The collapse of share prices on Wall Street in 1929, often called the Wall Street Crash, directly led to which major global economic crisis?

Introduction / Context:
This question connects economic history with world affairs. The Wall Street collapse of 1929, also called the Wall Street Crash or the Great Crash, was a dramatic fall in share prices on the New York Stock Exchange. It is widely regarded as the trigger for one of the most severe and prolonged global economic crises of the twentieth century. Recognising the link between the crash and the subsequent Great Depression is a key part of modern world history and general awareness.

Given Data / Assumptions:

• The event mentioned is the collapse of share prices on Wall Street.
• The year, though not stated in the stem, is historically 1929.
• The question asks what this collapse led to.
• The options link it to World War II, a recession, a US attack on Iraq and the Great Depression.
• We assume knowledge of the sequence of major twentieth century events.

Concept / Approach:
The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 sharply reduced share values, undermined investor confidence and led to bank failures and credit contraction. Because the United States was a major economic power, the effects soon spread worldwide. Declining output, falling prices, massive unemployment and contraction of international trade marked the global crisis of the 1930s, commonly known as the Great Depression. Although the depression created conditions that indirectly contributed to the rise of extremist regimes and eventually World War II, the immediate and direct outcome of the crash was the onset of the Great Depression rather than war or a specific military attack.

Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: Identify the Wall Street collapse as the stock market crash of 1929 in the United States. Step 2: Recall that this crash undermined banks and businesses and led to widespread economic hardship. Step 3: Understand that this hardship was not confined to the US; it spread to Europe and other parts of the world. Step 4: Recognise that the name given to this global economic downturn of the 1930s is the Great Depression. Step 5: Match this with the options and choose the one that explicitly mentions the Great Depression.

Verification / Alternative check:
Histories of the interwar period consistently state that the Great Depression began after the 1929 crash and lasted roughly until the late 1930s. They describe the crash as the starting point or trigger, though they also mention underlying structural problems in the world economy. World War II, by contrast, began later in 1939, about a decade after the crash, and cannot be said to have been directly "led to" by the crash in the narrow sense asked in the question. The US attack on Iraq belongs to a much later period of world history and is unrelated to the 1929 financial crisis.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Outbreak of the Second World War: While economic instability in the 1930s helped extremist politics to grow, the crash did not immediately or directly cause World War II; there were many intervening political events.
A brief local recession only in the United States: The downturn was neither brief nor local; it became a prolonged worldwide depression.
A United States military attack on Iraq: This is an event from the late twentieth or early twenty first century and has no direct connection with the 1929 Wall Street collapse.

Common Pitfalls:
Students sometimes confuse the terms "recession" and "depression" or treat them as interchangeable. Another mistake is to compress the 1930s timeline and assume that everything from the crash to World War II is one continuous event. It is better to remember the sequence clearly: Crash (1929) leads to Great Depression in the 1930s, and only later do unresolved political and economic tensions contribute to the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

Final Answer:
The Wall Street collapse of 1929 led directly to the worldwide Great Depression.