Transcript An_Age_of_Anxiety - Mira Costa High School

The Interim War Period
An Age of Anxiety
Unit 6
Unit Contents
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Challenges to European Preeminence
Alterations in the Cultural Realm
Global Depression
Alteration in the Political Realm;
Challenges to the Liberal Order
An Age of Anxiety
Challenges to European
Preeminence
Weakened Europe
• The Great War did irreparable damage to
European power an prestige
• Set the stage for decolonization
• Growth of nationalism accelerated in the colonial
world calling for self-determination
• European economies fail under the strains of
total war
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Huge public debts
High rates of inflation
Loss of overseas investments and markets
U.S. becomes creditor
Revolutionary Ideas Around the
World
• Revolutionary ideas spread to colonies
• Fourteen Points gives hope to people
under imperial rule, calling for national
independence and self-rule
• Nationalist organize anti-imperialist
resistance movements, sometimes
inspired by the Soviet Union (denounced
imperialism)
An Age of Anxiety
Alterations in the Cultural Realm
Postwar Pessimism
• In 1914, intellectuals rallied enthusiastically to
the war viewing it as a splendid adventure.
• Industrialized warfare left no room for heroes
• Intellectuals and artists quickly became
disillusioned
• The “lost generation” is in reference to those
who expressed disillusion through literature
– Ernest Hemmingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” (1929)
– Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western
Front” (1929)
– Oswald Spengler’s “The Decline of the West” was
seen as an obituary of western civilization
Religious Uncertainty
• Theologian Karl Barth sharply attacked the
liberal Christian theology that God’s purpose is
man’s limitless improvement
• Many believed contemporary human society
was not God’s purpose
• Nikolai Berdiaev summed up these sentiments:
“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
• The 19th century scientific progress promised a beneficial
conquest of nature
• Instead, early 20th century science brought death and
destruction
• Intellectuals become disgusted with democracy,
perceiving it as the tyranny of the average person or
“rule of inferiors”
• German people associated democracy with corruption
and inefficiency party politics during the Weimar
Republic (1919-1933)
• A widely read essay “The Revolt of the Masses” warned
that masses would destroy the highest achievements of
Western society
Revolutions in Physics and
Psychology
• Albert Einstein introduces the Theory of
Relativity
• This meant that space and time was
relative to the person measuring it
• Science reached its limit of what would be
known with certainty
• Werner Heisenberg published the
“Uncertainty Principle”, classical physics is
replaced by probability calculations
Revolutions in Physics and
Psychology
• Broader philosophical ramifications of the “Uncertainty
Principal” includes the questioning of objectivity
• An anthropologist studying another society must be alert
to the fact that her presence becomes an integral part of
the study
• In an indeterminate universe governed by relativity
morals and values become impossible to judge
• Sigmund Freud finds conflict between one’s conscious
and unconscious mental processes
• Freud set out to understand human behavior
• Freud theorized that psychoanalysis provided the key
to understanding human behavior
Experimentation in Art and
Architecture
• Poets, painters, and novelists in the
1920’s acknowledged Freud as they
focused on the hidden depths of memory
and emotion of their character
• Painters avoided realism, because
photographs captured reality so well
• Painters no longer wanted mirror reality,
but create it
Experimentation in Art and
Architecture
• A variety of pictorial schools formed promising
an entirely new art
• Expressionism, cubism, abstractionism,
dadaism, and surrealism
• No longer depict recognizable objects from the
every day world
• Beauty expressed in pure color and shape
• Characterized by violent distortions of form and
explosive colors
• Some artists works portray inner vision or dream
Expressionism-Kandinsky
Cubism-Braque
Abstractionism-Pollock
Dadaism
Surrealism-Dali
Experimentation in Art and
Architecture
• Architecture transforms in the interim war period
• Key focal points of modern architectural designs
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Functional design
Integration of engineering and art
Simplicity of shape
Extensive use of glass
Form must follow function
• This functionalism well suited the design of large
apartment and office complexes
Bauhaus by Walter Gropius
Cubism in Architecture
Frank Lloyd Wright
An Age of Anxiety
Global Depression
Rebuilding
• The Great War consumed all resources
• Governments around the world worked to
restore normality and prosperity
• The early 1920 seemed to bear fruit of this effort
• Industrial productivity returned to prewar levels
as businesses repaired plants, equipment, and
transportation facilities
• Serious problems remained in the international
economy, however.
