Hansen Name ____________________WWII Period _________

Lecture Guide for the World War II, Unit II The Weakness of the West Lecture

• Interwar Totalitarian countries ____________________ _______________________________________________

• Interwar Democracies ____________________________ _______________________________________________

• Key Question Why did the ____________________ _______________________ allow threats to their system of government and way of life to __________________ in the twenty years_________________________________?

• Reason 1a) Pacifism

• Reason 1b) A Loss of Faith in the Virtue of Western Society

– Philosophy

– Physics

– Psychiatry

• Reason 1c) U.S. Returns to Isolationism

• Reason 1d) The Looming Menace of Communism

• Reason 1e) Economic Difficulties

• The Age of Anxiety

Hansen Name ____________________WWII Period _________

Lecture Guide for the World War II, Unit II The Rise of Totalitarianism Lecture

• Themes of Totalitarianism

• WWI Paved the Way for Totalitarianism

• The Soviet Union – Fall of the Tsar and the Rise of Communism

– Stalin Takes Power and Sets Up a Totalitarian State

• Italy’s Anger at the End of WWI

• Mussolini

• German Anger After WWI

• Continuing Problems (Weimar Gov., Ruhr Valley, Great Depression)

• Hitler

• Hitler’s Election, Policies, and the Stab in the Back Theory

• Japan Turns Away from the West

• Japan (cont.)

• Reactions to Totalitarianism From the West

– U.S.

– France

The Interwar Years- The Weakness of Western Democracies and the Rise of Totalitarianism

Totalitarians

Democracies

Part I.- The Weakness of the West

Our Key Question Why did the victors of World War I allow threats to their system of government and way of life to rise to power in the twenty years following World War I?

Reason 1a) Pacifism A Desire for Peace At All Costs

How does this wood carving help us to understand the high level of pacifism in 1920s Europe?

Why is this pacifism relevant?

Reasons 1b) A Loss of Faith in the Virtue of Western Society

• Pre WWI- “Human reason ushered in democracy and the Industrial Age. Perhaps it can solve all of our problems…”. Utopianism

• Post WWI- “Umm… ok… scratch that.”

• “If modern science brought us the slaughter in the trenches, what will future ‘progress’ bring us? – Not totally misguided…

think about the atom bomb – Orwell’s 1984

This Western Loss of Faith in Progress Was Aggravated By New Ideas at the Time

• Philosophy– Existentialism (Nieztsche)– There is no God and no meaning to life. Humans must create their own

meaning. • Physics

– Einstein’s Relativity– Time and space are both curved and are both relative to the observer– Time is relative

• If I were to travel away from the earth on a space ship traveling the speed of light and came back in a year, 100 years would have passed on earth

– Heisenberg uncertainty principle• If you know exactly where a particle is, you cannot know its speed. If

you know its exact speed, you cannot know exactly where it is. • Psychiatry

– Human brains are not entirely rational– Many human actions are motivated by subconscious desires

VS

If a human were to move near the speed of light, time would slow down for them,

relative to the observer…

Which is more comfortable to believe?

Salvador Dali: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War),

1936

Salvador Dali: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War),

1936Surrealis

m

Freudian Psychology

Pre-Freudian View of the Brain

Input

Logic

Output

Freudian View of the Brain

InputOutput

You Tube- Nietzsche interprets Hitler You Tube- Nietzsche interprets Hitler Sharks and nazisSharks and nazis

Reason 1c) The U.S. Returned to

Isolationism, Leaving Europe

Deal With Its Problems

1d) The Looming Menace of Communism

• Russia had become Communist

• Communism advocates a worldwide violent revolution to replace world governments

• Rejects wealth inequality • Connected to Atheism, and

ironically at the same time, Judaism

Reason 1e) Economic Difficulties

• In the 1920s, nations struggled economically to recover from WWI war debt

• By the end of the 1920s, they started to recover, but then…

• …the Great Depression hit• It is hard to convince people, especially in

a democracy, to spend money for military action, even if the action is justified, in a time of economic crisis– Shouldn’t that money be going to help

the poor? – Interesting Keynesian idea

Historians Have Dubbed the 1920s The Age of Anxiety

• There were attempts to deal with this anxiety

• Various Pacts and Treaties – Locarno Pact – Kellogg-Briand Pact

Attempt At An Amazing Metaphor

Reason

Science

Industry

Shorter Work Hours

Technological Gadgets to Ease Life

Peace

World War I

Einstein

Existentialism

FreudStream of Consciousness- distopias

Progress

Society/ The Age of Anxiety

Pre 1914 World

Part II. The Rise of Totalitarianism

Themes of Totalitarianism

• Dictatorship/Cult of Personality • Rejection of Individual Liberties• Expansionism • Provided a sense of security to their people

– The poverty of the Great Depression

– The Age of Anxiety

• Promised to Restore Honor – Done partly through the use of scapegoats

• Reliance on Nationalism

WWI Paved the Way for Totalitarianism

• People are used to taking orders from a government– Rationing– Military control, etc.

