Chapter 26&27
Uncertainty in modern thought
The effects of World War I on modern thought
Western society began to question values and beliefs that had guided it since the Enlightenment.
Many people rejected the long accepted beliefs in progress and the power of the rational mind to understand a logical universe and an orderly society.
Valéry wrote about the crisis of the cruelly injured mind; to him the war ("storm") had left a "terrible uncertainty."
New ideas and discoveries in philosophy, physics, psychology, and literature encouraged this general intellectual crisis.
Modern philosophy
The traditional belief in progress and the rational human was attacked by Nietzsche, Bergson, and Sorel before 1914.
Nietzsche believed that Western civilization was in decline because of Christian humility and an overstress on rational thinking at the expense of emotion and passion; he believed that a few superior supermen had to become the leaders of the herd of inferior people.
Bergson added to this the idea that immediate experience and intuition are as important as rational and scientific thinking.
Sorel argued that socialism, led by an elite, would succeed through a great violent strike of all working people.
The two main developments in philosophy were logical empiricism (logical positivism) in English speaking countries, and existentialism on the Continent.
Logical empiricism, as defined by Wittgenstein, claimed that philosophy was nothing more than the logical clarification of thoughts--the study of language; it could not answer the great issues of the ages such as the meaning of life.
Existentialism, first developed in Germany by Heidegger and Jaspers, and then by Sartre and Camus in France, stressed that humans can overcome the meaninglessness of life by individual action.
Existentialism was popular in France after the Second World War because it advocated positive human action at a time of hopelessness.
The revival of Christianity
Before 1914, Protestant theologians, such as Schweitzer, stressed the human nature of Jesus and turned away from the supernatural aspects of his divinity; they sought to harmonize religious belief with scientific findings.
A revitalization of fundamental Christianity took place after World War I.
Kierkegaard was rediscovered; he had criticized the worldliness of the church and stressed commitment to a remote and majestic God.
Barth stressed the imperfect and sinful nature of man and the need to accept God's truth through trust, not reason.
Catholic existential theologians, such as Marcel, found new hope in religion by emphasizing the need for its hope and piety in a broken world.
The new physics
Prior to the 1920s, science was one of the main supports of Western society's optimistic and rational worldview.
The challenge to Newtonian physics by scientists such as Planck and Einstein undermined belief in constant natural laws.
Plank's work with subatomic energy showed that atoms were not the basic building blocks of nature.
Einstein postulated that time and space are relative, the universe is infinite, and matter and energy are interchangeable.
The 1920s were the "heroic age of physics."
Rutherford split the atom.
Subatomic particles were identified, notably the neutron.
The new physics described a universe that lacked absolute objective reality; Heisenberg claimed that instead of Newton's rational laws, there are only tendencies and probabilities.
In short, science seemed to have little to do with human experience and human problems.
Freudian psychology
Prior to Freud, it was assumed that the conscious mind processed experiences in a rational and logical way.
According to Freud, human behavior is basically irrational.
The key to understanding the mind is the irrational unconscious (the id), which is driven by sexual, aggressive, and pleasure seeking desires.
Behavior is a compromise between the needs of the id and the rationalizing conscious (the ego), which mediates what a person can do, and ingrained moral values (the superego), which tell what a person should do.
Instinctual drives can easily overwhelm the control mechanisms; yet rational thinking and traditional moral values can cripple people with guilt and neuroses.
Many interpreted Freudian thought as an encouragement of an uninhibited sex life.
Twentieth century literature
The postwar moods of pessimism, relativism, and alienation influenced novelists.
Literature focused on the complexity and irrationality of the human mind.
Writers such as Proust embraced psychological relativity--the attempt to understand oneself by looking at one's past.
Novelists such as Woolf, Faulkner, and Joyce adopted the stream of consciousness technique, in which ideas and emotions from different time periods bubble up randomly.
Some literature, such as that of Spengler, Kafka, and Orwell, was anti utopian--it predicted a future of doom.
Modern art and music
"Modernism" in art and music meant constant experimentation and a search for new forms of expression.
