CHAPTER 27: DICTATORSHIPS AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR (1919 - 1945)

Conservative authoritarianism

• traditional form of antidemocratic gov in Euro history was Conservative authoritarianism

Totalitarianism

• a radical dictatorship that exercises “total claims” over the beliefs and behavior of its citizens by taking control of the economic, social, intellectual, and cultural aspects of society

• emphasizes characteristics that fascist and communists dictatorships had in common

Total war

• many historians: totalitarianism owed much to experience of total war 1914-1918

Stalinism

• name given to communist system during Stalin’s rule

• Stalinsts states nationalized private property, pushed rapid industrialization, and collectivized agriculture

Fascism

• movement characterized by extreme, often expansionist nationalism, antisocialism, a dynamic and violent leader, and glorification of war and military

• leader like Mussolini and Hitler embraced

• glorified war and military

Eugenics

• pseudoscientific doctrine that maintains that the selective breeding of human beings can improve the general characteristics of a national population, which helped inspire Nazi ideas about “race and space” and ultimately contributed to the Holocaust

• popular 1920s and 1930s through Western world viewed as legitimate social policy

Primo Levi

• questions:

  • Which was more important for generating popular support; terror and coercion or material rewards?

  • Under what circumstances did people resist or perpetrate totalitarian tyranny?

• these questions led Holocaust survivor Primo Levi called “gray zone” of moral compromise, which defined everyday life in totalitarian societies

Five-year plan

• plan launched by Stalin (1928( and termed “revolution from above” aimed at modernizing the Soviet Union and creating a new Communist society with new attitudes, new loyalties, and a new socialist humanity

• means where constant propaganda, enormous sacrifices by ppls, harsh repression that included purges and executions, and rewards those who followed party line

New Economic Policy (NEP)

Lenin’s 1921 policy to re-estab limited economic freedom in an attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry in face of economic disintegration

Stalin

• Lenin died w/o chosen successor creating intense struggle for power in inner circle of Communist Party

• principle contenders: Stalin and Trotsky

• Joseph Dzhugashvili (Stalin); good organizer but poor speaker and writer, and no experience outside Russia

• still won because more effective at gaining all-important support of party

Trotsky

• Lenin died w/o chosen successor creating intense struggle for power in inner circle of Communist Party

• principle contenders: Stalin and Trotsky

• Trotsky: great and inspriing leader who planned 1917 Bolshevik takeover and then created victotious Red Army, appeared to have all advantage in power

• Stalin won still

General secretary of the Central Committee

• Stalin rose to General secretary of the Central Committee (1922) and used office to win friends and allies w/jobs and promises

“socialism in one country”/“permanent Revolution”

• Stalin dev this theory “socialism in one country” that more appealing to majority of party member than Trotsky’s doctrine of “permanent Revolution”

• Stalin argued Russian dominated SOviety Union had ability to build socialism on its own

• Trotsky maintained that socialism in Soviet Imion could only succeed if a socialist revolution swept throughout Europe

“second revolution”

• Stalin released his “second revolution” rev for dif reason:

  • ideological considerations: Stalin and militant supporters deeply committed to socialism as understood it, feared gradual resortration of capitalism: wished promote working classes; eager to abolish NEP’s private traders, intendent artisans, and property-owning peasants

  • economic motivations: fragile economic recovery stalled 1929 and 2918 and new offensive seemed necessary to ensure industrial and agricultural growth, economic dev would allow U. S. S. R to catch up with West and overcome traditional Russian ‘backwardness”

  • independent peasantry: centuries peasants wanted own land and finally had it, Stalinists reasoned landowning peasants would embrace conservative capitalism and pose threat to regime, communists at same time believed feared and despised “class enemy: in villages could to squeezed to provide enormous sums needed for all-our industrialization

Collectivization of agriculture

• forcible consolidation of individual peasant farms into large state-controlled enterprises in the Soviet Union under Stalin

• peasants across soviet union compelled to move small plots onto large state-run farms, where their tools, livestock, and produce would be held in common and central planners could control all work

Kulaks

• better-off peasants who stripped of land and livestock under Stalin and were generally not permitted to join collective farms; many of them starved or deported to forced-labor camps for “re-educationn”

