Totalitarianism
Questions
• What is Totalitarianism?
• How did Joseph Stalin take control over the
Soviet Union?
– How did Stalin transform the Soviet Union?
• How did Mussolini come to power in Italy?
– To what extent was Italian Fascism totalitarian?
• How did Adolf Hitler seize power in Germany?
– How did Hitler’s policies lead to another World
War
Totalitarianism in the U.S.S.R.
• Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)
• ‘Socialism in One Country’
• Stalin feared USSR would be
overwhelmed by capitalist
west
• He believed the Soviet Union
needed to industrialize at all
costs
• His policies led to creation of
massive bureaucracy
(government), controlled by
him.
Stalin’s Russia
• Stalin drove all of his
opponents out of power
• Trotsky exiled 1929, later
assassinated
• Personality cult
• Purges: 600,000 out of 1.2
mil. CP members imprisoned
or killed
• Stalin murdered between 813 million people
• Aug. 1939 non-aggression
pact with Germany seemed
to ensure peace
Stalin signs a death warrant
Totalitarianism
• A government for the industrial
age
• The State was above all other
aspects of society
• Government willing to intervene
in lives of citizens, keep control
over economy
• Use of propaganda to mobilize
nation around a central ideology
– Education as indoctrination
(program people to follow)
• Often totalitarian regimes try to
mobilize the public around a
national goal or program
• Glorification of militarism
Stalin’s Economic Program
• Improve industrialization
through a huge amount of
state investment
• Beginning in 1928, 5 Year
Plans set goals for industrial
achievements
• Take farms away from people,
Gov. runs farms (Collective
Farms)
• Results: Rapid Industrial
Growth
– 1928 S.U. built 6000 tractors/year
– 1932 S.U. built 150,000
tractors/year
Worldwide Depre$$ion
• Post WWI economies are in DEEP trouble.
• Germany is broke, inflation is soaring. Their
government (Weimar Republic) is failing.
• Great Depression hits U.S., 1 out of 4 people
can’t find a job. New Deal (gov. spending)
• Socialism is becoming popular with workers.
Why?
Fascism in Italy
• Benito Mussolini (18831945)
• War seriously damaged
Italian economy, brought
little benefit to nation
• Parliament viewed as
weak, turned to right-wing
parties (Fascist)
Mussolini Marches on Rome
From Republic to Totalitarian State
• Mussolini began to
intimidate his opponents
using violence (Blackshirts)
• Oct., 1922 March on Rome
made Mussolini Prime
Minister
• Mussolini used his power in
parliament to make himself
dictator
Mussolini
• Italy is in bad economic shape after WWI.
• Benito Mussolini creates Fascist PartyNationalism, military, parades, speeches
• Mussolini becomes Fascist dictator of
Italy, all other parties outlawed.
• Italy wants to start to expand its borders,
create empire.
• Mussolini and Hitler become allies.
The Rise of Adolf Hitler
• Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
– Nazi Party
– SA (Brownshirts)
• German unemployment after
1929 created environment of
crisis in Germany
Jan 1933, Conservatives agree to
form coalition government
making Hitler Chancellor
(Weimar Republic Falls)
Adolf Hitler in 1927
Dollar Reichsmark Relationship
U.S. $1.00 would buy
Jul 1914 RM 4.2
Jan 1919 8.9
Jul 1919 14.0
Jan 1920 64.8
Jul 1920 39.5
Jan 1921 64.9
Jul 1921 76.7
Jan 1922 191.8
Jul 1922 493.2
Jan 1923 17,972.0
Jul 1923 353,412.0
Aug 1923 4,620,455.0
Sep 1923 98,860,000.0
Oct 1923 25,260,208,000.0
15 Nov 1923 42,200,000,000,000.0
Unemployment in Germany
Year
1929
Total (in
millions)
1,899
% of
Population
8.5
1930
3,076
14.0
1931
4,520
21.9
1932
5,603
29.9
The Nazi Party
• Founded after WWI, Hitler
transformed it into the largest
party in Germany
• Main goals
– Restore German Power and
Pride
• Get rid of Treaty of Versailles
• Lebensraum (Living space)
– Prevent Communist takeover of
Germany
– Purge Germany of elements
which Hitler believed threatened
German power
• Jews, Communists, Gypsies,
Homosexuals
– Reinforce traditional gender roles
Hitler in Power
• Deflection of
criticism
– scapegoats
– nationalism/massive
rallies
– economic success
• government spending
Hitler at rally, 1937
German Anti-Semitism
• Germany had over 500,000 Jews
in 1933
• After Hitler came to power he
passed laws preventing Jews from
being professionals, holding jobs
in the civil service and army, and
attending universities
• 1935 Nuremburg Laws:
– Jews and non-Jews could
neither marry nor have sex
– Jews were stripped of German
citizenship
– Jews were forced to wear Star
of David on clothes
• Nov. 9, 1938 Kristallnacht (Night
of Broken Glass)- 1st night where
violence broke out.
