Part I. The Rise of Totalitarianism

• 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.

•
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

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THE GROWTH OF HEAVY INDUSTRY IN THE USSR
INDUSTRY UNIT 1932 1938
Coal
Oil millions of tons millions of tons
64 132
22 32
Pig Iron
Steel
Automobiles millions of tons millions of tons thousands
6
6
14
18
23 211
Tractors thousand 50
Machinery billions of rubles
Chemicals billions of rubles
18
2 6
176
33

But at what cost? Totalitarian Methods…
• Starvation in the Ukraine
• Elimination of wealthy farmers
• Gulags
• Purges
• Propaganda and
Censorship

• 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
Mussolini’s Secret Police

• Mussolini Promised to Protect Italy from
Communism (which at the time was attractive to many poor or radical Western
Europeans)
• Why did Communism provoke such fear in the ruling classes?
– Think of the stories filtering out of Russia at this time
– Ukraine Starvation, forced collectivization

1c) Germany –
German Anger…

The Weimar Republic in Germany was Weak
• Black mark as gov’t that signed the Treaty of Versailles
• Started its life with crushing reparation debts
• Had no significant military, which allowed small extremist groups to play a role in German politics

Occupation of the Ruhr Valley
(1923-1924)
I just can’t pay…

The German Mark

The German Mark

Results: Occupation of the Ruhr
Valley (1923-1924)
• Hyperinflation
• International sympathy for Germany
• May have convinced the French that military options against Germany were of little value…

• Dawes Plan…U.S. loans to Germany to get them back on their feet…
• Why was the Dawes Plan Ridiculous?
• Dawes Plan did quiet German Radicalism for a while

The Great Depression, However,
Smashed Apart the German Recovery
(and made the Western Democracies
Less Likely to support military action)

• A worldwide phenomenon
• Destroys brief Dawes
Plan stability

Hitler
• Radicalism Surged in Germany During the Ruhr Valley Invasion
• Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch
• Trial Makes Him a Household Name
– Slap on the wrist
• Mein Kampf

Hitler Promises to Solve Germany’s Problems
• Put Germans to Work!
• Fight Communism!
• Perhaps most importantly: Regain German
Honor by Renouncing Treaty of Versailles!

Hitler’s Methods-
True to His Idol Mussolini
• Propaganda
– Use of mass technology
• Radio and even television
– ‘Contact’ Sci-Fi story
• Secret Police
– Gestapo
• Violence
– Assassination of rivals and even powerful (and thus rival) supporters
• Charisma 

• Hitler had cleverly affected a more moderate platform after his prison stint
• After his election, he quickly Cemented His Hold On
Power
– Oath of Loyalty to the Military
– Reichstag Fire
• Eliminates All Parties Except the Nazis
– Rejects Treaty of Versailles
• Begins to remilitarize
– Nuremburg Laws
– Women’s role
• Baby machine’s. Why?

Germany was not invaded fully invaded at the end of WWI…
• … stab in the back theory
• scapegoats

1d) Japan’s Turn Away From the West
• 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

• America’s
Reaction
– Isolationism

• 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

• The British Reaction- appeasement- will start off our next unit and lead to the war itself