A world economic crisis that began in October 1929, when the New York Stock Exchange collapsed, in the so-called Stock Market Crash. As a result US banks began to call in international loans and were unwilling to continue loans to Germany for reparations and industrial development. Throughout the USA and Germany members of the public began a ‘run on the banks’, withdrawing their personal savings, and more and more banks had to close. Farmers could not sell crops, factories and industrial concerns could not borrow and had to close, workers were thrown out of work, retail shops went bankrupt, and governments could not afford to continue unemployment benefits even where these had been available. Unemployment in Germany rose to 6 million, in Britain to 3 million, and in the USA to 14 million; in the USA by 1932 nearly every bank was closed. In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President of the USA, and gradually financial confidence there was restored, but not before the Third Reich in Germany had established itself as a means for the revitalization of the German economy.