HIST 468: Age of FDR: America in Depression & War

The Great Depression of the 1930's was the worst economic disaster in America history, and World War II was a devastating international war. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president in 1932 in large part due to the depression and spent longer in the White House than anyone else largely due to the onset of war in both Europe and Asia in the late 1930s. This course explores America in the depths of depression and during war: how people went on with their lives, how different groups were affected by depression and then war, and how the government under FDR responded to economic disaster followed by total war. Modern America came out of this era; government intervention to stabilize the economy, a greatly increased military presence around the world, and a vastly larger middle class were all the result of policies put into place in the 1930s and 1940s.