Introductory Essay

The IGCSE USA 1917-1974 Depth Study Option C covers the following specified content:

The US involvement in WW1: the US was only involved in the last 18 months of the fighting, but had a large role to play before that as a supplier to belligerents throughout the war. As the war dragged on, the relative position of the US began to become markedly favorable and would remain that way for many years.

The expansion of the US economy during the 1920s: mass production in the car and consumer durables industries, the fortunes of older industries, the development of credit and hire purchase, the decline of agricuIture. Weaknesses in the economy by the late 1920s.
Society in the 1920s: the 'Roaring Twenties', film and other media, prohibition and gangsterism, race relations, discrimination against black Americans, the Ku Klux Klan, the changing roles of women.
The Wall Street Crash and its financial, economic and social effects. The reaction of President Hoover to the Crash. The Presidential election of 1932: Hoover's and Roosevelt's programmes.
Roosevelt's inauguration and the 'Hundred Days'. The New Deal legislation, the 'alphabetic agencies' and their work, and the economic and social changes they caused. Opposition to the New Deal: the Republicans, the rich, business interests, the Supreme Court, radical critics like Huey Long. The strengths and weaknesses of the New Deal programme in dealing with unemployment and the Depression.

This material is of interest to students studying for Paper One (one question set) and Paper Four (source based questions).

Some useful generalizations can be made about the period: The US began to establish its dominance over much of the world during this time as the most 'exportable' culture the world had yet seen. Its contribution to total world production towered over every other nation. During this era, the US began to build the foundations of its role as 'leader of the free world', which took a firmer foothold during WW2 and then the Cold War. The 20s and 30s were a time of turmoil for the US as it struggled with the interventionalist vs isolationist debate and the fact it never joined the League of Nations is related to this. Its internal struggles with racism, equality, social mobility and income distribution were emblematic of the world as a whole. Its amazingly resilient Constitution and governmental structure were put to a strict test during these 22 years. The Great Depression almost brought this nation to its demise, but a new paradigm of governmental intervention helped save the overall structure of the society. World War Two was important in many ways as it helped establish even further the notion of US hegemony over vitrually the entire globe. As mentioned earlier, the notion of an exportable culture became even more important in the fight for the hearts and minds of the Cold War world. The 1950s and 1960s can be generalized as times of intense suppression and then intense soul searching in America. The units end with the problems of Vietnam and Watergate.