Transcript Ch 15.1-3 (all) – The West between the Wars

The West between the Wars
World Studies
Alice F. Short
Hilliard Davidson High School
Chapter 15:
The West between the Wars
• Instability After World War I
• The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
• Hitler and Nazi Germany
The West between the Wars
• peace and prosperity = short-lived
– global depression weakened Western democracies
• WWI influenced the arts and sciences
– increased uncertainty
– darker perspective
• European countries (by 1939)
– adopted dictatorial regimes
– aimed to control every aspect of their citizens’ lives
– state goals
• Hitler’s totalitarian state was widely accepted
– German Jews and minorities were persecuted
– Hitler promoted Nazism in many ways
Instability After World War I
• Uneasy Peace, Uncertain Security
– League of Nations
• U.S. didn’t join
• Ineffective
– Treaty of Versailles ** (Hip Hughes History) **
• punished / humiliated Germany
• war reparation (to France and Great Britain)
– financial crisis  France occupied Ruhr Valley in Germany
– Inflation in Germany ** (A SHORT Explanation of Inflation) **
– Treaty of Locarno
• guaranteed Germany’s new western borders with France and Belgium
– Kellogg-Briand Pact
• 65 nations pledged to “renounce [war] as an instrument of national
policy” (no consequences planned)
The Treaty of Versailles
Instability After WWI
• Great Depression
– depression – a person of
low economic activity and
rising unemployment
– Causes of Depression:
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•
FARMERS WENT INTO DEBT
RISKY INVESTMENTS FAILED
BANKS RAN OUT OF MONEY
banks = largely responsible
Stock Market Crash: market
speculations with loaned
money
• international financial crisis
• loans became difficult to get
 major problem
Instability After World War I
Chapter 15, Lesson 1
• Responses to
the Depression
– 1932 – worst
year of
depression
• 25% of Britain
unemployed
• 30% of Germans
unemployed
– democracy
under attack
– women gained
the right to vote
in some places
Instability After
World War I
• Germany
– Weimar Republic
– runaway
inflation (1922-23)
• fixed income 
– paved the way for fear and
the rise of extremist parties
• DISCUSSION: Why?
Instability After WWI
• France
– difficulties after WWI
• MIGINOT LINE  ECONOMY
• FARMLAND = RUINS
• YOUNG MEN LOST LIVES
(POPULATION)
– 1932-33 – 19 month
period with 6 different
cabinets (political chaos)
– Popular Front Government
• 1936: coalition of leftist
parties
– communists, socialists and
radicals
• French New Deal
– collective bargaining
– minimum wage
– 40-hour work week
Instability After World War I
Chapter 15, Lesson 1
• Great Britain
– 1925-1929 – limited prosperity
– Labour Party
• failed to solve economic problems
– Conservatives
• pulled out of worst of depression
• balance budgets
• protective tariffs
Keynesian Economics
• John Maynard Keynes
– unemployment came
from a decline in
demand, not from
overproduction
– increase demand by
creating jobs
– deficit spending – when a
government pays out
more money than it takes
in through taxation and
other revenues,
thus going into debt
Instability After World War I
• The United States
– Industrial production fell 50% (1929-1933)
– 1932 – FDR won (crushed) presidential
election
– New Deal
– unemployment grew
• WWII and weapons
industries  fixed
unemployment (WWII
ended Great Depression)
FDR’s New Deal
• New Deal (an incomplete
representation)
– Works Progress Administration (WPA),
1935
• employed 3 million
• built bridges, roads, post
offices and air ports
– Welfare
– Social Security Act, 1935
• old age pensions
• unemployment insurance
Instability After
World War I
“The world does
not make sense,
so why should art?”
• Arts
– fascination with
absurd &
unconscious
– Dadaism –
life has no purpose
– surrealism – seeks to depict the world of the unconscious
• Salvador Dali – The Persistence of Memory
• Sciences
– 1920s-30s – “heroic age of physics”
• Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle – (1927)
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
• 1939 – only France and GB remain democracies
• totalitarian state
– minds and hearts
(PROPAGANDA on
mass-level)
– single leader,
single party
– individual will
subjective to
collective will,
as determined by
the leader
– masses  actively involved in achieving state goals
The Rise of Dictatorial
Regimes
• Fascism in Italy
– Benito Mussolini, Il Duce
• Fascio di Combattimento
(League of Combat)
• fascism (nationalistic appeals)
• private army = BLACK Shirts
– middle class – fear of communism, socialism, disorder
– police – unrestricted
• secret police (OVRA) – watched indiv. political activities
– control over media (newspapers, radio and film)
• “Mussolini is always right.”
• 2/3 in fascist youth groups  fit, disciplined and war-loving
– traditional social values  family = pillar of state
– Catholicism survived (support fascists)
– Rome-Berlin Axis: Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
• From Russia to the USSR
– Lenin
• war communism
• command economy
• 1920-22 drought – 5 million
starved
• 1913-1921 – 80% decrease in
industrial production
“Down with
Lenin and
horse flesh.
Bring back
the Czar and
pork.”
– New Economic Policy (NEP)
• small-level capitalism
• heavy industry, banking, mines =
government controlled
• saved Soviet Union from
complete economic disaster
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
• From Russia to the USSR (cont.)
