1930s


The 1930s was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1930, and ended on December 31, 1939.
The decade was defined by a global economic and political crisis that culminated in the Second World War. It saw the international financial system collapse, beginning with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the largest stock market crash in American history, and an economic downfall called the Great Depression that had a traumatic effect worldwide, leading to widespread unemployment and poverty, especially in the United States, an economic superpower, and Germany, who had to deal with the reparations regarding World War I. The Dust Bowl in the United States further emphasised the scarcity of wealth. Herbert Hoover worsened the situation with his failed attempt to balance the budget by taxes. Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected, as a response, in 1933, and introduced the New Deal. The founding of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the funding of numerous projects helped restore prosperity in the US.
The decade also saw the rapid retreat of Liberal democracy, as authoritarian regimes emerged in countries across Europe and South America, in particular the Third Reich in Germany. Germany elected Adolf Hitler, who imposed the Nuremberg Laws, a series of laws which discriminated against Jews and other ethnic minorities. Weaker states such as Ethiopia, China, and Poland were invaded by expansionist world powers, the last of these attacks leading to the outbreak of the World War II on September 1, 1939, despite calls from the League of Nations for worldwide peace. World War II helped end the Great Depression when governments spent money for the war effort. The 1930s also saw a proliferation of new technologies, especially in the fields of intercontinental aviation, radio, and film.

Politics and wars

Wars

Germany - Rise of [Nazism]

Hertzog of South Africa, whose National Party had won the 1929 election alone, after splitting with the Labour Party, received much of the blame for the devastating economic impact of the depression.

Americas

airship Hindenburg exploding in 1937
dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, in 1935
Prominent assassinations, targeted killings, and assassination attempts include:

Technology

Many technological advances occurred in the 1930s, including:

Literature and art

In the art of film making, the Golden Age of Hollywood entered a whole decade, after the advent of talking pictures in 1927 and full-color films in 1930: more than 50 classic films were made in the 1930s:
most notable were Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz.
In 1930, Howard Hughes produces Hell's Angels, the first movie blockbuster to be produced outside of a professional studio, independently, as well as becoming the most expensive movie made, at that time, costing roughly 4 million dollars, and taking four years to make. Hell's Angels was an epic masterpiece, valued, and relative to the people at those specific times, of harsh war.

Radio

The most characteristic North American fashion trend from the 1930s to 1945 was attention at the shoulder, with butterfly sleeves and banjo sleeves, and exaggerated shoulder pads for both men and women by the 1940s. The period also saw the first widespread use of man-made fibers, especially rayon for dresses and viscose for linings and lingerie, and synthetic nylon stockings. The zipper became widely used. These essentially U.S. developments were echoed, in varying degrees, in Britain and Europe. Suntans became fashionable in the early 1930s, along with travel to the resorts along the Mediterranean, in the Bahamas, and on the east coast of Florida where one can acquire a tan, leading to new categories of clothes: white dinner jackets for men and beach pajamas, halter tops, and bare midriffs for women.
Fashion trendsetters in the period included The Prince of Wales and his companion Wallis Simpson, socialites like Nicolas de Gunzburg, Daisy Fellowes and Mona von Bismarck and such Hollywood movie stars as Fred Astaire, Carole Lombard and Joan Crawford.

Architecture

became an important art movement during the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s. Social realism generally portrayed imagery with socio-political meaning. Other related American artistic movements of the 1930s were American scene painting and Regionalism which were generally depictions of rural America, and historical images drawn from American history. Precisionism with its depictions of industrial America was also a popular art movement during the 1930s in the USA. During the Great Depression the art of photography played an important role in the Social Realist movement. The work of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, Lewis Hine, Edward Steichen, Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Wolcott, Doris Ulmann, Berenice Abbott, Aaron Siskind, Russell Lee, Ben Shahn among several others were particularly influential.
The Works Progress Administration part of the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal sponsored the Federal Art Project, the Public Works of Art Project, and the Section of Painting and Sculpture which employed many American artists and helped them to make a living during the Great Depression.
Mexican muralism was a Mexican art movement that took place primarily in the 1930s. The movement stands out historically because of its political undertones, the majority of which of a Marxist nature, or related to a social and political situation of post-revolutionary Mexico. Also in Latin America Symbolism and Magic Realism were important movements.
In Europe during the 1930s and the Great Depression, Surrealism, late Cubism, the Bauhaus, De Stijl, Dada, German Expressionism, Symbolist and modernist painting in various guises characterized the art scene in Paris and elsewhere.

World leaders

Actors / Entertainers

Influential artists

Painters and sculptors

Global

Prominent criminals of the Great Depression:
The following articles contain brief timelines which list the most prominent events of the decade:
1930 • 1931 • 1932 • 1933 • 1934 • 1935 • 1936 • 1937 • 1938 • 1939