AP World Chapter 34 Vocab

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

• “You are all a lost generation” said to her fellow American write Ernest Hemingway

• given a label to the group of American intellectuals and literati who congregated in Paris in the post-war years

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

wrote A Farewell to Arms (anti-war novel)

“Lost generation”

(in poetry and fiction) expressed the malaise and disillusion that characterized U.S. and European thought after the Great War

A Farewell to Arms (1929)

• written by Ernest Hemingway

• war novel with images of meaningless death and suffering

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

• written by Erich Maria Remarque

• war novel with images of meaningless death and suffering

Erich Maria Remarque

wrote All Quiet on the Western Front

Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) / The Decline of the West (1918-1922)

• retired German schoolteacher

• made headlines when he published The Decline of the West

  • seen as a obituary of civilization

• proposed that all societies pass through a life cycle of growth and decay comparable to the biological cycle of living organisms

• concluded that European society had entered the final stage of its existence (only war and imperialism remaining)

• brought comfort to those who sought to rationalize their postwar despair

• all nations of the world were equally doomed

Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975)

• English historian

• wrote A Study of History

  • analyzed genesis, growth, and disintegration of 26 societies

A Study of History (1934-1961)

• Arnold J. Toynbee’s twelve-volume classic

• sought to discover how societies develop through time

• analyzed genesis, growth, and disintegration of 26 societies

Karl Barth (1886-1968)

• one of the most notable Christian theologians

• published Epistle to the Romans

Epistle to the Romans (1919)

• written by Karl Barth

• a religious bombshell

• attacked the liberal Christian theology that embraced the idea of progress: the tendency of European thinkers to believe in limitless improvement as the realization of God’s purpose

Augustinian, Lutheran, and Calvinist message of original sin

• the depravity of human nature

• fell on receptive ears as many Christians refused to accept the idea that contemporary human society was in any way a realization of God’s purpose

Niokolai Berdiaev (1874-1948)

“Man’s historical experience has been one of steady failure, and there are no grounds for supposing it will ever be anything else”

Democracy

• fallen idol of 19th century progress

• the idea that people should have a voice in selecting the leaders of their government

• widespread support in European societies

Great War’s effect on belief of human progress

• Great War destroyed long-cherished beliefs in the universality of human progress

• science and technology came under attack

“rule of inferiors”

What a German school of conservatives viewed democracy as

“Revolt of the Masses” (1930) / José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955)

• Spanish philosopher

• antidemocratic

• warned readers about the masses who were destined to destroy the highest achievements of Western society

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

• theory of special relativity

• symbol of revolution in physics

Theory of special relativity (1905)

• shows that there is no single spatial and chronological framework in the universe

• didn’t make sense to speak of space and time as absolutes, because the measurement of those two categories always varies with the motion of the observer

  • (space and time are relative to the person measuring them)

“About the Quantum-Theoretical Reinterpretation of Kinetic and Mechanical Relationships” (1927) / Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976)

established the uncertainty principle

Uncertainty principle

• According to Heisenberg, it is impossible to specify simultaneously the position and the velocity of a sub-atomic particle

• the more accurately one determines the position of an electron, the less precisely one can determine its velocity, and vice versa

• scientists cannot observe the behavior of electrons objectively, because the act of observation interferes them

• also carried broader philosophical ramifications

The indeterminacy of the atomic universe

demanded that the exact calculations of classical physics be replaced by probability calculations

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

• Viennese doctor who focused on psychological explanations of mental disorders

• identified conflict between conscious and subconscious mental processes that lay at the root of neurotic behavior

  • suggested existence of repressive mechanism that keeps painful memories or threatening events away from the conscious mind

• believed that dreams held the key to the deepest recesses of the human psyche

• sexual drives and fantasies as the most important source of repression

• discovered “Oedipus complex”

Oedipus complex

said that male children develop an erotic attachment to their mother and hostility toward their father

Psychoanalysis

• key to understanding all human behavior

  • suggested that human behavior was fundamentally irrational

Freudian doctrines

• shaped the psychiatric profession and established a powerful presence in literature and the arts

