Unit 9 the Interwar Period

Totalitarianism

government controls every aspect of life, no privacy or independent organizations; political system dominates religion, family life, economy, education

Kemal Ataturk

Turkish nationalist leader and the first president of the Turkish Republic; modernized and westernized Turkey by introducing Western dress, legal codes, calendar, alphabet, customs, gave rights to women, and ended slavery

Sykes-Picot Agreement

European pact for the partition of the Middle East

Balfour Declaration

Agreement with Zionist leaders to establish a Jewish national homeland in Palestine

Five Year Plan

Economic plan by Joseph Stalin to rapidly increase industry in the USSR; featured heavy industry, big engineering projects like canals built with forced labor, targets set for every industry, workers fined if targets not met; goals were utopian and promised to create an abundant society for the working class person

Kulaks

so-called ‘wealthy’ peasants who owned land, targeted and eliminated by the Soviet government

Collectivization

farmers were required to pool their land and farm equipment and work under the orders of the collective farm committee under control of the communist party; shift from individually and privately owned farms and land to collectively owned and controlled state farms; destroyed a centuries-old way of life based around the village and family farm and millions were dispersed around the USSR

Purges

Stalin purged the Communist party, Russian population, religious leaders, ethnic minority groups and Red Army of anyone perceived to be against him by the Soviet Secret Police; 3 million regular people are accused of opposing Stalin and communism and are sent to the gulag; 750,000 killed on the spot

93/139 member of the Central Comittee

81/103 admirals and generals executed

Gulag

Glavonye Upravleniye LAGerey; forced labor camp for enemies of the USSR; by 1937 18 million people had been transported to labor camps; little sanitation, disease, overcrowding, no heating, prisoners lived in wooden barracks, prisoners had to meet production quotas, died of overworking, cold, and disease, food rationed

Holodomor

Ukrainian for “killing by hunger,” 3-6 million Ukrainians die of starvation or related diseases, part of a larger Soviet Famine of 1932-33

Socialist realism

artwork had to be promoting the state, art had to include scenes of everyday life of workers and peasants, artwork had to support the aims of the Soviet state and the Communist Party

League of Nations

established as part of the peace settlement post-WWI; goal was to create a peaceful future based on international cooperation; members of the League agreed to pursue disarmament and to take collective action against belligerent nations

Why the League failed

USA and other important nations were absent, lack of troops, treaties it had to uphold were seen as unfair, decisions were slow, lost credibility

Weaknesses of the League

They couldn’t do anything actionable and failed to stop military aggression and belligerent nations

How the League reacted to Italian and Japanese aggression

the League condemned Japan’s aggression but was unable to do anything about it; the League imposed sanctions on Italy but never closed the Suez Canal to Italian ships or banned oil exports to Italy

Japanese Imperialism

Since the Meiji Restoration, Japan became an imperial power; 1931 Japan invades Manchuria and establishes a puppet state called Manchukuo

Spanish Civil War

July 1936 nationalist army officers in Spain staged a coup against the country’s Republican government starting a civil war; fascist Italy and Nazi Germany sent military forces to support the nationalists; seen as a fight between fascism and its enemies… conflict became ideological prep for WWII

Bombing of Guernica

26 April 1937, most notorious event of the Spanish Civil War; Basque town of Guernica was bombed by the German Condor Legion; Town reduced to ruins in 3 hours of bombing; demonstrated horrors of new military tech

Benito Mussolini

founder of Fascism; leader of Italy from 1922-43; allied with Japan and Nazi Germany during WWII; became involved in socialist policies while working in Switzerland from 1902-1904 and ran a socialist newspaper ‘Avanti';

Issues facing Italy after WWI

Italians were divided about their involvement in WWI— soldiers who fought were badly equipped and poorly led; demobilization of the military caused high unemployment, especially for men; debt and bad economy in Italy

fasces symbol

a symbol of bound sticks; symbolizes unity and authority

Invasion of Ethiopia

Italians under Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935; Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie appealed to the League of Nations for help

Fascism

Defined by what it opposes: anti-liberal, anti-communist, anti-individual; any centralized, authoritarian government system that is not communist, whose policies glorify the state over the individual and are destructive to basic human rights

The Weimar Republic

1918 Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated, a republic was formed and a new constitution was written; Germany became a republic; Germany’s first democracy

hyperinflation

printing money resulted in hyperinflation, middle class people or anyone with savings were hit the hardest; 15 November 1923 the Great Inflation ended when the new Chancellor Gustav Stresemann introduced a new currency → the Reichsmark

1929 Stock Market Crash- Great Depression

29 October 1929, NYC; kicked off a worldwide depression; the Dawes Plan ended; by 1932 there were 6.2 million unemployed Germans

Adolf Hitler

Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; wanted to be an artist; both of his parents died by 1907; moved to Vienna for art school but was denied; 1909 homeless and tried to sell paintings of Vienna for money; fought in WWI for the German Army; joined the DAP in 1919; hard to pinpoint where he developed his antisemitic beliefs but they were his most strongly held political beliefs

Mein Kampf

book written by Hitler while he was in prison; it outlined his political worldview

Beer Hall Putsch

9 November 1923; a coup by NSDAP; Nazis wanted a revolution and followed Mussolini’s example of the March on Rome; Hitler was involved and was almost shot, he was sentenced to five years of prison for high treason

NSDAP

formed in 1919; Hitler joined soon after and became a leader in the party; 1920 renamed and introduced their 25 point program;