The Interwar Years and the Rise of Dictators Outline.docx

The Interwar Years and the Rise of Dictators

Global Depression

Post War Settlement

  • Ruhr industrial area: occupied by France in 1923 when Germany fell behind on reparations
  • Maginot Line: Defensive line built by France beginning in 1929 to prevent invasion
  • 1924 Dawes Plan: 1924 – plan for Germany to make reparation payments In installments

The Great Depression: October 1929 – Stock Market Crash – trigger for Depression

  • John Maynard Keynes: Urged governments to stimulate economy by increasing money supply and provide jobs
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt – New Deal: try to provide relief, recovery, and reform
  • India—Gandhi: fed nationalist sentiments led by Gandhi to boycott British goods
  • Japan - Sino-Japanese War: Dependent on trade and tried to free East Asia from imperialism; attacked China in 1937, (shanghai)

Communism in Russia

Civil War

  • Bolsheviks –(party of Lenin) took power and called themselves Russian Communist Party
  • 1918-1920: Reds (Bolsheviks) vs. Whites (anticommunists) opposition led to Civil war
  • Comintern: founded 1919 to lead international revolution. This idea is what caused the red scare in America.

Lenin to Stalin

  • war communism: policy where government assumed control of banks, industry, property, and crops
  • New Economic Policy (NEP): restored small industries to owners and some of the market economy
  • Leon Trotsky: close aide to Lenin
  • Joseph Stalin: seized power after death of Lenin and became dictator
  • Five-Year Plan: stalin attempt to move from agricultural to industrial economy
  • Collectivism: cooperative farm units whose profits were shared by all farmers
  • Purges: 1933 trials of all opposition

The Fascist Alternative

Italy

  • Fascism: nationalism and militarism very important in this
  • Benito Mussolini: became fascist Prime minister of Italy
  • Black shirts: fascist armed squads who supported Mussolini, against socialists
  • Pact of Steel: 1939- formal alliance with Berlin made in 1939

Germany

  • Weimar Republic: democratic republic established after ww1
  • National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi): fascist party emerged just after the war
  • Beer Hall Putsch 1923: failed coup to overthrow the government.
  • Chancellor to Fuhrer – 1933-1934: Hitler offered Chancellorship in 1933 on promise to relieve suffering.
  • Enabling Act 1933: allowed hitler to rule by decree.
  • 1934 president or whatever died and hitler became pres. And chancellor
  • 1935 Nuremburg Laws: prohibited relations and marriage between Jews and non-Jewish Germans
  • Kristallnacht 1938: progom that burned synagogues and destroyed Jewish stores

Revolution in china

  • Chinese communist party: founded 1921 after the failed revolution of 1911; led by Mao Zedong
  • Nationalist party- Sun Yat-sen; worked to unify china outside control of imperial powers
  • New culture movement: aimed at abolishing remnants of old system and introducing western values and instititions to china
  • Northern expedition: 1926 allaince between CCP and nationalist party to oppose warlords and drive imperialist powers out of China
  • Chiang Kai-shek: successor to Sun Yat-sen; attached communists in the Chinese civil war, begun 1927 between

Japan

  • Zaibatsu: financial cliques in Japan that held much of government power
  • Expansion: Japan seized Taiwan, Korea, and southern Manchuria to support Japanese empire with raw materials and foreign markets
  • Japan - Sino-Japanese War: Dependent on trade and tried to free East Asia from imperialism; attacked China in 1937, (shanghai)