Hitler demanded and was given what area in northwestern czechoslovakia

Retreat from Democracy: Dictatorial Regimes FOCUS QUESTIONS: What are the characteristics of totalitarian states, and to what degree were these characteristics present in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Stalinist Russia? To what extent was Japan a totalitarian state? The rise of dictatorial regimes in the 1930s had a great deal to do with the coming of World War II. By 1939, only two major states in Europe, France and Great Britain, remained democratic. Italy and Germany had succumbed to the political movement called fascism, and Soviet Russia under Stalin moved toward repressive totalitarianism. A host of other European states and Latin American countries adopted authoritarian structures of various kinds, while a militarist regime in Japan moved that country down the path to war. The dictatorial regimes between the wars assumed both old and new forms. Dictatorship was not new, but the modern totalitarian state was. The totalitarian regimes, best exemplified by Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, greatly extended the functions and power of the central state. The new ‘‘total states’’ expected the active loyalty and commitment of citizens to the regime’s goal, whether it be war, a socialist society, or a thousandyear Reich (RYKH) (empire). They used modern mass propaganda techniques and high-speed communications to conquer the minds and hearts of their subjects. The total state sought to control not only the economic, political, and social aspects of life but the intellectual and cultural aspects as well. The modern totalitarian state was to be led by a single leader and a single party. It ruthlessly rejected the liberal ideal of limited government power and constitutional guarantees of individual freedoms. Indeed, individual freedom was to be subordinated to the collective will of the masses, organized and determined for them by the leader or leaders. Modern technology also gave total states unprecedented police controls to enforce their wishes on their subjects. The Birth of Fascism In the early 1920s, Benito Mussolini (buh-NEE-toh moos-suh-LEE-nee) (1883–1945) bestowed on Italy the first successful fascist movement in Europe. In 1919, Mussolini, a veteran of World War I, had established a new political group, the Fascio di Combattimento (FASHee-oh dee com-bat-ee-MEN-toh) (League of Combat), which won support from middle-class industrialists fearful of working-class agitation and large landowners who objected to strikes by farmers. The movement gained momentum as Mussolini’s nationalist rhetoric and the middle-class fear of socialism, Communist revolution, and disorder made the Fascists seem more and more attractive. On October 29, 1922, after Mussolini and the Fascists threatened to march on Rome if they were not given power, King Victor Emmanuel (1900–1946) capitulated and made Mussolini prime minister of Italy. By 1926, Mussolini had established the institutional framework for a Fascist dictatorship. The prime minister was made ‘‘head of government’’ with the power to legislate by decree. A law empowered the police to arrest and confine anybody for both nonpolitical and political crimes without pressing charges. The government was given the power to dissolve political and cultural associations. In 1926, all anti-Fascist parties were outlawed, and a secret police force was established. By the end of the year, Mussolini ruled Italy as Il Duce (eel DOO-chay), the leader. Mussolini conceived of the Fascist state as totalitarian: ‘‘Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State, the synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops and gives strength to the whole life of the people.’’ 1 Mussolini did try to create a police state, but it was not very effective. Likewise, the Italian Fascists’ attempt to exercise control over all forms of mass media, including newspapers,

