THE BETWEEN YEARS 1920s & 1930s

1. THE BETWEEN YEARS1920s & 1930s

2. Politics of the 1920s • League of Nations – failed to maintain European peace as expected. The U.S. failed to join, because most Americans did not want to get involved in European affairs • The Dawes Plan – coordinated Germany’s reparations with its ability to pay • The Treaty of Locarno – guaranteed Germany’s new western borders with France and Belgium

3. The Great Flu Epidemic • Some believe it began among American soldiers who spread it to Europe during WWI • Was known for spreading quickly and being deadly • In 1918 and 1919, The Spanish flu spread around the world killing an estimated 22 million people (more than twice the number of people killed in WWI)

4. THE GREAT DEPRESSION • Causes: • Downturns in the economies of individual nations • Declining industrial production • Decreased trade • An international financial crisis involving the U.S. stock market • Responses to the Depression • Widespread unemployment • Increased government activity in economic affairs • Renewed interest in Marxist doctrines • Masses of people were willing to follow political leaders who offered simple solutions in return for dictatorial power

5. THE RISE OF DICTATORIAL REGIMES (TOTALITARIANISM)

6. FASCISM IN ITALY • Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) • Became Prime Minister in 1922 • Created a fascist government through his Fascist Party • Supported by Middle-class industrialists and large land owners • Controlled opposition through his secret police, imprisonment, outlawing other parties, propaganda, and censorship of the press • Supported the Catholic Church, nationalism, antisocialism, and anticommunism

7. A NEW ERA IN THE SOVIET UNION • Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) • Came to power as General Secretary in 1929 • Implemented a communist government through his Communist Party • Supported by communist officials • Controlled opposition through purges, prison camps, secret police, state-run press, forced labor camps, and executions • Created a Five-Year Plan for rapid industrialization, and created collectivization of farms

8. NAZI GERMANY • Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) • Came to power as Chancellor of Germany in 1933 • Began a fascist government through his National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazis) • Supported by industrial leaders, landed aristocrats, military, and bureaucracy • Controlled opposition through his police force, propaganda, state-run press, terror, repression, racial laws, concentration and death camps • Implemented the Enabling Act, rearmament, public work projects, anti-Semitism, racism, social Darwinism, and extreme nationalism

9. KEY TERMS/EVENTS OF THE FASCIST YEARS (1930s) • Totalitarian state – a government that aims to control the political, economic, social, intellectual, and cultural lives of its citizens • Fascism – a political philosophy that glorifies the state above the individual by emphasizing the need for a strong central government led by a dictator • Politburo – a committee that had become the leading policy-making body of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union • The Five-Year Plans – set economic goals for five-year periods to transform Russia from and agricultural to an industrial country

10. Cont… • Collectivization – a system in which private farms were eliminated when the government took over ownership of all land while peasants worked it • Reichstag – German parliament • Nuremberg Laws – excluded Jews from German citizenship and forbade marriages between Jews and German citizens • Kristallnacht – a destructive rampage against Jews in November, 1938 in which Nazis burned synagogues, destroyed Jewish businesses, and sent Jewish males to concentration camps