Introduction to the Documents, Chapter 30

The Great Depression may have had its origins in the economy of the United States, but its effects were rapidly experienced throughout most of the world, and the hardships it generated added stress to the already fragile social and political situations that existed after the First World War. In the United States, the depression exacerbated social tensions; in Europe and elsewhere, it helped radicalize the political landscape, as men and women sought to create and make sense of new visions of state and citizen. New expressions of nationalism emerged, including the chilling racism of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s totalitarian order in the Communist Soviet Union, and Mussolini’s Fascist control of Italy. While the Soviet Union’s planned economy was largely spared the effects of the depression, citizens there also struggled to understand how their lives fit new forms of state and society. Universally, these social and political developments helped fuel the Second World War, which claimed millions of lives, ushered in the age of nuclear conflict, and reshaped the geopolitical landscape for decades.