9. 1933 was a bad year for millions, from unemployed Americans struggling through the Depression to Germany’s Jews who saw Hitler named dictator.
The year 1933 was a miserable one for millions of ordinary people all around the world. What’s more, looking back, it’s clear that the year marked a wider descent into dictatorship and towards war and genocide. For many Americans, it began with poverty and uncertainty. The Great Depression, which had begun with the Wall Street Crash four years earlier, reached its peak. Some 15 million Americans were unemployed – around 1 in 4 adults – and half the nation’s banks had defaulted. On the plus side, President Roosevelt was elected and began to turn things around, while beer was also made legal again!
Things were nowhere near so good in Germany. In February of 1933, the national parliament, the Reichstag, burned down. A Jewish man was blamed, and the Nazis used this as an excuse to tighten their grip on power. That March, the Enabling Act was passed, effectively confirming Hitler as all-powerful dictator. More ominously, 1933 also saw the opening of the first Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, while trade unions were banned, books burned, Jewish businesses boycotted, and the feared Gestapo secret police established. Meanwhile, Japan quit the League of Nations. Looking back, it can be argued 1933 set the world on the path to unavoidable war.