Rebecca Finkelman DBQ 13

Many key concepts have motivated authoritarian governments and rulers in the interwar years of 1919 to 1939. Hitler and Mussolini were promising stability and progress once they are put into power and Stalin wanted industrial modernization because he felt that Russia was behind the rest of the European countries. These are a few specific concepts that motivated them, however political power in their country, territorial expansion, and economic and social reasons are the major concepts that pushed them to what they did during the interwar years. The social aspect and life of the people played a significant role in motivating these rulers. In order to gain power, they felt they needed to eliminate major threats to them. Race was huge for Hitler. He discriminated the Jews greatly. According to document 8, he would observe the Jews by the way the walked and their gestures. He would also observe certain peoples racial features and their expressions. Hitlers ideal person consisted of blond hair and blue eyes and executing the rest was his motivation to gain more power. The Nazi propaganda illustrated in document 3 is trying to negatively portray the Jewish population. According to document 9, the fate of man is changing and unifying humanity is disappearing. This demonstrates that these authoritarian governments and rulers are not unifying their countries; they are strictly eliminating people due to their race, which is also diminishing the standards of living for many of these people resulting in economic problems for the European countries. The economic standpoint was a motivation for these rulers especially Stalin. He felt that his country was not industrialized enough and was behind the rest of the European countries. According to document 5, Stalin believes that Russia is 50 or 100 years behind the rest of the countries and that if they dont make a big step forward toward industrialization that the rest of the countries would crush Russia. This would be in fact true because the rest of the countries would have better machinery for battle and advanced technology that Russia would not be able to keep up with. Stalin knew that Russia would lose all its territory and power. This motivation for modern industrialization resulted in millions of people dead, similar to Hitler. Also, stated in document 10, these interwar years was the beginning of the decline of Europe. The inflation of the 1920s diminished the middle class. The Great Depression affected a majority of Europe, according to the map in document 7. The unemployment rates soared, reaching up to 32% in some countries. These authoritarian governments and rulers were also motivated by the decline of the economy because they needed a good economy to participate in the war. Many of these rulers adopted new forms of government to help them reach their ultimate goal of being in power. Mussolini went by fascism, which is an authoritarian or nationalistic right-wing system of government. Referring to document 4 and 6, fascism is a new kind of thing. Mussolini believed that this would be a century of Fascism not Socialism, Liberalism or Democracy. Hitler also adopted Nazism in which the party that supported him was the Nazis. The Nazis blamed their fate on the treaty of Versailles, but mostly the Jews. These different political systems helped motivate these rulers to gain political power. However, these political systems resulted in the mass murder of

millions of people throughout Europe by Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini all for one ultimate goal of power of everyone. According to document 1, the mass murder that these men caused resulted in a world war. It states, that they will not be able to control what they created. To conclude, the motives of many of these authoritarian governments and rulers were due to their extreme desire to have political power over everybody. Stalin was mostly motivated by the want of modern industrialization and both Hitler and Mussolini wanted stability and progress for their countries. However, their motivation all comes down too the social, economic and political aspects. These motives became so appealing because they portrayed them so everyone could see what they wanted to do through propaganda and many other forms of mass media. Also, everyone of the major rulers used mass murder to help obtain their goal.