The 1920s and 1930s:The Rise of Totalitarianism

1. Based on the following charts, how are individuals in a

totalitarian state molded into obedient citizens?

2. How would your life change if you lived in a totalitarian state?

Key Traits

One-Party Rule

Dynamic Leader

Ideology (set of beliefs)

Description• Exercises absolute authority

• Dominates the government

• Helps unite people toward meeting shared goals or realizing a common vision

• Encourages people to devote their unconditional loyalty and uncritical support to the regime

• Becomes a symbol of the government

• Justifies government actions

• Glorifies the aims of the state

Key TraitsState Control Over All

Sectors of Society

State Control Over theIndividual

Dependence on

Modern Technology

Organized Violence

Description• business • labor • housing • education

• family life • youth groups • religion • the arts

• Demands total obedience to authority and personal sacrifice for the good of the state

• Denies basic liberties

• Relies on mass communication, such as radios, newsreels, and loudspeakers, to spread propaganda

• Builds up advanced military weapons

• Uses force, such as police terror, to crush all opposition

• Targets certain groups, such as national minorities and political opponents, as enemies

Europe Recovered Slowly From WWI

• Cost of war: Allied AND Central Powers: $200 billion

• The USA and Japan benefitted– No fighting took place on home soil– Increased trade opportunities

• The last absolute royal families fell – Habsburgs (Austria), – Romanovs (Russia), – Hohenzollerns (Germany)

Mussolini Launched a Fascist State• Worries:

– Betrayed by Versailles– Unemployment and inflation– Communist Revolution

• Newspaper editor (and former Socialist) Benito Mussolini made promises

• The Roman Fasces

Ancient symbols of Rome were popular in early American history, too.

Fascist Mob in the Streets• Blackshirts

– Killing enemies– Youth, the middle class

and aristocrats supported him

• Capitulating to 30,000 angry Fascists in the streets in Rome, the King of Italy appointed him Prime Minister

Italy Becomes a Model

• Democracy abolished

• Mussolini set corporations to own and run the economy– Wages, and prices

were controlled

• Oratory• “Mussolini is Always

Right”

Stalin in the Soviet Union!

1925-53•Command Communist Economy

•5 Year Plans

•Collective Ownership

•Gulags

Weimar Republic 1918-1933.

• Germany’s weak liberal democracy which surrendered…

• Hitler denounced this “false” German government

How Germany paid for war, and more…

Printing Paper Money– War cost $38 billion, people taxed only $1.5

billion

• Continued this policy after WWI

Germany Struggled with Reparations

• Germany made first payment in 1921 in commodities – coal, wood, iron ore.

• In 1922, Germany could not make next payment.

• Angry Belgian and French govts took control of Germany’s Ruhr region… CHAOS results

Iron Ore is used to make steel

See map…..

Occupying Ruhr Creates Chaos…

• Govt told German citizens in Ruhr to go on strike• 8 months of occupation:

– Germans refused cooperation

• Dozens of small revolts– German communists – Nazis– hard time keeping peace

Art of 1920s

George Grosz

Grey Day(1921)

Art of 1920s

George Grosz

Grey Day(1921)“DaDa”

Ridiculed contemporary culture & traditional art forms.

The collapse during WW I of social and moral values.

Nihilistic.

George Grosz

The Pillarsof Society

(1926)

George Grosz

The Pillarsof Society

(1926)

Raoul Hausmann: ABCD (1924-25)Raoul Hausmann: ABCD (1924-25)

Picasso: Studio with Plaster Head (1925)

Picasso: Studio with Plaster Head (1925)

Hyperinflation

• German government funded the strikers printed more paper

• Cycle of rapid inflation

• Soon :– 1 trillion of the new Marks

= 1 old Mark

Denominations will range anywhere from 1 to 20 Million Mark or more!  During the hyper-inflation, prices were so high that suitcases and wheel barrows were used to carry money around.

How the Wall Street Crash Hurt Germany…

• Germany received cheap loans from the US – To prop up its economy and to pay reparations– Dawes Plan 1924, then the Young Plan 1929– Austria too received US loans

• The Weimar Republic of Germany was devastated by the Crash on Wall Street – Black Tuesday Oct. 1929

• The US needed those loans repaid

$

Desperation spread• Millions lost their jobs

• Shantytowns sprang up

• Schools lost enrollment: why?

I ca

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Hitler was once a child

“Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn on the Austro-German border on 20th April 1889. His family background has given rise to much psychological speculation. His father, a customs official who died when Hitler was 13, was cold and strict, while his mother was gentle and loving and pampered her son, who adored her. Hitler was clearly intelligent but bored by much of his formal education, except for history, which was taught with a strong German nationalist bias” (Noakes).

Hitler: The Austrian Teenager

• Artistic, feeling superior to others• Drifted from job to job• Tried to sell tourists his paintings of famous sites

– Ironically, he was friends with several young Jewish men who helped him sell his pictures.

• In school Hitler was exposed to Pan-Germanism, anti-Semitism and racist views by teachers.

• Rejected by Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.

