The West Between the Wars 1919 –1939

• The West Between the Wars 1919 –1939

Introduction

The period between World War I and World War II (1919-1939) was marked by a futile search for stability, the rise of dictatorial regimes, and significant cultural and intellectual shifts. The Treaty of Versailles left many nations discontented, and the League of Nations proved ineffective in addressing the crises of the time. The brief period of prosperity in Europe during the early 1920s ended with the Great Depression in 1929, shaking confidence in political democracy and paving the way for extremist parties.

Timeline

• 1919-1925: Nationalists and Communists in China form an alliance.

• 1922: Lenin and the Communists create the USSR.

• 1923:

• 1926: Mussolini establishes a Fascist dictatorship in Italy.

• 1929: U.S. stock market crashes, marking the beginning of the Great Depression.

• 1932: Sultan Ibn Sa‘u¯d establishes the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

• 1933: Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany.

• 1935: Nuremberg Laws in Germany exclude Jews as citizens.

• 1938: Japan passes military draft law.

• 1939:

The Futile Search for Stability

The peace settlement of World War I left many nations unhappy, and the League of Nations proved unable to deal with the crises following the war. The brief period of prosperity that began in Europe during the early 1920s ended in 1929 with the beginning of the Great Depression, shaking confidence in political democracy and paving the way for fear and the rise of extremist parties that offered solutions to the hardships that many were enduring.

Uneasy Peace, Uncertain Security

Discontent with the Treaty of Versailles and a weak League of Nations opened the door to new problems in the interwar years. The peace settlement at the end of World War I tried to fulfill nineteenth-century dreams of nationalism. It created new boundaries and new states. Border disputes poisoned relations in eastern Europe for years, and many Germans vowed to revise the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

A Weak League of Nations

President Woodrow Wilson had realized that the peace settlement included unwise provisions that could serve as new causes for conflict and placed many of his hopes for the future in the League of Nations. However, the organization was not very effective in maintaining the peace. One problem was the failure of the United States to join the League because most Americans wanted to avoid involvement in European affairs. Without the United States, the League of Nations’ effectiveness was automatically weakened. The remaining League members could not agree to use force against aggression.

French Demands

Between 1919 and 1924, the French government sought security led to the demand strict enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles. This tough policy began with the issue of reparations (payments) that the Germans were supposed to make for the damage they had done in the war. In April 1921, the Allied Reparations Commission determined that Germany owed 132 billion German marks (33 billion U.S. dollars) for reparations, payable in annual installments of 2.5 billion marks.

The new German republic made its first payment in 1921. By the following year, however, the German government faced a financial crisis and announced that it could not pay any more reparations. Outraged, France sent troops to occupy the Ruhr Valley, Germany’s chief industrial and mining center, planning to collect reparations by using the Ruhr mines and factories.

Inflation in Germany

The German government adopted a policy of passive resistance to this French occupation. German workers went on strike, and the German government mainly paid their salaries by printing more paper money. This only added to the inflation (rise in prices) that had already begun in Germany by the end of the war. The German mark soon became worthless. In 1914, 4.2 marks equaled 1 U.S. dollar. By November 1, 1923, it took 130 billion marks to equal 1 dollar. By the end of November, the ratio had increased to an incredible 4.2 trillion marks to 1 dollar. Economic adversity led to political upheavals, and both France and Germany began to seek a way out of the disaster.

The Dawes Plan

In August 1924, an international commission produced a new plan for reparations. The Dawes Plan, named after the American banker who chaired the commission, first reduced reparations and then coordinated Germany’s annual payments with its ability to pay. The Dawes Plan also granted an initial 200 million loan for German recovery, which soon opened the door to heavy American investment in Europe. A brief period of European prosperity followed, but it only lasted from 1924 to 1929.

The Treaty of Locarno

With prosperity came a new European diplomacy. The foreign ministers of Germany and France, Gustav Stresemann and Aristide Briand, fostered a spirit of cooperation. In 1925 they signed the Treaty of Locarno, which guaranteed Germany’s new western borders with France and Belgium. Many viewed the Locarno pact as the beginning of a new era of European peace.

The new spirit of cooperation grew even stronger when Germany joined the League of Nations in March 1926. Two years later, the Kellogg-Briand Pact brought even more hope. Sixty-three nations signed this accord and pledged “to renounce war as an instrument of national policy.” Nothing was said, however, about what would be done if anyone violated the pact.

