1930's The Great Depression

  • J.Edgar Hoover Becomes Head of the FBI

    On May 10, 1924, Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone appointed the 29-year-old Hoover acting director of the Bureau, and by the end of the year Mr. Hoover was named Director. As Director, Mr. Hoover put into effect a number of institutional changes to correct criticisms made of his predecessor's administration.
  • Mein Kampf is Published

    Mein Kampf is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925.
  • Stock Market Crash Begins Great Depression

    Simply put, the stock market crash of 1929 caused the Great Depression because everyone lost money. Investors and businesses both put significant amounts of money into the market and when it crashed, tremendous amounts of money were lost. Businesses closed and people lost their savings.
  • The Dust Bowl Begins

    The Dust Bowl was the result of a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s.
  • Adolf Hitler Become Chancellor of Germany

    On 30 January 1933, the new cabinet was sworn in during a brief ceremony in Hindenburg's office. The NSDAP gained three posts: Hitler was named chancellor, Wilhelm Frick Minister of the Interior, and Hermann Göring, Minister Without Portfolio (and Minister of the Interior for Prussia).
  • Franklin Roosevelt is Elected President (1st Time)

    In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican president Herbert Hoover in a landslide.
  • CCC is Created

    The Civilian Conservation Corps was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28.
  • Germany Invades Poland

    The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, War of Poland of 1939, and Polish Defensive War of 1939, was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet Union; which marked the beginning of World War II.
  • WPA is Created

    The Works Progress Administration was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads it was set up on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal.
  • J.J. Braddock Wins Heavyweight Boxing Title

    Instead, on June 13, 1935, at Madison Square Garden Bowl, Braddock won the Heavyweight Championship of the World as the 10-to-1 underdog in what was called "the greatest fistic upset since the defeat of John L. Sullivan by Jim Corbett".
  • Olympic Games in Berlin

    The Berlin Games were only a partial success for the Nazis. Germany finished top of the medal table ahead of their main rivals, the United States, but the Americans dominated the Athletics events with African American Jesse Owens winning four gold medals ahead of his blond, Aryan rivals.
  • Kristallnacht

    Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung paramilitary and Schutzstaffel paramilitary forces
  • The Four Freedoms Speech

    Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union Address, commonly known as the “Four Freedoms” speech. In it he articulated a powerful vision for a world in which all people had freedom of speech and of religion, and freedom from want and fear. It was delivered on January 6, 1941 and it helped change the world.
  • Grapes of Wrath is Published

    The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.
  • Wizard of Oz Premiers in Movie Theaters

    When a tornado rips through Kansas, Dorothy (Judy Garland) and her dog, Toto, are whisked away in their house to the magical land of Oz. They follow the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, and en route they meet a Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) that needs a brain, a Tin Man