The Futile Search for a New Stability:

1
Chapter 26

• The Futile Search for a New Stability
• Europe Between the Wars,
• 1919 - 1939

2
Timeline
3
An Uncertain Peace The Search for Security

• Weaknesses of the League of Nations
• The French Policy of Coercion (1919 1924)
• Desire for strict enforcement the Treaty of
  Versailles
• Allied Reparations Commission, April 1921 33
  billion
• Paid in annual installments of billion gold marks
• Germany unable to pay in 1922
• French occupation of the Ruhr Valley
• German mark fall to 4.2 trillion to 1, end of
  November 1923
• The Hopeful Years (1924 1929)
• Dawes Plan, 1924
• Treaty of Locarno, 1925
• Coexistence with Soviet Union

4
The Little Entente
5
The Great Depression

• Problems in domestic economies
• International financial crisis
• Crash of the American stock market, October 1929
• Affects European markets
• Unemployment
• Social Repercussions
• Powerlessness of Governments

6
The Democratic States

• Great Britain
• Labour Party failed to solve problems
• Coalition claimed credit for prosperity
• John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
• Keynes says the government should create jobs
• France
• Was the strongest power in Europe
• Could not solved financial problems
• Popular Front
• The United States
• Herbert Hoover, (1929-1933)
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, (1933-1945)
• New Deal
• Public works projects
• World War II ends the depression

7
European States and the World Colonial Empires

• Rising tide of unrest in Asia and Africa
• The Middle East
• Division of Ottoman Empire
• Turkey
• Colonel Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk)
• India
• Mohandas Gandhi (1869 1948) and Civil
  Disobedience
• Africa
• Britain and France awarded German colonies
• Protest movements

8
Retreat from Democracy The Authoritarian and
Totalitarian States

• Totalitarianism
• By 1939 only France and Great Britain are
  democracies
• The modern totalitarian state
• Active commitment of citizens
• Mass propaganda techniques
• High speed communication
• Led by single leader and single party

9
Fascist Italy

• Impact of World War I
• Italians angry over failure to receive territory
  after World War I
• Birth of Fascism
• Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)
• Fascio di Combattimento (League of Combat), 1919
• Growth of the socialist
• Squadristi, armed Fascists
• Fascist movement gains support from
  industrialists
• March on Rome, 1922
• Mussolini appointed prime minister, October 29,
  1922

10
Mussolini and the Italian Fascist State

• Fascist Government
• All parties outlawed, 1926 Fascist dictatorship
  established
• Mussolinis view of a Fascist state
• Young Fascists
• Family is the pillar of the state
• Never achieves the degree of totalitarianism like
  Germany or Soviet Union
• Lateran Accords, February 1929

11
Hitler and Nazi Germany

• Weimar Germany
• No leaders
• Paul von Hindenberg elected president, 1925
• Great Depression
• The Emergence of Adolf Hitler
• Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
• Vienna
• Lanz von Liebenfels
• Munich
• The Rise of the Nazis
• German Workers Party
• National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP),
  1921
• Sturmabteilung (SA), Storm Troops

12
Hitler and Nazi Germany (cont)

• The Nazi Seizure of Power
• Munich Beer Hall Putsch, November 1923
• Hitler imprisoned
• Mein Kampf, (My Struggle)
• Lebensraum (living space)
• Reorganization of the party
• New strategies
• Nazi party largest in the Reichstag after 1932
  election
• Support from right-wing elites
• Becomes chancellor, January 30, 1933
• Reichstag fire, February 27, 1933
• Successes in 1933 election
• Enabling Act, March 23, 1933
• Gleichschaltung, coordination of all institutions
  under Nazi control
• President Paul von Hindenburg dies, August 2, 1934

13
The Nazi State (1933-1939)

• Parliamentary republic dismantled
• Mass demonstrations and spectacles to create
  collective fellowship
• Constant rivalry gives Hitler power
• Economics and the drop in unemployment
• Heinrich Himmler and the SS
• Churches, schools, and universities brought under
  Nazi control
• Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) and Bund deutscher
  Mädel (League of German Maidens)
• Influence of Nazi ideas on working women
• Aryan Racial State
• Nuremberg laws, September 1935
• Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938
• Restrictions on Jews

