How was the United States transformed by prosperity, depression and war between 1917 and 1945?
The development of the United States as a modern nation through the 1920s boom, the Great Depression and New Deal, and the Second World War to 1945
A focused answer to the WACE Modern History Unit 3 option on the United States 1917 to 1945, covering the 1920s boom, the Great Depression and New Deal, and the impact of the Second World War.
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What this dot point is asking
SCSA wants you to explain how the United States developed as a modern nation across three phases: the prosperity and tensions of the 1920s, the collapse into the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal response, and the transformation brought by the Second World War. You need command of economic, social and political change, the experience of different groups, and the debates over how far the period changed America. The option is examined through source analysis and essays in the external paper.
The United States emerged from World War I (it entered in 1917) as the world's leading creditor nation, but quickly turned inward. The "Red Scare" of 1919 to 1920, the Palmer Raids, and fear of radicalism shaped a conservative, isolationist mood. Congress rejected the League of Nations, and the Republican administrations of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover pursued low taxes, high tariffs (the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922) and minimal regulation.
The 1920s boom rested on new mass-production industries, above all the automobile. Henry Ford's assembly line made cars affordable, and the car drove demand for steel, oil, rubber and roads. Electrification, consumer durables, advertising and the spread of hire-purchase credit fuelled a consumer culture, while a rising stock market encouraged speculation, often "on the margin" with borrowed money. New mass entertainment (cinema, radio, jazz) and changing roles for women, symbolised by the "flapper" and the vote won in 1920, marked a cultural shift.
The decade's prosperity was uneven and contested. Farmers suffered from overproduction and falling prices throughout the 1920s. Prohibition (the Eighteenth Amendment, in force from 1920) fuelled organised crime figures such as Al Capone before its repeal in 1933. Nativism produced the restrictive Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924, and a revived Ku Klux Klan reached millions of members. African Americans faced segregation and violence in the South, prompting the Great Migration north, even as the Harlem Renaissance flourished.
The Wall Street Crash, peaking on Black Tuesday (29 October 1929), wiped out fortunes and confidence. The Great Depression followed: by 1933 around a quarter of the workforce was unemployed, thousands of banks had failed, industrial output had collapsed, and shanty towns nicknamed "Hoovervilles" appeared. President Herbert Hoover, committed to limited government and voluntary action, was widely blamed, and the violent dispersal of the Bonus Army of veterans in 1932 damaged him further.
Franklin D. Roosevelt won the 1932 election promising a "New Deal". From his inauguration in March 1933 he launched the "Hundred Days", restoring banking confidence through the Emergency Banking Act and "fireside chats". The New Deal pursued the "three Rs": relief, recovery and reform. Agencies such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Recovery Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority created jobs and regulated the economy. The Second New Deal from 1935 brought the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act protecting unions. The New Deal was contested: critics on the right called it socialist, the Supreme Court struck down some measures, and figures such as Huey Long argued it did not go far enough.
The New Deal eased suffering and reshaped the role of the federal government, but did not end the Depression. Recovery came with the Second World War. After Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941) the United States mobilised totally: war production ended unemployment, drew millions of women into industry (symbolised by "Rosie the Riveter"), and accelerated the migration and employment of African Americans, though within continued segregation. The war also saw the internment of around 120,000 Japanese Americans after Executive Order 9066 in 1942. The United States emerged in 1945 as the dominant economic and military power, sole possessor of the atomic bomb, and a founder of the new international order.
Historiographically, debate centres on the New Deal. "Progressive" historians praise Roosevelt for saving capitalism and democracy; New Left historians argue it was a conservative rescue of the existing order that left inequality intact; others stress that only the war achieved full recovery. On the 1920s, historians dispute whether the decade was a confident "Jazz Age" or a brittle prosperity masking deep structural weakness.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of SCSA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
WACE 20228 marksEvaluate the usefulness of Sources 1 and 2 (a 1936 pro-New Deal cartoon and a contemporary critic's editorial) for a historian investigating reactions to the New Deal, referring to their content, origin and perspective.Show worked answer →
An 8 mark usefulness question wants a structured evaluation of each source against a specific inquiry.
Set up the inquiry. Restate that the historian is investigating reactions to the New Deal, because usefulness is always relative to a question.
Source by source. For the cartoon, identify origin (pro-New Deal, 1936), perspective (sympathetic to Roosevelt) and what it reveals about how supporters portrayed relief and recovery. For the editorial, identify the critic's viewpoint and what it reveals about opposition charges that the New Deal was socialist or overreaching.
Comparative judgement. Conclude that together they are very useful precisely because their opposing perspectives reveal the contested politics of the New Deal. Explain that a partisan source is useful for showing a point of view, not despite it. Tie every point to the inquiry.
Markers reward evaluation against the question, attention to origin and perspective, and the recognition that bias is itself evidence.
WACE 202316 marksTo what extent did the New Deal transform the United States in the 1930s?Show worked answer →
A 16 mark essay needs a thesis weighing how far the New Deal changed America, sustained with precise evidence.
Thesis. Argue that the New Deal transformed the role of the federal government and provided relief and reform, but did not end the Depression, so its transformation was political and structural more than economic recovery.
Reform and relief. Show the Hundred Days, the Emergency Banking Act, the "three Rs", and agencies such as the CCC, PWA, AAA, NRA and TVA. Add the Second New Deal: Social Security 1935 and the Wagner Act protecting unions.
Limits and opposition. Weigh the failure to end mass unemployment, the Supreme Court striking down measures, critics on the right calling it socialist, and Huey Long arguing it did too little.
The decisive change. Argue the lasting transformation was the expanded federal role and the new expectation that government would manage the economy and provide a safety net.
Judgement. Conclude that recovery came only with wartime mobilisation after 1941, but the New Deal permanently reshaped American government. Reference the progressive-versus-New-Left debate.
Markers reward a weighed thesis, accurate evidence, and a clear answer to "to what extent".