13. France during the Great Depression
Perhaps no other European nation other than Belgium suffered greater damage to its infrastructure than France during World War I. Yet the Great Depression was felt less there than in most of the rest of Western Europe. France, unlike the rest of the Western economies, was not struck with a severe banking crisis, nor even a mild one, in terms of reduced credit and runs on banks. The French economy was more self-sufficient than that of its allies, which relied on trade for economic survival. French farms fed the French people, French factories provided them with French built automobiles and consumer products, which were carried on French railroads. French investors for the most part did not speculate in stocks during the 1920s, instead putting their money into gold during the years of the Roaring Twenties, which established them in the market which became a refuge after stocks collapsed.
The French also did not see the rampant unemployment which struck during the depression of the 1930s, in part because the French workforce had suffered so badly during the First World War. The relative lack of manpower allowed the French economy to operate at nearly full employment throughout the economic downturn of the 1930s. It also drove the French to modernize business operations to achieve peak production with fewer workers well ahead of the Americans and the British. France led the world, or nearly did so, in the production of raw materials such as iron and coal, despite having reduced work forces in nearly all industries for much of the 1930s. Before the end of the 1930s, and the German invasion in the spring of 1940, France became the largest holder of gold bullion in the world, not so much surviving the Great Depression as avoiding its worst effects.