The Consequences of the Great Depression

Main points of the Dawes Plan

In an agreement of August 1924, the main points of The Dawes Plan were:

1. The Ruhr area was to be evacuated by Allied occupation troops.
2. Reparation payments would begin at “one billion marks the first year, increasing to two and a half billion marks annually after five years" (Merrill 93)
3. The German Reichsbank would be reorganized under Allied supervision.
4. The sources for the reparation money would include transportation, and custom taxes.

The Dawes Plan did rely on money given to Germany by America. The German economic state was one in which careful footing was required, and the Dawes plan was of the nature that only with the unrelated help of loans from America could it succeed.

The plan was accepted by Germany and the Allies and went into effect in September 1924. Although German business rebounded and reparation payments were made promptly, it became obvious that Germany could not continue those huge annual payments for long. As a result, the Young Plan was substituted in 1929.

The Great Depression of 1929

The effects of the Great Depression was huge across the world. Not only did it lead to the New Deal in America but more significantly, it was a direct cause of the rise of extremism in Germany leading to World War II.

What caused the Great Depression, the worst economic depression in US history? It was not just one factor, but instead a combination of domestic and worldwide conditions that led to the Great Depression. As such, there is no agreed upon list of all its causes.

The Great Depression was a period of worldwide economic depression that lasted from 1929 until approximately 1939. The starting point of the Great Depression is usually listed as October 29, 1929, commonly called Black Tuesday. This was the date when the stock market fell dramatically 12.8%. This was after two previous stock market crashes on Black Tuesday (October 24), and Black Monday (October 28). The Dow Jones Industrial Average would eventually bottom out by July, 1932 with a loss of approximately 89% of its value. However, the actual causes of the Great Depression are much more complicated than just the stock market crash. In fact, historians and economists do not always agree about the exact causes of the depression.

Throughout 1930, consumer spending continued to decline which meant businesses cut jobs thereby increasing unemployment. Further, a severe drought across America meant that agricultural jobs were reduced. Countries across the globe were affected and many protectionist polices were created thereby increasing the problems on a global scale.

The Consequences of the Great Depression

The Great Depression of 1929 was the most severe economic crisis of modern times. Millions of people lost their jobs, and many farmers and businesses were bankrupted. Industrialized nations and those supplying primary products (food and raw materials) were all affected in one way or another. In Germany the United States industrial output fell by about 50 per cent, and between 25 and 33 per cent of the industrial labour force was unemployed.

The Depression was eventually to cause a complete turn-around in economic theory and government policy. In the 1920s governments and business people largely believed, as they had since the 19^th century, that prosperity resulted from the least possible government intervention in the domestic economy, from open international relations with little trade discrimination, and from currencies that were fixed in value and readily convertible. Few people would continue to believe this in the 1930s.

The economic situation in Germany was made worse by the enormous debt with which the country had been burdened following the First World War. It had been forced to borrow heavily in order to pay "reparations" to the victorious European powers, as demanded by the Treat of Versailles (1919), and also to pay for industrial reconstruction. When the American economy fell into depression, US banks recalled their loans, causing the German banking system tocollapse.

POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

The Depression had profound political implications. In countries such as Germany and Japan, reaction to the Depression brought about the rise to power of militarist governments who adopted the regressive foreign policies that led to the Second World War. In countries such as the United States and Britain, government intervention ultimately resulted in the creation of welfare systems and the managed economies of the period following the Second World War.

In the United States Roosevelt became President in 1933 and promised a "New Deal" under which the government would intervene to reduce unemployment by work-creation schemes such as street cleaning and the painting of post offices. Both agriculture and industry were supported by policies. The most durable legacy of the New Deal was the great public works projects.

The New Deal was not, in the main, an early example of economic management, and it did not lead to rapid recovery. Income per capita was no higher in 1939 than in 1929, although the government’s welfare and public works policies did benefit many of the most needy people. The big growth in the US economy was, in fact, due to rearmament.

In Germany Hitler adopted policies that were more interventionist, developing a massive work-creation scheme that had largely eradicated unemployment by 1936. In the same year rearmament, paid for by government borrowing, started in earnest. In order to keep down inflation, consumption was restricted by rationing and trade controls. By 1939 the Germans’ Gross National Product was 51 per cent higher than in 1929 — an increase due mainly to the manufacture of armaments and machinery.

THE COLLAPSE OF WORLD TRADE

The German case is an extreme example of what happened virtually everywhere in the 1930s. The international economy broke up into trading blocs determined by political allegiances and the currency in which they traded. Trade between the blocs was limited, with world trade in 1939 still below its 1929 level. Although the global economy did eventually recover from the Depression, it was at considerable cost to international economic relations and to political stability.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29