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radio, and cinema, so that they could use propaganda as an instrument to integrate the masses into the state, was rarely effective. Most commonly, Fascist propaganda was disseminated through simple slogans, such as ‘‘Mussolini is always right,’’ plastered on walls all over Italy. The Fascists portrayed the family as the pillar of the state and women as the basic foundation of the family. ‘‘Woman into the home’’ became the Fascist slogan. Women were to be homemakers and baby producers, ‘‘their natural and fundamental mission in life,’’ according to Mussolini, for population growth was viewed as an indicator of national strength. Employment outside the home might distract women from conception: ‘‘It forms an independence and consequent physical and moral habits contrary to child bearing.’’ 2 Despite the instruments of repression, the use of propaganda, and the creation of numerous Fascist organizations, Mussolini never achieved the degree of totalitarian control attained in Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union. Mussolini and the Fascist Party never completely destroyed the old power structure, and they were soon overshadowed by a much more powerful fascist movement to the north. Hitler and Nazi Germany In 1923, a small rightist party led by an obscure Austrian rabble-rouser named Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) attempted to seize power in southern Germany in the notorious Beer Hall Putsch. Although the effort failed, the attempted putsch brought Hitler and the Nazis to national prominence. HITLER’S RISE TO POWER, 1919–1933 At the end of World War I, after four years of service on the Western Front, Hitler went to Munich and decided to enter politics. In 1919, he joined the obscure German Workers’ Party, one of a number of right-wing extreme nationalist parties in Munich. By the summer of 1921, Hitler had assumed control of the party, which he renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), or Nazi Party for short. In two years, membership reached 55,000, including 15,000 in the party militia known as the SA, the Sturmabteilung (SHTOORM-ap-ty-loonk) (Storm Troops). Overconfident, Hitler staged an armed uprising against the government in Munich in November 1923. The so-called Beer Hall Putsch was quickly crushed, and Hitler was sentenced to prison. During his brief stay in jail, he wrote Mein Kampf (myn KAHMPF) (My Struggle), an autobiographical account of his movement and its underlying ideology. Extreme German nationalism, virulent anti-Semitism, and anticommunism are linked together by a social Darwinian theory of struggle that stresses the right of superior nations to Lebensraum (LAY-benz-rown) (living space) through expansion and the right of superior individuals to secure authoritarian leadership over the masses. During his imprisonment, Hitler also came to the realization that the Nazis would have to come to power by constitutional means, not by overthrowing the Weimar (VY-mar) Republic. After his release from prison, Hitler reorganized the Nazi Party and competed for votes with the other political parties. By 1929, the Nazis had a national party organization. Three years later, the Nazi Party had 800,000 members and had become the largest party in the Reichstag (RYKHSS-tahk). Germany’s economic difficulties were a crucial factor in the Nazis’ rise to power. Unemployment rose dramatically, from 4 million in 1931 to 6 million by the winter of 1932. Claiming to stand above all differences, Hitler promised that he would create a new Germany free of class differences and party infighting. His appeal to national pride, national honor, and traditional militarism struck receptive chords in his listeners. After attending one of Hitler’s rallies, a schoolteacher in Hamburg said: ‘‘When the speech was over, there was roaring enthusiasm and applause. . . . Then he went—How many look up to him with touching faith as their savior, their deliverer from unbearable distress.’’ 3 Increasingly, the right-wing elites of Germany—the industrial magnates, landed aristocrats, military establishment, and higher bureaucrats—came to see Hitler as the man who had the mass support to establish a right-wing, authoritarian regime that would save Germany and their privileged positions from a Communist takeover. Under pressure, since the Nazi Party had the largest share of seats in the Reichstag, President Paul von Hindenburg agreed to allow Hitler to become chancellor (on January 30, 1933) and form a new government. Within two months, Hitler had laid the foundations for the Nazis’ complete control over Germany. The crowning step in Hitler’s ‘‘legal seizure’’ of power came on March 23, when the Reichstag, by a two-thirds vote, passed the Enabling Act, which empowered the government to dispense with constitutional forms for four years while it issued laws to deal with the country’s problems. With their new source of power, the Nazis acted quickly to bring all institutions under Nazi control. The civil service was purged of Jews and democratic elements, concentration camps were established for opponents of the new regime, trade unions were dissolved, and all political parties except the Nazis were abolished. By the end of the summer of 1933, Hitler and the Nazis had established the foundations for a totalitarian state. When Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934, the office of Reich president was abolished, and Hitler became der Fu¨hrer ((FYOOR-ur) (the leader)—sole ruler of Germany.

