The Path to World War II

The Rise of Dictators

Setting the Scene: Nuremberg Rally

The pride and unity of the Nuremberg rally hid the fact that people who disagreed with Hitler were silenced, beaten, or killed.

Totalitarian Rule• A totalitarian government exerts control over a

nation.• It dominates every aspect of life, using terror to

suppress individual rights and silence all forms of opposition.

• Hitler is an example of a totalitarian ruler. He people gave him the power both willingly and unwillingly, over a period of time until it was too late.

• Hitler’s power rested on the destruction of the individual.

Fascism and Communism

• Fascism emphasizes the importance of the nation or an ethnic group and supreme authority of the leader

• In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin based his totalitarian government on a vicious form of communism.

• Like fascism, communism relies upon a strong, dictatorial government that does not respect individual rights and freedoms.

Stalin’s Soviet Union• Economic failure threatened Communist control

of the government, but Stalin took care of that by jailing or killing anyone he deemed a threat.

• Stalin tried to take “one great leap forward” and modernize agriculture.

• To do this, he “encouraged” Soviet farmers to combine their small family farms owned and run by the state.

• This didn’t work out to well because people resisted so he simply began to take the farmers’ land away.

Stalin Punishes Uncooperative Farmers

• Stalin was upset that some farmers, especially in the Ukraine were not cooperating. So he confiscated the crops they had produced.

• As a result, millions of people died from starvation, and millions of others fled to the cities.

• Stalin also sent around 5 million peasants to labor camps in Siberia and northern Russia.

Industrialization is More Successful

• Stalin’s pursuit of industrialization was more successful.

• He assigned millions of laborers from rural areas to build and run new industrial centers where iron, steel, oil, and coal were produced.

• The problem was that Stalin put all of the money and labor into industrialization instead of housing, clothing, and consumer goods. The people suffered.

Stalin’s Reign of Terror• During the economic problems, Stalin completed

his political domination of the Soviet Union through a series of purges.

• In political terms, a purge is the process of removing enemies and undesirable individuals from power.

• It started in 1934 and ended in 1939. 7 million people were arrested, a million were executed, and millions more ended up in forced labor camps.

• Most were innocent, but the purge successfully got rid of all of his opponents.

Fascism in Italy

• As in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Italy’s totalitarian government arose from the failures of World War I.

• Benito Mussolini (Il Duce or “the leader”) believed strongly that the Versailles Treaty should have granted Italy more Territory.

• Mussolini followers included dissatisfied war veterans, opponents of the monarchy, socialists, and anarchists.

Mussolini Takes Over

• Mussolini relied on gangs of Fascist thugs, called Blackshirts to terrorize and bring under control those who opposed him.

• When he threatened to march on Rome, the king panicked and appointed him Prime Minister.

• Mussolini fixed Italy’s big economic problems, but in the meantime he suspended elections and outlawed other political parties.

Mussolini Attempts to Become Caesar

• Mussolini had dreams of making a new Roman Empire.

• A fascist slogan summed up his goals: “ The Country is Nothing Without Conquest.”

• In 1934, he invaded Ethiopia. The Ethiopians resisted fiercely but they were overpowered by Italy’s army and poison gas dropped from warplanes.

Mussolini’s East Africa

“Italy finally has its empire,” after the conquest of Ethiopia. The letters A.O. are the Italian abbreviation for East Africa.

Hitler’s Rise to Power

• While Mussolini was doing his thing in Italy, a discontented Austrian painter was rising to power in Germany.

• Hitler felt enraged by the terms of the Versailles treaty, which stripped Germany of land and colonies and forced Germany to pay a huge debt for the damage done to France, Belgium, and Britain.

• Hitler especially hated the war-guilt clause

The Nazi Party

• In 1919, Hitler joined a small political group that became the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or Nazi Party.

• Nazism is a form of fascism based on German nationalism and racial superiority.

• Hitler wanted the German people to protest against the embarrassing burden of the war-guilt clause.

Mein Kampf

• In November 1923, with some 3,000 followers, Hitler tried to overthrow the German government.

• Authorities easily crushed the uprising and Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison.

• He ended up only serving 9 months and while in prison he wrote Mein Kampf, or “My Struggle”

Mein Kampf Gives Scary Hints

• In the book Hitler outlined the Nazi philosophy, his views on Germany’s problems, and his plans for the nation.

