The document discusses the Great Depression and WWII. It describes how both events had major impacts on the global economy and led countries like the US and Germany to adopt new approaches to economic policy under Roosevelt's New Deal and Hitler's leadership. Both leaders launched large public works programs and jobs initiatives to tackle unemployment, displaying similarities in their responses to the worldwide economic crisis.

1. Comparative History
WWII
Great Depression
By. Megan Foster

2. An Ocean Apart
• Otto Freidrich has written, WWII “changed Americans from a nation of provincial innocents…
ignorant of the great world… into a nation that would often have to bear the burden’s of rescuing
the world.
• The after math of the war brought the collapse of all overseas Western empires, a cold war
between communist an noncommunist nations, and, finally, the arrival of Japan at worlds economic
and political center
• Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill put aside disputes and prejudices to forge an alliance that
committed the U.S. to join the war effort and to take up Britain's role as policeman after the war
• Winston Churchill dubbed WWII as the “unnecessary war”
• By the early 1930’s the world economy had collapsed into depression
• Franklin D. Roosevelt has lost faith in the League of Nations
• Roosevelt still believed U.S. should have influence in the cause of world peace
• In 1937 Roosevelt compared war to an infectious disease whose spread could be prevented only by
putting the aggressors in “quarantine” through diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions
• The English Channel was no barrier to the growing German Air Force
• Since deterrence seemed impossible, British leaders adopted a policy of appeasement
• Appeasement was a policy of Torydominated National Government throughout the 1930’s
• Many underestimated Hitler's long-term ambitions and exaggerated Germany’s immediate military
strength
• The British Dominions were isolationist, France was in turmoil, and Russia was engulfed in Stalin’s
bloody purges

3. • Prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, gave Hitler half of Czechoslovakia in
exchange for pledges that he would make no further territorial demands
and that Britain and Germany would never fight each other again
• Roosevelt worried if any agreement with Hitler would stick
• Relations between the two governments improved during 1939
• Americans applauded Britain's decision to end appeasement after Hitler
took the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March 1939
• On the night of August 31, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, ignoring Britain's
ultimatum, and 3 days later Britain and France declared war
• Roosevelt made it clear at once that American sympathies lay with the
allies
• Neutrality was Americas official policy
• Roosevelt secured repeal of the arms embargo
• Britain could now buy whatever she wanted, as long as she paid cash and
arranged delivery
• May 10, Germany invaded Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, and
Northern France
• At 6 that night, the British Prime Minister resigned, Winston Churchill was
his successor

4. • Churchill was weary of asking the U.S. for help due to the financial cost
of WWI, eventually deciding, “we must ask… as a matter of life or
death… to be reinforced with their destroyers”
• The Presidents military advisors were particularly reluctant to see much
given away
• In April of 1940 U.S. ranked among Worlds Military Powers
• By middle of August Roosevelt felt able to act
• Britain could have the destroyers, but would have to offered something
in return
• President wanted 99 year leases on 8 British possessions in the
Americas, stretching from Newfoundland to the Caribbean, to build U.S.
Naval bases and to strengthen it’s own defenses.
• September 2, 1940 “destroyers for bases” deal signed
• The morning of December 7th, Japanese planes bombed American base,
sinking or immobilizing 8 American Battleships and leaving 2400 dead
• September 4, a U-Boat attacked U.S. Destroyer Greer, and Roosevelt
used the opportunity to announce a state of virtual, though still
undeclared, naval war
• America declared war on Japan, and Hitler in turn, declared war on
America

5. Race War: American & Japanese
Perceptions of the Enemy
• WWII was the costliest and deadliest war in human history
• 19 million soldiers were killed in the fighting, 300,000 were American (less than 2%)
• Few questioned the justice of fighting Nazi’s or retaliating against Japan
• Anti-German propaganda concentrated on evil figure of Adolf Hitler, in the pacific, venom was directed at
Japanese in general
• Japanese were designated as monkeys, children, “little men”, or simply “yellow bastards”
• Americans today view WWII as atrocious and racist due to Nazi genocide of Jews, however when the war was
being fought, the enemy Americans perceived as most atrocious was not the Germans but the Japanese
• Americans were obsessed with the uniquely evil nature of the Japanese
• Japan’s aggression stirred the deepest recesses of white suprimism and provoked a response bordering the
apocalyptic
• Hollywood introduced good Germans as well as Nazi’s but almost never showed a “good Japanese”
• Popular song inspired by Pearl Harbor was titled “There’ll be no Adolf Hitler, nor Yellow Japs to Fear”
• It took Pearl Harbor and Singapore to destroy the myth cherished by Caucasians that the Japanese were poor
navigators and inept pilots and unimaginative strategists
• Japanese were viewed as sub-human: they were little men, inferior to the white Westerner in every physical,
moral, and intellectual way. They were also collectively primitive, childish, and mad
• At the same time, Japanese were portrayed as supermen
• Fighting Japanese in the jungle was like going after “small game in the woods back home” or tracking down a
predatory animal

