1930s

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took office in 1933, introduced a program of broad-scale social reforms and stimulus plans called the New Deal in response to the crisis.

Following the rise of Adolf Hitler and the emergence of the NSDAP as the country's sole legal party in 1933, Germany imposed a series of laws which discriminated against Jews and other ethnic minorities.

Germany adopted an aggressive foreign policy, remilitarizing the Rhineland (1936), annexing Austria (1938) and the Sudetenland (1938), before invading Poland (1939) and starting World War II near the end of the decade.

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.

Suntans (called at the time "sunburns") 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.

[20] Revolutionary designer and couturier Madeleine Vionnet gained popularity for her bias-cut technique, which clung, draped, and embraced the curves of the natural female body.

Fashion trendsetters in the period included The Prince of Wales (King Edward VIII from January 1936 until his abdication that December) and his companion Wallis Simpson (the Duke and Duchess of Windsor from their marriage in June 1937), socialites like Nicolas de Gunzburg, Daisy Fellowes and Mona von Bismarck, and Hollywood movie stars such as Fred Astaire, Carole Lombard, and Joan Crawford.

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 (as a photographer) among several others were particularly influential.

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.

Great Depression Dust Bowl Second Sino-Japanese War Rape of Nanking Amelia Earhart Salt March Hindenburg disaster Nazi Invasion of Poland Kristallnacht
From left, clockwise: Dorothea Lange 's photo of the homeless Florence Thompson shows the effects of the Great Depression ; due to extreme drought conditions, farms across the south-central United States become dry and the Dust Bowl spreads; The Empire of Japan invades China , which eventually leads to the Second Sino-Japanese War . In 1937, Japanese soldiers massacre civilians in Nanjing ; aviator Amelia Earhart becomes an American flight icon; German dictator Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party attempt to establish a New Order of German hegemony in Europe, which culminates in 1939 when Germany invades Poland , leading to the outbreak of World War II . The Nazis also persecute Jews in Germany, specifically with Kristallnacht in 1938; the Hindenburg explodes over a small New Jersey airfield , causing 36 deaths and effectively ending commercial airship travel; Mohandas Gandhi walks to the Arabian Sea in the Salt March of 1930. Popular comedy team The Three Stooges had prominence during the decade.
Flag map of the world from 1930, nine years before World War II
At the outbreak of World War II , both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland ; by October 1939, they had divided the occupied territory between them in accordance with the secret part of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact .
Soldiers mobilizing during the 1930 Argentine coup.
SA paramilitaries outside a Berlin store during the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses , 1933
Cheering crowds greet Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Munich, 1938
New Deal : President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, May 18, 1933
Soviet famine of 1930–1933 . Starved peasants in the streets of Kharkiv, 1933
Senussi rebel leader Omar al-Mukhtar after his arrest by Italian armed forces in 1931
Mohandas Gandhi on the Salt March in 1930
Japanese march into Zhengyangmen of Beijing after capturing the city in July 1937
The German dirigible airship Hindenburg exploding in 1937
A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas , in 1935, during the Dust Bowl
Alexander I of Yugoslavia
In the United States the significantly high unemployment rate lead many unemployed people to use freight trains in order to seek employment in various cities across the country
Solvay Conference of 1930, with prominent physicists such as Albert Einstein , Werner Heisenberg , Marie Curie and Enrico Fermi .
The Place de Varsovie in Paris during the World Expo in 1937, photographed using newly invented Agfacolor process.
The discovery of the dwarf planet Pluto
On October 30, 1938 Orson Welles ' radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds is broadcast, causing panic in various parts of the United States
The Empire State Building became the world's tallest building when completed in 1931
Kavanagh Building in Buenos Aires
Walt Disney introduces each of the Seven Dwarfs in a scene from the original 1937 Snow White
Louis Armstrong , 1936
Salvador Dalí
Frida Kahlo
Dorothea Lange in 1936
Jack Craword , Australian World number 1 tennis player
Joe DiMaggio , center fielder for the New York Yankees , 1937
Al Capone