In addition to France, the gold bloc included Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, and Switzerland.
[2] As the shock from the May 1931 default of Austria's largest commercial bank, Creditanstalt, spread throughout Europe, several countries, most notably Great Britain in September 1931, abandoned the gold standard.
[3] Other countries, including Denmark, Norway, Sweden (September 1931), Finland (October), and Japan (December), also abandoned the gold standard.
They thus persisted with deflationary policies—i.e., "while foreswearing exchange controls, they raised tariffs and tightened quotas on imports in an effort to insulate their economies from the downturn and protect their gold reserves".
The gold bloc countries' export businesses found it difficult to maintain profitability and suffered from massive capital flight to the United States.