The Great Depression

Underlying economic problems and an American stock market crisis triggered the Great Depression. The brief period of prosperity that began in Europe in 1924 ended in an economic collapse that came to be known as the Great Depression. A depression is a period of low economic activity and rising unemployment.

Causes of the Depression

Two factors played a major role in the start of the Great Depression. First was a series of downturns in the economies of individual nations in the second half of the 1920s. Prices for farm products, especially wheat, fell rapidly due to overproduction.

The second factor that triggered the Great Depression was an international financial crisis involving the U.S. stock market. Much of the European prosperity between 1924 and 1929 was built on U.S. bank loans to Germany. Germany needed the U.S. loans to pay reparations to France and Great Britain. During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market boomed. By 1928, American investors pulled money out of Germany to invest it in the stock market. Then, in October 1929, the U.S. stock market crashed, and stock prices plunged. In a panic, U.S. investors withdrew even more funds from Germany and other European markets. This withdrawal made the banks of Germany and other European states weak. The well-known Creditanstalt Bank in Vienna collapsed in May 1931. By then, trade was slowing, industrial production was declining, and unemployment was rising.

Responses to the Depression

Economic depression was not new to Europe. However, the extent of the economic downturn after 1929 truly made this the Great Depression. During 1932, the worst year of the Depression, nearly 1 in every 4 British workers was unemployed. About 5.5 million Germans, or roughly 30 percent of the German labor force, had no jobs. The unemployed and homeless filled the streets. Governments did not know how to deal with the crisis. They lowered wages and raised tariffs to exclude foreign goods from home markets. These measures made the crisis worse and had serious political effects.

Political Effects of the Great Depression

One effect of the economic crisis was increased government activity in the economy. Another effect was a renewed interest in Marxist ideas. Marx’s prediction that capitalism would destroy itself through overproduction seemed to be coming true. Communism thus became more popular, especially among workers and intellectuals. Finally, the Great Depression led masses of people to follow political leaders who offered simple solutions in return for dictatorial power. Everywhere, democracy seemed on the defensive in the 1930s.

Democratic States

Although new democracies were established in Europe after World War I, the Depression shook people’s confidence in political democracy. President Woodrow Wilson claimed that World War I had been fought to make the world safe for democracy. In 1919 his claim seemed justified. Most European states, both major and minor, had democratic governments. In a number of states, women could now vote. Male political leaders had rewarded women for their contributions to the war effort by granting them voting rights.

In the 1920s, Europe seemed to be returning to the political trends of the prewar era—parliamentary regimes and the growth of individual liberties. This was not, however, an easy process. Four years of total war and four years of postwar turmoil made a “return to normalcy” difficult.

Germany

Imperial Germany ended in 1918 with Germany’s defeat in the war. A German democratic state known as the Weimar Republic was then created. The Weimar Republic was plagued by serious economic problems. Germany experienced runaway inflation in 1922 and 1923, bringing serious social problems. Families on fixed incomes watched their life savings disappear. To make matters worse, after a period of relative prosperity from 1924 to 1929, Germany was struck by the Great Depression.

In 1930, unemployment had grown to 3 million people by March and to 4.38 million by December. The Depression paved the way for fear and the rise of extremist parties.

France

After the defeat of Germany, France became the strongest power on the European continent. However, France, too, suffered financial problems after the war. It needed to rebuild the areas that had been devastated in the war. Because it had a more balanced economy than other nations, France did not begin to feel the full effects of the Great Depression until 1932. The economic instability it then suffered soon had political effects. During a 19-month period in 1932 and 1933, six different cabinets were formed as France faced political chaos.

Finally, in June 1936, a coalition of leftist parties—Communists, Socialists, and Radicals—formed the Popular Front government. The Popular Front started a program for workers that some have called the French New Deal. This program gave workers the right to collective bargaining (the right of unions to negotiate with employers over wages and hours), a 40-hour workweek in industry, a two-week paid vacation, and a minimum wage.

Great Britain

Industries such as coal, steel, and textiles declined after the war, leading to a rise in unemployment. Two million Britons were out of work in 1921. Britain experienced limited prosperity from 1925 to 1929. However, by 1929, Britain faced the growing effects of the Great Depression. The Labour Party failed to solve the nation’s economic problems and fell from power in 1931. A new government, led by the Conservatives, claimed credit for bringing Britain out of the worst stages of the Depression by using the traditional policies of balanced budgets and protective tariffs.

