Did the great depression only affect the US or did it also affect other countries?
~The Depression is one of the leading factors behind Adolph Hitler’s rise to power. It also played a role in the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. The US was not as hard hit as were many other countries. The causes are many but the primary ones were the idiotic policies of the Federal Reserve (first flooding the economy with money, then cutting the supply at the very time an influx was most needed) and of the Stock Exchange (margin accounts only needed a 10% deposit), and the resultant crash of October 29, 1929 (Black Tuesday). When the US economy collapsed, the world economy followed. The UK decision to return to the Gold Standard played a major role as well. So too did the Draconian measures of the Treaty of Versailles. What could have been simply a recession, a typical periodic economic adjustment, was then fueled by a curtailment of credit that killed consumer buying which shut down industry as well as the world wide drought that started in 1930 (The Dust Bowl should ring a bell). Pa
