Download World War II

WORLD WAR II
The Rise of Dictators Threaten World Peace
Treaty of Versailles and Reparations
• At Versailles in 1919, the “big
Four” had demanded that
Germany accept total blame
for the war, pay $33 billion in
reparations, and restrict
rearmament.
• Germany had been stripped
of its overseas colonies
• These demands created a
period of hyper inflation in the
German economy
• By 1923, an inflating
economy made a five million
German mark worth less than
a penny
Treaty of Versailles and Reparations
• Germans resented this and when
economic conditions worsened during
the great depression Hitler and his Nazi
party gained strength.
• The treaty had not made the world “safe
for democracy”
• Democratic governments set up after
World War I began to collapse
• Without a democratic tradition people
turned to authoritarian leaders to solve
economic and social problems.
DICTATORS THREATEN WORLD PEACE
Totalitarian governments
were created in which a
single party of leader controls
the economic, social and
cultural lives of its people.
DICTATORS THREATEN WORLD PEACE
In country after country, dictators seized power and threw out
elected leaders.
Adolf Hitler
• At the end of WWI he was a
jobless soldier
• In 1919 he joined a struggling
group known as the National
Socialist German Workers’
Party, or the Nazi Party
• Because of his charisma and
powerful speaking he
became the leader (Der
Fuhrer) of the Nazi Party
• Promised to bring Germany
out of the Depression
Adolf Hitler
• His book, Mein Kampf, outlined his
basic beliefs and plans to bring
Germany out of the Depression
• Nazism was a brand of fascism
that was based on extreme
nationalism
• The book outline three tenants of
his beliefs:
• He wanted to unite all German
speaking people into one German
Empire.
• He wanted to enforce racial
“purification”; Germans, especially
blue-eyed, blond haired “Aryans”
formed a master race that was
destined to rule the world; “Inferior”
races such as Jews, Slavs and nonwhites were deemed fit enough to
serve Aryans
• He wanted national expansion;
believed that Germany must have
more living space, or lebenstraum.
Adolf Hitler
• By 1932, the Nazis had
become the strongest political
party in Germany
• In January 1933, Hitler was
appointed chancellor (prime
minister)
• Once in power he dismantled
Germany’s democratic
Weimar Republic
• In its place he established the
Third Reich, or Third German
Empire (a Thousand year
Reich according to Hitler)
Joseph Stalin
• In Russia, hopes of a
•
•
•
•
democracy gave way to civil
war, which resulted in a
communist state
In 1924, Joseph Stalin
succeeded V. I. Lenin as leader
of the Soviet Union
His focus was creating a model
communist state
He made both agricultural ad
industrial growth the prime
economic goals of the Soviet
Union
Abolished all privately owned
farms and replaced them with
collectives-large governmentowned farms, each worked by
100s of families
Joseph Stalin
• In 1928 he outlined the first of
•
•
•
•
several “five year plans” to direct
the industrialization of the Soviet
Union
By 1937, the Soviet Union was
the second largest industrialized
power, surpassed in overall
production by only the U.S.
The cost of the transformation
enormous; historians estimate
that Stalin was responsible for the
deaths of 8-13 million people who
were either overworked or
“purged” because of their
disloyalty to Stalin
Millions more would die of
starvation
By 1939, the Soviet Union was a
totalitarian state
Benito Mussolini
• Established a totalitarian regime in
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Italy
Italians were alarmed by inflation,
unemployment and labor strikes
Mussolini played on these fears to
assume power
By 1921, Mussolini established the
Fascist Party; Fascism stressed
nationalism and placed the interests
of the state above the individual
In October of 1922 Mussolini
marched on Rome with thousands of
his followers, whose black uniforms
gave them the name of “Black Shirts”
The Italian king, seeing the amount of
support that Mussolini received,
appointed him head of the
government
Called himself Il Duce, or “the leader”
Extended Fascist control over all
Italian life
Timeline of Early Aggression
• 1931-Japanese militarists launched a surprise attack and
•
•
•
•
seized control of Chinese province of Manchuria; after
League of Nations protested, Japan simply quit the
League
1933-Hitler pulled Germany out of the League of Nations
1935-Hitler began military build up of Germany in violation
of the Treaty of Versailles
1936-Hitler sent German troops into the Rhineland, a
German region bordering France and Germany that had
been demilitarized
1936-Mussolini and Italy had seized Africa’s last
independent country-Ethiopia
The United States Responds Cautiously
• Many Americans
alarmed by international
conflicts of 1930s but
believed the U.S. should
not get involved
• Once again, Americans
began to support
isolationism to avoid
international
commitments that might
drag the nation into
another war.
The United States Responds Cautiously
• In early 1930s a flood of books
argued that the U.S. had been
dragged into WWI by greedy
bankers and arms dealers
• Congressional committee led
by North Dakota Senator
Gerald Nye held hearings on
these charges and
documented the large profits
that banks and manufacturers
made during the war;
Americans further determined
not to enter war
• Girl Scouts even changed
uniform color from khaki to
green to appear less militaristic
Isolationism
Isolationists also knew that attacks
on neutral American ships carrying
supplies to Europe had helped bring
the country onto World War I.
Neutrality Acts
• In an effort to keep
the U.S. out of war,
Congress beginning
in 1935 passed a
series of Neutrality
Acts
• The first two acts
outlawed arms sales
or loans to nations at
war
• The third act was
passed in response
to fighting in Spain;
this act extended the
ban on arms sales
and loans to nations
engaged in civil wars
Neutrality Acts
• Roosevelt found it impossible
to stay neutral and began
finding ways around the acts
• When Japan attacked China
again in 1937, FDR claimed
there was no need to enforce
the Neutrality Acts since
Japan had not formally
declared war against China;
So U.S. continued sending
arms and supplies to China
• A few months later, October
5, 1937 FDR issued the
“Quarantine Speech”
“Cash-and-Carry”
• September 1939 FDR
persuaded Congress to
pass a “cash-and-carry”
provision that allowed
warring nations to buy
U.S. arms as long as they
paid cash and
transported them on their
own ships
• Providing the arms, he
argued, would help
France and Britain defeat
Hitler and keep the U.S.
out of the war
• Neutrality Act of 1939 put
the policy into effect
despite protests by
Isolationist politicians