Political leaders in Britain largely ignored the new ideas of a British economist, John Maynard Keynes, who published his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936. Keynes condemned the old theory that, in a free economy, depressions should be left to resolve themselves without governmental interference. Keynes argued that unemployment came from a decline in demand, not from overproduction. Demand, in turn, could be increased by putting people back to work building highways and public buildings. If necessary, governments should finance such projects with deficit spending, or going into debt.

The United States

After Germany, no Western nation was more affected by the Great Depression than the United States. By 1932, U.S. industrial production had fallen almost 50 percent from its 1929 level. By 1933, there were more than 12 million unemployed. Under these circumstances, the Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt won a landslide victory in the 1932 presidential election.

Believing in free enterprise, Roosevelt believed that capitalism had to be reformed to save it. He pursued a policy of active government intervention in the economy, known as the New Deal. The New Deal included an increased program of public works. The Works Progress Administration (WPA), established in 1935, was a government organization employing about three million people at its peak. Workers built bridges, roads, post offices, and airports.

The Roosevelt administration was also responsible for new social legislation that began the U.S. welfare system. In 1935 the Social Security Act created a system of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance. The New Deal’s reforms may have prevented a social revolution in the United States. However, it did not solve the unemployment problems. In 1938 American unemployment still stood at more than 10 million. Only World War II and the growth of weapons industries brought U.S. workers back to full employment.

The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes

After World War I, European democracy was under threat. France and Britain remained democratic, but in Italy and Russia, a new kind of dictatorship emerged with Mussolini’s fascist state in Italy and Stalin’s totalitarian rule in Russia. Other Western states like Spain tried to keep old elites in power with authoritarian regimes.

The Rise of Dictators

The apparent triumph of democracy in Europe in 1919 was very short-lived. By 1939, only two major European states—France and Great Britain—remained democratic. Italy, the Soviet Union, Germany, and many other European states adopted dictatorial regimes, which took both old and new forms. A new form of dictatorship was the modern totalitarian state. In a totalitarian state, the government aims to control the political, economic, social, intellectual, and cultural lives of its citizens.

Totalitarian regimes wanted more than passive obedience. They wanted to conquer the minds and hearts of their subjects. They achieved this goal through mass propaganda techniques and high-speed modern communication. Modern technology also gave totalitarian states an unprecedented ability to impose their wishes on their subjects. The totalitarian states were led by a single leader and a single party. They rejected the ideal of limited government power and the guarantee of individual freedoms. Instead, individual freedom was subordinated to the collective will of the masses. The leader determined that collective will, however. The masses were expected to be actively involved in achieving the state’s goals. , which might include war, a socialist state, or a thousand-year empire like the one Adolf Hitler wanted to establish.

Fascism in Italy

Like other European countries, Italy experienced severe economic problems after World War I. Inflation grew, and both industrial and agricultural workers staged strikes. Socialists spoke of revolution. The middle class began to fear a Communist takeover like the one that had recently occurred in Russia. Industrial and agricultural strikes created more division. From this background of widespread unrest emerged Mussolini. In the early 1920s, Benito Mussolini set up the first European fascist movement in Italy.

Mussolini began his political career as a Socialist. In 1919 he created a new political group, the Fascio di Combattimento, or League of Combat. Fascism comes from that name. As a political philosophy, fascism glorifies the state above the individual by emphasizing the need for a strong central government led by a dictatorial ruler. In a fascist state, the government controls the people and stifles any opposition.

By 1922, Mussolini’s movement was growing quickly. The middle-class fear of socialism, communism, and disorder made the Fascists increasingly attractive to many people. Mussolini knew that many Italians were still angry over the peace settlement and the failure to receive more land under the treaty was a deep source of resentment. He knew nationalism was a powerful force and demanded more land for Italy. Mussolini converted thousands to the Fascist Party with his nationalistic appeals.

Mussolini's Rise to Power

In 1922 Mussolini and the Fascists threatened to march on Rome if they were not given power. Victor Emmanuel III, the king of Italy, gave in and made Mussolini prime minister. Mussolini used his position as prime minister to create a Fascist dictatorship. New laws gave the government the right to stop any publications that criticized the Catholic Church, the monarchy, or the state. The prime minister was made head of the government with the power to make laws by decree. The police were given unrestricted authority to arrest and jail anyone for either political or nonpolitical crimes. In 1926 the Fascists outlawed all other political parties in Italy and established a secret police, known as the OVRA. By the end of the year, Mussolini ruled Italy as Il Duce, “The Leader.”

