The West between the Wars
World Studies
Alice F. Short
Hilliard Davidson High School
Chapter 15:
The West between the Wars
• Lesson 1 – Instability After World War I
• Lesson 2 – The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
• Lesson 3 – Hitler and Nazi Germany
Chapter 15 Overview:
The West between the Wars
• peace and prosperity were short-lived after
World War I as the global depression weakened
Western democracies
• WWI influenced the arts and sciences (increased
uncertainty, darker perspective)
• By 1939, many European countries had adopted
dictatorial regimes that aimed to control every
aspect of their citizens’ lives for state goals
• Hitler’s totalitarian state was widely accepted,
but German Jews and minorities were persecuted
– Hitler promoted Nazism in many ways
Instability After World War I
Chapter 15, Lesson 1
• Uneasy Peace, Uncertain Security
– League of Nations
• U.S. didn’t join
• Ineffective
– Treaty of Versailles
• punished / humiliated Germany
• war reparation (to France and Great Britain)
– financial crisis  France occupied Ruhr Valley in Germany
– Inflation in Germany
– Treaty of Locarno
• guaranteed Germany’s new western borders with France and
Belgium
– Kellogg-Briand Pact
• 65 nations pledged to “renounce [war] as an instrument of
national policy” (no consequences planned)
The Treaty of Versailles
Instability After WWI
Chapter 15, Lesson 1
• Great Depression
– depression – a person of
low economic activity and
rising unemployment
– Causes of Depression:
FARMERS WENT INTO
DEBT, RISKY INVESTMENTS
FAILED, BANKS RAN OUT
OF MONEY
– banks = largely responsible
• Stock Market Crash: market
speculations with loaned
money
• international financial crisis
• loans became difficult to get
 major problem
Instability After World War I
Chapter 15, Lesson 1
• Responses to
the Depression
– 1932 – worst
year of
depression
• 25% of Britain
unemployed
• 30% of Germans
unemployed
– democracy
under attack
– women gained
the right to vote
in some places
Instability After
World War I
Chapter 15, Lesson 1
• Germany
– Weimar Republic
(unpopular)
– runaway inflation (1922-23)
• fixed income  lost
everything
– paved the way for fear and
the rise of extremist parties
• DISCUSSION: Why?
Instability After
World War I
Chapter 15, Lesson 1
• France
– difficulties after WWI
• MIGINOT LINE HURT ECONOMY,
• FARMLAND WAS IN RUINS,
• YOUNG MEN LOST LIVES HURTING
POPULATION
– 1932-33 – 19 month
period with 6 different
cabinets (political chaos)
– Popular Front Government
• 1936 – coalition of leftist parties
– communists, socialists and radicals
• French New Deal
– collective bargaining
– minimum wage
– 40-hour work week
Instability After World War I
Chapter 15, Lesson 1
• Great Britain
– 1925-1929 – limited prosperity
– Labour Party
• failed to solve economic problems
– Conservatives
• pulled out of worst of depression
• balance budgets
• protective tariffs
• John Maynard Keynes
– unemployment came from a decline in
demand, not from overproduction
– increase demand by creating jobs
– deficit spending – when a government
pays out more money than it takes in
through taxation and other revenues,
thus going into debt
Instability After World War I
Chapter 15, Lesson 1
• The United States
– Industrial production fell 50% (1929-1933)
– 1932 – FDR won presidential election (crushed
it!)
– New Deal
• Works Progress Administration (WPA), 1935
– employed 3 million
– built bridges, roads, post
offices and air ports
• Welfare
• Social Security Act, 1935
– old age pensions
– unemployment insurance
– unemployment still grew
• WWII and weapons industries
 fixed unemployment
• WWII ended Great Depression
Instability After World War I
Chapter 15, Lesson 1
• Arts
– fascination with absurd and
unconscious
• “The world does not make sense,
so why should art?”
– Dadaism – artists obsessed with
the idea that life has no purpose
– surrealism – an artistic
movement that seeks to depict the world of the unconscious
• Salvador Dali – The Persistence of Memory
• Sciences
– 1920s-30s – “heroic age of physics”
• Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle – (1927) – the idea that the
behavior of subatomic particles is uncertain, suggesting that all of the
physical laws governing the universe are based in uncertainty
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
Chapter 15, Lesson 2
• The Rise of Dictators
– 1939 – only France and GB remain democracies
– totalitarian state – a government that aims to
control the political, economic, social, intellectual,
and cultural lives of its citizens
• minds and hearts
– PROPAGANDA and mass
communication
• single leader, single party
• individual will subjective to
collective will, as
determined by the leader
• masses  actively involved
in achieving state goals
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
Chapter 15, Lesson 2
• Fascism in Italy
– Benito Mussolini, Il Duce
• Fascio di Combattimento (League of Combat)
• fascism – a political philosophy that glorifies the state
above the individual by emphasizing the need for a
strong central government led by a dictatorial rule
– nationalistic appeals
• Fascists used a private army called the BLACK Shirts.
– middle class – fear of communism, socialism, disorder
– police – unrestricted authority to arrest and jail anyone for either
political or nonpolitical crimes
• secret police (OVRA) – watched indiv. political activities
– control over media (newspapers, radio and film)
• “Mussolini is always right.”
• 2/3 in fascist youth groups  fit, disciplined and war-loving
– traditional social values  family = pillar of state
– Catholicism survived (Vatican City, national religion, support fascists)
– Rome-Berlin Axis: Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
Chapter 15, Lesson 2
• From Russia to the USSR
– Lenin
• war communism
• command economy - GOVERNMENT
MAKES ALL ECONOMIC DECISIONS
• 1920-22 drought – 5 million starved
• 1913-1921 – 80% decrease in
industrial production
• “Down with Lenin and horse flesh.
Bring back the Czar and pork.”
– Leon Trotsky
– Lenin’s New Economic Policy
(NEP)
• small-level capitalism
• heavy industry, banking, mines =
government controlled
• saved Soviet Union from complete
economic disaster
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
Chapter 15, Lesson 2
• From Russia to the USSR (cont.)
– The Soviet Union
• 1922 – Lenin and Communists  Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
• production at 75% of prewar levels
• 1924 – Lenin dies  power struggle
– 7 member
Politburo –
the Communist Party’s main policy-making body
– Leon Trotsky – expand industrialization (at expense of peasants) and expand
communist abroad
– opposition: socialism, continue NEP
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
Chapter 15, Lesson 2
• From Russia to the USSR (cont.)
– Joseph Stalin and His Five-Year Plans
– intense personal rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky
 Stalin wins
• 1927 – Trotsky flees to Mexico, 1940 assassinated
– 1928 – ended NEP, launch First Five-Year Plan
• economic goal: agricultural  industrial
• production of military and capital goods – goods devoted
to the production of other goods such as heavy machines
– 4x heavy machinery production; 2x oil production
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
Chapter 15, Lesson 2
• From Russia to the USSR (cont.)
– Costs of Stalin’s Programs
•
•
•
•
real wages decline by 43% (1928-1940)
housing investments declined
terrible living conditions for workers
collectivization – a system in which
private farms are eliminated and
peasants work land owned by the
government (private farms eliminated)
– resistance: hoarding crops and killing livestock
– led to widespread famine (1932-33, 10 million died)
• forced labor camps in Siberia
• Great Purge – 8 million arrested and sent to labor camps
– Executions - ELIMINATE DISLOYAL PARTY MEMBERS
• parent = small collective – teach hard work, duty, discipline
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
Chapter 15, Lesson 2
• Authoritarian States in the West
–
–
–
–
–
–
Eastern Europe
not totalitarian
used police powers
preserve existing social order
historically: rural, agrarian, no democratic tradition,
Czechoslovakia – maintained democracy
• large middle class
• liberal tradition
• strong industrial base
The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes
Chapter 15, Lesson 2
• Authoritarian States in the
West
– Spain
• General Francisco Franco,
revolted 1936
• Spanish Civil War
– Hitler and Mussolini aided
Franco – arms, money, soldiers
– 1939-1975 – dictatorship
established by Franco
» favored traditional groups
» did not control all aspects
of peoples’ lives
» harsh – special police
forces, exiles,
imprisonment
Hitler and Nazi Germany
Chapter 15, Lesson 3
• Hitler and Nazism
– Nazi (National Socialist
German Workers’ Party, NSDAP)
• 2 years – 55,000 members
• 15,000 in party militia
(SA/Storm Troops/Brownshirts)
– Beer Hall Putsch (1932)
• Hitler  sentenced to prison  wrote Mein Kampf
– German nationalism, strong anti-Semitism, anticommunism
LINKD by a Social Darwinism theory of struggle
– Lebenstraum “living space” through expansion
Hitler and Nazi Germany
Chapter 15, Lesson 3
• Hitler and Nazism
– Rise of Nazism
• Nazis  obtain power legally
• 3 years  800,000 member, largest rep. in
Reichstag
• terrible conditions helped Nazi rise to power
• appealed to nationalism and militarism
– The Nazis Take Control
• 1933 – Pres. Hindenberg allowed Hitler became Chancellor and to
create a new government
– Enabling Act (1933) – 2/3 vote gave Hitler the ability to ignore the
constitution for 4 years (essentially voted-in dictatorship)
• removed all Jews from government
• built concentration camps – a camp where prisoners, or members
of minority groups are confined, typically under harsh conditions
• banned all other political parties
• 1934 – Hindenberg dies  presidency abolished  Hitler is the
Fuhrer!
Hitler and Nazi Germany
Chapter 15, Lesson 3
• The Nazi State, 1933-1939
– Aryan – a term used to identify people speaking
Indo-European languages; Nazis misused the
term, treating it as a racial designation and
identifying the Aryans with the ancient Greeks and
Romans and twentieth-century Germans and
Scandinavians
– mass demonstrations and spectacles
• Nuremberg party rallies every September
Nuremberg
Party Rallies
Hitler and Nazi Germany
Chapter 15, Lesson 3
• The Nazi State, 1933-1939
– The State and Terror
• schutzstaffeln “Guard Squadrons” (SS)
– Heinrich Himmler – control of secret police and regular police
– terror: instruments of repression and murder  secret police,
criminal police, concentration camps… execution squads and
death camps
– ideology: further the “Aryan master race”
– Economics
• public works and grants  put people back to work
• rearmament  largely fixed unemployment
The SS
• schutzstaffeln
“Guard
Squadrons”
Hitler and Nazi Germany
Chapter 15, Lesson 3
• The Nazi State, 19331939
– Women and Nazism
• bearers of Aryan children
(honor)
• encouraged to leave
“difficult” or “serious”
professions
• encouraged to pursue
social work and nursing
Hitler and Nazi
Germany
Chapter 15, Lesson 3
• The Nazi State, 1933-1939
– Anti-Semitic Policies
• Nuremburg Laws, 1935
– Jew = anyone with one Jewish
grandparent
– stripped Jews of citizenship
– banned marriage between Jews and German citizens
– later  forced to wear Stars of David
• Kristallnacht – “night of shattered glass”
– synagogues and Jewish-owned business destroyed
– 30,000 Jewish males arrested  sent to concentration camps
– Jews  barred from public transportation, public buildings (includes
schools and hospitals)
Kristallnacht
Hitler and Nazi Germany
Chapter 15, Lesson 3
• The Nazi State, 1933-1939
– Culture and Leisure
• Joseph Goebbels, German
propaganda minister
– Kraft durch Freude “Strength through Joy”
– radio, movies, concerts, operas, films, guided tours, sporting
events
• Marconi’s invention of radios
– encouraged (inexpensive, buy on payment plan)
• movies (40% of adults  seeing 1 movie per week)
– feature films and documentaries supporting Nazi message
• 1936 Berlin Olympics
Dictator Breakdown:
Fascists vs. Communists
Fascist Dictators:
Benito Mussolini
Francisco Franco
Hitler
Communist Dictators:
Lenin
Stalin