The Rise of the Mass Dictators (1919 - 1936)

I.

Russia's Backward Society and its Discontents; The Bolshevik Revolution

A.

Incitement to Revolution
1.
Preexisting sources of resentment against the Romanovs
a. The near revolution of 1905
i. Czar Nicholas II had ascended to the throne in 1894; he was not an imaginative or
insightful thinker, and was determined to suppress challenges to the monarchy so
he continued to repression that had been commonplace since Alexander IIs 1881
assassination
ii. Movements for national liberation and political liberalization grew, in spite of the
efforts of the czars secret police to root out and eliminate them; the most radical
of these continued to plan to overthrow the czar
iii. The shocking defeat of the Russian fleets and the food shortages brought on by the
Russo-Japanese War heightened tensions in Russia; a general strike broke out in
St. Petersburg
iv. Father Gregory Gapon (Russian Orthodox Church) led a peaceful protest at the
Winter Palace, but the Imperial Guard fired on the crowd, killing/injuring around
1,000; this incident, called Bloody Sunday, fired further resentment against the
czar
v. As conditions worsened, Nicholas II announced he would give Russia a constitution
guaranteeing expanded civil liberties, and a State Duma elected by a broad
franchise (thus fulfilling Alexander IIs last idea)
vi. However, the czar and his ministers were not accountable to the Duma and the czar
could dissolve it at will (as he did in 1906 after two months and 1907 after four)
and later Dumas were elected by an increasingly narrow and conservative franchise
so that by World War One less than 1/5 of seats were held by representatives of
Russias common people
b. Czarina Alexandra and Rasputin
i. Alexandra was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain, but was of
German birth, a foreigner; her only son, Czarevich Alexei, suffered from
hemophilia and was thus endangered by every bruise or scrape
ii. Beginning in 1905, Alexandra and Nicholas came to rely on the services of a
former monk, Gregory Rasputin, who it seemed could heal Alexei stop his
bleeding (some have claimed through hypnosis, relaxation techniques, etc.)
iii. Rasputin had become part of the official court, but his closeness to the Czarina
was resented; rumors flew of his drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, mysticism,
and even consort with the devil
2.
How these were amplified by the Russians' experience in the Great War
a. Russias failures
i. Russia remained a profoundly backward country in terms of its economy; still in
many ways a feudal society with little manufacturing
ii. Despite 85% of Russian manufacturing being converted to wartime production, only
1 in 4 soldiers had a working rifle and the average soldier carried nine rounds of
ammunition
iii. Disasters beginning with Tannenburg led Nicholas II to take personal command of
his armies, but his presence did not change the fortunes of the Russian army
b. Response of the public
i. Alexandra remained in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) to address the ongoing problems of
food shortages, inflation, and military failure; she did poorly, for she was as

unimaginative, uninsightful, shortsighted and stubborn as Nicholas

ii. As conditions worsened, the German Alexandra became subject of conspiracy
theories, and the presence of Rasputin added to peoples willingness to believe such
theories; Rasputin was murdered in 1916 by Russian court nobles
iii. By 1917, 8 million Russian soldiers had been killed, injured, or captured; hundreds
of thousands more had simply deserted
iv. Winter of 1916-1917 was unusually harsh, contributing to further food shortages
B.

The Feburary/March Revolution

1.
The revolution itself
a. Petrograd riots
i. As harsh winter weather gave way to an early spring, women and factory workers of
Petrograd filled the streets to protest the war, which they regarded as the primary
source of their suffering
ii. Local authorities demanded that the protests come to an end, and the Imperial Guard
once again fired into a crowd of demonstrators, killing dozens and inciting further
outbreaks of violence
iii. The government called in 160,000 Russian troops to quell the rioting, but these
troops instead joined the protests and formed a peoples militia, sealing the
monarchys fate
b. Abdication and formation of new government
i. Nicholas II, under advice from his court, abdicated the throne on March 15, 1917
ii. The Duma intended to take on the role of governing; many of its remaining leaders
envisioned a parliamentary democracy based on liberal ideology which pleased
the other Allies because it meant they would all be fighting for democracy
iii. However, in the meantime, soldiers and workers had been electing their own
representative assemblies, called soviets (councils of workers and soldiers
deputies); each unit of the army elected a deputy, each factory a deputy (or for
large factories, one deputy per 1000 workers)
iv. There were soviets across Russia, but the most influential was the Petrograd Soviet,
which claimed to speak for all the others; they demanded to be included as part of
the new government
v. In the new Provisional Government, power was thus shared by the Duma (who
embraced constitutionalism and liberalism) and the Petrograd Soviet (moderate
socialists, mostly)
2.
Acts of the Provisional Government
a. Reorganization of the government
i. The leader of the Provisional Government was Alexander Kerensky, a socialist
elected to the soviet who also had been elected to the Duma
ii. The Provisional Government announced that elections based on universal male
suffrage would be held to elect a Constituent Assembly by the end of the year;
this would replace the Provisional Government and establish Russias democracy
b. The war
i. The Provisional Government, however, announced its intention to continue Russias
war effort; Kerensky took the title War Minister and then Prime Minister
ii. This was very damaging, since most Russians blamed the war for their misery; it
opened the door for radical socialists such as the Bolsheviks

C.