The Fascist State

Believing that the Fascist state should be totalitarian, Mussolini used various means to establish complete control over the Italian people. The OVRA watched citizens’ political activities and enforced government policies. Police actions in Italy, however, were never as repressive or savage as those in Nazi Germany. The Italian Fascists also tried to exercise control over all forms of mass media, including newspapers, radio, and film. The media was used to spread propaganda, intended to mold Italians into a single-minded Fascist community. Most Italian Fascist propaganda, however, was fairly basic and mainly consisted of simple slogans like “Mussolini Is Always Right.”

The Fascists also used organizations to promote the ideals of fascism and to control the population. For example, by 1939, Fascist youth groups included about 66 percent of the population between the ages of 8 and 18. These youth groups particularly focused on military activities and values. With these organizations, the Fascists hoped to create a nation of new Italians who were fit, disciplined, and war-loving. In practice, however, the Fascists largely maintained traditional social attitudes.

This is especially evident in their policies regarding women. The Fascists portrayed the family as the pillar of the state. Seen as the foundation of the family, women were to be homemakers and mothers. According to Mussolini, these roles were “their natural and fundamental mission in life.” In spite of his attempts, Mussolini never achieved the degree of totalitarian control seen in Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Italian Fascist Party did not completely destroy the country’s old power structure. Some institutions, including the armed forces, managed to keep most of their independence. Victor Emmanuel III was also retained as king.

Mussolini’s compromise with the traditional institutions of Italy was especially evident in his dealings with the Catholic Church. Mussolini’s regime recognized the sovereign independence of a small area within Rome known as Vatican City. The Church had claimed this area since 1870. In return, the pope recognized the Italian state. Mussolini’s regime also gave the Church a large grant of money and recognized Catholicism as the “sole religion of the state.” In return, the Catholic Church urged Italians to support the Fascist regime.

In all areas of Italian life under Mussolini and the Fascists, a large gap existed between Fascist ideals and practices. The Italian Fascists promised much but delivered considerably less. They would soon be overshadowed by a much more powerful fascist movement to the north—that of Adolf Hitler, a student and admirer of Mussolini.

A New Era in the USSR

In the Soviet Union, Stalin maintained total power by murdering his political opponents. As discussed earlier, Lenin followed a policy of war communism during the civil war in Russia. The government controlled most industries and seized grain from peasants to ensure supplies for the army. Once the war was over, peasants began to sabotage the Communist program by hoarding food. The situation became even worse when drought caused a terrible famine between 1920 and 1922. As many as 5 million lives were lost. With agricultural disaster came industrial collapse. By 1921, industrial output was only 20 percent of its 1913 level. Russia was exhausted.

Lenin's New Economic Policy

In March 1921, Lenin pulled Russia back from the abyss. He abandoned war communism in favor of his New Economic Policy (NEP). The NEP was a modified version of the old capitalist system. Peasants were allowed to sell their produce openly. Retail stores, as well as small industries that employed fewer than 20 workers, could be privately owned and operated. Heavy industry, banking, and mines, however, remained in the hands of the government.

The Soviet Union

In 1922 Lenin and the Communists formally created a new state called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The state is also known as the USSR (by its initials) or as the Soviet Union (by its shortened form). By that time, a revived market and a good harvest had brought an end to famine. Soviet agricultural production climbed to 75 percent of its prewar level. Overall, the NEP saved the Soviet Union from complete economic disaster. Lenin and other leading Communists, however, intended the NEP to be only a temporary retreat from the goals of communism.

Industrialization

Lenin died in 1924. A struggle for power began at once among the seven members of the Politburo—the Communist Party’s main policy-making body. The Politburo was severely divided over the future direction of the Soviet Union. One group, led by Leon Trotsky, wanted to end the NEP and launch Russia on a path of rapid industrialization, chiefly at the expense of the peasants. This group also wanted to spread communism abroad. It believed that the revolution in Russia would not survive without other communist states.

