Download THE YEARS BETWEEN THE WARS 1918-1939

THE YEARS BETWEEN
THE WARS 1918-1939
Unemployed: George Grosz
Consequences of WWI
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Cost $200 billion
Only US and Japan were in better financial
shape in 1919
Decline of European dominance in world affairs
Rise of new democracies:
Hohenzollerns
 Hapsburgs
 Romanovs…all overthrown
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WEIMAR REPUBLIC
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Had serious weaknesses
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Few democratic traditions
Many political parties
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Bore the burden of defeat
 Enormous economic problems
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Germany had not increased taxes during the war
Simply printed paper money
Skyrocketing inflation
Most Germans blamed the Weimar government
for Germany’s problems
THE DAWES PLAN
• Enabled Germany to recover from
hyperinflation
• Provided a $200 million loan from
American banks to stablize the mark
• Set more realistic reparations payments
• Put into effect in 1924
THE RISE OF FASCISM
• A political movement that believed in an
extreme form of nationalism
• Denied individual rights
• Insisted on the supremacy of the state
• Advocated dictatorial one party rule
• Did not seek a classless society
Italy and Benito Mussolini
• In 1919, Italians felt betrayed
– 650,000 dead and 1 million wounded in vain
• Severe economic crisis
• Mussolini, a newspaper editor, promised to
rescue Italy
• Organized the Fascist party
• Used Blackshirts to terrorize Communists and
Socialists
• Won support of middle class, aristocrats and
industrialists
Il Duce
Italy under Mussolini
• October 1922: became prime minister
• Abolished democracy and outlawed all other political
parties
• Secret police
• Censorship
• Set up 22 corporations to run the economy
• “Mussolini is always right.”
The Rise of Nazi Germany
ADOLF HITLER
• A failure as an artist
• Soldier in WWI: awarded Iron Cross
• Believed that Germany had been
betrayed at Versailles
• 1920: joined the National Socialist
German Workers party in Munich
• German brand of fascism
• Private army of Brownshirts/the S.A.
Munich 1923
• Beer Hall Putsch…attempted coup failed
• Hitler sent to jail for 9 months
Mein Kampf
• Book written while Hitler was in prison
• Set forth his goals and ideas
– Germans were the master race: all others
should be destroyed, including Jews, Slavs,
and gypsies
– Treaty of Versailles was a outrage
– Germany needed lebensraum
Hitler became Chancellor
• 1929 depression ended German economic
recovery
• Germans listened to the Nazi message of
hate
• 1932: Nazi party was largest in Germany
• 1933: President von Hindenburg forced to
appoint Hitler chancellor
ABSOLUTE POWER
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Reichstag fire
Enabling Act: gave Hitler absolute power for 4
years
All political parties banned except the Nazis
Total control of economy, culture and religion
Secret police: Gestapo
SS: elite protection squad
Jugend: Hitler Youth
Der Fuhrer
JEWS WERE PERSECUTED
• Only 1% of Germany’s population was Jewish
• Included many distinguished scientists,
businessmen and academics
• Anti-Semitism began in earnest in 1933
– Laws forbade Jews from holding public office
• Nuremberg Laws
– 1935
– Deprived of German citizenship
– Required to wear yellow Star of David
KRISTALLNACHT
• November 9-10, 1938
• “night of broken glass”
• Destroyed 7500 Jewish shops and
businesses
• Burned 275 synogogues
• Thousands were rounded up and sent to
concentration camps
• November 10, 1938
The World Drifted Towards War
• League of Nations was weak
• Britain and France followed policy of
appeasement
• Japan invaded Manchuria in
1931…League did nothin
• 1937: War between China and Japan
• Mussolini attacked Ethiopia 1936
• Hitler scrapped the Versailles Treaty 1935
Expansion of Nazi Germany
ROME-BERLIN AXIS
Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
• Spain had been a monarchy until 1931,
when a democratic gov’t was established
• July 1936: Generalissimo Francisco
Franco led a revolt against the
government (the
Nationalists/Falange…fascists)
• Franco supported by Mussolini and Hitler
• Republicans (the gov’t.) supported by
Stalin
Guernica…April 1937
Pablo Picasso’s Guernica
ANSCHLUSS: MARCH 1938
ANNOUNCING THE ANNEXATION OF
AUSTRIA
APPEASEMENT: SEPTEMBER
1938
• The Sudetenland: home to 3 million
Germans within Czechoslovakia
• Hitler demanded the Sudentenland
• Czechs refused
• Called upon France for help
• Hitler called Neville Chamberlain, Britain’s
PM, to meet in Munich on September 29
“I believe it is peace for our time.”
• Neville Chamberlain September 1938