chapter 34 | an age of anxiety

PROBING CULTURAL FRONTIERS

  • european society declined

  • science, psychology, art, and architecture developed after war

  • newtonian universe: a set of inexorable natural laws governed events, with a new and disturbing cosmos

  • psychoanalysis suggested human behavior was fundamentally irrational

  • realism paintings

POSTWAR PESSIMISM

  • gertrude stein, “you are all a lost generation”

  • discomfort in us and europe after war

  • works with death and suffering

  • ernest hemingway, a farewell to arms

  • erich maria remarque, all quiet on the western front

  • oswald spengler, the decline of the west

    • all societies pass through life cycle of growth and decay, like biological organisms

    • europe in final stage of existence

    • imperialism and warfare marked decline

  • arnold j tonbee, a study of history

    • searched the genesis, growth, and decay of 26 societies

RELIGIOUS UNCERTAINTY

  • karl barth, christian theologian, published epistle to the roman’s

  • attacked liberal christian theology that embraced progress

    • limitless improvement as realization of god’s purpose

  • christ’s kingdom not of this world

  • niolkolai berdiaev, “man’s historical experience has been one of steady failure, and there are no grounds for supposing it will be ever anything else”

ATTACKS ON PROGRESS

  • great war stopped belief in human progress

  • scientists spent the war making poisonous gas and explosives

  • democracy idea spread in europe

  • removal of property and educational restrictions, early 1900s

  • viewed democracy as product of decay

    • people liked elite rule

    • seen as corrupt and ineffective

  • jose ortega y basset, wrote revolt of the masses

    • warned about the people who were to destroy achievements of western society

NEW VISIONS IN PHYSICS, PSYCHOLOGY, AND ART

  • albert einstein

    • theory of special relativity, no single spatial and chronological framework in the universe

  • space and time are relative to the person measuring it

  • reality and true were a set of mental constructs

THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

  • werner heisenberg, published about the quantum-theoretical reinterpretation of kinetic and mechanical relationships

    • uncertainty principle

  • impossible to specify the position and velocity of subatomic particle

  • act of observation effects behavior of electrons

  • violated law of cause and effect

  • the one studying becomes a part of the study

FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

  • psychology challenged morality and values

  • sigmund freud

  • focused on psychological evaluation of mental disorders

  • conflict between conscious and subconscious mental processes

  • existence of mechanism that stores painful memories

  • dreams held key to human psyche

  • oedipus complex: male children develop an erotic attachment to their mother and hostility to their father

EXPERIMENTATION IN ART

  • unsettling atmosphere of 20th century

  • brutality of great war led to dada or dadaism

  • in zurich, paris, and new york

  • used it to hate on nationalism, materialism, and rationalism, they felt it led to the great war

  • neue sachlichkeit aka new objectivity in germany

    • realistic, critical towards war

  • wilhelm heinrich otto dix, german painter

    • volunteered for war, after somme he hated it

  • same with george grosz

  • dadaists, surrealists, cubists, and abstractionists

  • “abolish the sovereignty of appearance”

  • no recognizable objects with pure color or shape, instead feelings and emotions through violent drawings and colors

GLOBAL DEPRESSION

  • people wanted normality and prosperity

  • 1929, great depression

  • system of trade and finance collapsed until 1945

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

  • middle 1920s, countries seemed back on track to prosperity

ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

  • europe economy

    • war debts among allies

    • reparations from germany and austria

    • us funds to europe

  • austria and germany relied on us loans to pay back france and england

  • france and england relied on those reparations to pay back us loans

  • 1928, us investors withdraw capital from europe

  • reduced demand for raw materials

  • increase in supply, drop in prices

  • dutch east indies, ceylon, and malaysia relied on export of rubber

  • automobiles started using reclaimed rubber

  • use of oil undermined coal industry

  • synthetics undermined cotton industry

  • artificial nitrogen ruined nitrate industry of chile

  • agriculture overproduction and falling prices

  • during war, europe stopped agriculture so us, canada, argentina, and australia took over, soon europe went back and caused a surplus

  • farmers became impoverished

THE CRASH OF 1929

  • us had economic boom after war

    • industrial wages increased

    • production and consumption increased

  • bought stocks

  • october 1929, people pulled from market due to economic warnings

  • black thursday: 24 october, panic selling on new york stock exchange caused stock prices to plummet

  • people lost life savings

ECONOMIC CONTRACTION SPREADS

  • decrease in business activity, wages, and employment

  • consumer means didn’t reach business goods, so businesses had to cutback production and lay off people

  • unemployment meant demand plummeted more

    • which caused business failure which caused even more unemployment

  • national income dropped by half

  • banks went out of business

  • us economy effected the entire world

  • germany and japan suffered the most

  • economies in latin america, africa, and asia fell too

  • countries that exported coffee, sugar, cotton, and raw materials fell

INDUSTRIAL ECONOMIES

  • us investors tried to raise money by calling in loans and liquidating investments

