The Rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany

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The Rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany
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Europe Recovered Slowly From WWI

• War cost about 200 billion on the war
• Which countries came out on top and why?
• Guesses?
• Anyone?
• Absolute rulers are gone
• Habsburgs (Austria)
• Romanovs (Russia)
• Hohenzollerns (Germany)

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Mussolini Launched a Fascist State

• Why did Italians feel betrayed by the Treaty?
• Fear of Communist Revolution was strong.
• Newspaper editor Benito Mussolini promised to
  rescue Italy.
• Fasces were symbols of authority in ancient Rome

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What are those things in the arms of Lincolns
chair?

• And in the US Capitol?

Ancient symbols of Rome were popular in early
American history, too.
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Mussolinis Takeover

• Blackshirts who?
• Won support from middle class and aristocracy
• King Victor Emmanuel capitulated to 30,000
  Fascists in the streets of Rome and made
  Mussolini prime minister.
• Mussolini received emergency powers

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Italy Becomes a Model

• Democracy was abolished
• Mussolini set up 22 corporations to own and run
  the economy
• Wages, and prices were controlled
• A great orator, people loved him.
• Mussolini is Always Right
• Il Duce is the man
• Franco (Spain)
• Hitler (Germany)

http//video.google.com/videoplay?docid-641147466
2262791339qMussolinispeechhlen
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Postwar Germany Cant Pay

• Germany made its first payment in 1921.
• Allowed to pay off much of the reparations in
  commodities such as coal, wood, and iron ore.
• In 1922, Germany could not make its payment so
  Belgian and French soldiers occupied the Ruhr,
  Germanys most industrialized area.
• Violation of League of Nations law.

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Weimar Republic

• Germany attempted a liberal democracy between
  1919 and 1933.
• Weimar is city where convention was held to write
  new constitution
• Germans continued to call their country the
  Deutsches Reich or German Empire, although this
  was not the 2nd Reich.
• When Hitler came to power in 1933, he would call
  the German Empire under him the 3rd Reich
• Q?? By Hitlers calculation, what or when were
  the 1st and 2nd Reichs?

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Germany in Chaos

• The Weimar Republic told its people of the Ruhr
  region to go on strike and not cooperate with the
  occupying French and Belgians.
• During 8 months of occupation
• 132 Germans killed and 15,000 expelled from
  their homes.
• Weimar went on to suffer many revolts and
  attempted takeovers by German communists as well
  as conservative groups the small German army
  had a hard time keeping peace.

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Hyperinflation

• German government funded the strikers in the Ruhr
  by printing more paper money
• This began a cycle of rapid inflation
• Soon 1 trillion of the new
• marks 1 old mark!!!

Denominations will range anywhere from 1 to 20
Million Mark or more!  During the
hyper-inflation, prices were so high that
suitcases and wheel barrows were used to carry
money around.
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The Great Depression Struck

• To prop up its economy and to pay reparations
  Germany had received cheap loans from the US
• (Dawes Plan 1924 Young Plan 1929)
• Austria too received US loans
• The Weimar Republic of Germany was devastated by
  the Crash on Wall Street (Black Tuesday Oct.
  1929)
• Now the US needed those loans paid back

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Desperation spread

• Millions lost their jobs
• Shantytowns of evicted people sprang up
• Schools saw a drop in enrollment
• Children were too hungry or shoeless or were
  trying to work to help out

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Germany was desperate for help

• Adolf Hitler, an Austrian who had fought for
  Germany in WWI had a plan.
• He had attempted a coup detat in 1923 and went
  to jail.
• Where he wrote My Struggle (Mein Kampf) to
  influence others

Hitler with supporters in Munich. Where is Munich?
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Hitler as a Boy

• Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn on the
  Austro-German border on 20th April 1889. His
  family background has given rise to much
  psychological speculation. His father, a customs
  official who died when Hitler was 13, was cold
  and strict, while his mother was gentle and
  loving and pampered her son, who adored her.
  Hitler was clearly intelligent but bored by much
  of his formal education, except for history,
  which was taught with a strong German nationalist
  bias. (Noakes)