Architecture and design
The new idea of functionalism in architecture, exemplified by Le Corbusier, emphasized efficiency and clean lines instead of ornamentation.
The Chicago school of architects, led by Sullivan, pioneered in the building of skyscrapers.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed truly modern houses featuring low lines, open interiors, and mass-produced building materials.
Germany was the leader in modern architecture.
The Bauhaus school under Gropius became the major proponent of functional and industrial forms.
It combined the study of fine art with the study of applied art.
The Bauhaus stressed good design for everyday life.
Van der Rohe brought European functionalism to Chicago--and hence steel frame and glass wall architecture.
Modern painting
French impressionism yielded to nonrepresentational expressionism, which sought to portray the worlds of emotion and imagination, as in the works of van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Matisse.
Cubism, founded by Picasso, concentrated on zigzagging lines and overlapping planes.
Nonrepresentational art turned away from nature completely; it focused on mood, not objects.
Dadaism and surrealism became prominent in the 1920s and 1930s.
Dadaism delighted in outrageous conduct.
Surrealists, inspired by Freud, painted wild dreams and complex symbols.
Modern music
The concept of expressionism also affected music, as in the work of Stravinsky and Berg.
Some composers, led by Schönberg, abandoned traditional harmony and tonality.
Movies and radio
The general public embraced movies and radio enthusiastically.
The movie factories and stars such as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, and Charlie Chaplin created a new medium and a new culture.
Moviegoing became a form of escapism and the main entertainment of the masses.
Radio, which became possible with Marconi's "wireless" communication and the development of the vacuum tube, permitted transmission of speech and music, but major broadcasting did not begin until 1920.
Then every country established national broadcasting networks; by the late 1930s, three of four households in Britain and Germany had a radio.
Dictators and presidents used the radio for political propaganda.
Movies also became tools of indoctrination.
Eisenstein used film to dramatize the communist view of Russian history.
In Germany, Riefenstahl created a propaganda film for Hitler.
The search for peace and political stability
The search for peace was difficult: Germany hated the Treaty of Versailles, France was fearful and isolated, Britain was undependable, and the United States was not interested. Besides, Eastern Europe was in ferment and the international economy was disrupted and poor.
Yet, from 1925 to late 1929, it appeared that peace and stability were within reach. But the collapse of the 1930s ended that quest.
Germany and the Western powers
Germany was the key to lasting peace, and the Germans hated the Treaty of Versailles.
France believed that an economically weak Germany was necessary for its security and wanted massive reparations to repair devastated northern France.
Britain needed a prosperous Germany in order to maintain the British economy.
J. M. Keynes, an economist, argued that the Versailles treaty crippled the European economy and needed revision.
His attack on the treaty contributed to guilt feelings about Germany in Britain.
As a result, France and Britain drifted apart.
When Germany refused to continue its heavy reparations payments, French and Belgian armies occupied the Ruhr (1923).
The Germans stopped work in the factories, and France occupied the German Rhineland; this left many Germans unemployed.
Inflation skyrocketed; prices soared and savings were wiped out.
Resentment and political unrest among the Germans grew; many blamed the Western governments, and some blamed the Jews and communists.
Under Stresemann, Germany agreed to revised reparations payments, and France agreed to re-examine Germany's ability to pay.
Stresemann represented a new compromising mood in both Germany and France.
Hope in foreign affairs (1924-1929)
The Dawes Plan (1924) provided a solution to the reparations problem: the United States lent money to Germany so it could pay France and Britain so they could pay the United States.
In 1929, the Young Plan further reduced German reparations.
The treaties of Locarno (1925) eased European disputes.
Germany and France accepted their common border.
Britain and Italy agreed to fight either France or Germany if either country invaded the other.
Germany joined the League of Nations in 1926.
The Kellogg Briand Pact (1928) condemned war, and the signing states agreed to settle international disputes peacefully.
Hope in democratic government
The Ruhr crisis saw the emergence of the radical right under Hitler; his beer hall plot failed, but he set out his theories in Mein Kampf.
But after 1923, democracy took root in Germany as the economy boomed.