  • austria and germany banks collapsed because they received us loans

  • german economy 35% unemployment, 50% industrial decrease

  • rest of europe suffered because they relied on germany

  • foreign trade fell

ECONOMIC NATIONALISM

  • economic nationalism: economic policies pursued by many governments affected by the great depression in which the nation tried to become economically self-sufficient by imposing high tariffs on foreign goods, the policy served to worsen the damaging effects of the depression around the world

  • backfired, provoked other nations whose interests were affected

  • smoot-hailey tariff act: passed by us congress in 1930, raised duties on most manufactured products to prohibitive levels, other governments retaliated by raising tariffs on us imports

    • sharp drop in international trade

DESPAIR AND GOVERNMENT ACTION

  • unemployment affected women before men because employers preferred women

  • governments put policies in place to reduce female employment so they would stay home

  • charles richet, insisted removing women from the workforce would solve male unemployment and increase france’s low birth rate

PERSONAL SUFFERING

  • struggle for food, clothing, and shelter

  • shantytowns appeared in urban areas

  • marriage, birth, and divorce rates declined, suicide rates rose

  • workers and farmers despised the wealthy

  • john steinbeck, grapes of wrath

    • heartlessness and politics, anger about the great depression

ECONOMIC EXPERIMENTATION

  • capitalism a self-correcting system

  • governments first ignored depression in hopes it would solve itself

  • governments then balanced national budgets and curtailed public spending

KEYNES

  • john maynard keynes, economist offered a solution

  • the general theory of employment, interest, and money

  • cause of depression not excessive supply, but inadequate demand

  • governments increase money supply

  • undertake public works project to provide jobs and give incomes through tax policy

THE NEW DEAL

  • keynes theories not influential until after wwii

  • franklin d roosevelt had similar ideas

  • legislation designed to prevent collapse of banking system

  • provide jobs and farm grants

  • workers right to organize and bargain collectively

  • minimum wages

  • social security for old age

  • trend toward social reform legislation

  • military spending during wwii helped end the great depression

CHALLENGES TO THE LIBERAL ORDER

  • marxists believed capital society was about to end

    • believed proletariats would soon rule

  • vladimir ilyich and joseph stalin helped transform the tsarist empire into a socialist society, the union of soviet socialist and republics

  • fascist movements in europe, alternatives to socialism

COMMUNISM IN RUSSIA

  • 1917, lenin and bolsheviks took power in russia for the working class

  • defend proletariat dictatorship against socialists, anti bolshevik officers and troops, peasants, and foreign military

CIVIL WAR

  • russian communist party, the bolshevik party

  • red terror campaign: suspected anti communists known as whites were arrested, tried, and executed

  • bolsheviks executed tsar nicholas ii and children

  • peasantry supported bolsheviks

  • foreign military supported white resistance to the communist party

    • britain, france, japan, and the us

  • whites defeated by reds in 1920

  • lasted from 1918-1920

  • 10 million dead

WAR COMMUNISM

  • new rulers started nationalization

  • war communism: the bolshevik policy of nationalizing industry and seizing private land during the civil war

  • government in charge of banks, industry, and other commercial properties

  • estates, monasteries, churches became national property

  • seized crops from the peasants to feed those in cities

  • industrial production decreased

  • workers on strike, depopulated cities, destroyed factories, demobilized soldiers

  • 1912, lenin started reversal of war communism to create peace

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY

  • new economic policy: plan by lenin that called for minor free-market reforms

    • temporarily restored economy and some private enterprise in russia

  • large industries still under government control

  • peasants sell surplus at free market prices

  • small industries >20 workers under private control

  • electrification, schools to teach technicians and engineers

JOSEPH STALIN

  • politburo: central governing body of the communist party

    • wanted socialism in one country alone

      • promoted by joseph stalin

  • triumphed over rivals in the party, started unchallenged dictatorship of the soviet union

FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN

  • replace lenin’s new economic policy with the first five-year plan

  • first in 1929

  • transform soviet union from agriculture to industrial

  • felt they were behind other countries, if they didn’t advance they would collapse

COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE

  • took private land to create collective farm units where the profits could be shared with all farmers

  • stalin felt this would increase agriculture and ensure industrial workers would be fed

  • kulaks: wealthy peasants who had risen to prosperity during the new economic policy, suffered from five-year plan

  • some peasants would slaughter their livestock and burn crops in retaliation

  • farmers quit and moved to cities

  • peasants starved, 3 million died

  • steelworks and hydroelectric plants

  • scarcity of consumer goods

    • balanced by full employment, low cost utilities, cheap housing and food

THE GREAT PURGE

  • communists party’s 17th congress in 1934, congress of victors

  • stalin wanted more variety in leadership

  • civil war in party between the trials of the formal bolshevik elites for treason