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THE NAZI STATE, 1933–1939 Having smashed the parliamentary state, Hitler now felt the real task was at hand: to develop the ‘‘total state.’’ Hitler’s goal was the development of an Aryan racial state that would dominate Europe and possibly the world for generations to come. Hitler stated: We must develop organizations in which an individual’s entire life can take place. Then every activity and every need of every individual will be regulated by the collectivity represented by the party. There is no longer any arbitrary will, there are no longer any free realms in which the individual belongs to himself. . . . The time of personal happiness is over. 4 The Nazis pursued the realization of this totalitarian ideal in a variety of ways. Mass demonstrations and spectacles were employed to integrate the German nation into a collective fellowship and to mobilize it as an instrument for Hitler’s policies. These mass demonstrations, especially the party rallies that were held in Nuremberg every September, combined the symbolism of a religious service with the merriment of a popular amusement and usually evoked mass enthusiasm and excitement. Despite the symbolism and Hitler’s goal of establishing an all-powerful government that would maintain absolute control and order, in actuality, Nazi Germany was the scene of almost constant personal and institutional conflict, which resulted in administrative chaos. Struggle characterized relationships within the party, within the state, and between party and state. Hitler, of course, remained the ultimate decision maker and absolute ruler. In the economic sphere, Hitler and the Nazis also worked to establish control. Although the regime used public works projects and ‘‘pump-priming’’ grants to private construction firms to foster employment and end the depression, there is little doubt that rearmament contributed far more to solving the unemployment problem. Unemployment, which had stood at 6 million in 1932, dropped to 2.6 million in 1934 and less than 500,000 in 1937. This was an important factor in convincing many Germans to accept the new regime, despite its excesses. For Germans who needed coercion, the Nazi total state had its instruments of terror. Especially important were the Schutzstaffel (SHOOTS-shtah-fuhn) (guard squadrons), known simply as the SS. The SS, under the direction of Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945), came to control all of the regular and secret police forces. Himmler and the SS functioned on the basis of two principles: terror and ideology. Terror included the instruments of repression and murder: secret police, criminal police, concentration camps, and later execution squads and death camps for the extermination of the Jews. For Himmler, the primary goal of the SS was to further the Aryan ‘‘master race.’’ The creation of the Nazi total state also had an impact on women. Women played a crucial role in the Aryan racial state as bearers of the children who would bring about the triumph of the Aryan race. To the Nazis, the differences between men and women were natural: men were destined to be warriors and political leaders; women were to be wives and mothers. The Nazi total state was intended to be an Aryan racial state. From its beginning, the Nazi Party reflected the strong anti-Semitic beliefs of Adolf Hitler. Once in power, the Nazis translated anti-Semitic ideas into anti-Semitic policies. In September 1935, at the annual party rally in Nuremberg, the Nazis announced new racial laws,

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which excluded German Jews from German citizenship and forbade marriages and extramarital relations between Jews and German citizens. A more violent phase of anti-Jewish activity took place in 1938 and 1939, initiated on November 9–10, 1938, by the infamous Kristallnacht (kri-STAHL-nahkht), or night of shattered glass. The assassination of a secretary in the German embassy in Paris became the excuse for a Naziled rampage against the Jews in which synagogues were burned, 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed, and at least one hundred Jews were killed. Jews were barred from all public buildings and prohibited from owning or working in any retail store. The Stalinist Era in the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin made a significant shift in economic policy in 1928 when he launched his first five-year plan. Its real goal was nothing less than the transformation of the agrarian Soviet Union into an industrial country virtually overnight. Instead of consumer goods, the first five-year plan emphasized maximum production of capital goods and armaments and succeeded in quadrupling the production of heavy machinery and doubling oil production. Between 1928 and 1937, during the first two five-year plans, steel production increased from 4 million to 18 million tons per year. Rapid industrialization was accompanied by an equally rapid collectivization of agriculture. Its goal was to eliminate private farms and push people onto collective farms. Strong resistance to Stalin’s plans from peasants who hoarded crops and killed livestock only caused him to step up the program. By 1934, Russia’s 26 million family farms had been collectivized into 250,000 units, though at a tremendous cost, since the hoarding of food and the slaughter of livestock produced widespread famine. Perhaps 10 million peasants died in the artificially created famines of 1932 and 1933. The only concession Stalin made to the peasants was to allow each collective farm worker to have one tiny, privately owned garden plot. To achieve his goals, Stalin strengthened the party bureaucracy under his control. Anyone who resisted was sent into forced labor camps in Siberia. Stalin’s desire for sole control of decision making also led to purges of the Old Bolsheviks. Between 1936 and 1938, the most prominent Old Bolsheviks were put on trial and condemned to death. During this same time, Stalin undertook a purge of army officers, diplomats, union officials, party members, intellectuals, and numerous ordinary citizens. Estimates are that 8 million Russians were arrested; millions died in Siberian forced labor camps. This gave Stalin the distinction of being one of the greatest mass murderers in human history. The Stalinist era also reversed much of the permissive social legislation of the early 1920s. Advocating complete equality of rights for women, the Communists had made divorce and abortion easy to obtain while also encouraging women to work outside the home and to set their own moral standards. After Stalin came to power, the family was praised as a miniature collective in which parents were responsible for inculcating values of duty, discipline, and hard work. Abortion was outlawed, and divorced fathers who failed to support their children were fined heavily. The Rise of Militarism in Japan The rise of militarism in Japan resulted not from a seizure of power by a new political party but from the growing influence of militant forces at the top of the political hierarchy. In the early 1930s, confrontations with China in Manchuria, combined with the onset of the Great Depression, brought an end to the fragile stability of the immediate postwar years. The depression had a disastrous effect on Japan, as many European countries, along with the United States, raised stiff tariff walls against cheap Japanese imports in order to protect their struggling domestic industries. The ensuing economic slowdown imposed a heavy burden on the fragile democracy in Japan. Although civilian cabinets tried desperately to cope with the economic challenges presented by the world depression, the political parties were no longer able to stem the growing influence of militant nationalist elements. Extremist patriotic organizations began to terrorize Japanese society by assassinating businessmen and public figures identified with the policy of conciliation toward the outside world. Some argued that Western-style political institutions should be replaced by a new system that would return to traditional Japanese values and imperial authority. Their message of ‘‘Asia for the Asians’’ became increasingly popular as the Great Depression convinced many Japanese that capitalism was unsuitable for Japan. During the mid-1930s, the influence of the military and extreme nationalists over the government steadily increased. National elections continued to take place, but cabinets were dominated by the military or advocates of Japanese expansionism. In February 1936, junior army officers led a coup, briefly occupying the Diet building and other key government installations in Tokyo and assassinating several members of the cabinet. The ringleaders were quickly tried and convicted of treason, but under conditions that further strengthened the influence of the military.