However, there were sharp political divisions in the country.
The right consisted of nationalists and monarchists.
The communists remained active on the left.
Most working class people supported the socialist Social Democrats.
In France, the democratically elected government rested in the hands of the middle class oriented moderates, while communists and socialists battled for the support of the workers.
Northern France was rebuilt, and Paris became the world's cultural center.
Britain's major problem was unemployment, and the government's efforts to ease it led the country gradually toward state sponsored welfare plans.
Britain's Labour party, committed to revisionist socialism, replaced the Liberals as the main opposition party to the Conservatives.
Labour, under MacDonald, won in 1924 and 1929, yet moved toward socialism gradually.
The Great Depression (1929-1939)
The depression of 1929-1939 was worldwide and long lasting--and it caused many to turn to radical solutions.
The economic crisis
The depression began with the American stock market crash (October 1929).
Net investment in factories and farms fell while share prices soared.
Many investors and speculators had bought stocks on margin (paying only a small part of the purchase price and borrowing the rest from their stockbrokers).
When prices started to fall, thousands of people had to sell their shares at once to pay their brokers, and a financial panic started.
Financial crisis led to a decline in production, first in the United States and then in Europe, and an unwise turn to protective tariffs.
The absence of international leadership and poor national economic policies added to the depression.
Mass unemployment
As production decreased, workers lost their jobs and had no money to buy goods, which cut production even more.
Mass unemployment also caused great social and psychological problems.
The New Deal in the United States
Roosevelt's goal was to reform capitalism--especially by giving aid to farmers by raising agricultural prices and restricting production (via Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933).
Government intervention and regulation took place through the National Recovery Administration (NRA)--designed to reduce competition, fix prices and wages.
The NRA was declared unconstitutional (1935), and Roosevelt decided to attacked the problem of mass unemployment by government employment of as many people as possible.
The popular Work Projects Administration (1935) employed millions of people.
Other social measures, such as social security and government support for labor unions, also eased the hardships of the depression.
Although the New Deal helped, it failed to pull the United States out of the depression.
Some believe Roosevelt should have nationalized industry so that national economic planning could have worked.
Many economists argued that the New Deal did not put enough money into the economy through deficit financing.
The Scandinavian response to depression
Backed by a strong tradition of community cooperation, socialist parties were firmly established in Sweden and Norway by the 1920s.
Deficit spending to finance public works and create jobs was used to check unemployment and revive the economy after 1929.
Scandinavia's welfare socialism, though it depended on a large bureaucracy and high taxes, offered an appealing middle way between capitalism and communism or fascism in the 1930s.
Recovery and reform in Britain and France
Britain's concentration on its national market aided its economic recovery--so that by 1937 production had grown by 20 percent.
Government instability in France prevented recovery and needed reform.
The Socialists, led by Blum, became the strongest party in France, and his Popular Front government attempted New Deal-type reforms.
France was drawn to the brink of civil war, and Blum was forced to resign (1937), leaving the country to drift aimlessly.
Authoritarian states
Conservative authoritarianism
Conservative authoritarianism had deep roots in European history and led to an antidemocratic form of government that believed in avoiding change but was limited in its power and objectives.
Conservative authoritarianism revived after the First World War in eastern Europe, Spain, and Portugal.
These countries lacked a strong tradition of selfgovernment.
Many were torn by ethnic conflicts.
Large landowners and the church looked to dictators to save them from land reform.
The new authoritarian governments were more concerned with maintaining the status quo than with forcing society into rapid change.
Radical totalitarian dictatorships
Radical dictatorships emerged in the Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy.
These dictatorships rejected parliamentary and liberal values (including rationality, peaceful progress, economic freedom, and a strong middle class), and sought full control over the masses--of whom they sought to mobilize for action.
Lenin, in the Soviet Union, provided a model for single-party dictatorship.
Totalitarian leaders believed in will power, conflict, the worship of violence--and the idea that the individual was less valuable than the state and there are no lasting rights.
Totalitarianism was a permanent revolution.
