The Interwar Years- The Weakness of Western Democracies and the Rise of Totalitarianism Totalitarians Democracies

Our Key Question  Why did the victors of World War I allow threats to their system of government and way of life to rise to power in the twenty years following World War I?

Reason 1a) Pacifism A Desire for Peace At All Costs How does this wood carving help us to understand the high level of pacifism in 1920s Europe? Why is this pacifism relevant?

Reasons 1b) A Loss of Faith in the Virtue of Western Society Pre WWI- “Human reason ushered in democracy and the Industrial Age. Perhaps it can solve all of our problems…”. Utopianism Post WWI- “Umm… ok… scratch that.” “If modern science brought us the slaughter in the trenches, what will future ‘progress’ bring us? –Not totally misguided… think about the atom bomb –Orwell’s 1984

This Western Loss of Faith in Progress Was Aggravated By New Ideas at the Time Philosophy –Existentialism (Nieztsche) –There is no God and no meaning to life. Humans must create their own meaning. Physics –Einstein’s Relativity –Time and space are both curved and are both relative to the observer –Time is relative If I were to travel away from the earth on a space ship traveling the speed of light and came back in a year, 100 years would have passed on earth –Heisenberg uncertainty principle If you know exactly where a particle is, you cannot know its speed. If you know its exact speed, you cannot know exactly where it is. Psychiatry –Human brains are not entirely rational –Many human actions are motivated by subconscious desires

VS If a human were to move near the speed of light, time would slow down for them, relative to the observer… Which is more comfortable to believe?

Salvador Dali: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), 1936 Surrealism

Freudian Psychology Pre-Freudian View of the Brain Input Logic Output Freudian View of the Brain Input Output

You Tube- Nietzsche interprets Hitler You Tube- Nietzsche interprets Hitler Sharks and nazis Sharks and nazis

Reason 1c) The U.S. Returned to Isolationism, Leaving Europe Deal With Its Problems

1d) The Looming Menace of Communism Russia had become Communist Communism advocates a worldwide violent revolution to replace world governments Rejects wealth inequality Connected to Atheism, and ironically at the same time, Judaism

Reason 1e) Economic Difficulties In the 1920s, nations struggled economically to recover from WWI war debt By the end of the 1920s, they started to recover, but then… …the Great Depression hit It is hard to convince people, especially in a democracy, to spend money for military action, even if the action is justified, in a time of economic crisis –Shouldn’t that money be going to help the poor? –Interesting Keynesian idea

Historians Have Dubbed the 1920s The Age of Anxiety There were attempts to deal with this anxiety Various Pacts and Treaties –Locarno Pact –Kellogg-Briand Pact

Attempt At An Amazing Metaphor Reason Science Industry Shorter Work Hours Technological Gadgets to Ease Life Peace World War I Einstein Existentialism Freud Stream of Consciousness- distopias Progress Society/ The Age of Anxiety Pre 1914 World