Turmoil Between the Wars – Key Vocabulary

The Soviet Union Under Lenin and Stalin

• Bolshevik Revolution ( $1917$ ) establishes the world’s first one-party communist state; formally withdraws from WWI via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ( $1918$ ).
• Lenin’s ideological goal: translate Marxism to the Russian context ( "Marxism-Leninism" ) ➜ centralized party vanguard, dictatorship of the proletariat.
• New Economic Policy ( NEP, $1921! - ! 1928$ )
  • Replaces "War Communism"; allows limited private trade & small-scale capitalism to revive a shattered economy.
  • Peasants may sell surplus grain; state still controls "commanding heights" ( heavy industry, banking, foreign trade ).
  • Significance: Tactical retreat to stabilize regime; shows flexibility within communist dogma.
• Power struggle after Lenin’s death ( $1924$ )
  • Key rivals: Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin.
  • Stalin leverages post of General Secretary to pack party with supporters ➜ by late $1920\text{s}$ he is unchallenged.
• Stalinist Totalitarianism
  • Tools: ubiquitous censorship, propaganda, personality cult ( posters, films, hymns ); secret police ( Cheka ➜ GPU ➜ NKVD ).
  • The Great Purge ( $1936! - ! 1938$ ): public "show trials," forced confessions, ~ $1$ million executions, millions more sent to Gulag.
  • Rapid industrialization through Five-Year Plans ( 1st plan begins $1928$ )
    • Gargantuan quotas for steel, coal, electricity; new cities ( Magnitogorsk ) & dams ( Dneprostroi ).
    • Achieves impressive output growth but at immense human cost & chronic consumer-goods shortages.
  • Ethical / philosophical issue: Can economic modernization justify systematic terror?

Collectivization of Agriculture

• Officially replaces NEP in countryside ( start $1929$ ).
  • Goal: feed urban workers, obtain exportable grain to finance industry, destroy independent peasantry as a class.
• Process
  • Millions of small plots merged into state-directed kolkhozes & sovkhozes; mechanization via state-owned tractors.
  • Kulaks ( so-called "rich" peasants ) labeled class enemies; deported, imprisoned, or executed.
• Consequences
  • Widespread armed & passive resistance: slaughter of livestock, crop burning.
  • Holodomor in Ukraine ( $1932! - ! 1933$ )
    • Man-made famine; estimates of $3$ – $7$ million deaths.
    • Controversy: genocide vs policy failure; still shapes Russo-Ukrainian memory politics.
  • Long-term inefficiencies, yet Stalin secures absolute rural control.

Emergence of Fascism in Italy

• Post-WWI discontent: "mutilated victory," high unemployment, socialist strikes.
• Benito Mussolini founds the Fasci di Combattimento ( $1919$ ); black-shirt squads attack leftists.
• March on Rome ( October $1922$ )
  • King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing civil war, invites Mussolini to form government ➜ Mussolini becomes Prime Minister.
• Consolidation of power ( $1922! - ! 1925$ )
  • Acerbo Law ( $1923$ ) guarantees fascist electoral majority; press censorship, secret police ( OVRA ).
  • By $1925$ Italy is a one-party state.
• Fascist Ideology
  • Ultrantionalism, imperial nostalgia ( "New Rome" ), militarism, corporate state ( economy organized by syndicates ).
  • Slogans: "Believe, Obey, Fight." Cult of Il Duce.
• Lateran Accords ( $1929$ ) normalize relations with the Catholic Church ➜ bolsters regime legitimacy.

Weimar Germany

• Founded after Kaiser’s abdication ( November $1918$ ); constitution signed at Weimar ( $1919$ ).
• Burdens of the Treaty of Versailles
  • Reparations of $132$ billion Goldmarks; Article $231$ "war guilt" clause; loss of Alsace-Lorraine & overseas colonies.
• Early instability
  • Spartacist Uprising ( Jan. $1919$ ), Kapp Putsch ( $1920$ ), assassinations of politicians ( e.g., Rathenau $1922$ ).
• Hyperinflation Crisis ( $1923$ )
  • Mark collapses: price of a loaf of bread rises from $250$ ( Jan. ) to $2 \times 10^{11}$ ( Nov. ).
  • Middle-class savings wiped out ➜ enduring bitterness toward republic & democracy.
• Stresemann Era & Dawes Plan ( $1924$ )
  • U.S. loans stabilize currency ( Rentenmark ); cultural "Goldene Zwanziger" ( Bauhaus, cabaret ).
• Great Depression ( $1929$ )
  • U.S. capital withdrawals; German unemployment reaches $6$ million by $1932$ ➜ fertile ground for extremists.

