AP Euro Chapter 27: Dictatorships and the Second World War 1919-1945

Government inaction/ unable to effectively deal with the depression

• Laissez-faire capitalism- wasn’t their role to intervene

• → Population looking to extremes to solve depression issues

• GB, France, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Scandinavia

Conservative Authoritarianism:

• Kind of carried over feudalism, more agrarian states, Lots of in eastern Europe, Limited power and objectives, typically right wing

• Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Portugal

  • No real history or rep. govs., fear land reforms, Vichy France 1940 and fascist Spain

Characteristics of Totalitarianism:

• Totalitarian State: Complete control over all aspects of life

• Has several key characteristics:

  • Cult of leadership- Dictatorship as Symbol of nation

  • Ideaology: constant Revolution: entire pop. in same direction

  • Eradicate all opposition: One party system, Anti-Democracy/ Parliamentary

  • Massive Propaganda: Indoctrination(Social Conditioning)

  • Police State: Terror as means of control

  • System for the majority: expense of minority

• Left: Communism, Socialism, Liberalism, Moderate, Conservatism, Libertarianism, Fascism: Right

USSR

Fascism: only true new ideology from 1920s, sythesis of both left and right

• movements tend to be reactionary

• Difference between Fascism and Communism

  • Opposition Groups: Ethnic groups vs Class

  • Support Base: middle class v lower class

  • Private property: protected vs State Control

  • Religion: Church Supported vs Atheist

  • Economy: Regulated vs Command

  • Goal Extreme Nationalism vs sort of International

  • Militarism stronger force in Fascism

New Economic Policy- Compromise with capitalism 1921:

• Following Civil war 5-10 mil dead, economy in ruin

• Agriculturally:

  • abolish quota requisiton on peasants, pay taxes, sell surplus on open market(incentive to grow mor)

• Industrial:

  • Small factories- private ownership, incentives for labor productivity

• Politically:

  • Gov. Positions to most qualified

• Important/ Vital Industries: controlled by state

• Effects:

  • Plan was temporary

  • Problem: Black Market emerges, Peasants horde surplus, NEP- Men emerge

  • Successful program by 1926 at pre-war levels

Emergence of Stalin:

• Lenin dies 1924

• Power struggle 1924-1928 within Politburo

• Trotsky: logical heir to Lenin, but unrealistic and alarming- gobal communist revolution

• Stalin(secretary): realistic goals “socialism in one country”

  • makes alliances and outsts competition, turns on allies, 1928 comple control

    • Trotsky exiled 1940 Mexico City

  • Starts Rev from above, transformation imposed on the people- make Soviet Communism self sufficient

What is USSR

• Russia became in 1922

• Union of Soviet Republics

• Flag:

  • Sicle and Hammer= Industry and Agriculture, Union of Hammer(workers) and sickle (peasants), Color red= Paris commune flag 1971

• Federation of 4 soviet Republics: Ukraine, Belorussia, Transcaucasian republic

  • Stalin doesn’t allow much automony, controlled by force and fear

    • Gulags- forced labor, transit camps from 1917

      • Between 1929 and 1953 millions die as result

Purposes of 5 year plans:

• Second Rev: dual purposes

  • End NEP(too capitalistic) and catch up w/ west

• 5 year plans 1928-1932:

  • NEP=Too peasant friendly and too slow

  • Establish quotas for Collectivization and Industrialization

    • Industrialization increase at great expense

    • Collectivization- Kolhoz increase Agricultral output fails

Russia’s Cursed Problem

• 90% are peasant farmers, unneeded peasants sent all over USSR, Kulaks- wealthy peasants in Ukraine resisted collectivization.

• Objective: liquidize Kulaks as a class

• Results::

  • 1932-1933 Holodomor Genocide

    • Kulaks destory crops and livestock, 4-7 mill die in first year, 1934 rest of resistance sent to Gulags, 1937 93% of farms collectivized.

  • Man-made Famine

Concesions for peasants

• Work day limits on collectives small family plots to grow own food- 1938 accounts for 22% of agriculture on 4% of land.

Strengths/ limits of Stalins forced industialization

• Remarkable growth: unlimited peasant labor, Industry matching western output

• Limitations

  • Bad living conditions:

    • Communal kitchens and bathrooms, shortages of goods, Little improvements in standard of living → promise of better future never arrives.

Why were many willing to work harder dispite bad conditions?

• Conditions to cause of creation of first socialist society

• Many benefits: pensions, health care, day care, free education

• Unemployment essentially nonexistent

• Not classless society

• Incentives to those skilled

Stalin’s Propaganda

• Newpapers, film, radio glorify individual achievement of ordinary people → inspire nationalism, church became museams of atheism

• Indoctrination: state controls media and spred positive about gov., Social conditioning

• PRAVDA- central newpaper till 1991

• Censorship- blocks any independent and international news

• Indoctination/Education

  • Shapee new soviet man/woman

  • Alexei Stakhanov=model worker, Fellow Commie= comerades

  • Youth groups and schools participate in indoctrianation of ideology: art, music, sports, film

Women under Stalin:

• Greater equality, all serve greater good.