• small in number, but help up as great enemy of progress,

Liquidation

• Stalin called for “liquidation” and seizure of lands of Kulaks

Ukraine

• collectivization in fertile farmlands of Ukraine more rapid and violent than other soviet territories

• drive against peasants snowballed into assault on Ukrainians in general, who had sought independence from Soviet rule after WW1; Stalin and associates viewed peasant resistance as expression of unacceptable anti-Soviet nationalism

• party leaders set levels of grain deliveries for Ukraine collectives at excessively high levels and refused relax quotas allow food causing man made famine

Gosplan

• huge State Planning Commission, Gosplan, created to set production goals and control deliveries of raw and finished materials

• complex and difficult task, and production bottlenecks and slowdowns often resulted

Magnitogorsk

• workers typically lived in deplorable conditions in hastily built industrial cities such as Magnitogorsk (Magnetic Mountain City) in the Ural Mountains

• also experienced some benefits of upward mobility

• letter published in Magnitogorsk newspaper, ordinary electrician described opportunities created by rapid industrialization

“museums of atheism”

• gov persecuted those who practiced religion and turned churches into “museums of atheism”, state had both earthly religion and high persist : Marxism- Leninism and Joseph Stalin

Sergei Kirov

• 1934: Stalin’s number-two man, Sergei Kirov, mysteriously killed

• Stalin - who probs ordered his murder - blamed assassination on “fascist agents” within the party

• he used incident to launch reign of terror that purged Communist Party of supposed traitors and solidified his own control

“great purge”

• murderous repression picked up steam over next 2 years: culminated the “great purge” of 1936 to 1938

• series of spectacular public show trials in which false evidence, often gathered using torture was to incriminate party administrators and Red Army Leaders

“Old Bolsheviks”

• (Aug 1936) sixteen “Old Bolsheviks” - prominent leaders who had been in party since Russian Revolution - confessed to all manner of contrived plots against Stalin; all were executed

Versailles treaty

• denied Italy any territorial gains, and soaring unemployment and inflation after war created mass hardships

Benito Mussolini

• (1883-1945)

• began political career pre WW1 as Socialist Party leader and radical newspaper editor

  • (1914) urged Italy join Allies, stand for which expelled from Socialist Party

  • return gone after being wounded at from 1917: Mussolini began organizing bitter war veterans like himself in band of Fascists - from Italian word for “union of forces”

Black Shirts

• Mussolini’s private militia that destroyed socialist newspapers, union halls, and Socialist Party headquarters, eventually pushing Socialists out of city gov of northern Italy

Prime minister

• Oct 1922: band of armed Fascists marched on Rome to threaten king and force him to appoint Mussolini pm of Italy

King Victor Emmanuel III

• (r. 1900- 1946) - who him self had no love for liberal regime - asked Mussolini to take over gov and form new cabinet

• (post widespread violence and threat armed uprising) Mussolini seized power using legal framework of Italian constitution

Giacomo Matteotti

• group of Fascists extremists kidnapped and murdered leading Socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti

Lateran Agreement

1929 agreement that recognized the Vatican as independent state, with Mussolini agreeing to give church heavy financial support in return for public support from pope

“cult of the Duce”

• newspapers, radio and film promoted “cult of the Duce”, portraying Mussolini as powerful strongman who embodied best qualities of Italian ppl

Ethiopia

• after surprising setbacks at hand of poorly armed Ethiopian army, Italian won (1936) and Mussolini could proudly declare that Italy again had its empire

National Socialism

movement and po3ltical party driven by extreme nationalism and racism led by Adolf Hitler; its adherents ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945 and forced Euro into WW2

“stabbed Germany in the back”

• Hitler convinced Jews and Marxists had “stabbed Germany in the back” and vowed to fight on

Weimar Republic

• Hitler turned master of mass propaganda and political showmanship

• wild historical speeches: worked his audience into frenzy w/ demagogic attacks on Versailles Treaty, Jews, war profiteers, and Weimar Republic

Beer Hall Putsch

• (1923) Republic seemed on verge of collapse and Hitler inspired by Mussolini’s recent victory organized armed uprising in Munich - so called Beer Hall Putsch

Mein Kampf

• Hitler used brief prison term to dictate book Mein Kampf (My Struggle)

• where laid out basic ideas on “racial purification” and territorial expansion that would define National Socialism

• claimed Germans were “master race” and needed to defend its “pure blood” from groups labeled “racial degenerates” including Jews, Slavs, others

Lebensraum

• according to Hitler; German race was destined to triumph and grow and needed Lebensraum (living space)

• space would be found to Germany’s east, which he claimed was inhabited by “subhuman” Slavs and Jews

Fuhrer

• Hitler championed idea of leader-dictator or Fuhrer, who unlimited power would embody ppl’s will and lead German nation to victory

• these ideas ultimately propel world into WW2

Heinrich Bruning

• chancellor

• tried to overcome economic crisis by cutting back gov spending and ruthlessly forcing down prices and wages

• his conservative policies intensified Germany’s economic collapse and convinced many voters that country’s republican leaders were stupid and corrupt, adding to Hitler’s appeal

President Hindenburg

• (Jan 30, 1933) Adolf Hitler, leader of largest party in Germany, appointed chancellor by President Hindenburg

Reichstag fire

• (Feb 1933) in midst of electoral campaign plagued by violence - much caused by Nazi toughs - Reichstag' building partly destroyed by fire

• Hitler blamed communists and convinced Hindenburg to sign emergency acts that abolished freedom of speech and assembly as well as most personal liberties

Enabling Act

act published through Reichstag by Nazis that gave Hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years

German Labor Front

• Nazis outlawed strikes and abolished independent labor unions, which were replaced By Nazi-controlled German Labor Front

Storm Troopers (SA)

• Nazi storm troops (SA), quasi-military band of 3 million toughs in brown shirts who fought Communists and beaten up Jews before Nazis took power, now expected top positions in army

• some SA radicals even talked of a “second revolution” that would create equality among all Germans by sweeping away capitalism

SS

• night June 30, 1934: Hitler’s personal guard (SS) arrested and executed about one hundred SA leaders and other political enemies

• Afterward: SS grew rapidly

Heinrich Himmler

• under its methodical, ruthless leader Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945), SS took over the political police and concentration camp system

“coordination”

• Nazi instructed policy it called “coordination” that forced existing institutions to conform to National Socialist ideology

• professionals - doctors and lawyers, teachers and engineers - saw their previously independent organizations swallowed up by Nazi associations

German Society for Racial Research

• new university academies, such as German Society for Racial Research, wrote studies that measured and defined racial differences; prejudice was thus presented in guise of enlightened science, means for creating strong national race

Nuremberg Laws

• (1935) infamous Nuremberg Laws classified Jewish anyone having three or more Jewish grandparents, outlawed marriage and sexual relations b/w Jews and those defined Germans, and deprived Jews of all rights of citizenship

• conversion to Christianity and abandonment of Jewish faith made no difference

Kristallnacht

• (Nigh of Broken Glass)

• (late 1938) assault on Jews accelerated

• during well organized wave of violence known as Kristallnacht, Nazi gangs smashed windows and looted over 7000 Jewish owned shops, destroyed many homes, burned down over 200 synagogues, and killed dozens of Jews

• German Jews were then rounded up and made to pay for damage

Aryanization

• Germans stepped in to take their place (Jews) in process known as Aryanization

  • (named after “Ayran master race” prized by Nazis for supposedly pure German blood)

Hitler Youth, League of German Women

• millions Germans joined Hitler Youth the league of German Women, and the German labor front

Volkswagen

• items such as Volkswagen ( the “ppl’s car”) were intended to link individuals’ desire for consumer goods to collective ideology of “ppl’s community”

• such programs faltered as state increasingly focused on rearmament for approaching war, suggested to all that regime was working hard to improve German living standards

League of Nations

• Germany’s withdrawal from League of Nations (Oct 1933) indicated Gustav’s Stresemann’s policy of peaceful cooperation was dead

Appeasement

• The British policy toward Germany prior to WW2 that aimed at granting Hitler whatever he wanted, including western Czechoslovakia in order to avoid war

Rhineland

• Hitler suddenly marched his armies into demilitarized Rhineland (March 1936) brazenly violating treaties of Versailles and Locarno

• Britain refused act, France do lil w/o British support

Rome-Berlin Axis

• emboldened, Hitler moved ever more aggressively, enlisting powerful allies in international affairs

• Italy and Germany estab so called Rome-Berlin Axis (1936)