The USSR was totalitarianism of the left, while Nazi Germany was totalitarianism of the right.
Some historians describe the totalitarian regimes of Mussolini and Hitler as fascism which grew out of capitalism.
Fascism was expansionist nationalism, anti-socialism and anti-working class movements, and the glorification of war.
More recently, historians have emphasized the uniqueness of totalitarian rule in each country.
Stalin's Soviet Union
Stalin's modern totalitarian dictatorship was instituted by his five-year plans--which were economic, social (and propaganda) plans to build a new socialist humanity.
From Lenin to Stalin
By 1921, the economy of Russia had been destroyed.
In 1921, Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) reestablished limited economic freedom in an attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry.
Peasants bought and sold goods on the free market.
Agricultural production grew, and industrial production surpassed the prewar level.
Economic recovery and Lenin's death in 1924 brought a struggle for power between Stalin and Trotsky, which Stalin won.
Stalin met the ethnic demands for independence within the multinational Soviet state by granting minority groups limited freedoms.
Stalin's theory of "socialism in one country," or Russia building its own socialist society, was more attractive to many Communists than Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution," or the overthrow of other European states.
By 1927, Stalin had crushed all opposition and was ready to launch an economicsocial revolution.
The fiveyear plans
The first fiveyear plan (1928) to increase industrial and agricultural production was extremely ambitious, but Stalin wanted to erase the NEP, spur the economy, and catch up with the West.
Stalin waged a preventive war against the betteroff peasants, the kulaks, to bring them and their land under state control.
"Collectivization" of the peasants' land resulted in disaster for agriculture and unparalleled human tragedy.
Collectivization in the Ukraine resulted in massive famine in 1932-1933.
In the USSR, 93 percent of peasant families had been forced onto collective farms (by 1933).
Peasants fought back by securing the right to cultivate tiny family plots.
But it was a political victory for Stalin and the Communist party, as the peasants were eliminated as a potential threat.
The fiveyear plans brought about a spectacular growth of heavy industry, especially with the aid of government control of the workers and foreign technological experts.
Massive investment in heavy industry, however, meant low standards of living for workers.
Life and culture in Soviet society
The Communists wanted to create a new kind of society and human personality.
Nonfarm wages fell--by 1937, workers could buy only about 60 percent of what they bought in 1928.
Life was hard, but people were often inspired by socialist ideals and did gain some social benefits.
Personal advancement came through education, and a skilled elite emerged.
Women were given much greater opportunities in industry and education.
The 1917 revolution proclaimed complete equality of rights for women.
In the 1920s, divorce and abortion were made easy, and women were urged to work outside the home and liberate themselves sexually.
Medicine and other professions were opened to them--eventually most doctors were women.
Most women had to work to help support their families in addition to caring for the home and the children; many families were broken.
Culture became political indoctrination, and the earlier experimentation with art, theater, and literature came to an end.
History was rewritten.
Religion was persecuted.
Stalinist terror and the Great Purges
In the mid-1930s, a system of terror and purging was instituted.
Even Stalin's wife fell victim of his terrorist action.
The Kirov murder led to public "show trials" of prominent Bolsheviks; this led to more than 8 million people being arrested--many were killed.
Stalin recruited new loyal members to take the place of those who were purged; these people ruled until the 1980s.
Historians are baffled as to why the purges took place--some think they were a necessary part of totalitarianism; others think that Stalin's fears were real.
Mussolini and fascism in Italy
Mussolini hated liberalism; his movement was the first fascist movement--a halfway house between conservative authoritarianism and modern totalitarianism.
The fascist seizure of power
Prior to 1914, Italy was moving toward democracy but with problems: Catholics, conservatives, and landowners hated liberalism and the country was divided.
Only in Italy did the Socialist party gain leadership prior to 1914.
The First World War and postwar problems ended the move toward democracy in Italy.
Workers and peasants felt cheated because wartime promises of reform were not carried out.
Nationalists felt cheated by the war settlement.
The Russian Revolution energized Italy's socialists into occupying factories and farms.
By 1922, most Italians were opposed to liberal, parliamentary government.