6. • Psychology of the hunt became indistinguishable from a
broader psychology of extermination and came to a point of
having no qualms about extending the kill from the
battlefield, to the civilian population in Japan
• Japanese were vermin, apes, monkeys, “jaundiced baboons”
• On Iwo Jima, press found some marines went into battle with
“Rodent Exterminator” stenciled on their helmets
• Most popular float in a New York victory parade in mid 1942
was titled “Tokyo: We are Coming” and depicted bombs
falling on a frantic pack of yellow rats
• Before Pearl harbor, it was common wisdom among
westerners that the Japanese could not shoot, sail, or fly very
well
• British intelligence reported Japanese could not think
imaginatively because of the enormous amount of energy
required to memorize the ideographic writing system dulled
their brain and killed the spark of creativity
• Nothing in the “rational” min-set of Western leaders prepared
them for the audacity and skill of Japan’s attack

7. Into the Economic Abyss
• A spectacular, record breaking global boom from about 18550 to the early 1870’s had been
followed by the twenty odd years of the world economy…then another evidently secular forward
surge of the world economy
• History of the world economy since the Industrial Revolution has been one of accelerating
technological progress, of continuous but uneven economic growth and of increasing
“globalization”
• In the 15years before 1914 almost 15 millions has landed in the U.S. in the next 15, flow shrank 5 ½
millions, in the 19030’s and the war years it came to an almost complete stop
• Private savings disappeared totally, thus crating an almost complete vacuum of working capital for
business
• When the great inflation ended in 1922-23, people in Germany who had relied on fixed incomes
and savings were wiped out
• The roaring 1920’s were not a golden age on the farms of USA
• Unemployment in most of Western Europe remained pathologically high
• At the worst period of the Slump(1932-33) 22-23% of British and Belgium labor force, 24% of
Swedish, 27% of U.S., 29% of Austrians, 31% of Norwegian, 32% of Danish and no less then 44% of
German workers were out of jobs
• The only Eastern state which succeeded in eliminating unemployment was Nazi Germany between
1933 and 1938
• Even in the country most fully covered by Unemployment Insurance schemes before the
Slump(Great Britain) less than 60% of the labor force were covered

8. • The Great Slump destroyed economic liberalism for
half a century
• The Great Slump forced Western governments to give
social considerations priority over economic ones in
their state policies
• A prophylactic measure taken was the installation of
modern welfare systems
• U.S. passed Social Security Act in 1935
• By 1913 USA had become largest economy in the
world, producing over 1/3 of it’s industrial output
• In 1929 USA produced 42% of total world output
• U.S. steel production rose by about ¼ between 1913
and 1920
• Steel production in the rest of the world fell by about
1/3

9. Roosevelt & Hitler: New Deal and the
Nazi Reactions to the Depression
• Unemployment was in the area of 25% of the workforce
• January 30, 1933 Adolf Hitler became chancellor
• March 4, 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt took oath as President
of U.S.
• Their rise marked the beginning of the end of the Great
Depression
• Their method and personalities had enormous effects on
the entire world
• For some reason, Roosevelt and Hitler were especially
appealing to their social and economic opposites
• Hitler inspired awe among millions of ordinary Germans
• Roosevelt and Hitler were masters at speaking on the radio
• Depression oriented policies of New America and Nazi
Germany displayed many remarkable similarities

10. • Gave providing aid to unemployed top priority
• Nazi’s offered subsidies and tax rebates to private
companies that hired new workers
• Granted marriage loans to persuade women to leave the
work force and to encourage consumer spending
• Launched a huge public works program that included
numerous railroad and navigation projects, building and
repair of private homes, construction of public buildings,
and the motorization program that involved the design and
production of the Autobahn Network
• Both opened work camps
• By 1935 and 1936 both governments were abandoning
corporatism and taking a more anti-big-business stance
• New Deal was more successful in solving farm problems
• Nazi efforts on behalf of farm laborers were more effective
than those of the New Deal

11. • At the end of Roosevelt’s first year in office, Hitler
sent him a private message through diplomatic
channels offering sincere congratulations for “his
heroic efforts in the interest of the American
people. The president’s successful battle against
economic distress is being followed by the entire
German people with interest and admiration”
• Neither regime solved the problem of
maintaining prosperity without war
• German leaders wanted war and used economy
to make it possible
• American’s lacked this motivation. But when war
was forced upon them, they took the same
approach