hitler's
ambitious...</i> ( narrator )
The struggle against
the Great Depression continues. The American people
will not give up. The French gave America
the Statue of Liberty. Now America
builds her own monument to its people's tenacity. Blasted out of solid rock,
Mount Rushmore is created. ( man )<i>
The blasting of
Washington's chin</i> <i> and the first step in
the world's</i> <i> largest
monument is finished.</i> It began in 1927, desolate
corner of South Dakota, as a way to attract tourists. Now it's
a federally funded project, part of President Roosevelt's
New Deal to reinvigorate the country. <i> Soon they'll
start on Jefferson,</i> <i> then Lincoln and Roosevelt.</i> <i> The heads alone
will be 60 feet high</i> <i> and Washington's nose
is 19 feet long,</i> <i> as big as the head
of the Sphinx in Egypt.</i> <i> You can get a good idea of
the size of the monument</i> <i> by these men
playing leapfrog</i> <i> along the nose of the father
of his country.</i> <i> It's a grand undertaking.</i> They were, in a way,
our pyramids. We were building
something that would last and be a statement
about who we were. The 500-foot cliff is being
sculpted by dynamite... a dangerous way
to make a living for drillers like
Bill Reynolds. Below Bill are
20 charges of dynamite able to blast 3 tons
of solid rock. Above him is 60 feet
of sheer cliff... where the detonator
and the hoist man are. Take me up ! Drillers always move up
to stay above any charges, just in case they should
accidentally go off. Up ! Up ! The charges are due
to be set off at 4:00 p.m. That's good ! It's only 3:34,
so Bill's not worried. ( thunder ) But behind him, a mighty
Midwestern storm is brewing. He has no idea what is
happening 5 miles away. The electrical charge runs
straight down the power lines into Mount Rushmore...
and the detonator. Bill Reynolds survives
with only a burst eardrum and his boots blown off. He's back on the job
the very next day. Mount Rushmore becomes
a symbol of pride for the whole country. Abraham Lincoln,
Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson's portraits
join George Washington's. Ordinary men of the same
proportions would stand as high
as 40-story buildings and could wade
the Mississippi River without even getting
their knees wet. 3 extra inches of granite
cover the presidents' faces to allow for erosion
by wind and rain. It takes 10,000 years to
wear away an inch of granite. Mount Rushmore has been designed to wear back to its ideal
shape in 30,000 years. It is a symbol of America's
faith in its future as well as its past. By 1936, one in six workers
are still out of a job. Despite the government's
public-works programs, there is little
economic recovery. Public works aren't working. Free enterprise
is stagnating. It will take World War II to pull America out of
its economic slump. ( man )<i>
Louis in the front of the ring,</i> <i>Schmeling with
his back to me...</i> June 19, 1936. America is already
at war with Germany-- in Yankee Stadium. American Joe Louis
fights German Max Schmeling to be the number-one contender for the Heavyweight Championship
of the world. <i>And there was
a hard left...</i> With a record
of 24 straight wins, Joe is the 10:1
favorite. <i>Indeed Louis, a terrific
right hand to the jaw...</i> 57 million people listen
to the fight on the radio. <i>... while Louis is following
it up with good short rights</i> <i>and lefts.</i> It's the 12th and last round. Joe Louis is
taking a beating. <i>Schmeling's cut back</i> <i>and shot a hard right
hand to Louis' jaw.</i> The grandson of slaves, his family driven out of Alabama
by the Ku Klux Klan. The Depression
takes his family's jobs. Unemployment amongst urban
African-Americans is up to 50%. Joe keeps his family
alive by boxing. Within three years,
he's fought his way to the top. ( man )
These are not just two boxers,
they're symbols of totalitarianism
against democracy, supremacy against
a nonracial kind of society. America sees
Schmeling as old. He's 30, Joe's 22. <i> Schmeling gets over two more
hard rights to Louis' jaw.</i> <i> He has puffed up
Louis' left cheek.</i> <i> And Louis is down !</i> But tonight, Joe has
underestimated his much older German opponent. <i> And Louis is down !</i> <i> Hanging through the ropes,
hanging badly.</i> <i> He is a very tired fighter.</i> <i> He is blinking his eyes,
shaking his head.</i> <i> The count is done,
the fight is over !</i> <i> The fight is over !</i> Schmeling wins,
against all the odds. <i>Schmeling is the winner.</i> <i>Louis is
completely out.</i> Germany is on the rise. America is
on its knees. But not for long. America will get its revenge