The October/November Revolution

1.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks
a. The Bolsheviks

2.

i. Radical socialists intended a workers revolution; called themselves Bolsheviks

which means big party or majority party because they believed that they
represented the interests of the majority; they split from Russias Social Democrats
and established a centrally-controlled, highly disciplined, revolutionary
organization
ii. They called the moderate socialists and other supporters of the Provisional
Government Mensheviks, meaning small party or minority party because
they claimed that the Provisional Government represented the interests of the
bourgeoisie
iii. Bolsheviks had not had much success instigating an uprising in Petrograd, but had
been working hard to fill outlying soviets with their supporters
b. V. I. Lenin
i. Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in 1870 into a wealthy family, but his brother was a
radical executed in 1887 during the repression following Alexander IIs
assassination (he had attempted to kill Czar Alexander III); Lenin became a radical
himself, dedicated to overthrow of czarist regime
ii. He adopted Marxist ideology and helped found the Bolsheviks; he hoped to incite a
Marxist-style working class revolution in what was a primarily rural, agrarian (85%)
society this was therefore a departure from Marxs theory
iii. Also, whereas Marx announced that the working class revolution was an historical
inevitability, Lenin intended to accelerate history
iv. Exiled from Russia in 1900, he was in and out of Russia (mostly out) for the next
17 years; was living in Austria-Hungary when the Great War broke out, and moved
to Switzerland
v. He argued that the war was of the type of crisis that was inherent to capitalism;
competition among the bourgeoisie for resources had finally led them into war,
hurling the working class into a maelstrom of killing that could, if channeled
properly, be converted into a class war
vi. Because of Russias backwardness, he believed defeat could be the catalyst for the
revolution; he agreed to be transported by the Germans into Russia, and arrived at
Finland Station in Petrograd in April 1917
Coup and Soviet government
a. The setup
i. Lenin and fellow revolutionary Leon Trotsky prepared a revolution; discovered by
the Provisional Government, they were forced to flee to Finland in July
ii. As the renewed war effort faltered and the Provisional Government became
increasingly unpopular, they returned preaching the defeat of Russia (revolutionary
defeatism) and promising Peace, land and bread
iii. They called for a Congress of Soviets to challenge the authority of the Petrograd
Soviet (this congress was elected by pro-Bolshevik soviets from the outlying
provinces)
iv. Bolsheviks flooded into Petrograd; most of the military and naval units were
sympathetic
b. The coup
i. On the night of October 25, Bolshevik forces surrounded all of the government
buildings, including the Winter Palace, the Provisional Governments headquarters;
the palace was lightly defended by 300-500 troops
ii. 5,000 Bolshevik troops surrounded the palace, and the guns of the battleship Aurora
and the Peter and Paul fortress were trained on its faade; when the Provisional
Government failed to surrender, both began a bombardment and Bolshevik troops
entered the palace and seized most of the ministers (Kerensky fled, eventually

3.

becoming a professor at Stanford)

iii. Lenin issued a statement: Citizens of Russia: The Provisional Government has
been deposed. Government authority has passed into the hands of the Petrograd
Soviet. . . . The task for which the people have been struggling is assured the
immediate offer of . . . peace, the abolition of the landed property of the landlords,
worker control over production, and the establishment of a Soviet government.
Long live the Revolution of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants!
iv. The new government thus adopted the hammer, sickle, and star to represent the
groups in whose name the revolution was conducted
v. Martial law was thus declared in Petrograd as the Bolsheviks consolidated power
c. Lenins decrees rhetoric and reality
i. Decree of Peace: a cease-fire that led eventually to the signing of the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk; allowed Lenin to focus instead on rooting out the Bolsheviks
enemies and rivals
ii. Decree on Land: abolished private property and allowed peasants to seize the land;
they would later be stripped of any claim in favor of state ownership of the land
iii. Decree on Government: created the Council of Peoples Commissars (chaired by
Lenin himself and composed of loyal Bolsheviks) and pronounced that its membership would be subject to approval by future Constituent Assembly elections for
which would go ahead as promised by the Provisional Government; but when
elections returned only 25% for Bolsheviks, the Assembly was shut down
d. Dictatorship
i. Thus, power was to be held by Lenin and the Commissars, not by the grass-roots
soviets in whose name they claimed to rule; this was not a revolution from the
bottom up, despite Bolshevik rhetoric, but a power-grab by a group of radical
Elites
ii. Lenin declared the need for dictatorship: authority untrammeled by any laws,
absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatsoever, and based directly on force
The Red Terror and the Russian Civil War
a. Consolidating power
i. After disbanding the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks went about eliminating
all opposition political parties and banning all but the Bolshevik-sponsored news
papers
ii. The Cheka (stood for Extraordinary Commission for Combatting CounterRevolution and Sabotage) was formed to wage Red Terror against class
enemies not determined by their anti-government activities, but simply by
their social class
iii. When counter-revolutionary actions began to emerge, Lenin decreed that the czar
and his family, under house arrest in Ekaterinburg, must be executed, as reported
by the executioner Yurovsky:
I said to Nicholas approximately this: His royal and close relatives inside the country
and abroad were trying to save him, but the Soviet of Workers' Deputies resolved to
shoot them. He asked What? and turned toward Alexei. At that moment I shot him
and killed him outright. He did not get time to face us to get an answer. At that
moment disorganized, not orderly firing began. The room was small, but everybody
could come in and carry out the shooting according to the set order. But many shot
through the doorway. Bullets began to ricochet because the wall was brick. Moreover,
the firing intensified when the victims shouts arose. I managed to stop the firing but
with great difficulty. . . . When the firing stopped, it turned out that the daughters . . .
and Alexei too, were alive. I think they had fallen from fear or maybe intentionally,

