When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President of the United States in 1932, not only the United S

tates but also the rest of the world was in the throes of an economic depression. Following the termination of World War I, Britain and the United States at first experienced a boom in industry. Called the Roaring Twenties, the 1920s ushered in a number of things - prosperity, greater equality for women in the work world, rising consumption, and easy credit. The outlook for American business was rosy.

October 1929 was a month that had catastrophic economic reverberations worldwide. The American stock market witnessed the "Great Crash", as it is called, and the temporary boom in the American economy came to a standstill. Stock prices sank, and panic spread. The ensuing unemployment figure soared to 12 million by 1932.

Germany in the postwar years suffered from burdensome compensation it was obliged to pay to the Allies. The country's industrial capacity had been greatly diminished by the war. Inflation, political instability, and high unemployment were factors helpful to the growth of the initial Nazi party. Germans had lost confidence in their old leaders and heralded the arrival of a messiah-like figure who would lead them out of their economic wilderness. Hitler promised jobs and, once elected, kept his promise by providing employment in the party, in the newly expanded army, and in munitions factories.

Roosevelt was elected because he promised a "New Deal" to lift the United States out of the doldrums of the depression. Following the principles advocated by Keynes, a British economist, Roosevelt collected the spending capacities of the federal government to provide welfare, work, and agricultural aid to the millions of down-and-out Americans. Elected President for four terms because of his innovative policies, Roosevelt succeeded in dragging the nation out of the depression before the outbreak of World War II.