ABSTRACT
The fall in agricultural prices, the collapse of global trade, and the Central European banking crisis had a catastrophic impact on Eastern Europe. However, although the Great Depression caused profound economic damage, it is impossible to insulate its chronology from the broader interwar crisis that stretched from the end of World War I to the beginning of World War II. World War I had shattered Europe’s very economic foundations. In Eastern Europe, this was aggravated by the dramatic territorial reconfiguration brought about by imperial collapse and the postwar peace treaties. Bulgaria lost its granary, Dobruja, to Romania. Austria and Hungary were cut off from the former Habsburg Empire’s industrial heartlands. Poland’s territory consisted of vastly different developed regions. Outside of the region, this trend toward smaller territories and smaller economic units was interpreted as depreciation, particularism, and irrationality and, increasingly, as a problem that affected the economic recovery of Europe more broadly.
