Key Concepts in Totalitarianism and Postwar Europe

totalitarianism

A radical dictatorship that exercises 'total claims' over the beliefs and behavior of its citizens by taking control of the economic, social, intellectual, and cultural aspects of society.

fascism

A movement characterized by extreme, often expansionist nationalism, antisocialism, a dynamic and violent leader, and glorification of war and the military.

eugenics

A pseudoscientific doctrine that maintains that the selective breeding of human beings can improve the general characteristics of a national population, which helped inspire Nazi ideas about 'race and space' and ultimately contributed to the Holocaust.

Black Shirts

Mussolini's private militia that destroyed socialist newspapers, union halls, and Socialist Party headquarters, eventually pushing Socialists out of the city governments of northern Italy.

Lateran Agreement

A 1929 agreement that recognized the Vatican as an independent state, with Mussolini agreeing to give the church heavy financial support in return for public support from the pope.

five-year plan

A plan launched by Stalin in 1928, and termed the 'revolution from above,' aimed at modernizing the Soviet Union and creating a new Communist society with new attitudes, new loyalties, and a new socialist humanity.

New Economic Policy (NEP)

Lenin's 1921 policy to re-establish limited economic freedom in an attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry in the face of economic disintegration.

National Socialism

A movement and political party driven by extreme nationalism and racism, led by Adolf Hitler; its adherents ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945 and forced Europe into World War II.

collectivization of agriculture

The forcible consolidation of individual peasant farms into large state-controlled enterprises in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

kulaks

The better-off peasants who were stripped of land and livestock under Stalin and were generally not permitted to join collective farms; many of them starved or were deported to forced-labor camps for 're-education.'

Enabling Act

An act pushed through the Reichstag by the Nazis that gave Hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years.

appeasement

The British policy toward Germany prior to World War II that aimed at granting Hitler whatever he wanted, including western Czechoslovakia, in order to avoid war.

Cold War

The rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States that divided much of Europe into a Soviet-aligned Communist bloc and a U.S.-aligned capitalist bloc between 1945 and 1989.

displaced persons

Postwar refugees, including 13 million Germans, former Nazi prisoners and forced laborers, and orphaned children.

economic miracle

Term contemporaries used to describe rapid economic growth, often based on the consumer sector, in post-World War II western Europe.

Christian Democrats

Center-right political parties that rose to power in western Europe after the Second World War.

New Order

Hitler's program based on racial imperialism, which gave preferential treatment to the Nordic peoples; the French, an 'inferior' Latin people, occupied a middle position; and Slavs and Jews were treated harshly as 'subhumans.'

Truman Doctrine

America's policy geared to containing communism to those countries already under Soviet control.

Marshall Plan

American plan for providing economic aid to western Europe to help it rebuild.

Common Market

The European Economic Community, created by six western and central European countries in the West Bloc in 1957 as part of a larger search for European unity.

Holocaust

The systematic effort of the Nazi state to exterminate all European Jews and other groups deemed racially inferior during the Second World War.

Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON)

An economic organization of Communist states meant to help rebuild East Bloc countries under Soviet auspices.

NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western governments.

Warsaw Pact

Soviet-backed military alliance of East Bloc Communist countries in Europe.

socialist realism

Artistic movement that followed the dictates of Communist ideals, enforced by state control in the Soviet Union and East Bloc countries in the 1950s and 1960s.

de-Stalinization

The liberalization of the post-Stalin Soviet Union led by reformer Nikita Khrushchev.

neocolonialism

A postcolonial system that perpetuates Western economic exploitation in former colonial territories.

decolonization

The postwar reversal of Europe's overseas expansion caused by the rising demand of the colonized peoples themselves, the declining power of European nations, and the freedoms promised by U.S. and Soviet ideals.

guest worker programs

Government-run programs in western Europe designed to recruit labor for the booming postwar economy.

postcolonial migration

The postwar movement of people from former colonies and the developing world into Europe.

nonalignment

Policy of postcolonial governments to remain neutral in the Cold War and play both the United States and the Soviet Union for what they could get.