After the Great Depression hit the world…

The king chooses his son Sa'ud as heir apparent in 1933.

In this year, ibn Sa'ud, increasingly desperate for funds, reluctantly grants an oil concession to the kingdom's eastern territories to Standard Oil of California; it is not yet known whether the kingdom contains any oil at all.

The 18th Zionist congress, held in Prague in 1933, adopts blue and white colors for the Zionist flag, resolving, "according to a tradition of many years the azure and white is the flag of the Zionist Federation and the Hebrew People".

J.B.M. Hertzog, whose National Party had defeated the South African Party of Jan Smuts in 1924 and become the government, is a republican who believes strongly in promoting the independence of the Union of South Africa from the British Empire; his government had approved the Statute of Westminster in 1931.

His party riven by internal conflict, Hertzog forms a coalition with Smuts against the more extreme Afrikaner nationalists and in 1934 forms the United Party (in full, the United National South African Party).

The party draws support from several different parts of South African society, including English-speakers, Afrikaners and 'Cape Coloureds'.

Cultural life in the new Sa’udi kingdom flourishes, primarily in the Hejaz, which is the center for newspapers and radio.

Although the kingdom retains its fundamentalist, puritanical principles, the Saudis tolerate some of the practices that had taken root in the Hejaz and other areas as the result of foreign contacts.

The ban on music, for example, is progressively circumvented by the radio, which the Saudis employ as a tool to unite the kingdom and increase military efficiency.

The primary basis of the kingdom's revenues—the pilgrimage, customs duties, and taxes—continue to decrease as a result of the world economic depression of the 1930s.

The League of Nations condemns Japan in 1933 but imposes no sanctions; as a result, Japan resigns from the League.

Greece has lost most of its foreign exchange sources, and experiences difficulties in servicing its large foreign debt in the early 1930s.

After four years of relative stability in Greece, politics has reverted to the confusion of the early 1920s.

When the anti-Venizélists win the 1933 elections, Colonel Nikólaos Plastíras, a staunch supporter of Venizélos and the mastermind behind the 1922 coup, seeks to restore Venizélos to power by force.

His military coup is unsuccessful and is shortly afterward followed by an attempt on Venizélos' life.

Public life is once again polarized between supporters of Venizélos and of the monarchy.

Zog has signed a number of accords with Italy in order to stabilize Albania.

These provide transitory financial relief to Albania, but they effect no basic change in its economy, especially under the conditions of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Italy, on the other hand, views Albania primarily as a bridgehead for military expansion into the Balkans.

The social base of Zog's power is a coalition of southern beys and northern bajraktars.

With the support of this coalition -- plus a vast Oriental bureaucracy, an efficient police force, and Italian money -- King Zog has brought a large measure of stability to Albania.

He has extended the authority of the government to the highlands, reduced the brigandage that had formerly plagued the country, laid the foundations of a modern educational system, and taken a few steps to Westernize Albanian social life.

In 1932 and 1933, Albania cannot make the interest payments on its loans from the Society for the Economic Development of Albania.

In response, Rome turns up the pressure, demanding that Tiranë name Italians to direct the Gendarmerie; join Italy in a customs union; grant Italy control of the country's sugar, telegraph, and electrical monopolies; teach the Italian language in all Albanian schools; and admit Italian colonists.

Zog refuses.

Instead, he orders the national budget slashed by 30 percent, dismisses the Italian military advisers, and nationalizes Italian-run Roman Catholic schools in the northern part of the country.

Trotsky’s initial station in exile, after being deported from the Soviet Union in February 1929, has been at Büyükada off the coast of Istanbul, Turkey, where he has stayed for the past four years.

There are many former White Army officers in Istanbul, which put Trotsky's life in danger, but a number of Trotsky's European supporters have volunteered to serve as bodyguards and assure his safety.

Trotsky’s three-volume History of the Russian Revolution, written in exile and first published in 1932, argues that Russian socialism is doomed unless other, more advanced countries also experience revolutions.

The three parts are: The Overthrow of Tzarism, The Attempted Counter-Revolution and The Triumph of the Soviets.

In 1933, Trotsky is offered asylum in France by Daladier.

Muslim poet, philosopher and politician Muhammad Iqbal, writing in Urdu and Persian, expresses India’s growing anti-western sentiments.

Iqbal's idea of a Muslim nation, distinct from Hindu India, is ardently supported by a group of Indian Muslim students in Cambridge.

Issuing a pamphlet in 1933 entitled 'Now or Never,' they oppose the idea of federation, deny that India is a single country, and demand partition into regions, the northwest receiving national status as a "Pakistan." They explain the term as follows: "Pakistanis composed of letters taken from the names of our homelands: that is, Punjab, Afghania [North-West Frontier Province], Kashmir, Iran, Sindh, Tukharistan, Afghanistan, and Balochistan.

It means the land of the Paks, the spiritually pure and clean.

[Land of the pure, from the Urdu pak (pure) and stan (land)]"

From 1914, Einstein has served as a professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin, although with a special clause freeing him from most teaching obligations.

From 1914 to 1932 he has also directed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.

Einstein is a socialist Zionist who supports the creation of a Jewish national homeland in the British mandate of Palestine.

In 1931, The Macmillan Company publishes About Zionism: Speeches and Lectures by Professor Albert Einstein.

Querido, an Amsterdam publishing house, had collected eleven of Einstein's essays into a 1933 book entitled Mein Weltbild, translated to English as The World as I See It; Einstein's foreword dedicates the collection "to the Jews of Germany".

One of the first actions of Hitler's administration is the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which removes Jews and politically suspect government employees (including university professors) from their jobs, unless they have demonstrated their loyalty to Germany by serving in the Great War.

In response to this growing threat Einstein had prudently traveled to the U.S. in December 1932.

For several years he had been wintering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and has also been a guest lecturer at Abraham Flexner's newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where, in 1933, the Einsteins purchase a house; he is to remain an integral contributor to the Institute for Advanced Study until his death in 1955.

Einstein has begun to write affidavits recommending United States visas for a huge number of European Jews who are trying to flee growing persecution.

He raises money for Zionist organizations and is, in part, responsible for the formation, in 1933, of the International Rescue Committee.