and so they were alive. Then we proceeded to finish the shooting. . . . Alexei remained
sitting petrified. I killed him. They shot the daughters but did not kill them. Then
Yermakov resorted to a bayonet, but that did not work either. Finally they killed them
by shooting them in the head.
iv. Nobles were rounded up and hanged or shot, and wives were sometimes forced to
submit to sexual assaults with the false promise of sparing their husbands; clergy
were rounded up as well many crucified so that by the end of 1918, 20,000 are
thought to have been executed
v. The Red Terror also saw the opening of concentration camps called gulags in the
most remote areas of Russia (usually Siberia); these were hard-labor camps, run by
the Cheka, where class enemies were worked to death and sometimes massacred
vi. Lenin then used the idea that counter-revolutionaries were afoot, trying to
overthrow the new government to decree that a state of civil war existed
vii. This justified a program he called War Communism, in which the state seized
control of all factories and farms, stripping peasants of previous land claims those
who resisted were executed or sent to the gulags (as many as 70,000 at any one
time)
viii. In this way, Bolshevik Russia became the first totalitarian state of the era, with
both economic and personal decisions ruled by the government
b. The Civil War
i. Lenin was not simply making up a Civil War myth however; forces representing
the impulse to restore the monarchy were closing in on the Bolsheviks
ii. Three separate White armies advanced on the Bolshevik heartland, centered on
Petrograd and Moscow; but their aims were not in concert with each other some
Intended to restore the Provisional Government and other the monarchy and their
forces were geographically separate from each other, so it was hard to coordinate
strategy
iii. In the meantime, various nations which had declared their independence following
the Paris Peace Conference began to field armies; most prominent among these
were the Poles, who also marched on Soviet Russia from the west
iv. Leon Trotsky commanded the Bolshevik Red Army from an armored train,
shuttling from one front to another; the Red Army was ideologically as well as
geographically united (thus able to take advantage of interior lines of
communication) and Trotsky imposed severe discipline
v. Thus, in the winter of 1919-1920, the tide of the war turned so that by 1921 the
forces of the Whites had been defeated
vi. The Red Army then turned its attention to the new republics; Bolshevik parties had
been established in all of them through the efforts of Joseph Stalin, and those which
could not be taken from within would be conquered and reintegrated into a Soviet
Russian empire
vii. Poland waged war on Soviet Russia, but the Red Army crushed the Poles in
Ukraine and drove to the Vistula River before finally falling at the Battle of
Warsaw, known to Poles as the Miracle of the Vistula that assured Polish
independence
viii. By 1921, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, however, were
absorbed into the Soviet empire; in 1923 their Bolshevik-dominated assemblies
voted to unite with Soviet Russia to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
ix. In the midst of it all, forces of the western Allies and Japan had occupied various
Russian ports in an effort to secure supplies they had shipped to the Provisional
Government against being appropriated by the Bolsheviks; all were withdrawn by

1920, but the specter of foreign intervention was a Bolshevik theme

x. It is estimated that 7-10 million died during the Russian Civil War, 4-5 times as
many as had been killed by the Central Powers from 1914-1917
c. Exporting revolution
i. In 1919, Lenin and Trotsky had formed the Communist International in Moscow;
Lenin proclaimed that the goal was to export the revolution worldwide
ii. It founded and supported communist parties across Europe, but most of these failed
iii. The Red Armys campaign in Poland was primarily meant to lend support across a
Red Bridge to German communists, but their defeat and robust suppression by
the ultra-patriotic Freikorps prevented success in Germany, but the communist
movement survived
iv. In the Baltic states and Finland, local forces also routed the Bolsheviks; in Hungary
the government suppressed the emerging communist party with intense terror
v. In Western Europe, communist parties became active players in domestic politics,
especially as the postwar depression settled in; in both Germany and Italy, these
became rallying points for fascists
II.

Lenin and Stalin

A.

Lenins Soviet Union

1.
War Communism
a. The theory
i. Instituted as a radical imposition of a command economy during the Civil War, War
Communism sought to place all factories and farms under the control of the state
(ironically inspired by Lenins perception that Hindenburg and Ludendorffs
wartime dictatorship War Socialism had worked wonders for Germany)
ii. Trotsky: There is no other way of attaining socialism except through the command
allocation of the entire labor force by the economic center, the allocation of that force
in accord with the needs of a nationwide economic plan.
b. Implementation
i. A state bureaucracy was instituted to manage the economy, with the Red Army and
Cheka sent forth to enforce its decrees; skilled workers, for example, were
drafted into military service and those who resisted were treated as deserters
ii. Peasants were commanded to surrender to the state all agricultural products beyond
those needed to feed their families to be redistributed to the urban populations;
those who resisted were executed or enslaved as kulaks even if they were small
farmers
iii. Prices were dictated by the government, but to fund its bureaucratic explosion, the
government generated huge amounts of unbacked currency which was then let
loose into the system; a huge black market emerged, despite the Chekas threats
iv. The redistributive system was thoroughly dysfunctional, leading many urban
workers to flee to the countryside (in some cities, up to 50% of the population) to
become peasants and grow their own food; these were rounded up by the Cheka
and put to work in forced labor camps
c. Failure
vii. In spite of all the Bolsheviks efforts to manage the economy, production
collapsed to half of what it had been in 1914; peasants simply stopped producing
surpluses
viii. By 1921, according to the Bolshevik governments own estimates, 30 million
Russians were in danger of starving to death; as many as 10 million ultimately did
2.
Transition to the N. E. P.

a. What it meant
i. In 1922, Lenin announced that War Communism had, from the beginning, meant
to be a temporary measure to ensure the survival of the state through the Civil War;
he used the wars end to justify its abandonment
ii. He announced the New Economic Policy, in which state controls would be relaxed
to allow individual initiative: small businesses were allowed to operate at private
profit, and farmers were allowed to sell their surpluses rather than turning them
over to the state
b. Results
i. Major industry remained under state control, but the reintroduction of small-scale
private incentives had positive effects: by 1928, agricultural production had been
restored to prewar levels
ii. Lenin did not live to see the results; he had defended his new policy against the
criticisms of Bolshevik purists, but suffered a series of strokes and died in 1924
B.

