The central difficulty during my term as President was, obviously, the worldwide "Great Depression." Domestically it first appeared in late 1929, eight
months after my inauguration, and continued in the United States not only
during my term but for eight years more, until the start of the Second World War
in 1941.
That fateful eleven-year period is the subject of this volume of my Memoirs. I
have divided it into three major parts:
The Great Depression
The Presidential Election of 1932
The Aftermath
As in the previous two volumes of my Memoirs, I have treated the material
topically rather than chronologically, so as to present a clearer picture of the
events, policies and forces in motion at the time.
I wrote the sections on the Depression and the Election of 1932, for the most
part, less than three years after I left the White House. Later I clarified and
condensed some parts, in particular eliminating documents which had become
public. These I have indicated by references. The section on the Election of 1932
is more detailed than would be necessary but for the fact that this election was a
turning point in American life —and possibly in that of the world.
The section entitled The Aftermath, concerning the continuation of the
Depression from Mr. Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933 until 1941, was written
from 1942 to 1944. I have included here, from later dates, some quotations
which bear on this period.
Throughout I have endeavored to treat persons and events with the
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vi ] Introduction
restraint of a post-mortem. While occasionally mentioning my own views, I have
rested criticism of Mr. Roosevelt's policies by other persons upon statements of
his sometime associates rather than on quotations of his Republican opponents.
As this volume will demonstrate, the "Great Depression" did not start in the
United States. To be sure, we were due for some economic readjustment as a
result of the orgy of stock speculation in 1928-1929. This orgy was not a
consequence of my administrative policies. In the main it was the result of the
Federal Reserve Board's pre-1928 enormous inflation of credit at the request of
European bankers which, as this narrative shows, I persistently tried to stop, but
I was overruled. Aside from the inevitable collapse of this Mississippi Bubble,
some secondary economic forces also contributed to the October, 1929, events.
But even this slump started in foreign countries before it occurred in the United
States, and their difficulties were themselves a contributing factor to the stock
market crack. Our domestic difficulties standing alone would have produced no
more than the usual type of economic readjustment which had re-occurred at
intervals in our history.
Eighteen months later, by early 1931, we were convalescing from our own ills
when an economic hurricane struck us from abroad. The whole financial and
economic structure of Europe collapsed at this time as a result of the delayed
consequences of the First World War, the Versailles Treaty, and internal
policies.
The immediate effect of Central Europe's collapse was the terrible
unsettlement of all economically sensitive nations everywhere. Among the dire
consequences were Britain's suspension of payments to foreigners, abandonment
of the gold standard by scores of nations, trade wars, political revolutions in
more than a dozen countries outside of Europe, and disaster for the American
economy.
The eventual effect of this gigantic catastrophe was to kindle political and
social revolutions in all the defeated nations of Central and Eastern Europe.
Communism reached its dread hand into those areas, and Fascist dictators arose
as the antidote. In the end, these forces were to plunge the world into a Second
World War.
It is easy for the reader to look back and say that from the very beginning we
should have anticipated the European storm and enacted in advance
unprecedented measures to counteract it.
Explanation:
