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
Transcript
Hansen Name ____________________WWII Period _________
Lecture Guide for the World War II, Unit II The Weakness of the West Lecture
• Interwar Totalitarian countries ____________________ _______________________________________________
• 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
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,
• 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
• 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
