Western Civilization HIS 102

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Western CivilizationHIS 102

• Chapter 27
• The Tortured Decade, 1930-1939

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• The stock market in the United States crashed on
  29 October 1929
• Through loans and international trade networks,
  it spread around the world to major nations and
  their colonies
• The depression that ensued caused economic,
  political, and social disruptions in many nations
• These nations tried varying ways to get back on
  their feet and stabilize

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• In industry and in agriculture, too much was
  being produced and not enough was being sold
• Prices dropped, and people lost jobs
• There was no more need of raw materials from
  colonies
• People couldnt pay their rent, mortgages, and
  bills
• Countries couldnt pay what they owed to other
  nations German reparations from World War I

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• Credit was restricted, interest rates were
  raised, and buying power was low
• In the U.S., President Herbert Hoover got his
  Hawley-Smoot Act passed in 1930
• This raised tariffs on imports 50-100
• This forced other nations to do the same
• Trade declined

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• Socially
• Loss of jobs
• Loss of self-respect
• Malnutrition
• T.B.
• Scarlet Fever
• Ricketts
• Backlash against newly emancipated women
• Women accused of taking jobs away from men
• Page 917, Read

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• Politically
• British economist, John Maynard Keynes,
  recommended deficit spending to stimulate the
  economy
• President Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945) did just
  that
• Many others tried deficit spending because
  laissez-faire of Adam Smith wasnt working

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• Germany sealed off the German mark from
  international fluctuations, stimulated public
  spending through rearmament
• Scandinavia Norway, Sweden, and Denmark moved
  toward becoming a welfare state providing
  health care, unemployment insurance, and
  allowances to its citizens
• They also cut back on military expenses and
  raised taxes

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• Britain started to recover in the mid-1930s due
  to deficit spending and rearmament
• India Gandhi advocated non-cooperation with the
  British because he wanted Indians to rely on
  themselves
• Japan was dependent on international trade and
  hard hit by high tariffs
• Japan was moving toward a more aggressive stance
  with the West and imperialism of their own to get
  what was needed took Manchuria in 1931 and
  extended their conquest of China in 1937

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• In reaction to the Japanese conquests, the
  Chinese Communist Party, CCP, under Mao Tse-tung
  began to spread their idea of Marxism and land
  reform
• Mao wished to create an alternative to Western
  liberal capitalism
• Politically, those disillusioned with capitalism
  began looking at the systems found in the USSR,
  Italy, and Germany

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Stalin and the Soviet Union

• 1930s decade of upheaval
• Stalin used brutality, terror, collectivization
  of farms, and execution to move the USSR towards
  industrialization
• Peasants with land (Kulaks) were sent to labor
  camps in Siberia while their land was taken over
  by the state, collectivized farms
• In reaction to that, peasants killed their
  livestock and destroyed farm equipment
• January February 1930, 14 million head of
  cattle were slaughtered
• They had quite a feast

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• Stalin wanted to squeeze all he could from the
  peasants to finance industry
• Agricultural exports did increase after 1930 at
  the expense of the peasants
• Peasants starved to death, 1932-1933
• 5-6 million starved to death in USSR and half
  that number starved in the Ukraine
• Restrictions on private plots of land and
  livestock eased after 1933. Agriculture
  rebounded and industrial output increased.

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• Anyone speaking out against Stalin was eventually
  executed
• There were arbitrary arrests, trumped up charges,
  show trials, forced confessions, and forced labor
  camps called gulags
• There were periodic purges of those both in and
  out of the communist party
• The deaths resulting from Stalins policies of
  the 1930s have been estimated at 20 million
• Obviously, Stalin was not a charismatic leader

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Hitlers Actions Against the Jews

• 1933 During Hitlers first year as Chancellor
  of Germany, he declared all Jews the enemy of
  Germany
• He first made it difficult for them to stay and
  then proceeded to systematically remove those
  Jews who remained in Germany
• This early nationalistic goal and subsequent
  World War led to the destruction of 6 million
  Jews
• The official German racial policy began with the
  dismissal of all Jews from their civil service
  jobs

