Global Domino Effect

The Depression was not just American — it swept the entire industrial world with stunning speed. Germany was hit especially hard, and mass unemployment created the political instability that enabled Hitler's rise to power. Britain abandoned the gold standard, and Japan turned toward militarism and imperial expansion.

The lesson was clear: in an interconnected world, economic crises cannot be contained within national borders. That realization led directly to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the rules-based trading system still in use today.