1930s
The 1930s was a decade that began on January 1, 1930, and ended on December 31, 1939. In the United States, the Dust Bowl led to the nickname the "Dirty Thirties".
The decade was defined by a global economic and political crisis that culminated in the Second World War. It saw the collapse of the international financial system, beginning with the Wall Street crash of 1929, the largest stock market crash in American history. The subsequent economic downfall, called the Great Depression, had traumatic social effects worldwide, leading to widespread poverty and unemployment, especially in the economic superpower of the United States and in Germany, which was already struggling with the payment of reparations for the First World War. The Dust Bowl in the United States exacerbated the scarcity of wealth. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took office in 1933, introduced a program of broad-scale social reforms and stimulus plans called the New Deal in response to the crisis. The Soviet Union's second five-year plan gave heavy industry top priority, putting the Soviet Union not far behind Germany as one of the major steel-producing countries of the world, while also improving communications. First-wave feminism made advances, with women gaining the right to vote in South Africa, Brazil, and Cuba. Following the rise of Adolf Hitler and the emergence of the NSDAP as the country's sole legal party in 1933, Germany imposed a series of laws which discriminated against Jews and other ethnic minorities.
Germany adopted an aggressive foreign policy, remilitarizing the Rhineland, annexing Austria and the Sudetenland, before invading Poland and starting World War II near the end of the decade. Italy likewise continued its already aggressive foreign policy, defeating the Libyan resistance before invading Ethiopia and then Albania. Both Germany and Italy became involved in the Spanish Civil War, supporting the eventually victorious Nationalists led by Francisco Franco against the Republicans, who were in turn supported by the Soviet Union. The Chinese Civil War was halted due to the need to confront Japanese imperial ambitions, with the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party forming a Second United Front to fight Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War. Lesser conflicts included interstate wars such as the Colombia–Peru War, the Chaco War and the Saudi–Yemeni War, as well as internal conflicts in Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador, Austria and British Palestine.
Severe famine took place in the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union between 1930 and 1933, leading to 5.7 to 8.7 million deaths. Major contributing factors to the famine include: the forced collectivization in the Soviet Union of agriculture as a part of the First Five-Year Plan, forced grain procurement, combined with rapid industrialization, a decreasing agricultural workforce, and several severe droughts. A famine of similar scope also took place in China from 1936 to 1937, killing 5 million people. The 1931 China floods caused 422,499–4,000,000 deaths. Major earthquakes of this decade include the 1935 Quetta earthquake and the 1939 Erzincan earthquake.
With the advent of sound in 1927, the musical—the genre best placed to showcase the new technology—took over as the most popular type of film with audiences, with the animated musical fantasy film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs becoming the highest-grossing film of this decade in terms of gross rentals. In terms of distributor rentals, Gone with the Wind, an epic historical romance film, was the highest-grossing film of this decade and remains the highest-grossing film to this day. Popularity of comedy films boomed after the Silent era with popular comedians The Three Stooges and Marx Brothers. Popular novels of this decade include the historical fiction novels The Good Earth, ''Anthony Adverse and Gone with the Wind'', all three of which were best-selling novels in the United States for 2 consecutive years. Cole Porter was a popular music artist in the 1930s, with two of his songs, "Night and Day" and "Begin the Beguine" becoming No. 1 hits in 1932 and 1935 respectively. The latter song was of the Swing genre, which had begun to emerge as the most popular form of music in the United States since 1933.
The world population increased from 2.05 to 2.25 billion people during the decade, with about 750 million births and 550 million deaths.
Politics and wars
Wars
- Colombia–Peru War – fought between the Republic of Colombia and the Republic of Peru
- Chaco War – fought between Bolivia and Paraguay over the disputed territory of Gran Chaco, resulting in a Paraguayan victory in 1935; an agreement dividing the territory was made in 1938, formally ending the conflict
- Saudi–Yemeni War – fought between Saudi Arabia and the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen
- Second Italo-Ethiopian War
- Second Sino-Japanese War – fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. It was the largest Asian war of the 20th century, and made up more than 50% of the casualties in the Pacific theater of World War II.