• Japan also under rule of Fascist dictatorship joined axis alliance same year

Spanish Civil War/Francisco Franco

• Germany and Italy intervened in Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) where military aid helped General Francisco Franco’’s revolutionary Fascist movement defeated democratically elected Republican gov

• Republican Spanish’s only official aid in fight against Franco came from Soviet Union, for public opinion in Britain and especially in France hopelessly divided on whether to intervene

Anschluss

• in Anschluss (annexation), German armies moved in unopposed, and Austria became two provinces of Greater Germany

Sudentenland

• Hitler demanded that territories inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans in western Czechoslovakia - the Sudentenland - be ceded to Nazi Germany

Munich Conference, Chamberlain

• returning to London from Munich Conference (sep 1938), Chamberlain told cheering crowds that he had secured “peace w/honor.. peace for our time”

• sold out by western powers, Czechoslovakia gave in

• Chamberlain’s peace short-lived

Self-determination

• no possible rationale of Self-determination for Nazi aggression, since Hitler was seizing ethnic Czechs and Slovaks - not Germans - as captive ppl

Danzig

• when Hitler next used the question of German minorities in Danzig as pretext to confront Poland, suddenly militant Chamberlain declared that Britain and France would fight if Hitler attacked his eastern neighbor (Hitler didn’t take these warnings too seriously)

Non-aggression Pact

• (Aug 1939), in about-face that stunned world, sworn enemies Hitler and Stalin signed Non-aggression Pact that paved road to war

• each dictator promised remain neutral if the other became involved in open hostilities

• attached secret protocol ruthlessly divided Poland, the Baltic nations, Finland, and part of Romania into German and Soviet spheres of influence

• Stalin agreed to pact cus he remained distrustful of Western intentions and cus Hitler offered immediate territorial gains

Blitzkrieg

Dunkirk

• after occupying Denmark, Norway, and Holland, German motorized columns broke into France through southern Belgium, split the Franco-British forces, and trapped entire British army on French beaches of Dunkirk

Winston Churchill

• only Balkans and Britain , nation led by uncompromising Winston Churchill (1874-1965) remained unconquered

Battle of Britain/London Blitz

• Battle of Britain (July 1940): up to thousand German planes a day attacked British airfields and key factories, dueling w/British defender high in skies

• sep 1940: Hitler angrily turned from military objectives to indiscriminate bombing of British cities in attempt to break British morale

• British aircraft factories increased production, and heavily bombed ppl of London defiantly dug in

• by oct, Britain was beating Germany three t one in air war, and Battle of Britain over

Morale

(June 1941) Hitler broke pact w/Stalin and launched German armies into Soviet Union along vast front

Leningrad

• by oct most of Ukraine conquered, Leningrad was practically surrounded and Moscow besieged

New Order

• Hitler’s program based on radical imperialism, which gave preferential treatment to the Nordic ppl’s; the French, an “inferior” Latin ppl, occupied middle position; Slavs and Jews treated harshly as “subhuman”

Nordic Peoples

• Dutch, Norwegians, Danes received preferential treatment for the Germans beloved them related to Aryan master race

Collaborators

• Nazi found willing collaborators who ruled in accord w/German needs

• France divided into 2 parts

• German army occupied north, including Paris

• southeast remained nominally independent

Henri-Phillippe Petain

• aging WW1 general Marshal

• formed Vichy

Vichy

• organized by Henri-Phillippe Petain

• French gov

• Vichy regime

• adopted aspects of National Socialist ideology

• willingly placed French Jews in hands of Nazis

“mass settlement space”

• support of military commanders, German policemen, bureaucrats in occupied terriotories, Nazi administrators and Himmler’s elite SS corps now implemented program of destruction and annihilation to create “mass settlement space” for racially pure Germans

Polish Home Army

• underground members of Polish Home Army

• led by gov in exile (London)

• passed intelligence about German operations to Allies and committed sabotage

• famous French resistance undertook similar actions, as did groups Italy, Greece, Russia, and Netherlands

Holocaust

• systematic effort of Nazi state exterminate all Euro Jews and other groups deemed racially inferior during second World War

Euthanasia

• (1938-1940) persecution turned deadly in Nazi euthanasia (mercy killing) campaign, important step in genocide

“ghettos”

• German-occupied territories soon forced to move into urban districts termed “ghettos”