• Empowered but lost rights they won in revolution, Family grows in importance

  • Women: 50% workforce, 75% of doctors, traditional roles remain, Literacy increases

• Night Witches- Soviet all female military aviators 588 Night Bomber Regiment

Climate of fear in USSR

• All opposition eliminated, promotions=death sentence, disappearances=common,

• CHEKA becomes NKVD 1934, KGB 1950

• Moscow (show) trials- old Bolsheviks brought on charges

  • Trial of the 21, made for public spectacle

• By 1938 Stalin arrested and executed all important Bolsheviks from 1917 revolution

• Great Purge 1936-1938:

  • Cause: political leaders questions stalins methods

  • Goal eliminate all political rivals:

    • Start with Bolsheviks, party leaders and gov.

    • Purged Red Army and military high command

    • Ethnic minorities

Effects of Stalin’s rule

• period of De-Stalinization after 1953

• Purge= impact on military, Winter war (w/ Finland 1939-940) Molotov cocktail

Italy

Musolini’s rise to power:

• Context:

  • Unhappy w/ Versailles

  • Unemployment and threat of communism in working class

    • strikes by workers, Fascist party form 1919 rising power of working class

  • Mussolini and thugs (black shirts)

  • Symbol of Fascism= bundle of sticks w/ axe- meaning power over life, death and authority

• March on Rome 1922(1 Fascist leader in Europe)

  • Named Prime Minister 1922, Authoritarian rule begins=II Duce

    • Majority 1924, dissolves parliamentary restraints, establishes police state, 1 party state, Goal= return the glory of Roman empire

Musolini’s Fascist Italy 1922-1945

• Deal w/ Catholic church- Lateran Agreement 1929, Fears Atheistic Commies

• Disolves Parliament 1938 → corporate state

  • gov. = syndicates of workers, economy collectively managed by employers, workers, officials, Battle for Lira and grain- make Italy self Sufficiant

• Slogan: “everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”

• Use propaganda: Fascist Youth, massive rallies, sports events

• Invades Ethiopia 1935- struggles

• Never had full control:

  • Lost of compromises w/ traditional elite, no land reform, big business regulates itself, anti-semitism, filled w/ lots of self- delusion

Nazi Germany

• National Socialism- Anti-liberal Democracy/Capitalism/ Communism

• Hitlers background:

  • Braunau, Austria 1889, Anti semitism and social darwinism, fails to get into art school in vienna

  • Enters WWI disillusioned w/ results: “stab in the back legend”

  • Gains leadershop of Nazis: anti communist, speaches said what many thought

How did Hitler’s career evolve?

• 1923: Beer Hall Putsch Munich:

  • Failed coup against Weimar Gov. , imprisoned 5 years - serves 8 months, will decide on legal path to rev

• Mein Kampf:

  1. Levensraum- living space: Agressive foregin policy

  2. Racist worldview: Rabid anti-semitism

  3. Concept to Fuhrer: person to lead country to greatness

Effect of Great Depression

• US loans stop, Unempolyment hits 40%, anti-capitalist ideals rise

• Look to govs. for solutions

  • Liberal democracies seem failing

  • Hitler has plan and scapegoat, Corelation btwn Nazi support and Unemployment

Hitler= reformer

• Massive Public works:

  • Autobahn- highway sistem

  • protect business if suport of Nazis

  • Volkswagen (peoples wagen) state owned

  • Concentration camps

  • Encourage women home

  • Rebuild and rearm military

  • Economy recovers- Nazis→ more popular

Hitler’s rise to Chancellor

• Loses 1932 to Hindenburg

  • 1933 Hindenburg names him chancelor out of pressure from business intrests

• 1933: Reichstag fire→ invoke Art 48 of Weimar Constitution: Enabling Act- Emergency Dictatorial powers

  • Suscpends civil liberties, arrests political opposition- one party state

• 1934: Hindenburg dies → hitler combines President and chancellor into Fuhrer 90% approval

Terror to consolidate power

• SA ( brownshirts) 1921- group brought Hitler to power, Leadership massacred 1934 Night of Long Knives

• SS- Hitler personal guards, ran camps

• Gestapo- Secret police, division of SS only answered to Hitler, rounded up opposition

Propaganda:

• Hitler youth 10-18, League fo German girls 14-18,

• Strength through Joy- promoted advantages and rewards for work, Bridges class divide by making leisure available to all

  • The Colossus of Prora- planned vacation sight for working class was never finished

• Nuemberg Rallies

  • symbolic center (central location), yearly ralies, reason why postwar trials are there

Hitler gains popular support and women:

• Colksgemeinschaft: people’s community

Resitance?