Mussolini's Fascists opposed the "Socialist threat" with physical force (the Black Shirts).
Mussolini marched on Rome in 1922 and forced the king to name him head of the government.
The regime in action
Mussolini's Fascists manipulated elections and killed the Socialist leader Matteotti.
Between 1924 and 1926, Mussolini built a oneparty Fascist dictatorship but did not establish a fully totalitarian state.
Much of the old power structure remained, particularly the conservatives, who controlled the army, economy, and state.
The Catholic church supported Mussolini because he recognized the Vatican as an independent state and gave the church heavy financial support.
Women were repressed, but Jews were not persecuted until late in the Second World War.
Overall, Mussolini's fascist Italy was never really totalitarian.
Hitler and Nazism in Germany
The roots of Nazism
German Nazism was a product of Hitler, of Germany's social and political crisis, and the general attack on liberalism and rationality.
Hitler was born in Austria, was a school dropout, and was rejected by the Imperial art school.
Hitler became a fanatical nationalist while in Vienna, where he absorbed antiSemitic and racist ideas.
He adopted the ideas of some fanatical Christians (e.g., Lueger) that capitalism and liberalism resulted in excessive individualism.
He became obsessed with antiSemitism and racism, and believed that Jews and Marxists lost the First World War for Germany.
He believed in a JewishMarxist plot to destroy German culture.
By 1921, he had reshaped the tiny extremist German Workers' group into the Nazi party, using the mass rally as a particularly effective tool of propaganda.
The party grew rapidly.
Hitler and the party attempted to overthrow the Weimar government, but he was defeated and sent to jail (1923).
Hitler's road to power
The trial after Hitler's attempted coup brought him much publicity, but the Nazi party remained small until 1929.
Written in jail, his autobiography, Mein Kampf, was an outline of his desire to achieve German racial supremacy and domination of Europe, under the leadership of a dictator (Führer).
The depression made the Nazi party attractive to the lower middle class, who were seized by panic as unemployment soared and Communists made election gains.
By late 1932, some 43 percent of the labor force was unemployed.
Hitler favored government programs to bring about economic recovery.
By 1932, the Nazi party was the largest in the Reichstag--having 38 percent of the total.
Hitler wisely stressed the economic issue rather than the anti-Jewish and racist nationalism issues.
He stressed simple slogans tied to national rebirth to arouse hysterical fanaticism in the masses.
He appealed to the youth. Almost 40 percent of the Nazi party were under 30 years of age.
One reason for his rise to power is that Bruning and Hindenburg had already turned to rule by way of emergency decree.
Another reason Hitler won is that the communists welcomed Hitler as the last breath of monopoly capitalism.
Key people in the army and big business along with conservative and nationalistic politicians believed that they could control Hitler; Hitler was legally appointed chancellor in 1933.
The Nazi state and society
The Enabling Act of March 1933 gave Hitler absolute dictatorial power.
Germany became a one-party state--only the Nazi party was legal.
The Nazi government was full of rivalries and inefficiencies, leaving Hitler to act as he wished.
Strikes were forbidden and labor unions were replaced by the Nazi Labor Front.
The Nazis took over the government bureaucracy.
The Nazis took control of universities, writers, publishing houses; democratic, socialist, and Jewish literature was blacklisted.
Hitler gained control of the military by crushing his own storm troopers, the SA, thus ending the "second revolution."
The Gestapo, or secret police, used terror and purges to strengthen Hitler's hold on power.
Hitler set out to eliminate the Jews.
The Nuremberg Laws (1935) deprived Jews of their citizenship.
By 1938, 150,000 of Germany's 500,000 Jews had left Germany.
Kristallnacht was a wave of violence directed at Jews and their synagogues and businesses.
Hitler's popularity
Hitler promised and delivered economic recovery through public works projects and military spending.
Unemployment dropped. The standard of living rose moderately--but business profits rose sharply.
Those who were not Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, communists, or homosexuals experienced greater opportunities and equality.
Hitler reduced Germany's traditional class distinctions; the old ruling elites had to give way to lowermiddleclass people in Hitler's train.
