UNIT 2 THE RISE

OF DICTATORS
IN EUROPE
1919-1933
US prosperity, European misery
• After WWI the US, untouched by the war and having
made huge profit from selling food and industrial goods
to the participants replaced the European powers as the
world´s leading economy.
• The US dollar became the world´s strongest currency and
the Bank of America the world´s first investor.
• Industrial production increased together with workers
´wages starting an era of mass consumption in the US,
the “Roaring 20s” reflected in lifestyle, music, the
wideespread use of the car and the arrival of hundreds of
thousands of inmigrants, mostly from Europe.
• In contrast Europe was impoverished after the war, above
all Germany, which had to pay huge war reparations to
the war winners. This caused political unrest, revolts,
inflation and unemployment.
THE NEW WOMAN OF THE 20TH
CENTURY
• In the 1920s a new model of women emerged in
Western Europe and the US. The need for women to
replace men at the workplaces during the war had made
them more free and independent. The gained access to
a better education and better Jobs, even though they
earned les than men.
• However most women would remain housewives under
their husband´s authority for many decades.
• In the 1920´s women started to wear more fashionable,
comfortable clothes, sofisticated hairstyles and to go
out, play sports, smoke and drink openly at public
places.
• In the 1920´s women started a struggle to earn the right
to vote. In the 1930´s women could finally vote in GB,
Germany, US ans Spain among a few other countries.
The 1929 Wall Street Crash: a
worldwide economic crisis
• The economic bounty in US after WWI ment that lots of people
invested in shares. The great demand of shares made their price rise
artificially. This created a “financial bubble” which means that shares
were well above the real value of the companies they represented.
• In 24 October 1929 some investors, aware of the fact that the
economy was slowing down, started selling their shares before their
value started to drop. Rumours of shares losing value spread and
suddenly everybody wanted to sell shares and no one wanted to buy
them. The price of shares plummeted and the stock market in Wall
Street (NYC) crashed.
• Many investors went bankrupt. Many companies and banks had to
close down and millions of people in the US went unemployed and fell
into poverty. This economic crisis was called “The Great Depression”
• The economic crisis spread to Europe in the 1930s since the US was
not able to loan money or buy European products. Production and
trade decreased, unemployment increased halting the slow economic
recovery after WWI.
• The economic crisis created discontent among the people, who
blamed politicians and wealthy bankers and businessmen for the
crisis. This fuelled the birth of Fascism and the spread of Communism.
Totalitarian ideologies that wanted to change the situation through
violence and revolution.
Fascism:
characteristics
• Fascism was a political movement born in Italy after WWI out of: the
weakness of democratic governments and their incapacity to solve
the postwar economic crisis; the discontent with the postwar treaties;
the fear of communist revolution.
• Fascist parties were born all over Europe from Spain to Romania, but
only attained power in Italy and Germany. Their main characteristics
were:
• Authoritarian government and cult of the leader
• Rejection of Democracy,Liberalism and Communism
• Control of the main economic sectors by the state (but unlike
Communism, private property and business are allowed)
• Use of violence to attain political objectives (like Communism)
• Nationalism
• Militarism
• Expansionism: recovery of territories lost in the postwar treaties
or annexation of new ones both in Europe and overseas.
Italy: from democracy to fascism
• The social and economic consequences of WWI in Italy were severe.
700.000 men were killed, industries were destroyed and the territorial
gains were small. Italians felt cheated by French and British. The post-war
economic crisis increased the cost of living and unemployment. There
were social revolts and there was fear of a communist revolution.
• Benito Mussolini created the National Fascist Party in 1921. His ojective
was to solve the economic crisis, stop communism and expand Italian
territories in Africa and the Mediterranean. It had the support of the
middle class, the Catholic church and the landowners.
• In 1922 Mussolini was appointed chief of the government by the King of
Italy. He stablished a fascist dictatorship whose characteristics were:
-Mussolini and the National Fascist Party had total power. All other political
parties were banned.
-Prohibition of strikes and trade unions
-Control of key economic sectors by the Fascist government.
Encouragement of industrial development to attain economic self
sufficiency.
-Territorial expansión: Mussolini wanted to create an Italian Empire. He
started by ordering the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.
The rise of National Socialism
• After Germany´s defeat in 1918 the German kaiser (emperor) abdicated. Germany became a
democratic republic called the Weimar republic. The republic had to face:

1. Severe economic crisis, created by war reparations (that would be worsened by the
1929 crisis) that spread poverty, inflation and unemployment.

2. Communist armed revolts, caused by the social unrest, which had to be countered by
force using extreme right militias such as the freikorps, since Germany was not allowed to have a
large army.

• This situation favoured the creation in the 1920s of the German National Socialist Worker´s Party
(NSDAP) . An extreme right organization founded by Adolf Hitler, a WWI veteran. The Nazi party, as
it was called, created armed militias: the SA (Sturm Abteilung) and the SS (Schutzstaffel).

• The Nazi party´s main objectives were:

-Eradicate communism by force if neccesary

-Improve the economic situation

-Restore Germany´s power, ending the harsh conditions of the Versailles treaty and
creating a new German empire (III Reich) by expanding Germany´s borders to the East.

-Establish a racist state where jews, who were blamed by the Nazis for Germany´s
problems, would not be allowed to exist.

• In the 1930´s the Nazi party gained popularity among Germans, who increasingly voted for it. In
1934 the Nazi party won the elections and Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor (president) of the
German republic. Hitler banned all other political parties and passed laws that appointed him
“fuhrer” , becaming Germany´s dictator and proclaiming the end of the republic and the beginning
of the 3rd Reich.