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