International Economy
• The economic recovery depended upon a
tangled financial system among allies and others
• Examples are war debts incurred, reparations
paid by Germany and Austria, and the flow of
U.S. funds to Europe
• France and Britain owed money to the U.S.
• France and Britain relied on war reparations
from Germany and Austria to pay back debt
• Germany and Austria relied on U.S. loans and
investment capital to pay France and Britain
The Great Depression
• By 1928, U.S. lenders and investors
began to withdraw capital from Europe
• This placed a strain on the financial
system
• Demand for raw materials reduces due to
improvements in technology reducing the
income from colonies
• The economies of the colonial world
declined
Industrial Economies
• In the wake of financial chaos business activity
decreases
• Between 1930 and 1932 U.S. industrial
production fell to 50% of 1929 levels
• 40% of U.S. banks went out of business
• National income dropped to half
• The worlds prosperity depended the U.S. capital
and imports
• The weakened U.S. economy sends a ripple
effect around the world
Europe in Depression
• U.S. investors “call in” loans from abroad
• Banking houses in Germany and Austria lost the influx of
U.S. capital
• The loss of capital resulted in a precipitous economic
slide for major European economies
• The German economy experienced a 35%
unemployment and 50% decline in industrial production
by 1932
• The stalled German economy stalled the economy of all
other European nations
• Economic experimentations and changes in the political
realm begin
Economic Experimentation
• Classical economic thought held that capitalism was a
self-correcting system
• Initially governments did nothing to correct the economic
crises believing in classical economics
• John Maynard Keynes (British) published his work titled
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and
Money
• Keynes advocated that the problems can be solved by
increasing demand through increasing money supply
thereby decreasing interest rates and increasing
investments
• Keynes also advocated public works projects
• F.D.R. implemented these ideas in the New Deal
An Age of Anxiety
Alteration in the Political Realm;
Challenges to the Liberal Order
Communism
• Marxists believed that capitalism was dead and
advocated rule by the proletariat
• Lenin and Stalin transform Russia into a communist
state called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(U.S.S.R.)
• In 1928, Stalin triumphed over his rivals in the Bolshevik
Party clearing the way for a dictatorship of the Soviet
Union
• Stalin replaces the NEP with the First Five-Year Plan
• Aims of the five year plan included transferring the
agricultural society into a leading industrial power,
emphasized the production of heavy industry; steel and
machinery at the expense of consumer goods
Fascism
• People uncomfortable with the abolition of
private property and the “dictatorship of the
proletariat” offered an alternative that defied
traditional liberal democratic means
• Fascist movements, as they were called, were
most prominent in Italy and Germany
• Fascism was a political movement and ideology
that sought to create a new type of society
• It developed as a reaction against liberal
democracy and the spread of communism
Purpose of Fascism
• Attract the middle class and rural population
• Remove the perceived threat from the political left
Communism
Liberalism
Conservatism
Terrorism
Fascism
Democracy
• Attract nationalists that denounced their government for
failing to realize the glorious objectives of the Great War
• Reassertion of the nation-state made of a unique ethnic
or racial group
Fascist Ideology
• Fascism demanded the subordination of the
individual to the service of the state
• Fascism relied on strong and charismatic
leaders like Mussolini and Hitler who embodied
the state claiming indisputable authority
• Fascism viewed liberalism weak and decadent
• Fascism emphasized a confrontational form of
nationalism called chauvinism and xenophobia
or fear of foreigners
• Fascism embraced militarism (large military,
uniforms, parades)
Italian Fascism
• Fascism began in Italy between 1912 and 1920 as it
grew in popularity
• Mussolini and “Il Popolo d’Italia” supported the Great
War as a turning point for the nation
• Once a socialist himself, Mussolini demanded the
repression of socialists
• Fascist armed squads known as Blackshirts gained
support by effectively using violence against socialists
• Socialists organized militant strikes in response
• Italy was on the verge of civil war
• Blackshirts march on Rome to seize power
• Mussolini is named prime minister by King Emmanuel in
1921
The Italian Fascist State
• Between 1925 and 1931 fascists consolidate their power
through a series of laws
• Italy becomes a one-party dictatorship
• The regime eliminated all other political parties; curbed
freedom of the press; outlawed free speech and
association
• A Special Tribunal supervised military officers and
silenced political dissent
• Il Duce (Mussolini) crushed labor unions to the benefit of
business interests, but established corporatism under
which the different interest came under the control of the
state.
