ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 examines the impact of the two world wars and the inter-war period on co-operatives. During the First World War co-operatives played an important role in distributing scarce resources, while the Second World War saw the destruction of co-operative networks. The Depression brought financial difficulties for the co-operative movement but they benefited from disillusionment with capitalism and were hailed as the third way by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States, where co-operatives made considerable progress, particularly the credit unions and electricity co-operatives. The fascist and communist governments of this period moved to incorporate co-operatives into the state apparatus and sought to stifle their independence. Despite these challenges the co-operative movement generally continued to grow and the co-operative business model spread even further throughout the world.