• According to Mein Kampf, Germany had been weakened by certain groups that lived within its borders.

• In particular, Hitler bitterly criticized the nation’s Jewish population, which he blamed irrationally for Germany’s defeat in WWI.

Mein Kampf Foreshadows

• The following is what Hitler proposed:– Strengthening Germany’s military and

expanding its borders to include Germans living in other countries.

– He called for purifying the so-called “Aryan race” by removing from Germany those he called undesirable.

Hitler Becomes Chancellor

• The Great Depression hit in Germany in the early 1930s.

• The German people looked to their political leaders for help.

• In response, Hitler and the Nazis promised to stabilize the country, rebuild the economy, and restore the empire that had been lost.

• Hitler’s promises gradually won him a large following.

The Election of 1930

• The Nazi party became the largest group in the Reichstag (the lower house of the German parliament).

• Hitler placed second to Paul Von Hindenburg in the presidential election.

• In 1933, Von Hindenburg named Hitler Chancellor, or head of the German government.

The Reign of Terror Begins

• Hitler soon moved to suspend freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

• Thousands of Nazi thugs, called storm troopers or Brownshirts, waged a violent campaign that silenced those opposed to Hitler’s policies.

Using Terrorism to His Advantage• In March 1933, the Reichstag building burned

down in a suspicious fire. • Hitler blamed the Communists and used the

disaster to convince the parliament to pass an Enabling Bill which gave him dictatorial powers.

• When Hindenberg died in August 1934, Hitler became both Chancellor and president.

• He gave himself the title Der Fuhrer (“the leader”)

Germany Begins to Mobilize

• The Germans begin secretly spending money on rearming and expanding the armed forces, a violation of the Versailles Treaty.

• They also hired unemployed workers to build massive public buildings and a network of highways known as the autobahn.

• Unemployment fell to nearly zero, industry prospered, and by 1936, the Depression had ended in Germany.

Hitler Wants to Expand

• Like Mussolini, Hitler saw expansion as a way to bolster national pride.

• He believed Germans needed more territory, or “living space”, to the east.

• He planned on conquering eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

• First, he needed to show military force with Germany’s own borders and reclaim the Rhineland.

German Aggression• The Rhineland, a region in western Germany

was the place where Germany had its base for the 1914 attack on France and Belgium.

• As a result of the Versailles Treaty, Germany had agreed to not have any military in this region.

• Hitler said, “whatever, I do what I want!” and he re-militarized the area.

• France and Britain appeased Hitler because many thought the Treaty had been unfair and they had not forgotten the horrors of WW I.

Axis Powers and More Expansion

• Hitler teamed up with Mussolini’s Italy to form the “Axis Powers.” They were later joined by Japan.

• Hitler then set his eyes on his homeland of Austria for political union with Germany.

• When the Austrian Chancellor refused to surrender his country to Germany, Hitler ordered German troops into the country.

• When France and Britain complained Hitler said it only concerned the German people.

Appeasement• Then Hitler set his eyes on the Sudetenland, an

industrial region in western Czechoslovakia with a large German population and many fortifications crucial to Czechoslovakia defense.

• Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, and France’s Edouard Daladier, were not prepared to fight a war. So they met with Hitler and let him have the Sudetenland if he would agree to stop expanding.

• British crowds cheered Chamberlain upon his return home for achieving what he called “peace in our time.”

Spanish Civil War• The Spanish Civil War was a fierce battle between two

groups called the Nationalists and the Republicans.• This is important because it allowed Hitler to test out

his military force in Spain before he started WWII.• Germany and Italy helped out the Nationalists with

planes, tanks, and soldiers.• Germany drew the attention of the world when they

bombed the Spanish town of Guernica to ruins.• It was a preview of the destruction that would strike

hundreds of cities in Britain, Germany, Poland, and other countries a few years later.

Check for Understanding Questions

1) How did Stalin Change the Soviet Economy?2) How did Stalin Change the lives of the Soviet

people?3) Why did many people support Hitler and

Nazism in the early 1930s.4) Why did Britain and France pursue a policy of

appeasement with Hitler?5) How did leaders of totalitarian states feel

about using force against people and nations they considered their enemies?