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• 1935 Hitler stripped Jews of their citizenship
  and attacks on them by the Nazi Partys
  brown-shirted, paramilitary group, the
  Sturmabteilung or S.A. , increased
• 1938 - These assaults on Jews and their property
  reached their early zenith on November 9, 1938
  with a massive pogrom against Jews all over
  Germany, known as Kristallnacht or night of
  shattered glass
• Display windows of Jewish businesses were smashed

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• During this period from 1933 until Hitler
  declared war in 1939, the Nazis actively
  encouraged Jews to leave Germany without their
  possessions
• There were 150,000 Jews who chose this option and
  had difficulty in finding another country that
  would admit more refugees than their quotas would
  allow
• Read p. 931 on Hitlers view on the role of women

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European Fascism and the Popular Front

• France, 1930s
• had nationalists, anti-communists, and
  anti-Semitic groups growing stronger in the 1930s
• They seemed to threaten French democracy
• Communists were promoting Popular Fronts, a term
  for anti-fascist electoral alliances and
  governing coalitions that communists promoted
  from 1934 to 1939 to resist the further spread of
  fascism
• Anti-fascist governments took hold in France and
  Spain in 1930s

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• Spain
• They started 1930s with a new parliamentary
  democracy (1931)
• 1936, civil war broke out
• By 1939, there was a repressive authoritarian
  regime in place
• Spain had had a constitutional monarchy that died
  out in 1923
• It was replaced by a military dictatorship
• 1930, the dictator resigned
• 1931, the monarchy fell and Spain was proclaimed
  a republic

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• Various groups vied for power
• By 1936, the government couldnt keep order
• By July, civil war broke out led by General
  Francisco Franco
• It was a brutal war
• Nazis and Fascists intervened on Francos side so
  they could test their new weapons on the public
  Guernica was bombed by Germans
• Nationalists under Franco won in 1939
• Many saw Franco as a Fascist
• Franco said he was a military man and an
  authoritarian
• He was in power until his death in 1975

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Back to Hitler

• The next thing Hitler concentrated on was the
  dismantling of the Treaty of Versailles
• He did so without any resistence from the
  democracies
• Their isolationism, their fear of another bloody,
  destructive war allowed Hitler to proceed without
  check
• To be fair the democracies were concentrating on
  problems at home caused by the Depression

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• Initially, Hitler proceeded very cautiously and
  he took advantage of opportunities as they came
• He kept telling his people that he only wanted
  what was fair
• 1933 he withdrew Germany from international
  disarmament talks and the League of Nations
• 1935 he announced the creation of a German air
  force, the Luftwaffe

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• 1935 he also expanded the army to 5 times its
  permitted size of 100,000
• 1936 he re-militarized the Rhineland thus
  strengthening their western defenses
• France did verbally protest but feared another
  war
• Britain saw nothing wrong with Germany moving
  troops into German territory
• Spring, 1938 Hitler annexed Austria without
  resistance, the Anschluss

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• September, 1938 Hitler wanted Czechoslovakia
  because of its large German population in the
  Sudetenland 3 million
• France and Russia were committed to protect
  Czechoslovakia
• So the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
  made 3 trips to Germany to settle the matter and
  avoid war
• The result was the Munich Agreement and
  Appeasement

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• The Sudetenland was handed over to Hitler as a
  result
• Spring, 1939 Hitler took the rest of
  Czechoslovakia
• Britain then declared it would protect Poland,
  the next likely victim
• August, 1939 Hitler signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact
  that guaranteed Stalin a part of Poland and
  immunity from German attack
• Actually, Hitler did not want a 2-front war

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• On September 1, 1939 Hitler invaded Poland
• On September 3, 1939 the British and French
  declared war on Germany ( a defensive war)
• The European war had begun