Stalins Soviet Union

1.
Rise to power and vision for the Soviet Union
a. Personal background and rise to power
i. Iosif Vissarionovich Dzugashvili was born in Georgia, and changed his name to
Stalin when he entered Bolshevik politics in the early 1900s must have a
Russian name to be taken seriously
ii. Repeatedly captured and jailed by the czar, he repeatedly escaped; so successful at
doing so that some came to suspect that he was really a czarist spy
iii. Was wartime editor of Pravda and Commissar for Nationalities during the early
1920s; he organized and supported the Bolshevik parties in the new republics that
eventually formed the Soviet Union
iv. When Lenin suffered his initial stroke, Stalin assumed to title of General Secretary
of the Party, which positioned him to appoint all officials in the government (since
all other parties had been abolished) the power of patronage proved decisive
v. Challenged by Trotsky, who referred to him as the Gravedigger of the Party of the
Revolution, Stalins support from within proved too powerful; upon Lenins death
a three-year power struggle saw Stalin assert his leadership and Trotsky fled
vi. As leader, he was known for paranoia: when he traveled, five identical trains
followed different routes, each with a body double to prevent assassination
vii. As a person, he was known for being cold and detached: he worked at night and
slept all day, failed to attend his first wifes funeral, drive his second wife to
suicide, kept his daughter Svetlana sequestered to attend him (ordered the arrest of
one boyfriend), and drove his second son Yakov to attempt suicide (Ha! You
missed!); seemed to be utterly non-responsive to human suffering
b. His vision for the Soviet Union
i. Socialism in One Country: he did not support Lenin and Trotskys goal of trying to
export the Bolshevik Revolution worldwide; Soviet Union not equipped to do so
ii. Foresaw, however, that a second world war was inevitable another great crisis of
capitalism; he intended to have the Soviet Union stand aside this time and let the
capitalist states destroy each other so the Soviets could inherit the world and the
worldwide revolution would be accomplished largely by default
iii. Only workable if Soviet Union was strong enough to deter an invasion during the
coming war: We are fifty to one hundred years behind the advanced countries.
We must make good this lag in ten years, or we shall be crushed.
iv. He planned a massive program of forced modernization, stepped in five-year
segments with associated benchmarks thus known as Five Year Plans; he

2.

expected industrial production to grow by 20% per year

v. Focus of rapid industrialization would be the basics: mining coal, producing steel,
generating electric power, fabricating heavy machinery (machine tools, tractors,
etc.) and, secretly, rearmament; consumer goods would take a back seat as Soviet
people would have to sacrifice standard of living
vi. Capital would come from one sector of Soviet economy that was thriving since
institution of the N. E. P. agriculture; inefficiencies would be reduced through
collectivization and provision of modern farm implements and Soviet Union
would become an exporter of agricultural products
Policies as leader
a. How it played out
i. 26 million small peasant farms were forcibly collectivized into 250,000 kolkhozy
state farms; all surplus production to be confiscated by the state for redistribution
to urban populations or for export
ii. Loss of incentive to produce led to collapse of agricultural production rather than
growth (dropped by 30% during first Five Year Plan), but Stalin insisted on
exporting the planned amounts to generate capital; 12-15 million died as a result
iii. Those who resisted (by burning crops or slaughtering livestock) were again accused
of being kulaks and executed or sent to the gulags for forced labor
iv. In the Ukraine, peasant resistance was tied to Ukrainian nationalism, and Stalin
ordered a forced famine there that killed 7 million more out of a population of 40
million
v. Similarly, in the state-controlled factories, quotas were set for production of goods,
but no incentive existed to exceed quotas or produce higher-quality products; initial
response was to offer medals (Order of the Red Banner of Labor) while later
programs of executions were carried out to instill fear
vi. In the end, after incurring massive human costs, the Five Year Plans succeeded:
in 1928, production was only 11% greater than before the war, but by 1933 it
was nearly 3x greater and by 1938 nearly 7x greater; the Soviet Union advanced
from 16th in the world in 1924 to 2nd in 1938, producing 18% of the worlds
manufactured goods (and matching Germanys estimated military capacity)
b. Human costs
i. Already mentioned were the 20 million victims of starvation arising from the failure
of collective farms and the Ukrainian resistance, plus executions of factory workers
(as many as one million)
ii. In a totalitarian state, the rights of the individual are subordinated to the welfare of
the state; in Stalins Soviet Union (as in many totalitarian states), the welfare of the
state became synonymous with the security of the supreme leader
iii. Stalin engendered a cult of personality, fusing himself to Lenin (including doctored
photographs to show the two of them in harmony) as Lenins best disciple; statesponsored art and literature was mobilized to cultivate praise for him:
O great Stalin, O leader of the peoples,
Thou who broughtest man to birth.
Thou who fructifies the earth,
Thou who restorest to centuries,
Thou who makest bloom the spring,
Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords...
Thou, splendour of my spring, O thou,
Sun reflected by millions of hearts.
iv. Those who opposed Stalin or who were thought to oppose Stalin became victims of
the system of terror which he inherited from Lenin, but which was expanded during

his reign; Cheka became the NKVD and the gulag system expanded to 2,000
facilities, so that at any one time an estimated 10% of the population was imprisoned
the system became Europes largest employer
v. Great Purge began in 1934, and lasted 5 years as Stalin sought to wipe out all of
the remaining Bolsheviks; in show trials they were accused of sabotage,
espionage, and other forms of treason
vi. Lesser figures were usually executed without trial, or rounded up and sent to gulags
to be worked to death in locations where freezing temperatures generally
guaranteed that one would not survive the first winter
vii. Vorkuta was most notorious and held up to 300,000 prisoners at any one time; it is
thought that 20 million died in the gulags during Stalins reign
viii. It is estimated that Stalins policies resulted in the deaths of 50 million people;
Stalin counted on the sheer volume to surpass peoples capacity to comprehend: A
single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

III.

Mussolini's Fascists

A.