– The Soviet Union
• 1922 – Lenin and Communists  Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR)
– production at 75% of prewar levels
• 1924 – Lenin dies  power struggle
– 7 member Politburo
– Leon Trotsky – expand industrialization (at expense of peasants) and
expand communist abroad
– opposition: socialism, continue NEP
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
• From Russia to the USSR (cont.)
– Joseph Stalin and His Five-Year Plans
– intense personal rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky
 Stalin wins
• 1927 – Trotsky flees to Mexico, 1940 assassinated
– 1928 – ended NEP, launch First Five-Year Plan
• economic goal: agricultural  industrial
• production of military and capital goods – goods devoted
to the production of other goods such as heavy machines
– 4x heavy machinery production; 2x oil production
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
• From Russia to the USSR (cont.)
– Costs of Stalin’s Programs
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real wages decline by 43% (1928-1940)
housing investments declined
terrible living conditions for workers
collectivization
– resistance: hoarding crops and killing livestock
– led to widespread famine (1932-33, 10 million died)
• forced labor camps in Siberia
• Great Purge – 8 million arrested and sent to labor camps
– Executions - ELIMINATE DISLOYAL PARTY MEMBERS
• parent = small collective – teach hard work, duty, discipline
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
• Authoritarian States in the West
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–
–
Eastern Europe
not totalitarian
used police powers
preserve existing social order
historically: rural, agrarian, no democratic tradition,
Czechoslovakia – maintained democracy
• large middle class
• liberal tradition
• strong industrial base
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
• Authoritarian States in the
West
– Spain
• General Francisco Franco,
revolted 1936
• Spanish Civil War
– Hitler and Mussolini aided
Franco – arms, money, soldiers
– 1939-1975 – dictatorship
established by Franco
» favored traditional groups
» did not control all aspects
of peoples’ lives
» harsh – special police
forces, exiles,
imprisonment
Hitler and Nazi Germany
• Nazi (National Socialist
German Workers’ Party, NSDAP)
– 2 years – 55,000 members
– 15,000 in party militia
(SA/Storm Troopers/Brownshirts)
• Beer Hall Putsch (1932)
– Hitler  sentenced to prison  wrote Mein
Kampf
• German nationalism, strong anti-Semitism,
anticommunism LINKED by a Social Darwinism theory
of struggle
• Lebenstraum “living space” through expansion
Hitler and Nazi Germany
• Rise of Nazism
– Nazis  obtain power legally
– 3 years  800,000 member,
largest rep. in
Reichstag
– terrible conditions helped
Nazi rise to power
– appealed to nationalism and
militarism
Hitler and Nazi Germany
Chapter 15, Lesson 3
• The Nazis Take Control
– 1933 – Pres. Hindenberg allowed Hitler
became Chancellor and to create a new
government
• Enabling Act (1933) – 2/3 vote gave Hitler
the ability to ignore the constitution for 4
years (essentially voted-in dictatorship)
– removed all Jews from government
– built concentration camps – a camp
where prisoners, or members of
minority groups are confined, typically
under harsh conditions
– banned all other political parties
– 1934 – Hindenberg dies  presidency
abolished  Hitler is the Fuhrer!
Hitler and Nazi Germany
• The Nazi State, 1933-1939
– Aryan – a term used to identify people speaking
Indo-European languages; Nazis misused the
term, treating it as a racial designation and
identifying the Aryans with the ancient Greeks and
Romans and twentieth-century Germans and
Scandinavians
– mass demonstrations and spectacles
• Nuremberg party rallies every September
Nuremberg
Party Rallies
Hitler and Nazi Germany
• The Nazi State, 1933-1939
– The State and Terror
• schutzstaffeln “Guard Squadrons” (SS)
– Heinrich Himmler – control of secret police and regular police
– terror: instruments of repression and murder  secret police,
criminal police, concentration camps… execution squads and
death camps
– ideology: further the “Aryan master race”
– Economics
• public works and grants  put people back to work
• rearmament  largely fixed unemployment
The SS
• schutzstaffeln
“Guard
Squadrons”
Hitler and Nazi Germany
• The Nazi State, 19331939
– Women and Nazism
• bearers of Aryan children
(honor)
• encouraged to leave
“difficult” or “serious”
professions
• encouraged to pursue
social work and nursing
Hitler and Nazi
Germany
• The Nazi State, 1933-1939
– Anti-Semitic Policies
• Nuremburg Laws, 1935
– Jew = anyone with one Jewish
grandparent
– stripped Jews of citizenship
– banned marriage between Jews and German citizens
– later  forced to wear Stars of David
• Kristallnacht – “night of shattered glass”
– synagogues and Jewish-owned business destroyed
– 30,000 Jewish males arrested  sent to concentration camps
– Jews  barred from public transportation, public buildings (includes
schools and hospitals)
Kristallnacht
Hitler and Nazi Germany
• The Nazi State, 1933-1939
– Culture and Leisure
• Joseph Goebbels, German
propaganda minister
– Kraft durch Freude “Strength through Joy”
– radio, movies, concerts, operas, films, guided tours, sporting
events
• Marconi’s invention of radios
– encouraged (inexpensive, buy on payment plan)
• movies (40% of adults  seeing 1 movie per week)
– feature films and documentaries supporting Nazi message
• 1936 Berlin Olympics
Dictator Breakdown:
Fascists vs. Communists
Fascist Dictators:
Benito Mussolini
Francisco Franco
Hitler
Communist Dictators:
Lenin
Stalin