Skip to main content

How did the worldwide effects of the Great Depression cause World War II?

There are at least two ways in which the effects of the Great Depression helped cause WWII. First, they helped lay the foundation for the rise of fascism/Nazism in Germany and of militarism in Japan. Secondly, they devastated the economies of the US, France, and the UK. This caused those countries to be preoccupied with domestic economic issues and less interested in foreign affairs.


The Great Depression caused great harm to economies around the world. In some countries, the economic harm led people to accept political radicals because they were desperate for someone to fix their economic troubles. In Germany, this meant that people were willing to support the Nazis. In Japan, people supported more militaristic politicians. In both cases, these new leaders brought their countries into war.


Even in countries that did not become radicalized, the Great Depression had a significant impact.  Politicians in the US, Great Britain, and France stopped worrying so much about foreign affairs and focused almost solely on trying to improve their own economies. This meant they were willing to let Germany and Japan get away with aggressive actions such as the German rearmament and the Japanese incursions into China. These governments looked the other way, allowing Germany and Japan to get stronger to the point where they were ready to go to war.


The effects of the Great Depression, then, brought war-hngry leaders to power in Germany and Japan and caused leaders in the US, France, and Britain to ignore Japanese and German aggression until it was too late.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more