Hitler and the National Socialists

• Adolf Hitler joins German Workers’ Party ( DAP ) in $1919$ ➜ renames it NSDAP ( Nazi Party ).
• Beer Hall Putsch ( Nov. $1923$ ) fails; Hitler sentenced to $5$ years ( serves <1 ); writes "Mein Kampf" outlining Lebensraum & anti-Semitism.
• Electoral Breakthrough
  • Uses charismatic oratory, mass rallies, and SA intimidation; Nazi vote rises to $37\%$ ( July $1932$ Reichstag ).
• Hitler appointed Chancellor ( $30$ Jan. $1933$ ).
• Reichstag Fire ( $27$ Feb. $1933$ ) gives pretext for Emergency Decree suspending civil liberties.
• Enabling Act ( $23$ Mar. $1933$ ) passes with intimidation ➜ allows Hitler to legislate without parliament for $4$ years.
• Gleichschaltung ( "coordination" )
  • Independent parties, unions, state governments absorbed or banned; opponents sent to Dachau.
  • Night of the Long Knives ( June $1934$ ) eliminates SA leadership & rivals ➜ secures army loyalty.

Nazi Racism & Anti-Semitism

• Core doctrine: pseudo-scientific racial hierarchy, Aryans at apex; Social Darwinism.
• Nuremberg Laws ( $1935$ )
  • Strip Jews of citizenship; forbid marriage/sexual relations with "Aryans."
• Kristallnacht ( $9! - ! 10$ Nov. $1938$ )
  • State-orchestrated pogrom: $100+$ murdered, $7,500$ businesses & $200$ synagogues destroyed.
• Eugenics & "racial hygiene" programs
  • Compulsory sterilization law ( $1933$ ); T4 euthanasia ( $1939$ ) targets disabled Germans.
• Ideological function: unify populace through a common enemy, justify expansion ( Lebensraum ) & eventual Holocaust ( $1941! - ! 1945$ ).

Interwar Years in Major Democracies

• Britain
  • Postwar debt, outdated industry, high unemployment; General Strike ( $1926$ ).
  • Maintains parliamentary democracy; later pursues appeasement under Chamberlain.
• France
  • Fragmented parties ➜ short-lived cabinets; invests heavily in Maginot Line.
  • Popular Front ( Leon Blum, $1936$ ) enacts labor reforms but collapses by $1938$.
• United States
  • "Roaring Twenties" boom; Stock-Market Crash ( $24$ Oct. $1929$, "Black Thursday" ).
  • Unemployment peaks near $25\%$ ( $1933$ ).
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal ( $1933! - ! 1939$ )
    • Keynesian-inspired public works ( TVA, WPA ), Social Security Act ( $1935$ ), bank reforms ( FDIC ).
  • Retreat into isolationism: Neutrality Acts ( $1935! - ! 1937$ ).
• Overall Pattern: Democratic states grapple with mass unemployment & ideological polarization, yet retain core civil liberties.

Interwar Culture: Artists & Intellectuals

• Mood: Disillusion, "Lost Generation," questioning of progress after mechanized slaughter of WWI.
• Literature
  • Erich Maria Remarque, "All Quiet on the Western Front" ( $1929$ ); T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land" ( $1922$ ); Hemingway, Fitzgerald.
• Visual Arts
  • Dada ( Duchamp’s "Fountain," $1917$ ) rejects reason; Surrealism ( Dalí’s "Persistence of Memory," $1931$ ) mines subconscious.
  • Bauhaus ( founded $1919$ ) fuses art, craft, industry.
• Music & Popular Culture
  • Jazz spreads from U.S.; dance crazes ( Charleston ); radio & "talkies" ( first feature-length sound film "The Jazz Singer," $1927$ ).
• Intellectual Currents
  • Psychoanalysis ( Freud ): role of unconscious drives.
  • Existential seeds ( Kierkegaard revival, Heidegger’s "Being and Time," $1927$ ).
  • Scientific revolutions: Einstein’s relativity ( $1905, 1915$ ), Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle ( $1927$ ) undermine deterministic worldview.
• Significance: Cultural experimentation mirrors political volatility; artists grapple with identity, alienation, and threats to humanistic ideals.

Conclusion: From Crisis to Catastrophe

• Shared Drivers of Authoritarianism
  • Economic collapse ( hyperinflation, Depression ), national humiliation, fear of communism, and propaganda technology.
• Totalitarian Consolidation
  • USSR, Italy, Germany demonstrate state control over press, education, arts, economy, and even thought.
• Democratic Resilience & Limitations
  • Britain, France, U.S. preserve elections yet struggle to provide quick relief ➜ credibility gap vs dictators’ promises of decisive action.
• International Tensions Escalate
  • Italian invasion of Ethiopia ( $1935$ ), German remilitarization of the Rhineland ( $1936$ ), Spanish Civil War ( $1936! - ! 1939$ ) serve as dress rehearsals for global conflict.
  • League of Nations proves impotent; policy of appeasement fails to deter aggression.
• Road to WWII
  • Ideological polarization, rearmament, and unresolved WWI grievances culminate in German invasion of Poland ( Sept. $1$, $1939$ ), igniting the Second World War.
• Ethical / Philosophical Takeaways
  • Fragility of democratic institutions under stress.
  • Danger of scapegoating & dehumanization ➜ Holocaust as ultimate warning.
  • Need for vigilance against propaganda and surrender of civil liberties in exchange for security or national glory.