Hitler and the Nazi Party
• Hitler joins the National Socialist German
Worker’s Party (NAZI)
• In 1921, he became chairman
• In 1923, Nazis attempt to overthrow the Weimar
Republic which replaced the German empire
after WWI
• Hitler is jailed and the Nazis descend into
obscurity
• In 1924, Hitler is released launching the “path
of legality” to gain power through the ballot box
The Struggle for Power
• In 1929, National Socialism regained a broad
appeal because of
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Inflation
Depression
Political infighting among many parties
Hitler’s promise to end it all
Hitler’s vague collection of promises led all societal
groups to believe they were the primary beneficiary
• By 1932 the Nazi Party became the single
largest party in parliament
• The reactionary president Paul von
Hindenburg offers Hitler the chancellorship
Consolidation of Power
• Hitler and the Nazis move quickly to eliminate all
working-class and liberal opposition
• Nazis outlawed all other political parties and made it a
crime to create new ones
• Hitler and the Nazis abrogate virtually all constitutional
and civil rights
• Nazis destroy trade unions
• Nazis purge the police and judiciary to remove enemies
of the regime (both real and imagined)
• Ministry of Propaganda controlled media and gauged
public response to make adjustments.
• One police officer for every 155 people (1/435 in U.S.)
The Radical State
• Once securely in power Nazis translate their racist
ideology into practice
• Leaders of the “Third Reich” (Third Empire) set out to
create a race-based national community
• The goal is to improve the quality and quantity of the
German “race”
• Nazis launched a campaign to increase births of “racially
valuable” children
• The regime initiated a compulsory sterilization program
for men and women who identified as having a
“hereditarily determined” sickness
• The Nazi state also sponsored euthanasia as precursor
to the wholesale extermination Jews and Gypsies
Communism in Russia
• By 1928, Stalin triumphed over his rivals in the
Communist Party
• Stalin replaces Lenin’s NEP with the First Five Year Plan
• Stalin repeatedly told his people, “We are 50 to 100
years behind the advanced countries. Either we do it or
we shall go under.”
• Stalin reforms agriculture by collectivizing farms
• Collectivization was enforced most ruthlessly against the
Kulaks
• Kulaks (3-5%) or wealthy peasants mostly as a result of
the NEP
• Proclaiming success collectivization is halted in 1931
• About 3 million peasants lost their lives in the process
The Great Purge
• The disaster of collectivization and the ruthlessness with
which it was carried out raises doubts about Stalin’s
administration
• In 1934, the Communist Party prepared for the
seventeenth congress
• Delegates plan to bring more pluralism back into
leadership; Stalin learns of this
• Former Bolshevik elites were tried for treason
• Between 1935 and 1938, Stalin removed from office
– two-thirds of the Central Committee
– two-thirds of the delegates
– More than half of the highest ranking army officials
• The victims faced execution or long term suffering in
labor camps (3 million/8 million)