ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the causes and immediate effects of the 1929 stock market crash and its effects around the world. It examines both intellectual and government policy responses to the events of 1929, and while the vast majority of the Great Depression took place in the 1930s, the foundations of what would come later were laid in the final months of the 1920s. In Germany, Hitler's National Socialist Party would come to power on a combination of resentment toward the Treaty of Versailles, the mass unemployment that resulted from the 1929 crash, and promises to take radical action to rebuild the country. The effect of the crash was felt even more immediately in Germany. By the early 1930s, industrial production in Germany had fallen by nearly half. The crisis that began on Wall Street in October 1929 would not come to its complete fruition until the final surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945.