in the most politically charged fight of all time. ( narrator )
Boxer Joe Louis just knocked
out by Max Schmeling. Germany is triumphant. America
is in shock. It's a publicity dream
for the Nazis. Adolf Hitler calls
Schmeling an Aryan superman. Hitler considers Americans
a mongrel race, doomed to the
trash heap of history. Hitler says their "mistake"
was freeing their slaves. ( "Joe Louis" )
I had been humiliated, and I had to prove that I was
the best heavyweight around. A rematch is arranged,
but this time, it'll be the fight
that involves the whole world. Though attacked in the press,
Joe just keeps training. In Germany,
the Nazis expand their power. They build their army and prepare to attack
their neighbors. ( man )
The second
Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fight took on a proportion far greater
than any other fight in the history of boxing. ( man )<i>
This is the feature attraction,
15 rounds...</i> ( Henry )
This fight cemented
the unity of the people of the United States, vis-a-vis
Nazi Germany. <i> Weighing 193, Max Schmeling.</i> And for one
of the first times, if not the first time
in American history, America symbolically was being
represented by a black man. <i> Wearing black trunks,</i> <i> the famous Detroit
Brown Bomber, Joe Louis.</i> June 22, 1938. The rematch
finally takes place. The hype is at a fever pitch. 70,000 people pour
into Yankee Stadium to watch the fight live. ( man )<i>
Joe Louis in his corner,
prancing and....</i> 70 million people tune in
via radio across the country. Over 100 million listen
in around the world, the biggest
audience to that date for anything, anywhere. <i>Max Schmeling
standing calmly,</i> <i>getting last word
from Doc Casey.</i> For Joe Louis,
I can only imagine the immense pressure
that he was under to go out there and perform
because he had the whole-- almost the world
on his back. The fight is no longer
just about boxing. It's a battle of ideologies,
as Joe Louis knew all too well. ( "Joe Louis" )
Schmeling represented everything
that Americans disliked, and they wanted
him beat and beat good. ( man )<i>
And they're ready with the bell
just about to ring.</i> <i> And there we are.</i> <i> And they got to the ring...</i> <i> And Joe Louis is in the center
of the ring, Max going around.</i> <i> Joe Louis with two
straight lefts to the chin.</i> <i> ... and Louis missed with...</i> <i> ... to the jaw.</i> <i> And, again, a right
to the body.</i> <i> A left hook, and Louis hooks
a left to Max's head quickly.</i> <i> And shoots over
a high right to Max's head.</i> <i> Louis, a left to Max's jaw,
a right to his head.</i> <i> Max shoots a hard right.</i> Schmeling is stunned by
the ferocity of Louis' attack. <i> He's landed more blows in
this one round than he landed</i> <i> in his five rounds with
the other fights.</i> <i> ... Schmeling's
going down.</i> <i> And Schmeling is down !</i> <i> The count is four.</i> <i> And Louis, right and left to
the head, left to the jaw,</i> <i> a right to the head.</i> <i> And the German is
watching carefully.</i> <i> And Schmeling is down.</i> <i> Schmeling is down.</i> <i> The count at five...</i> <i> Five, six, seven, eight.</i> <i> The fight is over...</i> The second-shortest heavyweight
title fight in history is over in only 124 seconds. <i>Max Schmeling is
beaten in one round !</i> <i>The first time in a world
heavyweight championship...</i> ( "Joe Louis" )
I'm sure enough champion now. ( Al S. )
At the end of the fight, Joe Louis, this inferior,
this former slave's child, defeats the master race. Schmeling knows what his defeat
will mean to the Nazis. ( "Max Schmeling" )
After this defeat,
I no longer existed for Hitler. My name simply disappeared
from the newspapers. Joe Louis is
America's hero again. His victory is the comeback
the whole country needs. Look, something's
gonna knock you down, but you can't
stay down. You got to get
back up and plow on. You can't sit around feeling
sorry for yourself, and you certainly can't
look back and reminisce about the good old times. You just got to keep on going
forward and reinvent things. And I also believe that
that is going to get us through the crises that we're
facing right now. The American spirit
is forged in the fires of the Great Depression. But an even harder fight with
Germany and her allies is still to come. The United States of America
will be attacked. Over 400,000
Americans will die. The battle will be
for survival. For America. For the world. World War II will
transform America into the greatest power on Earth. Nothing would ever
be the same again. Captioned by<font color="#00FFFF">
Soundwriters™</font>
