AUTHORITARIAN ALTERNATIVES

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CHAPTER 25

• AUTHORITARIAN ALTERNATIVES

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Democratic Ideal

• To justify participating in World War I, Woodrow
  Wilson and others invoked the ideal of making the
  world safe for democracy.

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Democratic Freedoms

• Most of those who embraced this rationale thought
  of democracy as being linked intrinsically to
• free elections
• liberal notions of individual liberties
• freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so
  on.

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Rise of Totalitarianism

• Ironically, the war fostered conditions that
  encouraged the rise of totalitarianism.
• The stresses and strains of fighting the war
  precipitated the Russian revolution of March 1917.

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Consequences of Russian Revolution

• Eventually gave the Bolsheviks their great
  opportunity to seize power eight months later.
• Subsequent events led to the dictatorship of
  Joseph Stalin.

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Fascism

• The war also opened opportunities for the
  fascists.
• Mussolini began his transformation from Socialist
  to Fascist while campaigning for Italian
  intervention in the conflict.

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Growth of Fascism

• Economic hardships stemmed in large part from the
  war and disappointment with the peace settlement
  of 1919.
• Set the stage for the growth of Mussolini's
  Fascist movement and his formation of a
  government in 1922.

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Rise of Nazism

• Hitler's Nazi party is, of course, the other
  major version of fascism that benefitted from
  factors closely related to World War I.
• It seems very unlikely that the Nazis could have
  gained power if the war had not occurred (or
  perhaps if the Germans had won).

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The Modern States Development

• The role of WWI is less obvious.
• Nations were faced with the exigencies of waging
  war.
• Governments accelerated the development of
  bureaucratic organizations and techniques for
  controlling and mobilizing their populations.

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Totalitarianism

• Rejecting ethical and constitutional limitations,
  the totalitarian regimes carried governmental
  oppression to terrible extremes.
• The full horror of totalitarianism was not
  generally perceived right away.

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Praise for Totalitarianism

• Those regimes attracted considerable praise from
  admirers in the Western democracies who were
  impressed by propaganda about efficiency and
  economic growth.

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Totalitarianism as a Model

• During the Great Depression, dynamic images of
  economic growth projected by the Soviet Union
  made it appear to be a viable model for many
  reformers who thought capitalism was failing.
• Such images have, of course, been generally
  discredited.

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Totalitarianism Dismissed

• Subsequent disclosures of Stalin's bloody tyranny
  permanently tarnished Soviet communism.
• The collapse of Communist regimes in the late
  1980s and the early 1990s made the earlier
  portrayal of Soviet communism as a viable model
  seem ironic if not ridiculous.

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Central Planning Inferior

• Heavy reliance on central planning could produce
  impressive growth at Russia's stage of
  development in the 1930s.
• In the long run it proved to be far inferior to
  reliance on markets to determine what is produced
  and at what prices.

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YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND

• How World War I contributed to the rise of
  totalitarianism.
• The revolutions of 1917 and the development of a
  Communist dictatorship in Russia.
• Changes in the Communist dictatorship wrought by
  Stalin.

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YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND

• How Mussolini's Fascists gained and used power in
  Italy.
• The difficulties of the Weimar Republic and the
  Nazi rise to power in Germany.
• Nazi ideology and policies.
• Similarities and differences between communists
  and fascists.