Iconic Image: Wall Street and WWII

            During the Stock Market Crash of 1929, people flooded Wall Street trying to withdraw as much money as possible from their bank accounts. The banks had become insolvent, meaning they could not pay the account holders their cash because the banks had loaned out or invested most of the money in the failing stock market. When the value of stocks plummeted the country went into a panic, eventually leading up to the Great Depression. While there is no single iconic image of the stock market crash, there were many images from different camera angles taken during this panic in which people flooded Wall Street, trying to withdraw their cash from the banks.

In class, we discussed how Wall Street is a metonym for the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression in the United States. However, I think Wall Street can be a metonym for a much broader issue experienced around the world: the rise of Nazi Germany and the Second World War. We must remember the Great Depression did not only affect the United States economy, but the world economy was crushed as well. Adolf Hitler and other Nazis in Germany blamed its economic problems (which were really caused by hyperinflation – printing so much paper money that it holds little value – and extensive war reparations paid by the Germans after the First World War) on the work of Jewish bankers in Germany. As a Jewish accounting major, I obviously find it offensive that one religious group was blamed for the faults of many bankers and investors. Bankers were lending money to people who did not have the income to pay off their loans, and the debtors of these loans decreased their assets by investing most of their cash in stocks which rapidly declined in value.

While these images of people flooding the banks on Wall Street in 1929 have not been altered in any way, they have taken on a wider horizon of meanings depending on the interpretation of the viewer. At first, I simply made the association of Wall Street with the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression. I realized later that these images of Wall Street can be representative of World War II.