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Trading Monarchies for Dictatorships: Nationalistic
Conflicts Re-emerge
vs
Axis
Allies
Totalitarianism on the Rise
• Fascism– Middle-class oriented– Pro-Business– Anti-communist– Xenophobic– Anti-democratic– Violence prone– Strength of government
against enemies of the state– Work camps established for
undesirables– Control over every aspect of
people’s lives
• Communism– Working-class oriented– Pro-worker– Anti-capitalist– Anti-democratic– Violence prone– Strength of government
against enemies of the State– Work camps established for
Undesirables– Control over every aspect
of people’s lives
Stalin and the Cult of Personality• Comes to power in 1929, after an internal
struggle in the USSR following the death of Lenin
• 5 Year plan – efforts to bring Soviet Union into competitiveness with Western industrialized countries– Purges: 1930’s, Stalin eliminated millions of
people on trumped up charges; show trials in which coerced confessions were admitted as evidence
• Collectivization: policy of, once again, taking peasants land and forcing them onto state-run farms; eliminates competition; controlled, state-run economy
• Stalinism: NKVD (secret state police); fear and cult of personality
NKVD Prison, I
Prison cells in a former KGB prison in Vilnius, Lithuania
NKVD Prison, II
• Pictures from a prison in Vilnius, Lithuania
Hitler and Mass Politics• National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP;
Nazi)• Wrote Mein Kampf; anti-Semitism was the base of
much of Hitler’s philosophy; German superiority(Aryan race); Slavs were sub-human
• Hitler came to power legally; during turbulent times; rabidly anti-Communist (appealed to?)
• 1934: Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany; Nazis are single largest party in Reichstag
• Quickly the return of militarism: remilitarized Rhineland; violated Treaty of Versailles and no one stopped him from abroad (why?)
• Master of mass politics: knew the value of personal loyalty– SA – Sturmabteilung (party army)– SS – Schutzstaffeln (elite bodyguard)– Gestapo (Geheimes Staatspolizei) - secret state police
Once the Nazis took control
• 1936:– Kristallnacht – coordinated
pogrom against the Jewish communities
– Nuremburg Laws: passed the limitations of the Jews; singled them out for discrimination with wearing of yellow star of David
Spanish Civil War – An Ideological Proving Ground
• 1936: Francisco Franco: takes over as head of Nationalist forces in Spain• Fighting against Republican forces (combined socialist, communist, Catalan
nationalist and anarchist groups)• Starting from southern Spain, they methodically make their way north,
fighting against International Brigades of volunteers from France, the US, the UK, etc.
• Fascist forces from Italy and Germany support the Falangists of Franco
Prelude to World War II• Policy of Appeasement• Anschluß: unification
with Austria in 1938• Annexation of
Sudetenland: 1938; led• to absorption of
Czechoslovakia• 1939: Non-Aggression
Pact signed between Stalin and Hitler
It Begins• Sept. 1, 1939: Germany blitzkrieg
attacks Poland• Britain and France decide to stand
up to Hitler and World War II begins– France was overrun quickly, isolating
Britain• German state was thoroughly
mobilized for war (concentration camps for political prisoners and Jews, worked on munitions)
• US already active in supplying Britain through the Lend-Lease Plan, 1940
• Battle of Britain, 1940– “Never has so much been owed by so
many to so few”
War Time• 1941: Hitler invades Russia– This turned the war– Russians fought bravely
and the winter halted the German advance (learn from Napoleon?)
• December 7, 1941: Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in Hawaii– Draws the US into the war– Hitler declares war on US,
two days later
Operation Barbarossa
British Wartime Posters
The Tide Shifts
• Grand Alliance: US, Britain, USSR; combined to shut down Hitler; unconditional surrender
• Soviets and Anglo- American sides converged on Germany; D-Day invasion of Normandy
• British successes in North Africa (El Alamein)
• US leads invasion of Italy, which capitulates in 1944
• Mussolini captured and executed by Italian partisans
Holocaust (Shoah)
• Final Solution: Hitler and Nazi leadership’s answer to the Jewish Question– Concocted by Himmler (A)– Reflects abandonment of
Madagascar Plan– Came after plan of keeping Jews
in ghettoes– Showed most efficient way of
killing people– 6 million Jews died and 6 million
others (Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses)
A
Death Camps
• Most prominent death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau• Concentration camp vs. Death camp
– Zyklon-B: method of death– Arbeit macht Frei– Finds its roots in the deep-seated anti-
Semitism throughout Europe– Many individuals sheltered Jews in their
homes; monasteries would shelter Jews