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The Path to War FOCUS QUESTION: What were the underlying causes of World War II, and what specific steps taken by Nazi Germany and Japan led to war? Only twenty years after the ‘‘war to end war,’’ the world plunged back into the nightmare. The efforts at collective security in the 1920s proved meaningless in view of the growth of Nazi Germany and the rise of militant Japan. The Path to War in Europe World War II in Europe had its beginnings in the ideas of Adolf Hitler, who believed that only so-called Aryans were capable of building a great civilization. To Hitler, Germany needed more land to support a larger population and be a great power. Already in the 1920s, in the second volume of Mein Kampf, Hitler had indicated that a National Socialist regime would find this land to the east—in Russia. On March 9, 1935, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler announced the creation of an air force and one week later the introduction of a military draft that would expand Germany’s army from 100,000 to 550,000 troops. Hitler’s unilateral repudiation of the Versailles treaty brought a swift reaction as France, Great Britain, and Italy condemned Germany’s action and warned against future aggressive steps. But nothing concrete was done. Meanwhile, Hitler gained new allies. In October 1935, Benito Mussolini had committed Fascist Italy to imperial expansion by invading Ethiopia. Mussolini welcomed Hitler’s support and began to draw closer to the German dictator. In October 1936, Hitler and Mussolini concluded an agreement that recognized their common interests, and one month later, Mussolini referred publicly to the new Rome-Berlin Axis. Also in November, Germany and Japan (the rising military power in the Far East) concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact and agreed to maintain a common front against communism. By 1937, Germany was once more a ‘‘world power,’’ as Hitler proclaimed. Hitler was convinced that neither the French nor the British would provide much opposition to his plans and decided in 1938 to move to achieve one of his longtime goals: union with Austria. By threatening Austria with invasion, Hitler coerced the Austrian chancellor into putting Austrian Nazis in charge of the government. The new government promptly invited German troops to enter Austria and assist in maintaining law and order. One day later, on March 13, 1938, after his triumphal return to his native land, Hitler formally annexed Austria to Germany. Hitler’s next objective was the destruction of Czechoslovakia, and he believed that France and Britain would not use force to defend that nation. He was right again. On September 15, 1938, Hitler demanded the cession of the Sudetenland (soo-DAY-tun-land) (an area in northwestern Czechoslovakia inhabited largely by ethnic Germans) to Germany and expressed his willingness to risk ‘‘world war’’ if he was refused. Instead of objecting, the British, French, Germans, and Italians—at a hastily arranged conference at Munich—reached an agreement that met all of Hitler’s demands (see the box on p. 656). German troops were allowed to occupy the Sudetenland. Increasingly, Hitler was convinced of his own infallibility, and he had by no means been satisfied at Munich. In March 1939, Hitler occupied all the Czech lands (Bohemia and Moravia), while the Slovaks, with Hitler’s encouragement, declared their independence of the Czechs and became a puppet state (Slovakia) of Nazi Germany. On the evening of March 15, 1939, Hitler triumphantly declared in Prague that he would be known as the greatest German of them all. At last, the Western states reacted to Hitler’s threat. When Hitler began to demand the return of Danzig (which had been made a free city by the Treaty of Versailles to serve as a seaport for Poland) to Germany, Britain offered to protect Poland in the event of war. At the same time, both France and Britain realized that only the Soviet Union was powerful enough to help contain Nazi aggression and began political and military negotiations with Stalin and the Soviets. Meanwhile, Hitler pressed on. To preclude an alliance between the West and the Soviet Union, which would open the danger of a two-front war, Hitler negotiated his own nonaggression pact with Stalin and shocked the world with its announcement on August 23, 1939. The treaty with the Soviet Union gave Hitler the freedom to attack Poland. He told his generals: ‘‘Now Poland is in the position in which I wanted her. . . . I am only afraid that at the last moment some swine or other will yet submit to me a plan for mediation.’’ 5 He need not have worried. On September 1, German forces invaded Poland; two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Europe was again at war. The Path to War in Asia During the mid-1920s, Japan had maintained a strong military and economic presence in Manchuria, an area in northeastern China controlled by a Chinese warlord. Then, in September 1931, Japanese military officers stationed in the area launched a coup to bring about a complete Japanese takeover of the region. Despite worldwide protests from the League of Nations, which eventually