1933
1 Apr: One-day boycott of all Jewish businesses.
7 Apr: Most Jews in the civil service were forced to "retire"
25 Apr: Limit set on number of Jews students in high schools and gymnasiums
10 May: Buecherverbrennung public book burning of about 500 tons of books by or about Jews
(Marx, Ernst Bloch, Freud, Magnus Hirschfeld, Heine, Heinrich Mann, Ernst
Gl„ser, Erich Kaestner, Brecht, Erich Maria Remarque, Arthur Schnitzler, Ernest Hemingway, Jack
London).
1935
6 Sep: Jewish newspapers cannot be sold on the street
15 Sep: Nurenberg Laws Jews stripped of German citizenship, can not display the German flag, can not
employ in the home Germans under the age of 45, and marriage or relationships between Jews and non-Jews
are forbidden.
1937
16 Nov: Passports for foreign travel to be issued to Jews only in "special circumstances."
1938
26 Apr: Jews must register all property valued over RM500
15 Jun: Any Jews ever convicted of any offense, including trafiic violations, was arraested.
23 Jul: All Jews over 15 years and older must carry a special ID card and must show it when ever dealing with
a government official.
25 Jul: Licenses of Jewish doctors suspended; they may only treat Jews
27 Jul: All street names of Jewish origin are changed
17 Aug: All Jewish children born after 1 January 1939 must be named from an approved list of Jewish names.
9-10 Nov: Kristallnacht 200 synagogues destroyed; 7,500 shops looted;
30,000 Jews sent to camps; over 1,000 Jews killed
11 Nov: Jews cannot own weapons
12 Nov: Jews cannot own retail businesses, cannot attend public performances of plays, films, concerts, or
exhibitions; Jews must pay RM1.25 million for damages caused on Kristallnacht.
15 Nov: All Jews expelled from schools
3 Dec: Jews cannot own cars or have drivers licenses
8 Dec: Jews expelled from universities
1939
1 Jan: All Jews must add "Sarah" or "Israel" to their names
21 Feb: Jews must surrender all gold, silver, platinum, pearls, and gemstones
4 Mar: Jews leaving Germany can take only goods acquired before 30 Jan, 1933 except for gold, silver, platinum,
pearls, and gemstones. It was permitted to take wedding rings, used silverware (two each of knifes, forks, spoons
and soup spoons only).
3 Sep: Jewish curfew established 8.00 p.m. in winter, 9.00 p.m. in summer
23 Sep: Jews must hand in all radios
1 Dec: Jewish food ration reduced
1940
6 Feb: Jews cannot buy clothes or shoes
19 Feb: Jews can not have telephones
Jul: Beginning of T4 euthanasia for Jewish mentally ill and infirm patients
1941
19 Sep: All Jews over the age of six must wear "a black, six-pointed tar of yellow material, as big as the palm of a
hand, with the inscription 'Jew' sewn over the heart."
16 Oct: Jews forbidden to emigrate from Germany
16 Oct: General deportation of all Jews from Germany begins.
31 Oct: Jews still working cannot receive sick pay, vacations, or overtime pay.
26 Dec: Jews cannot use public phones
1942
5 Jan: Jews must hand in all woolens and furs.
17 Feb: Jews cannot subscribe to newspapers or magazines
26 Mar: Jews must affix a Star of David to the outside door
17 Apr: Jews cannot use public transportation
15 May: Jews cannot have pets
30 Jun: All Jewish schools closed
18 Sep: Jews cannot have rationed foods (meat, eggs, flour, milk and milk products)
9 Oct: Jews cannot buy books
Extermination
• Jews would be separated;
those who might be used for
labor were allowed to live,
temporarily; the rest were taken
to showers where poison gas
would kill them. The dead
would be hauled to crematoria
and burned.
• The scale of the operation
meant Germans and Poles
must have known what was
going on.
• Ultimately 6 million Jews were
killed and about 5 million others
were exterminated
Attitudes toward Germany
• British: Anti-war and willing to be more
lenient to Germans
• French: bitterly hostile to Germans but
unwilling to risk slow-growing population
on war
• USSR: suspicious of all western powers,
feared that capitalist nations would gang
up on the USSR
• U.S.: felt duped by Europe and was
unwilling to involve itself in European
affairs: isolationism
Stresemann and Briand
Dealing with Nazi Germany
• Problem of what to do
about Germany became
more difficult in 1933 as
Hitler takes power.
• Rome-Berlin Axis 1937
Hitler-Mussolini Team Up
Hitler and Mussolini, Sept. 1938
Toward World War
• 1936 Germany moved troops
into the Rhineland, in
violation of Treaty of
Versailles
• March 1938: Germany
annexed Austria
• Late 1938: Czech. crisis
– Sudetenland (3 million Germans)
– Munich Conference 1938
• March 1939: Hitler annexed
Czechoslovakia
• Appeasement (Give in to an
aggressor) GB and France
• August 23, 1939 GermanSoviet Non-aggression Pact
– The Danzig Corridor (Poland)
Chamberlain and Hitler at Munich
The Growth of Germany in the 1930s
The Failure of Versailles
• The British and French were unwilling to enforce the treaty or
the revisions to it.
• The League of Nations could not keep peace because it was
not a credible threat to aggressor nations.
• The citizens of the United States failed to grasp that WWI had
changed America’s role in the world; as a result the British and
French had to face Hitler without American support.