The World in 1933 the year Hitler took power and the bars reopened

Roughly 4,000 American banks shut their doors for good during 1933. On the morning of March 6 every bank in the country was closed at once by order of the new president, and for the rest of that week nobody could take out a dollar.

Life back then

For most of the year a drink was against the law, so people bought one in back rooms and unmarked cellars known as speakeasies. That ended in December, and saloons opened in plain sight again. During the bank shutdown in March some towns printed their own paper scrip so people could still buy groceries. In Germany the new government took over the radio within weeks, and by May students were piling banned books onto bonfires in Berlin. American cinemas ran King Kong from morning to night.

The year in 8 events

• 🏛️Jan 30 Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany.
• 🚪Feb 24 Japan walks out of the League of Nations after the League blames it for seizing Manchuria.
• 🔥Feb 27 The Reichstag building in Berlin burns. The Nazi government uses the fire to arrest its opponents.
• 🎙️Mar 4 Franklin Roosevelt is sworn in as US president and tells the country the only thing to fear is fear itself.
• 📜Mar 23 German members of parliament vote to let Hitler make laws on his own. Elections and parties soon stop mattering.
• 🛠️Jun 16 Roosevelt signs the last bills of his first hundred days, which put men to work on public projects and set new rules for industry.
• 🎖️Sep 4 Sergeants led by Fulgencio Batista take over the army in Cuba and put in a new government. Batista is the strongest man on the island for years afterwards.
• 🍺Dec 5 Prohibition ends in the United States after 13 years.

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