Yet few historians believe that Hitler brought on a real social revolution: the welleducated classes held on to their advantaged position, and women remained largely housewives and mothers.
He appealed to Germans for nationalistic reasons.
Communists, trade unionists, and some Christians opposed Hitler; many who opposed him were executed.
Nazi expansion and the Second World War
The chief concepts of Nazism were space and race--which demanded territorial expansion.
Aggression and appeasement (1933-1939)
When he was in a weak position, Hitler voiced his intention to overturn an unjust system; when strong, he kept increasing his demands.
He lied about his intentions; he withdrew from the League of Nations in order to rearm Germany.
Germany worked to add Austria to a greater Germany, established a military draft, and declared the Treaty of Versailles null and void.
An AngloGerman naval agreement in 1935 broke Germany's isolation.
In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler occupied the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936.
The British policy of appeasement, motivated by guilt, fear of communism, and pacifism, lasted far into 1939.
Mussolini attacked Ethiopia in 1935 and joined Germany in supporting the fascists in Spain (the Rome-Berlin Axis alliance).
Germany, Italy, and Japan formed an alliance.
Hitler annexed Austria and demanded part of Czechoslovakia in 1938.
Chamberlain flew to Munich to appease Hitler and agree to his territorial demands.
Hitler accelerated his aggression and occupied all of Czechoslovakia in 1939.
In 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed a public nonaggression pact and a secret pact that divided eastern Europe into German and Russian zones.
Germany attacked Poland, and Britain and France declared war on Germany (1939).
Hitler's empire (1939-1942)
The key to Hitler's military success was speed and force (the blitzkrieg).
He crushed Poland quickly and then France; by July 1940, the Nazis ruled nearly all of Europe except Britain.
He bombed British cities in an attempt to break British morale but did not succeed.
In 1941, Hitler's forces invaded Russia and conquered the Ukraine and got as far as Leningrad and Moscow until stopped by the severe winter weather.
After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor (1941), Hitler also declared war on the United States.
Hitler began building a New Order based on racial imperialism.
Nordic peoples were treated with preference; the French were heavily taxed; the Slavs were treated as "subhumans."
The SS evacuated Polish peasants to create a German "settlement space."
Polish workers and Russian prisoners of war were sent to Germany to work as slave laborers. Most did not survive.
Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and communists were condemned to death.
Six million Jews from all over Europe were murdered by killing squads, in ghettos, or in concentration camps.
At the extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau the victims were forced into gas chambers.
Recent research suggests that many Germans knew of and participated in these killings.
Some scholars believe that the key reason so many Germans (and non-Germans) did not protest the murders is that they felt no personal responsibility for Jews.
The Grand Alliance
The Allies had three policies that led them to victory.
The United States concentrated on European victory first, then Japan.
The Americans and British put military needs before political questions, thus avoiding conflict over postwar settlements.
The Allies adopted the principle of "unconditional surrender" of Germany and Japan, denying Hitler the possibility of dividing his foes.
American aid to Britain and the Soviets, along with the heroic support of the British and Soviet peoples and the assistance of resistance groups throughout Europe, contributed to the eventual victory.
The tide of battle
The Germans were defeated at Stalingrad at the end of 1942, and from there on the Soviets took the offensive.
At the same time, American, British, and Australian victories in the Pacific put Japan on the defensive.
The Battle of the Coral Sea (1942) stopped the Japanese advance.
The Battle of Midway Island (1942) established American naval superiority in the Pacific.
The British defeat of Rommel at the Battle of El Alamein (1942) helped drive the Axis powers from North Africa in 1943.
Italy surrendered in 1943, but fighting continued as the Germans seized Rome and northern Italy.
Bombing of Germany and Hitler's brutal elimination of opposition caused the Germans to fight on.
The British and Americans invaded Germanheld France in June 1944 but did not cross into Germany until March 1945.
The Soviets pushed from the east, crossing the Elbe and meeting the Americans on the other side on April 26, 1945; Hitler committed suicide, and Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945.
The United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, and it too surrendered.