1928 consumer spending falling,
slowdown in construction;
Black Monday, October
28, 1929 - Great Crash.
Oct.-Dec. 1929, unemployment
jumped from under 500,000 to over 4 million.
1931, 5000 banks closed,
NY Stock Exchange,
Chicago Board of Trade shut down.
1933 15 million out of
work, over 25% unemployment.
1929-1933, GNP fell 29%,
construction down 78%, manufacturing down 54%.
Steel industry 12% of
capacity.
1932 Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.
"the only thing we
have to fear is fear itself".
New Deal,
Tennessee Valley
Authority (TVA)
Arthur Morgan,
Army Corps of Engineers;
Rural Electrification
Administration
chemurgy
1939 New York World's
Fair - "The World of Tomorrow".
Trylon & Perisphere
Westinghouse
"Battle of the Centuries" - Mrs. Drudge vs. Mrs Modern)
DuPont "Wonder
World of Chemistry" – “better things for better living"
Westinghouse - Elektro
the Moto-Man,
RCA television
General Motors -
"Futurama"
1935 Mussolini invaded
Ethiopia,
1937 Japan invaded China.
1938 Hitler Austria
& Czechoslovakia.
1939 Axis military
alliance.
Hitler invaded Poland –
spring 1940 Germany
overruns Denmark, Norway, Belgium & Netherlands.
June, 1940 French army
fell apart
bomb attacks on London –
Churchill, "We
shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas & oceans, we shall fight
on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields, we shall never surrender."
June, 1941, German
forces invade USSR.
radar ("radio
detection & ranging").
German Luftwaffe 4,000
bombers, Royal Air Force 330 fighters;
"invisible
curtain"
1939, radar stations
every 25 miles.
December 7, 1941 Pearl
Harbor;
Germany & Italy then
declared war on US.
1944 U.S. 96,000 planes
per year –
1941-1945, 18 US
shipyards built 2708 Liberty ships
entire ship built 63
hours - standardization.
1942 Office of
Scientific Research & Development (OSRD)
"I don't think we
could continue the war without the jeep.
It does everything. It goes
everywhere. It's as faithful as a
dog, as strong as a mule, & as agile as a goat. It constantly carries twice what it was designed for &
still keeps on going. It can turn
on a dime & leave nine cents change.
Riding in one feels like falling downstairs, & it takes 24 hours to
stop shaking, but it's not so bad after you get used to it."
1940 entire US army 12,000
motor vehicles - within five years, over 600,000 jeeps.
June 6, 1944 D-Day –
April 30, 1945 Hitler
committed suicide.
May 4, 1945, Germany
surrendered