24 October 1929, New York

On 24 October 1929, the New York stock market collapsed – it was the worst crash in history. Warnings of an impending economic disaster had led thousands of Austrians to withdraw their savings. The subsequent Great Depression hit Austria worse than expected. The small economy that remained after the fall of the Habsburg Empire experienced high inflation and mass unemployment. When the biggest bank in the country, the Creditanstalt, declared bankruptcy in 1931, it triggered a crisis that swept across Europe, and contributed to the rise of political extremism.