Another group in the Politburo rejected the idea of worldwide communist revolution. Instead, it wanted to focus on building a socialist state in Russia and to continue Lenin’s NEP. This group believed that rapid industrialization would harm the living standards of the Soviet peasants.

The Rise of Stalin

These divisions were further strained by an intense personal rivalry between Leon Trotsky and another Politburo member, Joseph Stalin. In 1924 Trotsky held the post of commissar of war. Stalin held the bureaucratic job of party general secretary. The general secretary appointed regional, district, city, and town party officials. Thus this bureaucratic job actually became the most important position in the party. Stalin used his post as general secretary to gain complete control of the Communist Party. The thousands of officials Stalin appointed provided him with support in his bid for power. By 1929, Stalin had removed the Bolsheviks of the revolutionary era from the Politburo and had established a powerful dictatorship. Trotsky, pushed out of the party in 1927, eventually made his way to Mexico. There he was murdered in 1940, probably on Stalin’s orders.

Five-Year Plans

The Stalin Era marked the beginning of an economic, social, and political revolution that was more sweeping in its results than were the revolutions of 1917. Stalin made a significant shift in economic policy in 1928 when he ended the NEP. That year he launched his First Five-Year Plan. The Five-Year Plans set economic goals for five-year periods. Their purpose was to transform Russia virtually overnight from an agricultural into an industrial country. The First Five-Year Plan emphasized maximum production of military equipment and capital goods (goods devoted to the production of other goods, such as heavy machines). The plan quadrupled the production of heavy machinery and doubled oil production. Between 1928 and 1937, during the first two Five-Year Plans, steel production in Russia increased from 4 million to 18 million tons per year.

Costs of Stalin’s Programs

The social and political costs of industrialization were enormous. Little thought was given to caring for the expanded labor force in the cities. The number of workers increased by millions between 1932 and 1940. However, total investment in housing actually declined after 1929. The result was that millions of workers and their families lived in miserable conditions. Real wages in industry also declined by 43 percent between 1928 and 1940. Strict laws even limited where workers could move. To keep workers content, government propaganda stressed the need for sacrifice to create the new socialist state.

Collectivization

With rapid industrialization came an equally rapid collectivization of agriculture. Collectivization was a system in which private farms were eliminated. Instead, the government owned all of the land, and the peasants worked it. The peasants resisted by hoarding crops and killing livestock. In response, Stalin stepped up the program. By 1930, 10 million peasant households had been collectivized. By 1934, 26 million family farms had been collectivized into 250,000 units. Collectivization was done at tremendous cost. Hoarding food and slaughtering livestock led to widespread famine. Stalin is supposed to have said that 10 million died in the famine of 1932 to 1933. In the Ukraine an estimated 5 to 7 million were forced into famine. Stalin gave the peasants only one concession. Each collective farm worker could have one tiny, privately owned garden plot.

Purges

Stalin’s programs had other costs as well. To achieve his goals, Stalin strengthened his control over the party. Those who resisted were sent into forced labor camps in Siberia. Stalin’s desire to make all decisions led to purges, or removal, of the Old Bolsheviks. These people had been involved in the early days of the movement. Between 1936 and 1938, the most prominent Old Bolsheviks were put on trial and condemned to death. During this time, a reign of terror, Stalin purged army officers, diplomats, union officials, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens. About 8 million were arrested. Millions were sent to labor camps in Siberia; they never returned. Others were executed.

The Stalin era also overturned permissive social legislation enacted in the early 1920s. To promote equal rights for women, the Communists had made the divorce process easier. They had also encouraged women to work outside the home. After Stalin came to power, the family was praised as a small collective. Parents were responsible for teaching the values of hard work, duty, and discipline to their children.

Authoritarian States in the West

A number of governments in the Western world were not totalitarian but were authoritarian. These states adopted some of the features of totalitarian states, in particular their use of police powers. However, these authoritarian governments did not want to create a new kind of mass society. Instead, they wanted to preserve the existing social order.

Eastern Europe

At first, it seemed that political democracy would become well established in eastern Europe after World War I. Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia (known as the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes until 1929), Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary all adopted parliamentary systems. However, authoritarian regimes soon replaced most of these systems. Parliamentary systems failed in most eastern European states for several reasons. These states had little tradition of political democracy. In addition, they were mostly rural and agrarian. Many of the peasants were illiterate (could not read or write).

