Arguably the worst decade of the 20th Century, the 30s were dominated by the Great Depression and the political upheaval it spawned; an upheaval that led to genocide and the most destructive war in the history of mankind. The causes of the Depression echo, in many ways, our own time: an unbalanced distribution of wealth-concentrated in the wealthy urban classes of the US; rampant speculation in stocks and real estate; saturation of demand for cars and housing, financed by debt rather than income; massive over-production, especially in agriculture; irresponisble loans to weak governments; inept and grossly irresponsible governmental policies camouflaged by the purely rhetorical incantations of laisser-faire capitalist mantras. Economics alone, however, does not explains the horrors that emerged in the 30s and 40s.
Beyond the purely material factors cited above, there were more fundamental causes, prophesized in the 19th Century by Nietsche. He predicted that the decline of Christianity, combined with the rise of the masses to political power, would sweep away both monarchy and parliamentary democracy, as well as the aristocracy and middle-class that created them. The future belonged to the masses and their charismatic leaders-prophets and dictators promising a new, secular heaven...and delivering hell on earth. Communism came to power early in Russia (1917), and Fascism in Italy; but neither became truly global ideologies until the 1930s. The breakdown of capitalism, its failure to deliver 'bread and circuses', led to the rapid expansion of Fascism and Communism-an expansion only halted only in 1945, and not defeated until 1992.
Even in the 'free world', Freudianism (Psychoanalysis) and Modernism, while apolitical, were basically secular religions. Rising to dominance in the 30s, they set back the science of psychology and architecture for decades, and caused serious setbacks in many other fields. Much of the academic/artistic work of the 1930-1990 period has turned out to be a dead end. In the 1930s, great progress was limited primarily to physics and chemistry-and this was harnessed chiefly towards the arts of mass murder and destruction. The sterility and menace of the 1930s was captured by decade's best poet, W.H. Auden (writing on the outbreak of WWII): "I sit in one of the dives/On Fifty-second Street/Uncertain and afraid/As the clever hopes expire/of a low, dishonest decade...."