Rise to power
1.
Rise to power and vision for Italy
a. Personal background
i. Born into poverty in 1883; his father, a blacksmith and socialist, named him for the
Mexican revolutionary Benito Juarez
ii. Served as editor of Avanti Italian socialist newspaper prewar, but broke from the
Socialists and urged Italy to join the war on the side of the Allies; he believed that
through war, Italy might become stronger
iii. Expelled from Italys Socialist Party, he was conscripted into the army and served
without distinction on the Austrian front, until wounds suffered from an accidental
explosion sent him home in 1917
iv. Like many Italians, outraged by the outcome of the war: 500,000 killed and lessthan-anticipated territorial gains (which most blamed on the western Allies and a
weak Italian government)
b. Founding of Fascism
i. Convinced that only trenchocracy rule by veterans of the war -- could restore
Italys virtue and reputation; formed Fasci di Combattimento (veterans union) in
Milan in 1919 with goal of taking over the government
ii. Fasces were a bundle of rods bound around the handle of an axe a symbol of
strength through unity that originated with the ancient Roman legions; Mussolini
called his supporters fascists and adopted the symbol
iii. Fasci were established all over Italy; from among them were established squadristi,
(combat squads) composed of black-shirted thugs many of whom had served as
Arditi (bold ones) stormtroopers during the war
iv. Squadristi patrolled the streets attacking communists, socialists, and unionists; a
popular action at a time when strikes brought Italian society to frustrating halts
c. Rise to power
i. In 1921 parliamentary elections, Fascist candidates won 36 seats out of 535
ii. In October 1922, communists threatened a general strike; Mussolini proclaimed to
Italians that this act marked the onset of an attempt by the communists to
overthrow the government
iii. Squadristi from across Italy were ordered to March on Rome to save Rome from
its enemies; 30,000 marched on Rome and Mussolini demanded that King Victor

Emmanuel III appoint him as Prime Minister

iv. The intimidated king did so, new elections were held in 1924, and the Fascists took
61% of the seats in parliament though the circumstances of the vote are suspect
v. In 1925, the Fascist parliament passed a law subordinating itself to him and making
his official title head of government, by he went by Il Duce The Leader
d. Vision for Italy
i. Wished to restore Italy to its place as the dominant power of the Mediterranean;
referred to it as Mare Nostra
ii. Believed this could only be accomplished through subordination of individual
rights and interests to the state
B.

Policies as leader
1.
Totalitarian dictatorship
a. Distinctions between communism, fascism, and totalitarianism
i. Communism = state asserts complete control over economic decisions
ii. Fascism = state asserts complete control over personal / private lives what one
thinks, reads, believes (through control of press, religion, education); Mussolini
intended to mobilize thought to unite the Italian public behind his program:
Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all
individuals or groups are relative
iii. Totalitarianism = state asserts complete control over both economic decisions and
personal / private lives
iv. In Lenin and Stalins Soviet Union, communism had evolved into totalitarianism
because the state found it had to control peoples personal / private lives in order
to force them to accept its complete control over economic decisions (the same
will happen in Maos China and Castros Cuba)
v. In Hitlers Germany and Mussolinis Italy, both will avow their opposition to
communism, but to prepare their states for conquest, both will increasingly place
economic decisions (though not ownership) in the hands of the state
b. The corporate state
i. Mussolini essentially banned unions allowing only one per industry and requiring it
to align itself with the party (strikes prohibited), but he promised proper pay and
working conditions in return for workers support of his policies
ii. He demanded fair pay and safe conditions from employers, but guaranteed large
profits for manufacturers; he intended to rearm Italy and promised rich contracts
to cooperative employers by plowing 30% of government expenditure into the
military
iii. In this way, he forged a partnership between the state, manufacturers, and labor
that he called the Corporate State
iv. Also engaged in programs of public works to help combat unemployment; most of
these were largely ineffective and overall economic growth remained sluggish
c. Control over the mind
i. In light of the failures of the corporate state and public works, Mussolini remained
popular by maintaining strict control over the shapers of public opinion
ii. Like Stalin, Mussolini constructed a cult of personality and a cult of the nation;
ultra-patriotism was a major element of fascism and a well-known fascist slogan
was: Credere, Obbedire, Combattere ("Believe, Obey, Fight")
iii. Opposition political parties were prohibited, newspaper editors were hand-selected
by Mussolini and the press censored, and education was mobilized to indoctrinate
students with fascist propaganda from elementary school onward
iv. Ongoing tense relationship with Catholic Church, but Pope Pius XI signed Lateran

2.

Treaty recognizing Mussolini as legitimate ruler of Italy and accepting sovereignty

over Vatican City
Foreign policy
a. Mare Nostro
i. Seized the Dodecanese Islands and Corfu; these moves threatened British dominance
of the Mediterranean and was forced to retreat from Corfu
ii. Tightened relations with Lybia and encouraged settlement by Italian colonists
iii. In 1939, will invade Albania and in five days of fighting, seize it for Italy
b. Invasion of Ethiopia
i. Sought to erase memory of Italys 1896 defeat by invading Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
ii. Invaded in 1935 with 1 million soldiers, tanks, aircraft; Ethiopians outnumbered
2-to-1 and outgunned as they employed 30 year-old equipment
iii. Emperor Haile Selassie appealed to League of Nations, which condemned the
invasion, especially Italys use of poison gas, but France and Britain were not
prepared to make war over Ethiopia
iv. Ethiopia was merged with Somalia to form Italian East Africa; Mussolini again
encouraged settlement in an effort to Italianize the colonies
c. Alliance with Hitlers Germany
i. Hitler admired Mussolini and patterned his own rise to power after the Fascists
ii. Mussolini had initially viewed Hitler as a rival, but both were marginalized by their
designs on building empire; this drew them inevitably together
iii. In 1939, Italy and Germany aligned; known as the Axis or in Italy the Pact of
Steel

III.

The World Economic Crisis and the Rise of Hitler's Nazis

A.