Large landowners still dominated most of the land, and they feared the peasants. Ethnic conflicts also threatened these countries. Powerful landowners, the churches, and even some members of the small middle class feared land reform. They also feared communist upheaval and ethnic conflict. These groups looked to authoritarian governments to maintain the old system. Only Czechoslovakia, which had a large middle class, a liberal tradition, and a strong industrial base, maintained its political democracy.

Spain

In Spain, too, political democracy failed to survive. Although the middle class and intellectuals supported the Second Republic, the new government began falling apart shortly after it was created in 1931. Rivalries between political parties and personal rivalries between their leaders tore Spain apart. Spain’s Second Republic lasted only five years, three months, and three days.

Francisco Franco rose rapidly within the military ranks. He became Europe’s youngest general. When chaos swept Spain, the Spanish military forces under Franco’s leadership revolted against the democratic government in 1936. A brutal and bloody civil war began. Foreign intervention complicated the Spanish Civil War. The fascist regimes of Italy and Germany aided Franco’s forces, sending him arms, money, and soldiers. Hitler used the Spanish Civil War as an opportunity to test the new weapons of his revived air force. German bombers destroyed the city of Guernica in April 1937. Spanish artist Pablo Picasso immortalized the horrible destruction in his mural Guernica.

The Spanish republican government was aided by 40,000 foreign volunteers. The Soviet Union sent in trucks, planes, tanks, and military advisers. The Spanish Civil War came to an end when Franco’s forces captured Madrid in 1939. Franco established a dictatorship that favored large landowners, businesspeople, and the Catholic clergy. Because Franco’s dictatorship favored traditional groups and did not try to control every aspect of people’s lives, it is an example of an authoritarian rather than a totalitarian regime.

Hitler and Nazi Germany

Recovering from the humiliating loss of World War I and from the Great Depression, Germans found extremist parties more attractive. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party promised to build a new Germany, and his party’s propaganda appealed to the German sense of national honor. The new Germany that Hitler envisioned did not include any group the Nazis considered inferior, especially the Jewish people.

Hitler and His Views

Adolf Hitler was born in Austria on April 20, 1889. Unsuccessful in school, he traveled to Vienna to become an artist but was rejected by the academy. Here he developed his basic social and political ideas. At the core of Hitler’s ideas was racism, especially anti-Semitism (hostility toward Jews). Hitler was also an extreme nationalist who understood how political parties could effectively use propaganda and terror. Hitler served four years on the Western Front during World War I. At the end of the war, Hitler remained in Germany and decided to enter politics.

In 1919 he joined the little-known German Workers’ Party, one of several right-wing extreme nationalist parties in Munich. By the summer of 1921, Hitler had taken total control of the party. By then the party had been renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP, an abbreviation of the German name), or Nazi, for short. Within two years, party membership had grown to 55,000 people, with 15,000 in the party militia. The militia was variously known as the SA, the Storm Troops, or the Brownshirts, after the color of their uniforms.

An overconfident Hitler staged an armed uprising against the government in Munich in November 1923. This uprising, called the Beer Hall Putsch, was quickly crushed, and Hitler was sentenced to prison. During his brief stay in jail, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, an account of his movement and its basic ideas. In Mein Kampf, Hitler links extreme German nationalism, strong anti-Semitism, and anticommunism together by a Social Darwinian theory of struggle. This theory emphasizes the right of superior nations to lebensraum—“living space”—through expansion. It also upholds the right of superior individuals to gain authoritarian leadership over the masses.

The Message of Nazism

While in prison, Hitler realized that the Nazis would have to attain power by legal means, not by a violent overthrow of the Weimar Republic. Hitler knew that the Nazi Party would have to be a mass political party that could compete for votes with the other political parties. Once out of prison, Hitler expanded the Nazi Party in Germany. By 1929, it had a national party organization. Three years later, it had 800,000 members and had become the largest party in the Reichstag—the German parliament. No doubt, Germany’s economic difficulties were a crucial factor in the Nazi rise to power.

Unemployment had risen dramatically, growing from 4.35 million in 1931 to about 5.5 million by the winter of 1932. The Great Depression made extremist parties more attractive. Hitler promised a new Germany that appealed to nationalism and militarism. These appeals struck an emotional chord in his listeners.