2a) the Soviet Union –

• Fall of the Tsar and the Rise of Communism– Collapsed out of WWI – Civil War Lenin and Communism

• World’s first Communist nation

– Communism is a rejection of ‘government hands-off economics’, aka Capitalism

– Instead- violent revolution to overthrow the haves– End of private property no more class structure or

oppression– Must happen everywhere to work (according to Marx)

Stalin Takes Power and Sets Up a Totalitarian State

• Lenin dies• Stalin, not Lenin’s

chosen successor, takes power by force

• His Policies – Collective Farming– Farmers must merge their

farms into collectives to provide food for the state

– Five Year Plans– Soviet Industry Was Put

on Steroids

Was Stalin successful?

• THE GROWTH OF HEAVY INDUSTRY IN THE USSR• INDUSTRY UNIT 1932 1938• Coal millions of tons 64 132• Oil millions of tons 22 32• Pig Iron millions of tons 6 14• Steel millions of tons 6 18• Automobiles thousands 23 211• Tractors thousand 50 176• Machinery billions of rubles 18 33• Chemicals billions of rubles 2 6

But at what cost? Totalitarian Methods…

• Starvation in the Ukraine

• Elimination of wealthy farmers

• Gulags

• Purges

• Propaganda and Censorship

2b) Fascism in Italy• Italy’s Anger at the end of WWI

– Had fought for allies, but didn’t feel that they’d been rewarded properly

– Felt overlooked in Europe• Few colonies• Poor and unindustrialized

• Mussolini was a journalist who discovered the power of propaganda– If he put good stories about himself in the

media, however untrue, they bolstered his image

– He promised a bold, bright future • A renewed Roman Empire

• Was Willing to Use Violence– Assassination of his chief political rival– Secret police

Mussolini’s Secret Police

(cont.)

• Mussolini Promised to Protect Italy from Communism (which at the time was attractive to many poor or radical Western Europeans)

• Why did Communism provoke such fear in the ruling classes? – Think of the stories filtering out of Russia at this

time– Ukraine Starvation, forced collectivization

2c) Germany –German Anger…

The Weimar Republic in Germany was Weak

• Black mark as gov’t that signed the Treaty of Versailles

• Started its life with crushing reparation debts

• Had no significant military, which allowed small extremist groups to play a role in German politics

Occupation of the Ruhr Valley (1923-1924)

I just can’t pay…

The German MarkThe German Mark

The German MarkThe German Mark

Results: Occupation of the Ruhr Valley (1923-1924)

• Hyperinflation

• International sympathy for Germany

• May have convinced the French that military options against Germany were of little value…

• Dawes Plan…U.S. loans to Germany to get them back on their feet…

• Why was the Dawes Plan Ridiculous?

• Dawes Plan did quiet German Radicalism for a while

The Great Depression, However, Smashed Apart the German Recovery (and made the Western Democracies

Less Likely to support military action)

Great Depression (1929)

• A worldwide phenomenon

Hitler

• Radicalism Surged in Germany During the Ruhr Valley Invasion

• Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch

• Trial Makes Him a Household Name – Slap on the wrist

• Mein Kampf

Hitler Promises to Solve Germany’s Problems

• Put Germans to Work!

• Fight Communism!

• Perhaps most importantly: Regain German Honor by Renouncing Treaty of Versailles!

Hitler’s Methods- True to His Idol Mussolini

• Propaganda– Use of mass technology

• Radio and even television– ‘Contact’ Sci-Fi story

• Secret Police – Gestapo

• Violence– Assassination of rivals and

even powerful (and thus rival) supporters

• Charisma

Hitler was Elected

• Hitler had cleverly affected a more moderate platform after his prison stint

• After his election, he quickly Cemented His Hold On Power– Oath of Loyalty to the Military– Reichstag Fire

• Eliminates All Parties Except the Nazis

– Rejects Treaty of Versailles • Begins to remilitarize

– Nuremburg Laws– Women’s role

• Baby machine’s. Why?

• …stab in the back theory

• scapegoats

Germany was not invaded fully invaded at the end of WWI…

Japan’s Turn Away From the West

• Leader in Asian Westernization/Industrialization– Defeat of Russia in 1905

• Joined allies in WWI • Angered at racism during Treaty of Versailles

– Literal, in your face, racism• Clemenceau- (paraphrase) - “I can’t believe we have to stay cooped up in

here with these ugly bastards (Japanese diplomats) while there are blond women in the world.”

– No racial equality clause in the Treaty of Versailles

• U.S. Pushed the British to renounce their alliance with Japan– U.S. sees Asian Pacific as its economic backyard

• Japan began to feel that its aspirations of being a world class power would be forever frustrated by the white powers– Island has limited resources- need for an empire! – The rise of militarism

• World at War Film

Reactions to Totalitarianism

• America’s Reaction– Isolationism

France’s Reaction

• The U.S., Britain, and the League are doing squat to protect us… and who is Hitler going to come for first? – France!

• Maginot Line – Kinda like the best trench

system ever built– Makes a lot of sense after WWI

Fort Eben

Britain’s Reaction

• The British Reaction- appeasement- will start off our next unit and lead to the war itself