Economic roller-coaster
1.
Reparations and postwar Weimar hyperinflation
a. The Weimar Republic
i. Forged in the months following the end of The Great War, the Weimar government
featured a parliament called the Reichstag which appointed a chancellor, and a
separately-elected president to oversee foreign affairs (would also appoint a
chancellor if no majority could be achieved in Reichstag)
ii. From the beginning, saddled with unpopular Treaty of Versailles, which it was
forced to sign a fact that made its leaders unpopular with most Germans
iii. Confronted with massive reparations, plus expense of welfare programs needed to
care for millions of widows, orphans, and disabled veterans of the war
iv. Also struggled to maintain order in face of strong communist challenge (Spartakus)
and reactionary conservative response (Freikorps ultimately co-opted by
government to suppress Spartakus)
b. Reparations and hyperinflation
i. Initial plan had Germany paying $32 billion over 42 years; first payments to be made
in 1921, to allow Allied countries to repay loans owed to Americans
ii. Germany had little basis upon which to make payment: Alsace-Lorraine and the
colonies had been a major source of income, denied by the Treaty of Versailles,
and Danzig was a center of commerce that could be taxed, but was now part of
Poland
iii. French threatened to seize more German territory (the Ruhr Valley) as allowed for
by Treaty of Versailles if Germans failed, so Weimar government simply began
printing currency
iv. Without associated growth of production, the value of German currency began to

2.

3.

collapse: 60 Marks = 1 $US in Jan. 1921, 330 Marks = 1 $US by end of 1921,
8000 Marks = 1 $US by end of 1922
v. French and Belgians, outraged at being paid in devalued currency, seized the Ruhr
Valley; this meant that 50% of Germanys prewar iron ore and coal were in foreign
Hands
vi. German workers in the region went on strike and their incomes replaced by the
German government (which printed more currency to do this); France thus gained
nothing from this occupation, but did help incite hyperinflation
vii. Hyperinflation continued until end of year, when 1.26B Marks = 1 $US and rate of
inflation reached nearly 100% per hour
c. Impact on Germans and reaction
i. Hardest hit were those with a fixed income, living off government welfare payments
that could not keep pace; even workers struggled from paycheck to paycheck
ii. Marks were transported in wheelbarrows, people burned Marks instead of coal in
their furnaces
iii. Chaos and hatred of western powers incited ever more Germans to join radical
conservative, ultra-patriotic parties like the German Workers Party sounds
socialist, but did not embrace socialist ideas
iv. Adolf Hitler joined this party in 1919 and gradually through force of personality
took over the party, renaming it the National Socialist German Workers Party
again sounds socialist, but only seeks working class support, not socialist ideas
v. Like Mussolini, formed gang of thugs called Sturmabteilung (SA), stormtroops,
also known as brownshirts composed of former Freikorps and led by party cofounder Ernst Rohm
vi. Chancellor Gustav Streseman perceived deteriorating situation and sought to
renegotiate with western powers; Germans began to perceive an end to the crisis
vii. In Bavaria, Hitler and National Socialists attempted to recruit local military and
political leaders in effort to overthrow government; when rejected they tried to
seize Bavarias government -- and failed in 1923s Beer Hall Putsch in Munich,
which saw 16 killed by police
viii. Convicted of high treason, Hitler sentenced to five years in prison but released
after one year because of popularity with Bavarian people; prohibited from public
speaking for two years, but continued private meetings with party leaders now
convinced that only possible path to power was through legal, democratic means
Dawes Plan
a. Shocks of French occupation of Ruhr, hyperinflation, and Beer Hall Putsch accelerated
Stresemans efforts to renegotiate
b. Dawes Plan and the German recovery
i. For western Allies, demand for German reparations was tied to obligations to
American banks; U. S. thus agreed to finance payment of German reparations and
the western Allies accepted reduced reparations
ii. U. S. banks would lend to Weimar government, which would pay reparations to
western Allies, which would in turn pay back debts to American banks in a bizarre
cycle that promised American bankers a second round of interest and bought
Germany time to recover
iii. Germans revalued their currency through taxation and other means, Allied forces
withdrew from the Ruhr, and German economy began to recover, but was now
very much dependant on foreign investment to drive its economy
iv. In reality, the rebirth of German industry following the Great War was financed by
loans from the U. S. that exceeded the renegotiated reparations payments
Stock Market Crash and worldwide depression; impact in Germany

a. U. S. economy now tied to Europes economy in an unprecedented way; collapse of

NYSE and ensuing banking crisis drew Europe into the Great Depression
b. Impact in Germany
i. In 1931, in an effort to restore the European market for American manufactured
goods, the U. S. declared a moratorium on collecting loans from European
countries; did not stop the bleeding in Germany, which relied on American loans
ii. In 1929, 1.3 million Germans were unemployed (about 10%), but this skyrocketed
to over 6 million (about 45%) over the next four years
iii. The return of economic chaos to Germany gave Hitler and the National Socialists
(better known as the Nazis based on acronym) a second chance to gain power
B.