  • 1920s: artists focused on hidden depths of memory and emotion of their characters

  • Freud’s emphasis on sexuality to understand human behavior

Dada/Dadaism

• deliberately nonsensical word

• disillusioned artists of this movement (in Zurich, Paris, New York) used available public forums to spit metaphorically on nationalism, materialism, and rationalism, which they felt had contributed to a senseless war

• rejected prevailing standards of art and declared an all-out assault on the unquestioning conformity of culture and thought

• non-artists who created non-art

Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity)

• German art movement of the 1920s

• realistic style of painting that reflected a very cynical and highly critical attitude toward war

• aggressively attacked and satirized the evils of postwar society, especially as symbolized by those in political power

• illustrated devastating effects of the Great War

Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (1891-1969)

• German painter and printmaker

• notorious for his merciless and bitterly realistic depictions of society in the aftermath of war

• had volunteered for the Germany Army in 1914 in the Battle of Somme and became profoundly affected and disillusioned by the sights of war

• one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit

George Grosz (1893-1959)

one of the most important artists of Neue Sachlichkeit

“to abolish the sovereignty of appearance” artist program

• paintings no longer depicted recognizable objects from the everyday world

• beauty was expressed in pure color or shape

• some expressed feelings and emotions through violent distortion of forms and the use of explosive colors

• others tried to tap the subconscious mind to communicate inner vision or dream

Great Depression (began 1929)

• global economic depression

• long-lasting and severe

• destroyed the international financial and commercial network of capitalist economies

Post-war economic problems

• economic recovery and wellbeing of Europe were tied to a tangled financial system

• the governments of Austria and Germany relied on U.S. loans and investment capital to finance reparation payments to France and England

• improvements in industrial processes reduced worldwide demand for certain raw materials, causing an increase in supplies and a drop in princes

• depressed state of agriculture because of overproduction and falling prices

Technological advances in the production of automobile tires

• permitted use of reclaimed rubber

  • consequences for economies of Dutch East Indies, Ceylon, and Malaysia (had relied on export of natural rubber)

Increased use of oil

undermined the coal industry

Emergence of synthetics

hurt the cotton industry

Growing adoption of artificial nitrogen 

Virtually ruined the nitrate industry of Chile

One nagging weakness of global economy in 1920s

The depressed state of agriculture

Depressed state of agriculture

• Result of overproduction and falling prices

  • production increased, demand declined, prices collapsed

  • During WWI, farmers in US, Canada, Argentina, and Australia expanded their production

  • At end of war, European farmers continued agricultural activities (contribute to global surplus)

• Reduced income of farm families contributed to high inventories of manufactured goods, which caused businesses to cut back production and to dismiss workers

The Crash of 1929 / Black Thursday

• many people in the U.S. had invested in speculative ventures (especially stock on margin)

• hints of worldwide economic slowdown prompted investors to pull out of the market

• a wave of panic selling on the New York Stock Exchange caused stock prices to plummet

• thousands of people lost their life savings, and by the end of the day 11 financiers had committed suicide

• crisis deepened when lenders called in loans, which forced more investors to sell their securities at any prices

Contraction of U.S. economy

• Consumer demand no longer sufficed to purchase goods that businesses produced

  • So businesses responded with cutbacks in production and additional layoffs

• Because of un/underemployment, demand plummeted further

  • More business failures and soaring unemployment

• 1930: slump deepened

• 1932: industrial production had fallen to half of its 1929 level

• National income dropped by approximately half

• 44% of U.S. banks were out of business

  • Deposits of millions of people disappeared

Nations that relied on exports of manufactured goods to pay for imported fuel and food

• Germany and Japan

• economically suffered the most in 1930s

Economic difficulties (1930s)

• Every industrialized society saw its economy shrivel

  • Nations that relied on exports of manufactured goods to pay for imported fuel and food suffered the most

