24 October: beginning of the Great Crisis

The period of post-war reconstruction and prosperity created an illusory sense of economic security in most market economies and, as a result, the 1929 collapse was even a greater shock. The great economic crisis brought the deepest ever drop in production and mass unemployment in most highly developed countries everywhere, particularly in the US and Germany. It led to far-reaching political changes like the triumph of Nazism in Germany, and economic changes like state interventionism.