Hitler's appeal
1.
Rise to prominence
a. Personal background
i. Born in 1889 in Austria; his father was reputed to have been conceived by his grandmother while she was in the service of a Jewish banking family as a domestic
ii. Studied art in Vienna in 1907 but was dismissed (by his Jewish instructor) and
became a paper-hanger and postcard artist; descended into Viennese criminal
underworld and was exposed to anti-Slavic and anti-Semitic ideas
iii. Did not wish to serve in Austrian army so moved to Bavaria, volunteered for
service in the German army, and served almost the entirety of the war on the
Western Front
iv. As a dispatch courier, won the Iron Cross First Class (was recommended for it by
his Jewish commanding officer) and recalled his time in the army as the best time
of his life; wounded by mustard gas in October 1918 and spent months, partially
blind, recovering in a German hospital
v. Here he learned of Germanys defeat, suffered a sort of psychological breakdown,
and then recommitted himself: In vain all the sacrifices . . . the death of two
million . . . Hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for this deed . . . I
decided to go into politics.
vi. From thence to the German Workers Party, the Beer Hall Putsch, and prison, where
he composed Mein Kampf
b. Mein Kampf: Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice
i. Asserted a sort of racial hierarchy in which the Aryan race (northern Europeans)
existed at the top, and argued that the only thing holding back the Aryan race from
its position of mastery was the loss of pure blood through intermarriage:
Nature . . . puts living creatures on this globe and watches the free play of forces.
She then confers the masters right on her favorite child, the strongest in courage and
industry. . . . The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus
sacrificing his own greatness. . . . All the human culture, all the results of art, science
and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative
product of the Aryan. . . . It was he who laid the foundations and erected the walls of
every great structure in human culture. . . . The Aryan then gave up the purity of his
blood . . . became submerged in a racial mixture and gradually lost his cultural
creativeness. . . . Blood mixture and the resultant drop in the racial level is the sole
cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars,
but by the loss of that force of resistance which is continued only in pure blood. All
who are not of good race in this world are chaff.
ii. He asserted that at the bottom of the hierarchy of racial status were the
untermenschen (subhumans), including Africans, Slavs, and Jews, but among
these, he believed that the symbol of evil as well as racial inferiority was the Jew:

Wherever I went, I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they
became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity. . . . Was there any form of
filth or profligacy . . . without at least one Jew involved in it? If you cut even
cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like a maggot in a rotting body often
dazzled by the sudden light, a [Jew]. . . . Gradually, I began to hate them. . . . For me
this was the time of greatest spiritual upheaval I have ever had to go through. I had
ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and become an anti-Semite. . . . At the
beginning of the Great War, or even during the War, if twelve or fifteen thousand of
these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poison-gas . . .
then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain.
iii. He proclaimed the necessity of Germany conquering lands to the East on which to
settle and farm so that rapidly expanding German nation could continue to grow;
this was known as lebensraum (living space): Nature has not reserved this soil
[Europe] for the future possession of any nation or race; on the contrary, this soil
exists for the people which possesses the force to take it. . . . Only an adequate large
space on this earth assures a nation of freedom of existence. . . . [Germany] must find
the courage to gather our people and their strength to advance along the road that will
lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil. . . . We
must . . . secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled.
iv. He proclaimed France to be the inexorable mortal enemy of the German people
and demanded a final active reckoning with France.
v. He decried democracy and promoted dictatorship: There will be no majority
decisions, but only responsible persons. . . . Surely every man will have advisors by
his side, but the decision will be made by one man. . . . only he alone may possess the
authority and the right to command . . . -- absolute responsibility combined with
absolute authority.
vi. As for political strategy, he argued: (1) The art of leadership consists of
consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care
that nothing will split up this attention.; (2) in the primitive simplicity of their
minds [the masses] more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since
they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort
to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal
untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to
distort the truth so infamously.; (3) Terror will always succeed unless opposed
by equal terror.
c. Leadership of the Nazi Party
i. As Germany sank deeper into the Great Depression, communism again emerged as a
radical alternative to the unpopular government; Hitler and the Nazis positioned
themselves as nationalists against the class-warrior internationalist communists; as
with the Fascists in Italy, the SA battled the communists on the streets
ii. In 1928, the communists had taken 10.6% of the votes in the parliamentary election;
the Nazis had only 2.6% (Social Democrats remained strongest with 30%)
iii. Hitler, his right to speak publicly to groups restored, appealed to German
humiliation by calling the Germans a master race and arguing that Germany had not
really lost The Great War but had victory stolen from them through internal treachery
thus reviving the Stab in the Back myth; he blamed the Jews for economic
struggles
iv. By contrast, he promised a restoration of the Burgfrieden of the early war and
pledged to purge Germany of dissident elements in order to guarantee this return of
civil peace and a Volksgemeinschaft (peoples community)
v. By 1930, both the communists and Nazis had made gains, but the Nazis had

2.

3.

sprinted past the communists to 18.3% of the vote, while the communists held 13%
vi. Fearful of the growth of communism, Germanys industrialists threw their support
and funding behind Hitler and the Nazis; allowed the party to make broad appeal
across Germany
vii. In 1932, Hitler challenged president Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency and
lost 53-37%; SA had been so active (may have been 700,000 by now) that
Hindenburg was forced to invoke Weimar constitutional provision that allowed him
to ban paramilitary organizations and use armed force to restore order and safety
Rise to power
a. Nazis in the Reichstag
i. Despite Hitlers loss, Nazis increased their share of seats in the Reichstag to nearly
38%, making them the largest party
ii. Disrupted the parliamentary process; no legislation could be passed without their
votes, and no chancellor could be named without a coalition
iii. Franz von Papen, appointed by Hindenburg to try to form a coalition, proposed that
Nazis demand that Hitler be named chancellor be accepted; all hoped that the
Nazis would help suppress the communists (who also gained more votes in 1932)
iv. Hitler was appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933
b. Hitler as chancellor
i. Less than a month later, the Reichstag building burned to the ground; Hitler
immediately proclaimed the deed part of a communist plot to take over and
sought emergency powers from the Reichstag to deal with the crisis
ii. Enabling Act granted him dictatorial powers for four years by placing the power
to legislate in the hands of the chancellor, not the Reichstag; it was renewed in
1937, 1941, and 1944
iii. He had thus gained absolute power without ever violating Germanys constitution:
Hitlers democratic triumph exposed the true nature of democracy. Democracy
has few values of its own: it is as good, or as bad, as the principles of the people
who operate it. In the hands of liberal and tolerant people, it will produce a liberal
and tolerant government; in the hands of cannibals, a government of cannibals. In
1933-34, it produced a Nazi government because the prevailing culture of
Germanys voters did not prioritize the exclusion of gangsters. (Davies)
c. Consolidating power
i. Hitler knew that elements of the SA, which were locally-commanded and spread
across Germany, remained loyal to Rohm, not to him; also knew that some Nazis
were true socialists in whose mind a second revolution would follow Hitlers
ii. Pronounced the German army as the sole force of the German state (undermined the
value of the SA and gained the armys loyalty) and increasingly cultivated the
loyalty of Heinrich Himmlers SS Schutzstaffel (Protective Squadron)
iii. Night of the Long Knives was June 30, 1934; 5,000-7,000 SA and Nazi party
leaders were assassinated by the SS (including Rohm who was also discredited as a
homosexual)
iv. In August 1934, Paul von Hindenburg died; Hitler proposed to merge the offices
of president and chancellor into the position Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor; a
plebiscite returned an approval vote of 90%
v. He announced the establishment of the Third German Reich, the Thousand Year
Reich
vi. Having already outlawed the communist party, now outlawed all opposition parties
As fuhrer
a. Propaganda
i. Hitler had cultivated the gift of public speaking and so was in one sense the Nazi