  • Depression spread unevenly to primary producing economies

U.S. investors

• shaken by collapse of stock prices

• tried to raise money by calling in loans and liquidating investments

Wall Street banks

refused to extend short-term loans as they became due

Banking houses in Austria and Germany

• became vulnerable to collapse

  • they had been major recipients of U.S. loans

German economy

• experienced a precipitous economic slide 

  • by 1935: 35% unemployment; 50% decrease in industrial production

• its virtual halt caused the rest of Europe to sputter and stall

• after WWI, it had remained a leading economic power 

  • no military engagements had taken place on German soil, so its natural resources, infrastructure, and productive capacity was spared (unlike France or Russia)

Foreign trade

• fell sharply between 1929 and 1932

  • caused further losses in manufacturing, employment, and per capita income

Japanese economy

• felt depression’s effect almost immediately

• had great dependence on U.S. market

• companies cut back in production

  • unemployment in export-oriented sectors skyrocketed

Economic nationalism

• where politicians hoped to achieve a high degree of economic self-sufficiency

  • imposed tariff barriers, import quotas, and import prohibitions

• backfired and provoked retaliation by other nations whose interests were affected

• between 1929 and 1932, world production declined by 38% and trade dropped by more than 66%

Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (1930)

• passed by the U.S. Congress

• raised duties on most manufactured products to prohibitive levels

• retaliation by other nations: rose tariffs on imports of U.S. products

• resulted in a sharp drop in international trade

British royal commission on unemployment insurance (1931)

“in the case of married women as a class, industrial employment cannot be regarded as the normal condition”

Charles Richet (1850-1935)

• French Nobel Prize-winning physician

• insisted that removing women from the workforce would solve the problem of male unemployment and increase the nation’s dangerously low birthrate

Personal suffering

• struggle for food, clothing, and shelter grew desperate

• shantytowns appeared overnight

• bread-lines stretched for blocks

• marriage, childbearing, and divorce rates declined, while suicide rates rose

• workers and farmers despised the wealthy who were protected from the worst impact of economic downturn

• adolescents who completed school faced an almost non existent job market

John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

• U.S. writer

• chillingly captured the official heartlessness and rising political anger inspired by the depression

• wrote The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

The Grapes of Wrath（1939)

• written by John Steinbeck

• featured the Joad family, prototypical “Okies”, who migrated from Oklahoma to California to escape the “dust bowl”

• commented on the U.S. government’s policy of “planned scarcity”

• portrayed the nation’s rising political anguish

Dust bowl

a period of severe and damaging dust storms

Planned scarcity

surplus crops were destroyed to raise prices while citizens starved

Classical economic thought

held that capitalism was a self-correcting system that operated best when left to its own devices

Government response to economic crisis

• Initially, most governments did nothing, hoping against all odds that the crisis would resolve itself

• Some governments assumed more active roles, pursuing deflationary measures

  • balancing national budgets and curtailing public spending

• overall worsened the depression’s impact and intensified the plight of millions of people

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

• the most influential economist of the 20th century

• offered a novel solution to central problems of the depression

• wrote The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936)

• believed the fundamental cause of the depression was not excessive supply, but inadequate demand

• urged governments to play an active role and stimulate the economy by increasing the money supply, which would lower interest raters and encourage investments

• advised governments to undertake public works projects to provide jobs and redistribute incomes through tax policy, an intervention which would result in reduced unemployment and increased consumer demand, which would lead to economic revival

• his theories did not become influential with policymakers until after WWII

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936)

• written by John Maynard Keynes

• Keynes’ answer to the central problem of the depression

  • that millions of people who were willing to work could not find employment

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)

• Former U.S. president

• applied similar ideas to Keynes’ theories

• took aggressive steps to reinflate the economy and ease the worst of the suffering caused by the depression

The New Deal

• Program of sweeping economic and social reforms by Roosevelt

  • legislation designed to prevent the collapse of the banking system

  • provide jobs and farm subsidies

  • give workers the right to organize and bargain collectively

  • guarantee minimum wages

  • to provide social security in old age

• Less effective in ending the Great Depression than was the enormous military spending during WWII

Fundamental premise of the New Deal

• that the federal government was justified in intervening to protect the social and economic welfare of the people

• represented a major shift in U.S. government policy and started a trend toward social reform legislation that continued long after the depression years

