The United States of America, 1918–1939
After the First World War the USA turned from a debtor of Europe into its creditor, and in the 1920s electrical engineering, cars, chemicals, radio and film grew rapidly. Mass production spread cars, radios and refrigerators, but wealth was unevenly shared and many people bought shares on credit on the stock market. On 24 October 1929 the fall on the New York Stock Exchange began the crisis: in 1929–1932 industrial output fell by roughly half and unemployment reached about 13 million. President Herbert Hoover (1929–1933) tried to limit state intervention; in 1932 Franklin Roosevelt was elected and from 1933 launched the New Deal: bank regulation, large public works, relief for the unemployed and, in 1935, the Social Security Act. In foreign policy the USA relied on isolationism, passed neutrality laws in the 1930s, established diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1933 and entered the war only after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.
“Roosevelt on the radio”: students explain the aims of the New Deal to the public in five sentences in the style of a 1933 radio talk; the class checks the sentences against facts.