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condemned the seizure, Japan steadily strengthened its control over Manchuria, renaming it Manchukuo (manCHOO-kwoh), and then began to expand into northern China. For the moment, Chiang Kai-shek attempted to avoid a direct confrontation with Japan so that he could deal with the Communists, whom he he considered the greater threat. When clashes between Chinese and Japanese troops broke out, he sought to appease the Japanese by granting them the authority to administer areas in North China. But as the Japanese moved steadily southward, popular protests in Chinese cities against Japanese aggression intensified. In December 1936, Chiang ended his military efforts against the Communists in Yan’an and

Duiker, William J.. The Essential World History, Volume II: Since 1500: 2 (p. 656). Cengage Textbook. Kindle Edition.

formed a new united front against the Japanese. When Chinese and Japanese forces clashed at the Marco Polo Bridge, south of Beijing, in July 1937, China refused to apologize, and hostilities spread. Japan had not planned to declare war on China, but neither side would compromise, and the 1937 incident eventually turned into a major conflict. The Japanese advanced up the Yangtze River valley and seized the Chinese capital of Nanjing in December, but Chiang Kaishek refused to capitulate and moved his government upriver to Hankou (HAHN-kow). When the Japanese seized that city, he retreated to Chongqing (chungCHING), in remote Sichuan (suh-CHWAHN) province, and kept his capital there for the remainder of the war. Japanese strategists had hoped to force Chiang to join a Japanese-dominated New Order in East Asia, comprising Japan, Manchuria, and China. This was part of a larger Japanese plan to seize Soviet Siberia, with its rich resources, and create a new ‘‘Monroe Doctrine for Asia,’’ under which Japan would guide its Asian neighbors on the path to development and prosperity (see the box on p. 658). After all, who better to instruct Asian societies on modernization than the one Asian country that had already achieved it? During the late 1930s, Japan began to cooperate with Nazi Germany on the assumption that the two countries would ultimately launch a joint attack on the Soviet Union and divide up its resources between them. But when Germany surprised the world by signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviets in August 1939, Japanese strategists were compelled to reevaluate their long-term objectives. The Japanese were not strong enough to defeat the Soviet Union alone and so began to shift their eyes southward, to the vast resources of Southeast Asia—the oil of the Dutch East Indies, the rubber and tin of Malaya, and the rice of Burma and Indochina. A move southward, of course, would risk war with the European colonial powers and the United States. Japan’s attack on China in the summer of 1937 had already aroused strong criticism abroad, particularly from the United States. When Japan demanded the right to occupy airfields and exploit economic resources in French Indochina in the summer of 1940, the United States warned the Japanese that it would cut off the sale of oil and scrap iron unless Japan withdrew from the area and returned to its borders of 1931. The Japanese viewed the American threat of retaliation as an obstacle to their long-term objectives. Japan badly needed oil and scrap iron from the United States. Should they be cut off, Japan would have to find them elsewhere. The Japanese were thus caught in a vise. To obtain guaranteed access to natural resources that were necessary to fuel the Japanese military machine, Japan must risk being cut off from its current source of raw materials that would be needed in the event of a conflict. After much debate, Japan decided to launch a surprise attack on American and European colonies in Southeast Asia in the hope of a quick victory that would evict the United States from the region.

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