Marxists

• believed that capitalist society was on its deathbed

• had faith that a new and better system based on rule by the proletariat was being born out of the ashes of the Russian empire

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Jospeh Stalin

• new rulers of Russia

• transformed former tsarist empire in the world’s first socialist society the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922)

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922)

the world’s first socialist society

Fascist movements across Europe

• promoted alternatives to socialism and offered revolutionary answers to economic, social, and political problems that seemed to defy solution by traditional liberal democratic means

• Italian and German ones figured most prominently

Russian Communist Party

• Opposition to the Bolshevik Party

• Erupted into a civil war (1918-1920)

  • 10 million lives lost in civil war

Red Terror campaign

• Whites were arrested, tried, and executed

• The secret police killed 200,000 opponents of the regime

• Bolsheviks executed Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, their 5 children, and their servants because they feared that the Romanov family would fall into the hands of the Whites

• supported by peasants even though they were still hostile, but they feared Whites victory would lead to return of monarchy

Whites/White terror/resistance

• They were suspected anticommunists

• Supported by foreign military (Britain, France, Japan, U.S.)

• As brutal as Red terror

• Defeated by the Red Army in 1920

War communism

• policy of hasty and unplanned course of nationalization by new rulers of Russia

• annulled private property and the Bolshevik governments assumed control of banks, industry, and other privately held commercial properties

• landed estates and holdings of monasteries and churches became national property

  • exempted the holdings of poor peasants from confiscations

• abolition of private trade

  • unpopular, so peasants reduced production

Problems for rebuilding Russian society

• Workers on strike

• Depopulated cities

• Destroyed factories

• An army that demobilized soldiers faster than the workforce could absorb them

• Peasant rebellions

• A sailors’ revolt

• Economic paralysis

New Economic Policy (NEP)

• Implemented by Lenin

• Temporarily restored the market economy and some private enterprise in Russia

• Government returned small-scale industries (<20 workers) to private ownership

• Allowed peasants to sell their surpluses at free market prices

• Included vigorous program of electrification and establishment of technical schools to train technicians and engineers

Death of Lenin

• 1924

• from 3 paralytic strokes

• followed by a bitter struggle for power among Bolshevik leaders

Politburo

• the central governing body of the Communist Party

• favored establishing socialism in one country alone

• repudiated the role of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as torchbearer of worldwide socialist revolution

Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)

• general secretary of the Politburo

• promoted the idea of socialism in one country

• Georgian by birth, Orthodox seminarian by training, Russian nationalist by conviction

• indicated his universal resolve to gain power

• surname means “man of steel”

• an intellectual misfit among Bolshevik elite

• 1928: triumphed over his rivals in the party, clearing way for an unchallenged dictatorship of the Soviet Union

• replaced NEP with First Five-Year Plan

• “We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries. Either we do it, or we shall go under”

First Five-Year Plan

• Stalin’s ambitious plan for rapid economic development

• to transform the Soviet Union from a predominantly agricultural country to a leading industrial power

• set targets for increased productivity in all spheres of the economy but emphasized heavy industry (steel and machinery) at expense of consumer goods

• blueprint for maximum centralization of the entire national economy offered a bold alternative to market capitalism

• set unrealistically high production targets

Gosplan

central state planning agency of the Soviet Union

Collectivization of agriculture

• integral to the drive for industrialization

• Soviet state expropriated privately owned land to create collective or cooperative farm units whose profits were shared by all farmers

• a means of increasing the efficiency of agricultural production and ensuring that industrial workers would be fed

• enforced against kulaks

  • outraged peasants

Kulaks

• relatively wealthy peasants who had risen to prosperity during the NEP

• accounted for only 3-5% of the peasantry

Peasants’ response to the collectivization of agriculture

• slaughtered livestock

• burning their crops

• left the land and migrated to cities in search of work

  • taxed the limited supplied of housing, food, and utilities

• starved to death when unable to meet production quotas

• around 3 million peasant lives lost

Attractive alternative to collapse of U.S. markets and depressed capitalist world

centrally planned economy to create more jobs than workers could fill

Congress of Victors

• 17th congress of the Communist Party in 1934

• became Congress of Victims when Stalin learned of a plan to bring more pluralism back into leadership