partys most important propagandist; passionate and engaging, he presented

himself as the embodiment of the unknown German soldier of the Great War, a
model for unity: Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer Deutschland!
ii. Joseph Goebbels, however, was the partys appointed chief propagandist; he took
control of every form of art and media and forced it to be mobilized for the purpose
of promoting Nazi racial, national, and political ideology and cementing the image
in the minds of Germans of Hitler as the ideal (compared to Frederick the Great,
Otto von Bismarck, the Teutonic Knights, gods of Germanic lore)
iii. Mobilized children from age 10 onward to form Hitler-Jugend (Hitler Youth)
which provided Nazi indoctrination (Hitler as father figure) and physical /
outdoorsmanship for both boys and girls; 2.3 million involved by 1934
iv. Hitler Youth took part in massive collection and burning of anti-German and
Jewish books all across Germany; in Berlin 20,000
b. Economic reconstruction
i. In 1935 abrogated Treaty of Versailles, declared Germany would pay no further
reparations, and would rearm; Britain and France protested but took no action
(partially out of guilt, partially out of lack of will)
ii. As in Fascist Italy, labor unions were absorbed into a Nazi party organization and
striking was outlawed; manufacturers were coerced into proper pay and better
conditions by a promise of profits from rearmament
iii. Massive programs of public works were established, including the Autobahn and
facilities to host the 1936 Summer Olympic Games
iv. By 1936, nearly full employment had been achieved, though incomes had slipped
and Germany suffered from a growing debt due to deficit spending
v. Perception of recovery was a boon to Hitlers reputation; 1936 Olympics were a
showcase for the German recovery, and Hitler was named Times 1936 Man of the
Year
IV.

The Spanish Civil War

A.

Origins
1.
Spains Second Republic
a. Social divisions
i. Even more so than Russia, Spain remained a largely medieval society, with 1% of
the population in possession of half the land and a tiny manufacturing sector;
nobles dominated the armys officer corps and so army stood in way of reform
ii. Roman Catholic Church was a major landholder, socially conservative, and thus
opposed to any type of reform
iii. Peasants and small class of factory laborers in big cities were abysmally poor and
increasingly convinced that violence was the only means of reform; anarchist
movements emerged
b. The Republic
i. As the Great Depression hit Spain declining agricultural exports combined with a
bad harvest led to mounting political unrest; in this climate, King Alfonso XIII
abandoned his throne (though he did not officially abdicate until 1941)
ii. A Spanish Republic was established and a new constitution promised civil liberties
and representative government, but conservatives representing landowners and the
Church blocked further reforms
iii. In response, peasants began seizing land and burning churches, and in the cities
workers proclaimed general strikes
iv. In 1936 elections, a near-majority of seats in parliament were won by the Frente

2.

B.

Popular, which consisted of republicans, socialists, and communists

Reactions
a. Conservative responses
i. Falange Espanola was an anti-democratic party formed to promote a corporate state
not radically different from Mussolinis
ii. General Francisco Franco landed troops in the northwest and south of Spain, siding
with the Falange and proclaiming a crusade against Marxism, which he associated
with the Frente; proclaimed himself at head of nationalist forces
b. International responses
i. Franco may have been right; support from Stalin to Spains communists came in the
form of weapons and political advisors, and the communists used this support to
increasingly dominate the other elements of the Frente
ii. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy threw their weight behind Franco and the Falanges
paramilitary squads; Germanys Luftwaffe and Italian troops took part in the
ensuing civil war

The Spanish Civil War

1.
Conduct of the war
a. Taking sides
i. Wealthy landowners and Catholic hierarchy sided with Franco and the Falange;
peasants, workers, anti-clericals, and constitutionalists supported the government
ii. Not all Republicans, however, were prepared to fully back the government, as it
appeared to be increasingly controlled by the communists
iii. Catalans and Basques made a bid for independence
iv. International brigades of volunteers numbering as many as 50,000 and representing
France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania,
Greece, Britain, Canada, Mexico, the U. S. and even Germany and Italy arrived to
fight the fascists not always but usually in support of the communists
b. Combat
i. Battles were intense and localized, not characterized by broad strategy; massacres of
prisoners were common
ii. German planes bombed the town of Guernica in Basque country; 300 civilians were
killed and the city mostly wiped out in an early instance of mass civilian casualties
that attracted international outrage (and inspired a Picasso painting)
iii. In time, nationalists enveloped government forces from north and south, leading to
Francos victory in March 1939
2.
Results
a. Franco ruled Spain as a fascist dictator until 1975; neutral but supportive of Axis during
World War Two
b. Western nations aroused to danger of fascism; took place of fear of Soviet expansion
and helped awaken more determined effort to stop Axis expansion
c. Estimated 400,000 to one million Spaniards and internationals became casualties