The Roaring Twenties

Under Republican presidents (Harding, then Coolidge), the 1920s brought spectacular but uneven growth:

• Mass production: Henry Ford's assembly line made the motor car affordable, and the car industry pulled along steel, rubber, oil and road-building.
• Consumer boom: new goods - radios, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners - were bought on credit (hire purchase), driven by advertising. The stock market soared as ordinary Americans speculated, often 'on the margin'.
• Prohibition (from 1920): the ban on alcohol under the 18th Amendment fuelled bootlegging, speakeasies and organised crime.
• Left behind: farmers, African Americans and many workers gained little. Immigration was slashed by quota laws such as the National Origins Act (1924), and the decade saw a Red Scare and a revived Ku Klux Klan.

Underneath the boom: over-production, weak farm incomes, unequal wealth and reckless speculation on borrowed money were storing up the crash to come.

What drove the boom?

The Wall Street Crash and the Depression

The speculative bubble burst in October 1929. Panic selling on 'Black Thursday' (24 October) and 'Black Tuesday' (29 October) wiped out fortunes and confidence.

• The Crash triggered the Great Depression: banks failed, businesses closed, and by 1933 unemployment reached around a quarter of the workforce.
• Homeless and jobless Americans built shanty towns nicknamed 'Hoovervilles', blaming President Herbert Hoover.
• Hoover believed in 'rugged individualism' and voluntary action, and was slow to use federal power. His dispersal of the Bonus Army of unemployed veterans in 1932 shattered his reputation.

Source hotspot: photographs of breadlines and Hoovervilles, and government reports of the era, are classic Section A material - powerful, but shaped by who took them and why.

The turning point of 1929

Roosevelt and the First Hundred Days

Franklin D. Roosevelt won the 1932 election and was inaugurated in March 1933, telling Americans that 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself'. His response was the New Deal:

• In the First Hundred Days he steadied the banks (the Emergency Banking Act) and reassured the nation through radio 'fireside chats'.
• A stream of 'alphabet agencies' followed: the CCC (jobs for young men), the AAA (support for farmers), the NRA (industrial codes) and the TVA (regional development).
• The Second New Deal (1935) went further, with the Works Progress Administration, the Wagner Act protecting unions, and the landmark Social Security Act (1935) - pensions and unemployment insurance.

Boom, bust or recovery?

Tap an event, then the phase it belongs to.

Did the New Deal work?

The New Deal reshaped the role of the federal government, but it faced fierce opposition and never fully cured the Depression:

• Opposition: the Supreme Court struck down the NRA (1935) and AAA (1936) as unconstitutional; FDR's 'court-packing' plan (1937) to add friendly justices failed and cost him support. Critics like Huey Long said it did too little; conservatives said it did too much.
• The 'Roosevelt recession' (1937-38): when spending was cut, unemployment rose again - evidence that recovery was incomplete.
• War and boom: it was rearmament and the Second World War (from 1941) that finally brought full employment. The post-war years to 1955 saw a consumer boom and rising affluence, even as Cold War anxieties and deep racial inequality persisted.

The lasting New Deal reform

Agency to purpose

Tap a purpose on the left, then the New Deal agency or measure it describes.

Judging the recovery

Although Paper 2 examines sources, your essays gain from knowing the argument about the New Deal's success:

Supporters credit the New Deal with saving American capitalism and democracy, providing relief to millions and permanently enlarging the federal government's role. Critics on the left argue it did too little - it never restored full employment and left many, especially African Americans and the rural poor, behind. Critics on the right argue it did too much, over-extending federal power and prolonging the slump. Most historians agree on one blunt point: it was war production after 1941, more than the New Deal itself, that finally ended the Depression.

Exam skill: when a source praises or attacks the New Deal, test the claim - the persistence of high unemployment before 1941, the Roosevelt recession, the survival of Social Security - and reach a supported judgement.

What really ended the Depression?

Build the spine of the option

Tap the events in chronological order, earliest first.

How Paper 2 is assessed

Edexcel Paper 2 (Option 2H.1): 1 hour 30 minutes, 40 marks, 20% of the A-level. It is a depth study.

• Section A (AO2): a compulsory question on two primary sources - how far a historian could use them for a given enquiry, judged on provenance, content and context.
• Section B (AO1): one depth essay chosen from two.

Note: at Edexcel, historians' interpretations (AO3) are examined in Paper 1 and the Coursework - not the depth study. In Paper 2 your task is to weigh primary sources.

Prohibition's paradox

The big ideas to carry into the exam

You now have the arc of option 2H.1 and the debates around it. Press Finish to see your score.