14
The Soviet Union

• New Economic Policy
• Modified capitalism
• Union of Socialist Republics established, 1922
• Revived economy
• Lenin suffers strokes, (1922-1924)
• Division
• Leon Trotsky
• Joseph Stalin
• General Party Secretary

15
The Stalinist Era, (1929-1939)

• First Five Year Plan, 1928
• Emphasis on industry
• Real wages declined
• Use of propaganda
• Rapid collectivization of agriculture
• Famine of 1932-1933 10 million peasants died
• Political Control
• Stalins dictatorship established, 1929
• Political purge, 1936-1938 8 million arrested

16
Authoritarianism in Eastern Europe

• Conservative Authoritarian Governments
• Eastern Europe
• Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia
  adopted parliamentary systems
• Romania and Bulgaria gained new parliamentary
  constitutions
• Greece became a republic
• Hungary parliamentary in form controlled by
  landed aristocrats
• Problems
• Little or no tradition of liberalism and
  parliamentary form
• Rural and agrarian society
• Ethnic conflicts

17
Dictatorship in the Iberian Peninsula

• General Miguel Primo de Rivera and the End of
  Parliamentary Government (1923)
• The Spanish Civil War
• The Popular Front
• General Francisco Franco (1892 1975)
• Foreign intervention
• Franco emerges victorious (March 28, 1939)
• The Franco Regime
• Traditional, conservative, dictatorship
• Portugal
• Antonio Salazar (1889 1970)

18
Expansion of Mass Culture and Mass Leisure

• The Roaring Twenties
• Berlin, the entertainment center of Europe
• Josephine Baker (1906-1975)
• Jazz Age

19
Radio and Movies Mass forms of Communication
Entertainment

• Radio
• Nellie Melba, June 16, 1920
• BBC, 1926
• Movies
• Quo Vadis Birth of a Nation
• Stars became subjects of adoration
• Marlene Dietrich
• Used for political purposes
• Nazis encourage cheap radios
• Triumph of the Will, 1934

20
Mass Leisure

• Sports
• Tourism
• Organized Mass Leisure in Italy and Germany
• Dopolavoro in Italy
• Kraft durch Freude in Germany

21
Cultural Intellectual Trends in the Interwar
Years

• Prewar avant-garde culture becomes acceptable
• Political, economic, and social insecurities
• Radical changes in womens styles
• Theodor van de Velde
• Ideal Marriage Its Physiology and Technique
• Nightmares and New Visions Art and Music
• Abstract painting fascination with the absurd
• Dadaism
• Tristan Tzara (1896-1945)
• Surrealism
• Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
• Functionalism in Modern Architecture
• Bauhaus School in Germany

22
Cultural Intellectual Trends (cont)

• A Popular Audience
• Kurt Weill, The Threepenny Opera
• Art in Totalitarian Regimes
• Art in service of the state
• A New Style in Music
• Arnold Schönberg (1874 1951)

23
Literature Physics Between the Wars

• The Search for the Unconscious
• James Joyce (1882-1941), Ulysses
• Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)
• Impact of Freud
• Carl Jung (1856-1961)
• The Heroic Age of Physics
• Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), atom could be
  split
• Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), uncertainty
  principle

24
Discussion Questions

• How would you define fascism? How was fascism
  different from traditional authoritarianism?
• What were the strengths and weaknesses of Weimar
  democracy?
• Compare and contrast Stalins Soviet Union and
  Hitlers Germany. What did the two states have in
  common?
• What anxieties were reflected in the cultural and
  intellectual trends of the interwar period?

25
Web Links

• Italian Life under Fascism
• The History Place The Rise of Adolf Hitler
• Life in the USSR under Stalin
• Joseph Stalin Biographical Chronicle
• The World of Kurt Weill
• bauhaus-archiv Museum of Design