HI 112 Raffael Scheck Colby College

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HI 112Raffael ScheckColby College

• A Survey of Modern Europe
• 6

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Europe Between the Wars
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The Paris Peace Conferences

• Comparison 1815 to 1919
• Goals of the victors
• Democracy
• National self-determination
• Security for France (cordon sanitaire)
• Weakening Germany (Treaty of Versailles, 1919)
• League of Nations as a peaceful mediating
  institution

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Why did the Peace Order Not Work?

• Germany unreconciled
• Nationality problems in Eastern Central Europe
• Withdrawal of U.S.
• Unsettled situation in the Soviet Union

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Germany and the Treaty of Versailles
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Phases of the Postwar Period
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Revolutions and Unrest Hungary under Béla Kun
(1918-19)
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A Personal Connection for Reconciliation Briand
and Stresemann
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Treaty of Locarno, 1925
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Great Depression and Mass Unemployment, 1929-33
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The Rise of Totalitarianism
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What is Totalitarianism?

• Party - strong influence on state
• State - reaches into every area of life
• Army - high prestige
• Ideology - shapes state and society
• Propaganda - used unscrupulously
• Police Repression - largely outside of the law
• Leadership Cult - adulation of charismatic leader
  through state-controlled media
• Internal and external target groups of aggression

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Fascisms Three Sources (according to Scheck)

• Crisis of Christian and humanitarian values and
  of liberal-democratic states based on these
  values
• Deep-seated fear of communism and socialism
• World War I experience brutalization of
  politics veneration of military order stress on
  struggle extreme nationalism

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Italian Fascism

• Mussolini
• Fascist Party, black shirt paramilitary
  organization
• March on Rome, October 1922
• Gradual consolidation of power by 1926
• Corporatism
• Lateran Accord, 1929

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The Triumph of Hitler and National Socialism

• Anti-Semitic rabble-rousing, 1919-1923
• Beer Hall Putsch 1923
• Organizing a mass party, 1925-28
• Sudden mass success because of the Great
  Depression, 1930-33

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The Rise of the KPD and NSDAP(in percent of the
electorate)
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Stalinism

• Massive industrialization at gigantic human cost
  (five-year plans), 1929-1941
• Extremely repressive police state
• The Great Purges, 1935-39
• The Gulag
• Foreign policy out of isolation into an alliance
  first with the West (1935) and then Nazi Germany
  (1939)

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The Road to World War II
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Hitlers Successes

• Makes Germany strong and respected again
• Rearms Germany
• Wins an alliance with Italy (1936)
• Revises the Versailles peace order by annexing
  Austria and the Sudetenland
• He achieves all of this WITHOUT war

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Mussolinis Foreign Policy

• Initially opposition to Nazi designs on Austria
  (1934) and efforts to contain Nazi Germany
  (Stresa Front, 1935)
• Attack on Abyssinia (1935-36)
• Alliance with Germany (1936) and Japan (1939)
• Involvement in Spanish Civil War (1936-39)

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German Foreign Policy 1933-38 Main Events
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What Made Hitlers Foreign Policy Successes
Possible?

• General misunderstanding of Hitlers ultimate
  aims (Lebensraum, racial policy)
• Doubts about Versailles
• Disillusionment with postwar order
• No more war sentiment
• Global diversions for Britain (Japan, Italy, U.S.
  competition)

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Concentration Camp Flossenbürg
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Axis Berlin-Rome
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Italian Atrocities in Ethiopia
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Spanish Civil War
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Anschluß
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Maginot Line
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Munich Conference
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Unemployment in Germany 1932-39
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German Military Spending 1932-39
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World War II
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Cause

• Hitler wants war
• Obsession with his own mortality
• Exploitation of temporary advantage in terms of
  rearmament

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The Outbreak

• Hitler-Stalin Pact (August 1939) dooms Poland and
  misleads Hitler to believe that France and
  Britain will not go to war
• France and Britain do declare war but do not
  attack (Phony War)
• Soviet Union takes its share of Poland

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The Defeat of the Allies in the West, 1940

• Reasons German tactics and slowness of
  Franco-British response
• Consequence Germany in control of most of
  Continental Europe and able to attack the Soviet
  Union

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Britain Stays in the War

• Decision to keep fighting
• Inconclusive air battle over Britain, 1940-41

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The Attack on the Soviet Union

• Hitlers priority
• War of annihilation
• Tied to the Holocaust
• Too risky gamble

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The Long Road to Axis Defeat

• Soviet resilience
• U.S. entry into the war after Pearl Harbor
• Axis defeats in Russia, North Africa, the
  Atlantic
• D-Day and final defeat of Germany

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Consequences

• Europe looses its predominant position
• Utter destruction in many areas
• 50-65 million killed
• Soviet Union dominates Eastern Europe

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The Holocaust
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Ideological Background and Context

• The Nazi vision of races
• Racial hygiene

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Stages of Radicalization

• Segregation (1933-38)
• Nürnberg laws 1935
• Expulsion (1938-41)
• Crystal Night 1938
• Madagascar Plan 1940-41
• Mass murder (1941-45)
• Ghettos, gas vans, mass executions, death camps,
  death marches

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I Segregation
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The Nürnberg Laws, 1935
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Jews Unwanted
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II Expulsion
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Crystal Night, Nov. 1938
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III Mass Murder
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The Wannsee Conference, 1942
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Euthanasia
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Ghettoization of Jews in Poland
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The Ramp at Auschwitz (1942-45)
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Open Discussion

• Who was responsible?
• How many people knew?