The Nazis Take Control

After 1930, the German government ruled by decree with the support of President Hindenburg. The Reichstag had little power. More and more, the right-wing elites of Germany—the industrial leaders, landed aristocrats, military officers, and higher bureaucrats—looked to Hitler for leadership. Under pressure, Hindenburg agreed to allow Hitler to become chancellor in 1933 and create a new government. Within two months, Hitler had laid the foundation for the Nazi Party’s complete control over Germany. The crowning step of Hitler’s “legal seizure” of power came on March 23, 1933, when a two-thirds vote of the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act. This law gave the government the power to ignore the constitution for four years while it issued laws to deal with the country’s problems. The Enabling Act also gave Hitler’s later actions a legal basis. He no longer needed the Reichstag or President Hindenburg.

In effect, Hitler became a dictator appointed by the parliamentary body itself. With their new power, the Nazis quickly brought all institutions under their control. They purged the civil service of Jews and democratic elements. They set up prison camps called concentration camps for people who opposed them. Trade unions were dissolved. All political parties except the Nazis were abolished. By the end of the summer of 1933, only seven months after being appointed chancellor, Hitler had established the basis for a totalitarian state. When Hindenburg died in 1934, the office of president was abolished. Hitler became sole ruler of Germany. People took oaths of loyalty to their Führer, or “Leader.”

The Nazi State, 1933–1939

Hitler wanted to develop a totalitarian state and the development of an Aryan racial state that would dominate Europe and possibly the world for generations to come. (Aryan is a term used to identify people speaking Indo-European languages. The Nazis misused the term by treating it as a racial designation and identifying the Aryans with the ancient Greeks and Romans and twentieth-century Germans and Scandinavians.)

Nazis thought the Germans were the true descendants and leaders of the Aryans and would create another empire like the one ruled by the ancient Romans. The Nazis believed that the world had already seen two German empires, or Reichs: the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire of 1871 to 1918. It was Hitler’s goal to create a Third Reich, the empire of Nazi Germany. To achieve his goal, Hitler needed the active involvement of the German people.

The State and Terror

Nazi Germany was the scene of almost constant personal and institutional conflict. The Schutzstaffeln (“Guard Squadrons”), known simply as the SS, were an important force for maintaining order. The SS was originally created as Hitler’s personal bodyguard. Under the direction of Heinrich Himmler, the SS came to control not only the secret police forces that Himmler had set up, but also the regular police forces. The SS was based on two principles: terror and ideology. Terror included the instruments of repression and murder—secret police, criminal police, concentration camps, and later, execution squads and death camps (concentration camps where prisoners are killed). For Himmler, the chief goal of the SS was to further the Aryan master race.

Economics and Spectacles

In the economic sphere, Hitler used public works projects and grants to private construction firms to put people back to work and end the Depression. A massive rearmament program, however, was the key to solving the unemployment problem. Unemployment, which had reached more than 5 million people in 1932, dropped to 2.5 million in 1934 and less than 500,000 in 1937. The regime claimed full credit for solving Germany’s economic woes. The new regime’s part in bringing an end to the Depression was an important factor in leading many Germans to accept Hitler and the Nazis.

In addition, the Nazis used mass demonstrations and spectacles to make the German people an instrument of Hitler’s policies. These meetings, especially the Nuremberg party rallies that were held every September, usually evoked mass enthusiasm and excitement. The Nazi totalitarian state also controlled institutions, which included churches, schools, and universities. In addition, Nazi professional organizations and youth organizations taught Nazi ideals.

Women and Nazism

Women played a crucial role in the Aryan state as bearers of the children who, the Nazis believed, would bring about the triumph

Joseph Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union was marked by significant, albeit controversial, accomplishments:

1. Industrialization: Stalin ended the New Economic Policy (NEP) and launched the Five-Year Plans in 1928 to transform the Soviet Union from an agricultural country into an industrial power virtually overnight. The First Five-Year Plan emphasized maximum production of capital goods and military equipment. Between 1928 and 1937, steel production increased dramatically.

2. Collectivization of Agriculture: Private farms were eliminated, and the government owned all the land, with peasants working it. By 1934, millions of family farms had been collectivized into 250,000 units.

3. Social Changes: The Stalin era brought significant social changes, although at a great cost. The government stressed the need for sacrifice to create the new socialist state.

4. Purges: Stalin strengthened his control over the Communist Party through purges, removing those who resisted his policies. This included the removal of Old Bolsheviks and a reign of terror during which millions were arrested,