Many volumes could be written about the super-crisis of 1929-33 and the Great Depression. Among the subjects that would have to be dealt with would be the nature of European fascism and Roosevelt’s New Deal in the United States. I obviously cannot do this in these posts. I will simply highlight the most important economic events of the 1930s with special emphasis on the United States, the leading capitalist—and imperialist—country.
Of all the major capitalist nations, the United States was hardest hit by the super-crisis. Why was this? Before attempting to answer, how do I measure the relative severity of the super-crisis in individual capitalist countries?
The relative severity can be measured by the level of industrial production in 1932—the global trough of the economic cycle—as a percentage of the industrial production of 1929, which represented the peak of the 1920-1929 international industrial cycle.
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