Transcript Between Wars - St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School

Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
• Describes a government that takes total,
centralized state control over every aspect
of public and private life
• Secret police to crush opposition and
create sense of fear among people
Totalitarianism
• Challenges the highest values prized by
Western democracies
– Reason
– Freedom
– Human dignity
– Worth of the individual
Ideology
• Sets goals of the state
• Glorifies aims of the state
• Justifies government actions
State Control of Individuals
• Demands loyalty
• Denies basic beliefs
• Expects personal sacrifice for the good of
the state
Methods of Enforcement
• Police terror
– Dictators of totalitarian states use terror and
violence to force obedience
– Enforce central gov’t policies NOT criminal activity
– Spy and intimidate citizens
• Indoctrination
– Instruction in the governments beliefs – to mold
peoples minds
– Control of education to glorify the leaders policies
and to convince citizens of unconditional loyalty
• Censorship
• Persecution
Modern Technology
• Mass communication to spread
propaganda
• Advanced military weapons
State Control of Society
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Business
Labor
Housing
Education
Religion
Arts
Personal life
Youth groups
Dictatorship and One – Party Rule
• Exercises absolute authority
• Dominates the government
Dynamic leader
• Unites people
• Symbolizes government
• Encourages popular support through force
of will
Stalin
• Secret police uses tanks and armored cars
to stop riots
• Informants everywhere – even kids!!
• Fear of the knock!
Great Purge
• 1937 – campaign of terror directed at
eliminating anyone who threatened power
• Bolsheviks who were apart of revolution of
1917 stood trial
• Executed or sent to camps
• Tried for crimes against the Soviet State
• 8-13 million deaths
• Why?
Economy
• Command Economy
• Five Year Plan
– Impossible high quotas to increase output of steel,
coal, oil, and electricity
– Limited production of consumer goods to reach
goals
– Result – severe shortages on housing, food,
clothing, and other necessary goods
Agricultural Revolution
• Seized over 25 million private farms
• Collective farms
– Large government owned farms
Daily Life
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Personal freedoms limited
Consumer goods in short supply
Dissent prohibited
Economic plan – high demand for skilled
workers
– University and training VERY IMPORTANT
Women
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Gain rights
Bolshevik Rev – equality
Under 5 year plan – no choice – join labor
State provided child care for all working
mothers
• Men held best jobs
• Full time jobs and housework
• Provide the state with future generations of
loyal, obedient citizens
Total Control Achieved
• Mid 1930’s – Stalin – totalitarian regime
and industrial and political power
• Unopposed dictator
• No individual creativity
• Rule by terror
Gulag
• the secret police oversaw the Soviet
forced labor camps
Gulag
“Millions of innocent people
were incarcerated in the
GULAG, serving sentences of
five to twenty years of hard
labor. Prisoners in camps
worked outdoors and in mines,
in arid regions and the Arctic
Circle, without adequate
clothing, tools, shelter, food, or
even clean water. We will never
know how many prisoners
suffered from starvation,
illness, violence, and cold; an
immense number of people
died.
More people passed through
the GULAG, for a much longer
period of time, than through
Nazi concentration camps; yet,
the GULAG is still not nearly
as well known. The Nazi
concentration camps and the
GULAG differ in a very
important way…The GULAG
was used as a weapon of
ongoing political control over
one country…The GULAG
system did not target any
particular group of people: in
fact all ethnic groups,
nationalities and religions
were imprisoned. Moreover, if
a prisoner managed to
somehow survive his or her
sentence, he or she would be
released at the end of it.”
Post War Europe
Post War
• Unstable New Democracies
• Coalition governments – temporary
alliance of several parties when no
majority won
Fascism
Fascism
• New, militant political movement that
emphasized loyalty to the state and
obedience to its leader
• UNLIKE communism
– fascism had no clearly defined theory or
program
– Did not seek a classless society – each class
had its place and function
• Cultural
Characteristics
– Censorship
– Indoctrination
– Secret police
• Economic
– All functions
– Controlled by state
– Corporations of state
• Political
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Nationalist
Racist (Nazi)
One-party rule
Supreme leader
Characteristics
• Social
– Supported by middle class, industrialists, and
military
• Chief Examples
– Italy
– Germany
– Spain
• Basic Principles
– Authoritarianism
– State more important than individual
– Charismatic leader
– Action orientated
Italy
Benito Mussolini
• Newspaper editor and politician
• Promised to rebuild Italy by reviving its
economy and armed forces
• Bitter disappointment over the failure to win
large territory in the 1919 Paris Peace
Conference
• Rise of inflation
• Rise of unemployment
• Wanted a leader to “take action”
Il Duce
• Had support of middle class and workers
• “black shirts”
• Oct 1922 – 30,000 Fascists marched onto
Rome
– Demanded King Emmanuel III put Mussolini in
charge
– King decided he was best to help dynasty survive
– Legal power
Il Duce leadership
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Abolished democracy – Fascist only PP
Secret police jailed opponents
Government censors
Strikes outlawed
Ally Fascists with industrialists to control
economy – NEVER fully achieved total
control
Germany
1920’s – end of WW2
Weimar Republic
• Democratic government – 1919
• Laced strong democratic tradition
• Postwar Germany had several political
parties
• Many Germans blame republic NOT
wartime leaders for country’s defeat and
postwar humiliation by Versailles treaty
• President Paul von Hindenburg
Inflation causes crisis
• Economic problems in Germany
• To pay expenses of way, Germany printed
money
• No value!
• Heavy reparations to the allies
• Economic depression
Dawes Plan - 1924
• $200 million loan from American Banks to
stabilize German currency and strengthen
economy
• Realistic schedule for German reparation
payments
• Helped slow inflation
• 1929 – production UP!
Great Depression
• Hits the world – Hit Germany
HARD
• Germans seek strong leader in
times of crisis
• Hitler rises to LEGAL power!
HITLER
Hitler
• Leader of Nazi Party
• Anti – Semitism
– Anti – Jewish
Nazism
• German brand of Fascism
• Adopted swastika as symbol
Lebensraum
• Lebensraum = Living space!
• Hitler declared that Germany was crowded
and needed more space
– Promised to get that space by conquering
Eastern Europe and Russia
Rise of Nazi’s
• Political group – Hitler – overturn
Versailles Treaty and combat Communism
• National Socialist German Workers Party
– NAZI for shirt
• Private militia called storm troopers or
Brown Shirts
• “der Fuhrer”
Rise of Nazi’s
• Hitler plotted to seize power (like
Mussolini)
• Stormed Munich in 1923
• Failed!!
• Hitler arrested and tried for treason.
• Sentenced to 5 years and served 9
months
Hitler Legal Power
• Named chancellor
• Calls for new elections in Reichstag for
majority
• 6 days before building burns
• Nazi’s blame Communists
• Because of fear, Nazi’s win majority
• Banns other political parties
• Opponents arrested
Mein Kampf
• My Struggle
• Book – sets forth his beliefs and his goals for
Germany
• Germans who he incorrectly called Aryans were the
master race
• Non Aryan races such as Jews, Slavs, Gypsies
were inferior
• Versailles Treaty was an outrage and vowed to
regain German Lands
• Germany was overcrowded and needed more
lebensraum – living space
• Condemn Weimar Republic
Nazi Germany
• Human Rights
– Business shut
down
– Illegal arrests
• Education
– Nazi ideas
– Propaganda
– Hitler youth - M
– League of
German Girls
• Persecution of Jews
– Yellow stars
– Fired
– Nuremberg Laws
• Secret Police
– Gestapo (SS) –
torture, murder
• Women