Warsaw and Lodz

• in walled-off “ghettos” in cities large and small - two of most important were in Warsaw and Lodz - hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews lived in crowded and unsanitary conditions, w/o real work or adequate sustenance

• over 500000 ppl died under these conditions

Einsatzgruppen

• Three military death squads known as Special Task Forces (Einsatzgruppen) and other military units followed advancing German armies

• moved systematically from town to town, shooting Jews and other Target populations

“final solution”

• (late 1941) Hitler and Nazi leadership, in some-debated combinations, ordered SS to implement mass murder of all Jews in Euro

• what Nazi leadership called “final solution of Jewish question” had begun

• Germans set up industrialized killing machine that remains unparalleled w/ extensive network of concentration camps, industrial complexes, railroad transport lines to imprison and murder Jews and other so-called undesirables, and exploit labor before they died

Auschwitz-Birkenau

• (occupied east) surviving residents of ghettos loaded onto trains and taken to camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, best known of Nazi killing centers where over 1 million ppl - vast majority of Jews - murdered in gas chambers

Manchuria

• (1931) Japanese armies invaded and occupied Manchuria, vast territory bordering northeastern China

• (1937) Japan brutally invaded China itself

• (1940) seeking to cement ties w/Fascist regimes of Euro, Japanese entered into formal alliance w/Italy and Germany

• (summer 1941) Japanese armies occupied southern portions of French colony of Indochina (Vietnam and Cambodia)

Co-Prosperity Sphere

• sham

• real power remained in hands of Japanese

• exhibited great cruelty toward civilian populations and prisoners of war, and exploited local ppls for Japan’s wartime needs, arousing local populations against them

Pearl Harbor

• (Dec 7, 1941) Japanese sank or crippled every American battleship, but chance all American aircraft carriers were at sea and escaped unharmed

• Pearl Harbor brought Americans into war in spirit of anger and revenge

Island-hopping

• (July 1943) Americans and Australian allies opened successful Island-hopping campaign that slowly forced Japan out of conquered territories

Grand Alliance

• while Nazis and Japanese built their savage empires: great Britain, US, and Soviet Union joined together in military pact Churchill termed Grand Alliance

Great Patriotic War

• Broad-based Russian nationalism, as opposed to narrow communist ideology, became powerful unifying force in what Soviet ppl appropriately called Great Patriotic War of the Fatherland

Second Battle of El Alamein/“Hinge of fate”

• Second Battle of El Alamein (Oct-Nov 1942): British forces decisively defeated combined German and Italian armies and halted Axis penetration of North Africa

• Winston Churchill called battle the “hinge of fate” that cemented allied victory

Coup d’etat

• Mussolini was overthrown by Coup d’etat, and new Italian gov publicly accepted unconditional surrender

• (response) Nazi armies invaded and seized control of northern and central Italy, and German paratroopers rescued Mussolini in daring raid and put him at head of puppet gov

Dresden

• (by war’s end): hardly German city of any size remained untouched, and many - including Dresden, Hamburg, and Cologne - lay in ruins

Battle of Stalingrad

• (Nov 19422) Soviets surrounded and systematically destroyed entire German Sixth Army of 300,000 men

• (Jan 1943) only 123,000 soldiers left to surrender

• Hitler refused to allow retreat, suffered catastrophic defeat

Albert Speer

• German war industry, under Nazi minister of armaments Albert Speer, put to work millions of prisoners of war and slave laborers from across occupied Euro

• (1942-July 1944) German war production tripled despite heavy Anglo-American bombing

Dwight D. Eisenhower/D-day

• (June 6, 1944) American and British forces under General Dwight Eisenhower landed on beaches of Normandy, France, in history’s greatest naval invasion

• (hundred dramatic days) more 2 million men and almost half a million vehicles broke through German lines and pushed inland

Warsaw Uprising

• (July 1943) Soviets reached outskirts of Warsaw by August (1944)

• anticipating German defeat, Polish underground Home Army ordered uprising, so that Poles might take city on own and estab independence from Soviets

• Warsaw Uprising was tragic miscalculations

• Red Army refused enter city

Hiroshima & Nagasaki

• (post much discussion at upper levels of US gov) American planes dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki in Japan (Aug 6 & 9, 1945)