THE ERA OF THE DICTATORS
Totalitarianism: Total government control Paranoia and Propaganda A distortion of nationalism Individual rights suppressed A policy of aggression
Total control over culture The use of a scapegoat Extreme police power A permanent state of crisis Capable of genocide and mass murder
ITALY Upset with Paris Peace Treaties: did not get the territory they wanted (Italian Irredenta) Economic Depression Fear of Communism Returning soldiers w/o benefits Fear of worker’s strikes
GERMANY Upset with the Paris Peace Treaties: DIKTAT and WAR GUILT CLAUSE Fear of Communism Economic Depression High reparation payments Occupation of their industrial heartlands: Ruhr and Saar Extreme Nationalism
Failures of the Government Fear of Unions and strikes
Hitler gained ‘democratic power’ in 1933. Re-armed Occupied Rhineland Took back Saar and Ruhr United with Austria (1938) Abolished all other political parties Pushed ‘Aryan-master race’ doctrine
Initiated push to isolate undesirables Jews, Gypsies (Romas), Slavs, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the physically and mentally ill. Nuremberg Laws: 1935 1938: Kristallnacht Built infrastructure Invaded the Sudetenland (1938) Took the rest of Czechoslovakia (March, 1939) Invaded Poland (Sept. 1939)
What did the world do? Nothing: APPEASEMENT!!!
WHY? Isolationism: A European War Anti-Semitic Fear Misplaced Trust No organized military power (League of Nations)