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Hitler the Teenager

• As a teenager, Hitler came to see himself as an
  artist superior to others and unwilling to find a
  stable job. He drifted from job to job and tried
  to sell his paintings of famous sites to
  tourists.
• In school Hitler was exposed to teachers who
  urged Pan-Germanism, anti-Semitism and racist
  views.
• Ironically, he was friends with several young
  Jewish men who helped him sell his pictures.

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Mein Kampf

• During 9 months in prison, 1923-24.
• Germans were a master race
• Inferior races- Jews, Poles, gypsies should be
  destroyed.
• Lands lost should be regained, east west
• Lebensraum needed

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Hitler seizes his opportunity

• After prison, the Nazi Party was in decline as
  the economy improved.
• Then the Wall Street crashand Germanys economy
  sank
• By 1931, Germans were in the street demanding
  bread from their government.
• Like moths to light, the people flocked to
  Hitlers message

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Time Magazine observed then

• Fighting every inch of the way, three men stood
  out against the advance of Fascism in Germany
  last week pale, bespectacled Chancellor Heinrich
  Bruning white-haired Paul von Hindenburg and
  their faithful lieutenant, Minister of the
  Interior and of War Wilhelm Groener. Each morning
  foreign correspondents in Berlin expected the
  Bruning Government to fall and Fascist Adolf
  Hitler, who only fortnight ago pounded a platform
  and shouted in his best Mussolini manner Right
  goes hand in hand with Might! , to seize the
  Government.
• Dec. 21, 1931

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Hitler was named Chancellor and given absolute
power.

• 1932 Nazis became largest party
• January 1933 An old, tired President von
  Hindenburg named him chancellor according to the
  constitution.
• Then, just before parliamentary elections, a fire
  broke out in the Reichstag building. Who set it
  is a mystery, but
• Hitler used this to blame the
  communists, which helped the
  Nazis gain a majority in
  the parliament
  elections.
• With this majority, Hitler got what
  he wanted a law which gave
  him absolute power for 4
  years.

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http//video.google.com/videoplay?docid4093954384
308747267qhitlerspeechhlen
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Political and Economic Control

• Political The SS A security service loyal to
  Hitler sets out to execute Hitlers political
  enemies on the Night of the Long Knives in June
  1934.
• Economy is supervised
• Employers and workers alike have to
  join the National Labor Front
• Millions are put to work building
  factories, weapons of war, and
  highways.

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Cultural Control Reflected Propaganda Hitlers
Tastes

• The press, broadcasting, music, literature,
  drama, paintings, film are placed under control
  of Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda.
• Films such as Triumph of the Will
  are propa- ganda to reinforce Nazi
  ideology

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Nazis Persecuted Jews

• Nuremberg Laws 1935
• Forbade Jews to hold public office, deprived them
  of citizenship, of publication, of teaching or
  working at banks or hospitals. Had to wear yellow
  stars of David.
• Kristallnacht, Nov 9-10 1938
• Nazi mobs (Brownshirts)
• Broke glass windows.
• Destroyed 7500 shops
• 275 synagogues

Nazi documentary film The Eternal Jew
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Works Consulted/Cited

• Bytwerk, Randall. Nazi posters 1933-1945. Calvin
  College. (May 29, 2006) http//www.calvin.edu/acad
  emic/cas/gpa/posters2.htm
• Noakes, Jeremy. The Rise of Adolph Hitler. Wars
  and Conflict World War II. British Broadcasting
  Corp. (May 26, 2006) http//www.bbc.co.uk/history/
  war/wwtwo/hitler_02.shtml
• Solomon, Larry. Wagner and Hitler. 2002. (May
  28, 2006) http//solomonsmusic.net/WagHit.htm