  • Stalin incited a civil war within the party that was climaxed by highly publicized trials of former Bolshevik elites for treason and by a purge of 2/3s of the delegates

The Great Purge (1935-1938)

• campaign of political repression

• Stalin removed all persons suspected of opposition from posts of authority

  • included 2/3 of the members of the 1934 Central Committee

  • included more than ½ of the army’s high-ranking officers

  • victims faced execution or long-term suffering in labor camps

  • detained 1,548,366 persons; 681,692 were shot

World’s first dictatorship of the proletariat

• challenged values and institutions of liberal society everywhere

• demonstrated the viability of communism as a social and political system

Fascism

• a political movement and ideology that sought to create a new type of society

• developed as a reaction against liberal democracy and the spread of socialism and communism

• the term derives from fasces

• rarely threatened the political order and never overthrew parliamentary system

  • exceptions: Italy and Germany

• remained basically a European phenomenon of the era between the two world wars

• hostile towards class-based visions for the future promoted by socialism and communism

Fascist movements

• some dominated political life in many European societies

  • Germany: in the guise of National Socialism (Nazism)

• 1930s: sprung up in Japan, China, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, and in several Arab lands

• shared common features with each other

  • veneration of the state

  • devotion to a strong leader

  • emphasis on ultranationalism, ethnocentrism, and militarism

• emphasized chauvinism and xenophobia, which they frequently linked to an exaggerated ethnocentrism

Chauvinism

a belligerent form of nationalism

Xenophobia

fear of foreign people

Fasces

ancient Roman symbol of punitive authority consisting of a bundle of wooden rods strapped together around an axe

Benito Mussolini

• In 1919, adopted fasces symbol for the Italian Fascist movement that governed Italy from 1922-1943

• guiding force behind Italian fascism

• former socialist and editor of Avanti!

• 1914: founded his own newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia

• convinced that the war represented a turning point for the nation

• argued that the soldiers returning from the front would spearhead the thorough transformation of Italian society and create a new type of state

• advanced a political program that emphasized virulent nationalism, demanded repression of socialism, and called for a strong political leader

• 1919: established the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Veteran League)

• inaugurated a fascist regimes in Italy in 1922

• seized total power as dictator as dictator and subsequently ruled Italy as Il Duce

  • crushed labor unions and prohibited strikes

  • 1932: “the twentieth century will be a century of fascism, the century of Italian power”

Fascism to the Public (1920-1930s)

• attracted millions of followers

  • especially to miggle classes and rural populations

    • radicalized by economic and social crises and were especially fearful of class conflict and the perceived threat from the political left

  • attractive to nationalists

    • denounced their governments for failing to realize the glorious objectives for which they had fought during the Great War

Fascists

• sought to create a new national community

  • defined either as a nation-state or as a unique ethnic or racial group

• dedicated themselves to the revival of allegedly lost national traditions

  • differed widely

• hostile to liberal democracy, its devotion to individualism, and its institutions, which they viewed as weak and indecent

• leaders viewed national boundaries as artificial restraints limiting their union with ethnic or racial comrades living in other states

Militarism

• embraced by fascist states

  • maintained large and expensive military establishments

  • tried to organize much of public life along military lines

  • showed a fondness for uniforms, parades, and monumental architecture

• a belief in the rigors and virtues of military life as an individual and national ideal

Fascist ideology

• consistently invoked the primacy of the state, which stood at the center of the nation’s life and history

  • demanded the subordination of the individual to the service of the state

• strong and charismatic leaders embodied the state and claimed indisputable authority

Conditions conducive to the rise of fascism

• widespread disillusionment with uninspired political leadership and ineffective government

• extensive economic turmoil and social discontent

• a growing fear of socialism

Avanti!

• “Forward!”

• Italy’s leading socialist daily newspaper

Il Popolo d’Italia

• “The People of Italy”

• daily Italian newspaper founded in 1914 by Benito Mussolini

• encouraged Italian entry into the Great War