Great Depression (1929–1939) is a greatly exaggerated portrait The best research, which draws upon wartime fi les of the Home Intelligence and Mass-Observation departments ignored by the revisionists, demonstrates that the British people as a whole strongly supported the war effort and government and preserved solid national morale to the very end Of course, it was with feelings of succor as well as joy that they celebrated VE day on May And it was with a sense of profound relief that Britain received news of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945), Soviet entry into the Far Eastern war, and the surrender of Japan that followed those events See also ABC-1 Plan; ABDA Command; Air Defence of Great Britain (ADGB); Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA); Allied Control Commissions; Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ); Allies; Anderson shelters; Anglo–Soviet Treaty; area bombing; Atlantic Charter; Attlee, Clement; Baedeker raids; Baldwin, Stanley; BBC; Big Four; Big Three; Bletchley Park; British Union of Fascists; Brooke, Alan; Channel Islands; Chiefs of Staff Committee; Combined Chiefs of Staff; Commonwealth; Congress Party; convoys; Cripps, Richard Stafford; Eden, Anthony; Egypt; Enigma machine; Five Power Naval Treaty; Halifax, Lord; India; intelligence; Lend-Lease; limited liability; Malta; merchant marine; MI5/MI6; M19; morale bombing; National Fire Service (NFS); Neutrality Acts; nuclear weapons programs; Palestine; Royal Air Force; shipbuilding; Special Operations Executive (SOE); strategic bombing; Territorial Army; unconditional surrender; War Office; Westminster, Statute of; XX Committee Suggested Reading: Raymond Callahan, Churchill and His Generals (2007 ); Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill (1991); Talbot Imlay, Facing the Second World War (2003) GREAT DEPRESSION (1929–1939) The sharp global economic downturn of the 1930s was marked by high unemployment, declining international trade, and a crisis of deflation It was worsened, though it was not caused, by the stock market crash that began on Wall Street on “Black Tuesday,” October 24, 1929 The crash severely aggravated a recession in the United States that began at least two months earlier Controversy still attends the question of the Depression’s deeper causes Certainly, they included a radical decline in world money supply; rapidly falling levels of consumption of industrial products; prior depression in agricultural markets and the value of farm land; declines in mining, textiles, and other labor-intensive industries; breakdown of faith in the gold standard supporting major currencies; speculative excesses in financial markets; and a failure of U.S economic leadership in terms of poor tax and trade policy responses during the first years of the downturn The consensus view of mainstream economic historians sees the Depression as stemming from the core fact that the international financial system erected after World War I was inherently unstable Failure to restore the gold standard thus led to seriatim major bank failures, which in turn caused a run on smaller banks and to calls on outstanding loans In turn, that forced margin calls on stock markets, whose crash converted a steep American recession into a protracted depression The slowdown in the United States greatly exacerbated the ongoing international financial crisis as still more credit dried up 469