• White Rose- Sophie Scholl Munich

Steps to Remilitarization

• 1935 Announces rearmament publically, 1936 orders occupation of Rhineland- response to Franco-societ treaty of Mutual Assistance, 1936 Berlin Olympics, 1936 Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis

Munich Confrence

• 1938: Anschluss

• 1938 Munch conference:

  • appeasement- surrenders sudetenlands

• 1939 Rump of Czechoslovakia, F and GB pledge support for Poland

Nazi Soviet Pact:

• 1939: Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement

• Fascism and communism are enemies, Stalin feels West is selling him out, Next move is Poland

• Benefits: Hitler- one front fight, Stalin rearm- needs time

Domestic and racial policies

• Anti Semitism: long standing, Religious- Jews and rial and crusifiction of Jesus, Economic- Jews tied to economic community, Racial- Jews=separate race, Nazi’s Perfect Aryan poster Child was Je

• wish

• Jewish pop= scapegoate, Large enough to be recognized and small enough to not have a resitance, Less than 1% of pop, though to have/contol 20% of wealth-False

• Will force/ drive relocation of Jewish population,

Try to make sense out of senseless:

• Germany- most advanced/ enlightened civilians

• Can’t rationalized move from anti-semistims to extermination

Hitler’s New Order

• Guiding Principle= Nuemburg laws:

  • Law for protection of German Blood and honor no Jew and German relationship/marriage

  • Reich citizenship law- Strips Jews of citizenship

• Jews forced to give 90% of wealth as tax to leave country

• negative depictions of Jewish popluation in media → embracement/ look past injustices

• 1938: Jewish pop register wealth to state

  • Effect: harder to leave Germany, easier for Nazis to seize property, Stolen money still in Swiss Banks

• Kristallnacht- response to assaination of German diplomat in paris by Jewish refugee. Pogram against Jews

• 1939: St. Louis Affair: Jewish refuges go to other countries seeking asylum and denied entry, will end up back in German occupied territories

• 1939: Euthanasia Program: Aktion T4- Eugenics program

  • Physical and mental diabilites, Zyklon B- cyanide gas

  • Massive Public outcry against program

Holocaust:

• Where one burns books, they will ultimately burn people, Heinrich Heine 1821

• 1939- Invasion of Poland, Nazis establish Ghettos

• 1940- Madagascar Plan

  • Transport Jews to Madagascar, use Jewish assets to pay, Never materialized, lost it to Britain 1942

Final solution:

• 1942: Wannsee Conference

  • Operation Reinhard: extermination of European Jewish population, secrect camps specifically for extermination

World War 2

• 1939 Invasion of poland starts Blitzkreig- Lightning war

• The phony war- No fighting until 1940

• 1940 France falls after 1 month

  • Vichy France- Puppet gov in south, Direct control in north

• 1940 Gritish attack French Fleet

• 1940 Battle of Britain: Operation Sealion, RAF v Luftwaffe

• 1941: Hitler invades Yugoslavia and Greece to bail out Mussolini and delays operation Barb.

  • Operation Barbarossa- planned invasion of USSR june 1941

    • Racial war-Einstazgruppen

    • 1942-1943: Battle of Stalingrad (Turning point) German Sixth army defeat and German loss is imminent

War in Pacific

• 1931 Japan invades Manchuria

• 1937: Rape of Nanking

• 1941 Pearl Harbor and invasion of Philippines

• 1942: Battle of Midway

• March 1945: Firebombing Tokyo - single most destructive bombing in history

  • → No surrender from Japan

• No response to Potsdam Declaration

  • August 6th 1945 drops on Hiroshima, 9th Drops on Nagasaki, Japan surenders (announced 15th, Official Sept. 2, 1945)

Grand Alliance:

• led by GB, US, USSR and other 26 nations to face Axis Powers, Forms after Pearl Harbor and US declared war

• Unconditional Surrender

  • Total defeat of Axis powers, use all resources and never make seperate peace

• Big three: Stalin, FDR, Churchill

  • US and GB pooled resources

  • FOrm Strategy early

    • Germany defeated first, pacific theater= defensive until fall of Germany

Total War effort Germany

• All civilian resources and infrasturcture subordinatied to needs of militaru and war effort

June 6th 1944 D-Day, March 1945- Allies cross the Rhine, April 1945 Berlin Falls April 30- Hitler dies, Soviets capture Berlin,

Important Meetings

• Nov 1943: Tehran Conference

  • meet and discuss strategy for war, meet in Iran

  • Main issue= open second front, Stalin pleads open fron in France, Churchill delays and agrues for 2nd front in Italy

• February 1945: Yalta Conference

  • 2nd meeting btwn big 3

  • Soviets will help in war vs. Japan

  • Germany accepts unconditional surrender, Nazi War criminal placed on Trial

  • Free elctions in Poland(doesn’t happen) , will recieve German territory

  • Germany/ Berlin denaziafied and divided into 4 occupation zones

• July 1945: Potsdam Conference

  • Stalin, Truman, Atlee meet to discuss postwar peace

  • Reaffirms partiction of Germany and Austria 1955

  • Stalin will declin democratic election in Poland

  • Potsdam Declaration- Uncondition Surrender of Japan

    • → Manhattan Project: Tests atomic bomb in New Mexico (July 16 1945)