×
Create a new article
Write your page title here:
We currently have 10,670 articles on Polandball Wiki. Type your article name above or create one of the articles listed here!



    Polandball Wiki
    (Redirected from The Great Depression)

    Great Depression was the worst economic depression, ever. It affected  Germanyball's economy the worst. Many countryballs were affected by this event. The only countries that were less affected were those that had a separate economic network not connected to the global international File:Capitalism-icon (ideologyballs).png capitalist economy; countries like this were  Fascist Italy and the Stalinist Soviet Union. The recession started in October of 1929 in Wall Street, New Yorkball, USAball, and ended in September of 1939, when the nations involved in World War II conscripted their populations, still with enormous amounts of unemployment ending the last effects of the recession.

    History

    Background

    In the year 1918 the last standing member of the Central Powers, Germany, surrendered to the Entente, marking the end of World War I. This gave start to the peace negotiations, peace negotiations that would change forever the history of humanity. USAball started an initciative to prevent a war like this from ever happening again, "The League of Nations", an organizationball that would try to dissolve diplomatically disputes between countryballs and it would be dissolved in 1920 at Ginebra. Franceball and Belgiumball had been devastated by World War I, didn't even try to negotiate a moderate solution with the Germans. After the humiliating treaties imposed by the allies to the Central Powers the German population started to get angry, which would defeneatly not result in unpleasnt results...

    When all the allied soldiers returned to their homes, the rapid change from a War Economy to a Civil Economy caused sequels to some countryballs. The Weimar Republicball in order to pay their debt with Franceball and UKball came up with the amazing idea of printing money. But printing money doesn't make you richer but instead make the value of your currency less. This phenomenon is called inflation. And in 1920 one  US Dollar went from being worth one  German Mark to being worth 3 Million  German Marks in 1923. To put it into perspective, in 1920 if you bought a  German Sausage for 1 mark, now in 1923 it would cost you 3 Million. The  German economy had collapsed.

    Now that the Weimar Republicball couldn't pay the  French and the  Belgians, they occupied the Rhineland to exploit their   economic resources as a payment method. During this occupation many  German miners were File:†-icon.png assassinated by  french soldiers which this would make even more angry the already furious German population.

    In the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the Americans were living the high life due to that they had been selling weapons to European countries during World War I, this period was known as the "Happy 20's" in the US. There was jazz, music, cartoons, cinema and things were going so well that the middle class started to invest in market actions. This worked the following way: The typical [[File: Hat-icon.png]] "Joe" goes to a bank and asks for a loan promising that he will get his money back as he would invest it in the market. Now [[File: Hat-icon.png]] "Joe" invests in his favourite company, " Obama Industries I.N.C". As more and more people buy actions, the action that [[File: Hat-icon.png]] "Joe" bought now is worth 10 US Dollars more. He sells those actions and uses the 10 extra dollars to buy some nice flowers for his wife. This was the start of the  American Stock Exchange.

    In 1924 Vice-president of the United States of America,  "Charles Dawes" started to help economically the Weimar Republic  with the well known "Dawes Plan". The objective of this plan was to give loans to Germany so that they could pay their debt with the UK and France, which would give back the loan to the US while paying their debt, and as long as nothing changed the countries in this endless circle would get richer. In 1924 the Weimar Republicball was allowed in the League of Nations, err I mean Society of Nations, and the allies started to respect the Weimar Republicball as a Country as part of the "Locarlo Agreedments". All of this gave "Charles Dawes" the  Nobel Price in 1925.

    Crash

    Until the 24th of October everything was going good in Wall Street, until the actions were so high that nobody could afford to buy them, not even with bank loans. And everyone started to sell their actions. And prices suddently fell really fastly in what's known today as the "Crack of the 29". The wall street market had collapsed, without gains, investors couldn't return the money to the banks and the banks would not be able to pay the companies and soon the workers found themselves without money. This day was known as the "Black Thursday" and this same day at least File:†-icon.png 103 jumped off the Wall Street Building, taking their lives with them.

    Because of the Dawes Plan the German economy followed the collapse and so did Franceball and UKball. This started the crisis of the 30's. Many economists proposed plans to help the economy and one of the best examples was the plan made by the english economist "John Keynes" who proposed that the state needed to intervine in the economy a bit to estimulate the economy. These ideas were in conflict with the ideas of Adam Smith, who among others, had been the face of the dominant liberal thoughts inside of USAball's head.

    But the leaders of the main bank corporations united to change the trend of the economy, they inyected money in a serie of values that seemed stable, this was known as the "blue chips". Soon followed the millionarie "John D. Rockefeller", which they did. Now the economy was going up right when the crack had started. They invested great ammounts of money to make the stocks rise and make as well rise the confidence of investors and some newspapers said that the crisis of the stock market had "dissapeared", but this wasn't enough.

    After the recuperations that took place in Monday and Friday we arrive the 29th of October of 1929 or "Black Tuesday" when the economy truly collapsed, Republican President of the United States of America Herbert Hoover didn't know what to do. Unemployment skyrocketed and in the next 3 months 3,000 banks in the US alone would close. Shack neighbourhoods all over the US would appear and finnally it arrived to every place between Argentinaball and Australiaball. The UK abandoned the Gold Standard (measuring money by gold). In France unemployment rose and in a young soldier that fought in the Great War became the symbol of economic salvation and german stenght in Germany, his name was Adolf Hitler.

    In the next year  US president Roosvelt proposed and aproved multiple injections in the economy as a dust storm had also caused more economic recesion in the US, it damaged most of the American midwest ( Texasball, New Mexicoball, , Kansasball, Missouriball, Nebraskaball, Wyomingball, Montanaball, South Dakotaball, North Dakotaball and Iowaball). As the US economy rose because of changing to war mode in 1941, the Great Depression ended. 

    Cookies help us deliver our services. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies.

    Recent changes

  • URSS34 • 13 minutes ago
  • URSS34 • 14 minutes ago
  • URSS34 • 15 minutes ago
  • Icantthinkofanamexd • 20 minutes ago
  • Cookies help us deliver our services. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies.