Interwar Instability

1918 to 1939

The Coming of Wars End

Soviet Union withdraws from war: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

(March 1918)
Give up claims to Poland, the Baltic States, Ukraine
Had to consolidate power in Civil War

USA enters war (April 1917)

President Wilson offers ideological justifications for the
war with his 14 Points
Huge influx of manpower for Allies on western front

Second Battle of the Marne (Spring-early Summer 1918)

breaks German spirit, but Ludendorff wont declare
ceasefire
9 November Kaiser abdicates; 11 November Armistice is
declared

Paris Peace Conference (1919)

The Big Four
David Lloyd George
of Britain
Vittorio Orlando
of Italy
Georges Clemenseau
of France
Woodrow Wilson
of the United States

Public optimism based on Wilsons 14 Points, among them: selfdetermination of nationalities; open diplomacy; general disarmament;
and a League of Nations
Importance of The National Question & its complications
Specter of Communism: Soviet Union & Hungary (Bela Kun)

Interwar Instability
Outline
Paris Peace Conference
Realities of the Peace
Lingering Uncertainties
Weimar Germany & the Rise
of Nazism

Terms
Little Entente
Treaty of Rapallo
Weimar Republic
Hyperinflation
The Dawes Plan
Gustav Stresemann
The Locarno Pact
Kellogg-Briand Pact
Adolf Hitler
Emergency Decree
Enabling Act
Ernst Roehm
Sturmabteilung (SA)
Heinrich Himmler
Schtzstafel (SS)
Josef Goebbels

Realities of the Paris Peace Conference

Decisions usually made by Big Four & their experts

lead to resentment among the losers
Conflicting concerns of the victors
France need security, England needs reparations, USA needs
influence

Features of the Peace Treaties (June 1919)

Harsh treatment of Germany: demilitarized;
occupied; huge reparations; war guilt (Clause 231)
League of Nations set up (1920) with key states
missing & without sharp teeth
Map of Europe redrawn, creating new countries at
Austrias & Russias expense

Europe, post-1919

Realities of the Congress of Versailles

Features of the Peace Treaties (June 1919)
Map of Europe redrawn at Austrias & Russias expense
Harsh treatment of Germany: demilitarized; occupied;
huge reparations; war guilt (Clause 231)
League of Nations set up (1920) with key states missing
& without sharp teeth
Was this a peace without victors?
In its original sense, no.
Still, not even the victors found peace in the
settlement.

Civil War in the Soviet Union

White Russians &
western allies try to
stop Bolsheviks from
consolidating power.
Soviets try to extend
control by getting
regional allies
By 1921, Soviets
withstand threat
and begin
establishing their
state.

Unmet National Recognition: Ireland 1916-21

Easter Rising: Destruction in Dublin

Home Rule movement, 1870s-1914: hopes raised and dashed

The Irish Republican Brotherhood: underground alternative
1916 Easter Rising results in growing sympathy for republicans
Irish question ignored at Versailles
Guerrilla war, 1919-21, leads Lloyd Georges government to set up two
Home Rule governments

Lingering Discontents in Interwar Europe

Civil war in the Soviet Union

White Russians &
western allies try to stop
Bolsheviks from
consolidating power.
Communist government
uses Red Army (Trotsky) to
fight enemies.
By 1921, Soviets withstand
threat and begin
establishing their state. Use
of terror as an instrument
of political and social
control. Purges and camps.
Central economy
implemented: Five Year
Plans.

Demands for national recognition unmet

Colonial possessions: Middle East; Africa; South Asia
Ethnic demands within Europe
Economic uncertainties
Pre-war conditions changed
workers concerns up
Periods of severe downturns: 1919-20; 1926; 1929-34
Search for international stability
The Little Entente between Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia, & Romania (1920)
Franco-Polish alliance to contain Germany (1921)

The Little Entente

The Little Entente

France & new states seek

allies
Little Entente to keep an
eye on Hungary and
possibly Germany (1920)
France makes separate
alliance with Poland (1921)
Growing suspicion among
Germans and Soviets, who
make their own agreement
at Rapallo (1922)

Mussolini and the Blackshirts

Fascism
in Italy

Fasci di Combattimento or The Fascists (Bands of Combat)

Tended to be veterans who opposed Versailles settlement
Organized into armed bands; wore distinctive black shirts
Tended to be anti-union, violently breaking up meetings
Led by Benito Mussolini: opportunist, self-promoter, nationalist
Gained support as centrist parties unable to halt economic downturn: 1919-21

The March on Rome, October 1922

Mussolini & 50,000
supporters march on Rome:
King Victor Emmanuel III
didnt stop them & then
asks Mussolini to serve as
Prime Minister
Most thought hed fail
Nov. 1922: King grants
him dictatorial power for a
year
Fascists secure control
through intimidation, laws,
propaganda, military
efforts, economic
corporatism & emphasis
on dynamism.

Factors for Mussolinis Rise to Power

Feelings of betrayal after the 1919 peace settlement.

Italians felt they had been deprived of territory they
had been promised to them by the other Allies.

Italian government experiencing parliamentary chaos

and had no clear political program.

Fascism seemed to promise a way out of these

economic and political troubles Italy was facing in the
post-World War I era.

Played on middle and upper classes' fears about

inflation and concerns about their property rights.

Components of Fascism

The State is paramount

Fascism is for liberty the liberty of the State and
of the individual within the State.
The keystone of Fascist doctrine is the conception
of the State, or its essence, of its tasks, of its ends.
For Fascism the State is an absolute before which
individuals and groups are relative.
The Fascist State has a consciousness of its own, a
will of its own, on this account is called and ethical
state.
Corporatism
Nationalism
War as the natural state of society
Promotes foreign expansion: Ethiopia, Albania

Fascist Control Secured Through 5 Efforts

The Lateran Accord, 1929:

Indemnity to Pope;
recognized authority of pope
in Rome; recognized
Catholicism as state religion
War as natural condition:
colonial campaigns in Lybiya
and Ethiopia
Organized Economy to
achieve self-sufficiency and
to promote the state:
Corporatism vertical
orientation with state,
owners & workers together
Propaganda of DYNAMISM

Pius XI with Mussolini, 1932

Mussolini a Symbol of Italian Dynamism

Growing Relationship between Italy and Germany

Hitler in Rome, 8 May 1938

The Soviet Union: From Lenin to Stalin

Limits to control, even after Civil War

600,000 Bolsheviks out of 160 million population
Use of army & secret police (the Cheka, later NKVD,
much later KGB)
New Economic Policy (1921)
Allowed for some private ownership in small shops
Kulaks: peasants farming for profit
Results: more stable food supply & industrial capacity
back to pre-war level by 1927
Lenin dies (1924), sets up leadership struggle
Trotsky vs. Stalin

Stalin vs. Trotsky

Trotsky: middle-class, favored

rapid industrialization &
internationalizing revolution
Stalin: peasant, national
revolution, continue NEP
Stalin used position as General
Secretary to get support
1927: Trotsky removed from
offices & exiled
1929: Trotsky kicked out of
USSR; killed in 1940

Stalins Regime: Totalitarian Communism

Economic Shift: from NEP to rapid industrialization

Gosplan and 5-year plans
Huge Growth: 400% (1928-1940)
Conditions horrible
Kulaks Eliminated in favor of Collective Farms
400,000 families removed
Collectives = 1,000 acres; equipment from state; controlled food
supply; poor living conditions
Results:
Ownership shift to State: 2% (1928) to 90% (1938)
Production up 40%, but food shortages remained
Purges: control through terror, kangaroo courts
Millions exiled, executed
New men attached to Stalin come to power

Interwar Instabilities (cont.)

Outline
IV. Weimar Germany &
the Rise of Nazism
V. The Nazi Vision
VI. The Final Solution
VII. Fascism in Italy

Terms
Mein Kampf
Lebensraum
Nuremberg Laws
Kristallnacht
Einsatzgruppen
Wannsee Conference
The Fascists
Mussolini
March on Rome
The Lateran Accord
Corporatism

Seeking Stability in Weimar Germany

Weimars built-in instability

Constitution: President and
Reichstag with Proportional
Representation & Article 48
Attempted revolutions from Left
and Right
Anger at Versailles Treaty Clauses:
reparations bill and guilt
French under Poincare invade the
Ruhr Valley, 1923-25
Germans hold general strike
Hyperinflation
Stability comes via the Dawes Plan,
Gustav Stresemann, the Locarno Pact
(1925), & Kellogg-Briand Pact (1929)
The Mask Falls

The Demise of Weimar

Cabaret to Beauty by Otto Dix (1922)

Berlin a culturally decadent,

vibrant, lonely city
American money and culture
flowing in until 1929
Impact of Great Depression
Party coalitions unable to deal
with crisis
Unemployment grows from
2.25m (1930) to 6m (1932)
President, Field Marshall Paul
von Hindenburg started to rule
by decree and to rely on a small
circle of advisors
In early 1933, Hindenburg calls
on Adolf Hitler to become new
Chancellor

The Nazis & Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

National Socialist German Workers Party (f. 1919): sought repudiation of

Versailles; unification of Austria and Germany; exclusion of Jews from
German citizenship; land reforms and encouragement of small businesses
Party had paramilitary component: the S.A. under Ernst Roehm
Beerhall Putsch (1923)
Hitler had joined in 1920 & rose to leadership

What was the Nazi Vision?

Restructure Europe to benefit the racial hierarchy

Mein Kampf places Aryans at top: He furnishes the
gigantic building-stones and also the plans for all
human progress.
Unite ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsch) in a Greater
Germany
Lebensraum or Living Space: Must move eastward
and push out those already living there.

What was the Nazi Vision?

Restructure Europe to benefit the RACIAL HIERARCHY

Mein Kampf places Aryans at top: He furnishes the gigantic buildingstones and also the plans for all human progress.
Unite ethnic Germans in a Greater Germany
Lebensraum or Living Space

Jewish Girl Photographed at the Institute

for Racial Research (1936)

Nazi Identification Table:

German Race Heads

What Was the Nazi Vision?

Youth culture & fitness programs central

Motherhood had special emphasis. Mein Kampf:
Marriage also cannot be an end in itself, but has to serve
the one greater aim, the propagation and preservation of
the species and the race.

What was the Nazi Vision?

Restructure Europe to benefit the racially superior
peoples
Mein Kampf places Aryans at top.
bermenschen. Mixed races (like the USA)
incapable of world leadership.
Unite ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsch) in a
Greater Germany
Lebensraum or Living Space
Central theme of racial hierarchy & exclusivity in Mein
Kampf (1925) & Goebbelss propaganda: My neighbor
is one who is tied to me by his blood. If I love him,
then I must hate his enemies. He who thinks German
must despise the Jews.

What was the Nazi Vision?

Nazi Racial Ideas
Aryans/Germans
Semi-Aryans (Scandinavians)
Himmler spoke of
the war in the east
as a war of
extermination.

Anglo-Saxons & other Europeans

Untermenschen

Vermin: Jews, Gypsies, Gays

Nazi Seizure of Power (1933)

Nazis play off difficulties of other parties with their own

certainties: racism, expansionism, & anti-bolshevism
Party grows with young, lower-middle-classes & small
farmers: 37.3% (1932)
Hindenburgs invitation touches off quick series of events
Emergency Decree (Feb. 1933): suspend civil liberties;
round up communists
March Election & the Enabling Act: Rule by Decree
July 14, 1933: Nazi Party declared only legal party in the
state
June 30-July 2, Night of the Long Knives:
SA out & SS gains power

Five Phases of Anti-Jewish Action

Definition: 1933-35

Expropriation: 1935-38

Concentration: 1933-42

Uncoordinated killing: 1939-42

Annihilation: 1942-45

About 600,000 Jews in Germany

Nuremberg Laws (1935), which
defined who was and wasnt Jewish
Limited contacts between
Germans & Jews
5 October 1938 All Jewish
passports must be stamped with
the letter J.
November 1939 Jews in Poland
had to wear a white badge with a
Star of David on their right arm.
1 September 1941 Jews in
Germany & occupied Poland were
ordered to wear the Yellow Star
Know the True Enemy! Whenever You See
This SymbolJew

Ober Ramstadt Fire

Expropriation

Sites of Major Kristallnacht Incidents

Excluded from professions &

govt jobs
Set higher tax rates for Jews
Aryanized Jewish businesses &
property: Sept. 1937
Emigration: @300,000 leave
Culmination: Kristallnacht,
9-10 Nov. 1938
267 Synagogues burned
7,500 Stores & offices
destroyed
91 Dead
30,000 arrested and
deported to concentration
camps
All Jewish businesses closed

Interwar Instabilities (cont.)

Outline
IV. Weimar Germany &
the Rise of Nazism
V. The Nazi Vision
VI. The Final Solution
VII. Fascism in Italy
VIII. Communism in the
USSR

Terms
Einsatzgruppen
Wannsee Conference
The Fascists
Mussolini
March on Rome
The Lateran Accord
Corporatism
Cheka
New Economic Policy
Kulaks
Josef Stalin

Concentration

The Warsaw Ghetto

Discomfort in smaller towns

Moved to cities voluntarily: by 1939,
2/3 of German Jews lived in ten
cities
April 1939, German Jews forced to
relocate into ghettoes away from
general population
Sept. 1939, Polish Jews forced into
ghettoes
Sept. 1941 German Jews begin
relocating eastward
Ghetto conditions intentionally
horrid
Local councils & police
Limited & uncertain food supply
Hard labor & physical abuse

A Dutch Family Gets Deported

Uncoordinated Killing
Executions and
mass grave in
Germanoccupied Soviet
Union

Einsatzgruppen are mobile killing squads of the SS, which move

eastward alongside of advancing troops

Rounded up political opponents and then Jews and then took them
out to secluded sites for mass killings

1.5 m killed

Annihilation

Wannsee Conference, 20 January 1942

Final Solution built off existing ideas
Dozens of camps, including 20 large ones & 6
specially designed for mass extermination

Chelmno
Belzec
Sorbibor
Treblinka
Lublin
Auschwitz-Birkenau

Use of Zyklon B (hydrogen cyoniade), could

kill up to 2,000 per day
About 6 million Jews and others killed

Mass Killings: Wannsee Conference (20

January 1942) & The Final Solution

Work Makes You Free

Arrival & Selection

Faces from Auschwitz-Birkenau

The Impact of the Final Solution on the Jews of Europe

Ger/Aus
Poland
Baltics
Ukraine
Romania
Slovakia
Hungary

1939
240
3,300
253
1,500
600
90
630

1945
30
300
25
600
300
15
180

Number of Jews (in 1000s)

Living in Select Countries

Keys to Nazi Control

The Autobahn, 1937

Rally at Nuremberg, 1934

Police & SS Presence

Heinrich Himmler
Economic Recovery through
state-sponsored projects &
military spending
Public Relations chief
Josef Goebbels
Censorship, rallies, & radios