  • great purge: 1935-1938, campaign of political repression, stalin removed from posts of authority all people suspected of opposition, including the central committee and the army officers

    • execution or labor camps

  • dictatorship of the proletariat

THE FASCIST ALTERNATIVE

  • socialism in russia

  • fascism in europe

  • fascism: ideology that sought to regenerate the social, political, and cultural life of societies, in contrast to liberal democracy and socialism; began with mussolini in italy and peak with hitler in germany

  • national socialism, nazism

  • european phenomenon between the two world wars

DEFINING FASCISM

  • attractive to middle class and rural populations

  • attractive to nationalists of all classes

  • fascists wanted a new national community, a nation-state or a unique ethnic or racial group

  • wanted to revive lost national traditions

    • veneration of the state, devotion to a strong leader, emphasis on ultranationalist, ethnocentrism, and militarism

  • appealed to power of the state

  • benito mussolini and adolf hitler were fascists

  • hostile to liberal democracy, devotion to individualism, socialism, and communism

  • emphasized chauvinism (form of nationalism) and xenophobia (fear of foreign people)

  • militarism: belief in rigors and virtues of military life as an individual and national ideal

    • large armies, fond for uniforms, parades

ITALIAN FASCISM

  • rose after war because of disillusionment, uninspired political leadership, ineffective government, economic problems, and fear of socialism

BENITO MUSSOLINI

  • former socialist

  • editor of socialist newspaper avanti! (forward!)

  • created newspaper for italy entering great war il popolo d’italia (the people of italy)

  • thought war would transform italian society

  • 1919, established italian combat veteran league

  • 35 fascists in italian parliament

  • armed squads blackshirts against socialists

  • strikes in industrial societies

  • king victor emmanuel iii asked mussolini to become prime minister after march on rome

THE FASCIST STATE

  • italy consolidated their power through laws that transformed them into a one-party dictatorship

  • mussolini ruled italy as ii duce, the leader

  • eliminated all other parties, curb freedom of the press, outlaw free speech

  • antifascists were imprisoned and exiled

  • crushed labor unions and prohibited strikes

  • corporatism: viewed society as an organic entity through which the different interests in society came under the control of the state

  • 1938, antisemitic laws, labeled jews as unpatriotic

    • no government employment and no marriage between jews and aryans

  • mussolini friends with hitler

  • fascist italy and nazi germany signed the pact of steel

GERMAN NATIONAL SOCIALISM

HITLER AND THE NAZI PARTY

  • 192, chairman of national socialist german workers’ party

    • nazi movement

  • 1923, tried to overthrow democratic weimar republic that replaced german empire in 1919

  • hitler jailed, released 1924

  • wanted to gain power through ballot

THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER

  • people blamed german democracy for misfortunes

    • treaty of versailles

    • hyperinflation

    • great depression

  • national socialism appealed to lower-middle classes

  • loss of faith in democratic system

  • paul von hindenburg offered hitler chancellorship

CONSOLIDATION OF POWER

  • eliminated working class and liberal opposition

  • suppressed german communist and socialist parties and got rid of civil rights

  • outlawed other political parties

  • highly centralized state, eliminated autonomy

  • took control of police forces

  • removed enemies by prison or murder

THE RACIAL STATE

  • racial superiority or purity

  • started 1933

  • supported by social darwinism

    • survival of the fittest

  • eugenics: movement that wanted to improve the gene pool of the human race by encouraging those fit to have more children and discouraging those deemed unfit

    • supported by winston churchill, woodrow wilson, margaret sanger, and emile zola

  • sir francis galton, published hereditary genius

  • sterilization of mental patients

  • implemented in us, brazil, and sweden

WOMEN AND RACE

  • declining birthrates led to wanting racially valuable children

  • women as wife and mother

  • tax credits, special child allowances, marriage loans

  • husbands could get a divorce if their wife was infertile

  • outlawed abortions, closed birth control centers, no contraception

  • hitler gave mothers the honor cross of the german mother who birthed many children

    • bronze for four children

    • silver for more than six

    • gold for more than eight

NAZI EUGENICS

  • required sterilization for men and women who had mental or physical disabilities

    • allowed them to get abortions if pregnant

  • killed those they deemed worthless to society

    • roma (gypsies) and jews

ANTISEMITISM

  • prejudice against jews

  • humiliate, impoverish, and segregate jews

  • nuremberg laws: deprived german jews of their citizenship and prohibited marriage and sexual inter course between jews and germans

  • jews lost their jobs and doctors lost their clients

  • liquidation of jewish owned businesses

  • jews migrated, depriving germany of many intellectuals, scientists, and artists

  • kristallnacht (night of the broken glass): nazis destroyed jewish stores, burned synagogues, murdered jews in germany and austria