Although President Herbert Hoover was in office when the Great Depression struck, he wanted all to know that he was not the one to blame for the catastrophe. In this 1952 article the former president went into great detail explaining why he was innocent of the charge and he named the assorted factors that triggered the economic downturn. Hoover long maintained that the Great Depression was a result the general instability of European markets - an instability that was set in place as a result of the 1914 - 1918 European war:
"Without the war, we would have no such depression."