Adolf Hitler as a young artist

Germany was desperate for help…

• Attempted coup d’etat in Munich 1923 resulted in 9 months jailtime.

Hitler with supporters in Munich. Where is Munich?

From Prison: Mein Kampf

• Master race• Inferior races - Jews,

Poles, gypsies – should be destroyed.

• Lands lost should be regained, east & west

• Lebensraum needed

Hitler’s Opportunity Regained

• Late 1920s Economy slowly improved.– But The Nazi Party declined

• But 1929 Wall Street crash…– Germany’s economy sank…– 40% unemployment– 1931, bread riots

• Like moths to light, the people flocked to Hitler’s fascist message…

Time Magazine observed in1931…

“Fighting every inch of the way, three men stood out against the advance of Fascism in Germany last week: pale, bespectacled Chancellor Heinrich Bruning; white-haired Paul von Hindenburg; and their faithful lieutenant, Minister of the Interior and of War Wilhelm Groener. Each morning foreign correspondents in Berlin expected the Bruning Government to fall and Fascist Adolf Hitler, who only a fortnight ago pounded a platform and shouted in his best Mussolini manner ‘ Right goes hand in hand with Might!’ , to seize the Government.”

Dec. 21, 1931

Hitler was elected to the Reichstag

1932 - Nazis became largest party

• 1933 – President von Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor according to the constitution.

• Just before parliamentary elections, a mysterious fire breaks out…

• Fear of insurgents• Germans elected a new

majority: Nazi Party• Hitler voted absolute

emergency power for 4 years. (Over the Edge)

Control• Political: Night of the Long Knives

– The SS sets out to execute Hitler’s political enemies in June 1934.

• Economy is supervised– Employers and workers alike have

to join the National Labor Front– National Socialism

• A workers party• Millions are put to work building

factories, weapons of war, and the autobahn

Cultural Control Reflected Propaganda & Hitler’s Tastes• The press, broadcasting, music,

literature, drama, paintings, film are placed under control of Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda.

• Music: Wagner• Films such as Triumph

of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl

"With the exception of Richard Wagner", Hitler wrote, "I have no forerunner." (Solomon)

Nazis Persecuted Jews• Boycotts of Jewish stores

begin 1933• Nuremberg Laws 1935:

– Forbade Jews to – hold public office, – have citizenship, – Publish writing– Teach– work at banks or hospitals

• Had to wear yellow Stars of David.

Poster put in Jewish store urgingBoycott- did the owner have a choice?

The Power of Propaganda:

Nazi documentary film on Jewish History: The Eternal Jew

Tim

e M

agaz

ine

Man

of

the

Yea

r:

1938

Kristallnacht, Nov. 1938

Nazi mobs of Brownshirts• Broke glass windows.• Destroyed 7500 shops• 275 synagogues

Inspired by shooting of a minor diplomat, Ernst Vom Rath in Parisby an angry disgruntled Jewish man…German govt encouraged the riots…

Japanese Imperialism• Military leaders elected to power

– They promote absolute powers for Emperor Hirohito– But they guide Hirohito’s decisions

• In 1931, Japan invades Manchuria: coal, iron ore, oil.

Weak Responses Encouraged More Attacks

• In 1935 Italy seizes Ethiopia

• 1935 Hitler sends troops into Rhineland.

• 1936 Hitler and Mussolini sign Axis Pact.

• 1936 Japan joins Axis.

Why were the responses to these events so weak? - from League of Nations? from Britain, and France, the

major powers?

Axis Supported General Franco

• Spanish Civil War – Fascist Rebels v. an unstable democratic govt.

• Western volunteers support democracy

• 1939 Fascist rebels prevailed

Hitler Correctly Gauged French and British Response

• French public opinion was strongly against confrontation.

• No one wanted to go it alone.

• Economic depressions

Munich Pact: Sudetenland

• Sept 1938:– Hitler’s “last territorial claim”– Germany, Italy, Britain do a

Czech deal (w/o Czechs)– Neville Chamberlain

• “Peace in our time”

Appeasement

A Deal with the Soviets

• Secret: USSR-Germany split E. Europe

• Germany wants to avoid a 2 front war…

To the Chancellor of the German Reich, Herr A. Hitler.

I thank you for your letter. I hope that the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact will mark a decisive turn for the better in the political relations between our two countries. . . .

J. Stalin*

August 1939

Ribbentrop, Molotov (f), Stalin

Germany Expanded Without A Shot, Until Poland was Attacked

1936

Sept. 1938

March 1939

March 1938

Munich

1936-1939

Shooting War Begins inPoland, Sept 1,’39

German Reichstag Celebrates Annexation of Austria

Works Consulted/Cited

• Bytwerk, Randall. Nazi posters 1933-1945. Calvin College. (May 29, 2006) http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/posters2.htm

• Noakes, Jeremy. “The Rise of Adolph Hitler.” Wars and Conflict: World War II. British Broadcasting Corp. (May 26, 2006) http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/hitler_02.shtml

• Solomon, Larry. “Wagner and Hitler.” 2002. (May 28, 2006) http://solomonsmusic.net/WagHit.htm