United States in Prosperity,
Depression, and War
1920-1945
Cultural Changes: 1920-1945
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Breakdown of the Victorian Code
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Review
Youth and Women
New Expectations
Why Did the Victorian Code Break Down?
1. Dis-illusioning Effect of World War I
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Gertrude Stein: The Lost Generation
Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises
Erich Maria Remarque: All Quiet On the Western Front
Dalton Trumbo: Johnny Got His Gun
Cultural Changes: 1920-1945
2. De-Moralizing Impact of Science
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Sigmund Freud’s New Psychology: The New Image of
Man—Deterministic
Albert Einstein and the New Physics: The New Image of
the Physical World. E=mc2
Manhattan Project: Building an atomic bomb
3. Accelerating urbanization triggers a 1920s cultural
war
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Prohibition “The Noble Experiment”
Crusade Against Darwinism. Scopes Trial (1925)
First Red Scare
Nativism. The 1924 National Origins Act
Ku Klux Klan. Intimidation & violence
Cultural Changes: 1920-1945
4. High School as a wedge between parents &
children
5. Commercialization of American Values
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Transmission belts for new values: Motion
pictures & Radio
Marketing techniques: Credit and Advertising
Critique in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
6. New Religious Standards
– Critique of Optimism of previous era
– Christian Realism (Neo-orthodoxy) of Reinhold
Niebuhr
Cultural Changes: 1920-1945
7. Dis-illusioning impact of Great Depression
– “Grand illusion” of 1920s-unlimited material
progress
– Depression decade raised serious questions
Laissez Public Policies of the 1920s
1. Reduction in Government spending to prevent
government from overpowering business
2. Reduction in income and related taxes to encourage
business investment
3. End Government competition with private business
4. Encourage consolidation in business to make
business more efficient
5. Return to protecting the American market by a
policy of protective tariffs
6. Weaken power of organized labor
Coming of the Great Depression
• What was the Great Depression?
– Anecdotal evidence
– Statistically measuring the Great Depression
• Gross National Product
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1929
1931
1932
1933
1934
1936
104.4
89.5
76.4
74.2
80.8
100.9
1937
1938
1940
109.1
103.2
121.0
Coming of the Great Depression
• Unemployment
– 1929
– 1933
– 1940
@5%
25%
15%
• What conclusion can we draw? Try this: The Great
Depression was a period of time when the
American economy went into a slump and stayed
in a slump for a long period of time (about a
decade) with some recovery after 1933.
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Coming of the Great Depression
What caused the Great Depression?
1. Purchasing power thesis: Inadequate purchasing
power
2. Financial Weaknesses in the United States
• Overeliance on consumer credit: $2.5 to $8.1 b
• Weak banking system. Centered in rural areas
• Stock Market: Overeliance on credit? Role of this
institution
– Looking at the Great Bull Market:Late 1927 to Fall 1929
– Looking at the Crash and aftermath
– Effect of Crash: Weakened both consumer & business
confidence in continued prosperity
Coming of the Great Depression
3. International finance unstable
– Root of instability in World War I—U.S. the great
creditor nation. International debt structure
– Triangular relationship
– European collapse in 1930-1
Fighting the Great Depression
1. Herbert Hoover’s War on the Depression
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Hoover’s great vulnerability. Positive characteristics
overstated
Myth of Herbert Hoover as the “do-nothing”
President
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1931-Reconstruction Finance Corporation disproves the
myth
1932-Failing presidency as positive image collapses
Fighting the Great Depression
2. Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal
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Roosevelt, the man
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Family Connections, early political experience, effects of
bout with polio
Emergence of Roosevelt in the 1920s
1932 Election
Roosevelt in office
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Financial Collapse in early 1933
First Week in Office: March 4-12 1933
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Inaugural speech
Bank Holiday
Congress & the Emergency Banking Act of 1933
Fireside Chat, March 11
Fighting the Great Depression
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Three “Rs” of the New Deal
1. Relief
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Concept of Work Relief
1933-Civilian Conservation Corps
1935-Works Progress Association-In what ways was
the WPA innovative?
2. Reform
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Agricultural Adjustment Act. Farming as a subsidized
industry. Why?
American Welfare State
• Function
• Social Security Act. See old age & unemployment
Banking Act of 1933 (aka Glass-Steagall Act)
Fighting the Great Depression
3. Reconstruction
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Leaving the gold standard to stimulate economic growth
with government spending
Foreign Policy: 1920-1945
1. Central Problem: Could the U.S. find a
substitute for collective security?
2. Unilateralist decade: the 1920s
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Unilateralism:
Washington Conference: November 1921: Arms
limitation agreement, but no binding U.S.
commitment
Clark Memorandum (1927): U.S. repudiated the
Roosevelt Corollary and began a turn toward a
Good Neighbor Policy
Foreign Policy: 1920-1945
3. Isolationism: 1930-1939
• Isolationism
• Stimson Doctrine: 1931
• Neutrality Legislation: mid-1930s
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Initial U.S. response to a global slide toward war
Influence of U.S. decision to go to war in 1917
4. World War II
• Initial U.S. response: Neutrality
• Shift to non-belligerency: 1940-1. Important
implementation was Lend-Lease
Foreign Policy: 1920-1945
4. World War II (Cont.)
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U.S. entry into World War II: December 1941
U.S. and the war in Europe: Grand Alliance –
Collective Security in action
U.S. and the war in the Pacific: Mainly an American
show (but remember China)