- World War II – global war centered in Europe and the Pacific but involving the majority of the world's countries, including all of the major powers such as Germany, Russia, America, Italy, Japan, France and the United Kingdom.
Internal conflicts
- Chinese Civil War – The ruling Kuomintang and the rebel Chinese Communist Party fought a civil war for control of China. The Communists consolidated territory in the early 1930s and proclaimed a short-lived Chinese Soviet Republic that collapsed upon Kuomintang attacks, forcing a mass retreat known as the Long March. The Kuomintang and Communists attempted to put away their differences after 1937 to fight the Japanese invasion of China, but intermittent clashes continued through the remainder of the 1930s. Even with some clashes they all fought the Japanese.
- 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.
- Spanish Civil War – Germany and Italy backed the anti-communist Falange forces of Francisco Franco. The Soviet Union and international communist parties backed the left-wing republican faction in the war. The war ended in April 1939 with Franco's nationalist forces defeating the republican forces. Franco became Head of State of Spain and President of Government, and the Republic of Spain gave way to the Spanish State, an authoritarian dictatorship.
- The Argentine government of Hipólito Yrigoyen is overthrown by forces loyal to General José Féliz Uriburu in 1930, the coup marked the start of the Infamous Decade.
Major political changes
Germany – Rise of Nazism
- The NSDAP under Adolf Hitler wins the German federal election, March 1933. Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany. Night of the Long Knives with 85 victims, Following the 1934 death in office of Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany, Hitler's cabinet passes a law proclaiming the presidency vacant and transferring the role and powers of the head of state to Hitler, hereafter known as Führer und Reichskanzler. The Weimar Republic effectively gives way to Nazi Germany, a totalitarian autocratic national socialist dictatorship committed to repudiating the Treaty of Versailles, persecuting and removing Jews and other minorities from German society, expanding Germany's territory, and opposing the spread of communism.
- Hitler pulls Germany out of the League of Nations, but hosts the 1936 Summer Olympics to show his new Reich to the world as well as the supposed superior athleticism of his Aryan troops/athletes.
- Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, attempts the appeasement of Hitler in hope of avoiding war by allowing the dictator to annex the Sudetenland and later signing the Munich Agreement and promising constituents "Peace for our time". He is ousted in favor of Winston Churchill in May 1940, following the German invasion of Norway.
- The assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a German-born Polish Jew triggers the Kristallnacht which occurred between 9 and 10 November 1938, carried out by the Hitler Youth, the Gestapo, and the SS, during which much of the Jewish population living in Nazi Germany and Austria was attacked – 91 Jews were murdered, and between 25,000 and 30,000 more were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Some 267 synagogues were destroyed, and thousands of homes and businesses were ransacked. Kristallnacht also served as the pretext for the wholesale confiscation of firearms from German Jews.File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H12943, Münchener Abkommen, Hitler und Mussolini.jpg|thumb|Cheering crowds greet Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Munich, 1938
- Germany and Italy pursue territorial expansionist agendas. Germany demands the annexation of the Federal State of Austria and of other German-speaking territories in Europe. Between 1935 and 1936, Germany recovers the Saar and re-militarizes the Rhineland. Italy initially opposes Germany's aims for Austria, but in 1936 the two countries resolve their differences in the aftermath of Italy's diplomatic isolation following the start of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, and Germany becomes Italy's only remaining ally. Germany and Italy improve relations by forming an alliance against communism in 1936 with the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact. Germany annexes Austria in the Anschluss; the annexation of the Sudetenland follows negotiations which result in the Munich Agreement of 1938. The Italian invasion of Albania in 1939 succeeds in turning the Kingdom of Albania into an Italian protectorate. The vacant Albanian throne is claimed by Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. Germany receives the Memel territory from Lithuania, occupies what remains of Czechoslovakia, and finally invades the Second Polish Republic, the last of these events resulting in the outbreak of World War II.
- In 1939, several countries of the Americas, including Canada, Cuba, and the United States, controversially deny asylum to hundreds of German Jewish refugees on board the MS St. Louis who are fleeing the Nazi regime's racist agenda of anti-Semitic persecution in Germany. In the end, no country accepts the refugees, and the ship returns to Germany with most of its passengers on board. Some commit suicide, rather than return to Nazi Germany.