Russia-Venezuela - United
Be sure to consider the Ch. 16 Test Study Prep Page before Thursday.
Preview: Chapter 17 The West Between the Wars 1919-1939
Reading Check
Explaining
What did John Maynard Keynes think would resolve the Great Depression?
John Maynard Keynes and the Great Depression, 2:10
Hughes Rudd narrates:
Preview
An image from a magazine of Benito Mussolini leading his nation to war; Italian national flag during Mussolini’s rule.
By 1939 most European democracies had collapsed. Only France and Great Britain remained democratic. Benito Mussolini began his political career as a Socialist, but he abandoned socialism for fascism, which glorified the state and justified the suppression of all political dissent. In Italy, Mussolini outlawed most political opposition, but also compromised with powerful groups and never achieved totalitarian control. After the Russian civil war, Lenin restored capitalist practices to prevent economic and political collapse. After Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin emerged as the most powerful Communist figure. Stalin sidelined the Bolsheviks of the revolutionary era and established totalitarian rule. His program of rapid industrialization and collectivization forced horrendous sacrifices on the population. His political purges caused millions to be arrested, imprisoned, and executed. Elsewhere in Eastern Europe and in Francisco Franco's Spain, authoritarian regimes were mainly concerned with preserving the existing social order.
When Mussolini visited Berlin in September 1937 one million people crowed the Olympic Stadium and adjoining Mayfield to hear Il Duce (The Leader) address them in German, 2:27.
The Rise of Dictators
Note Taking
Reading and Listening Skill: Identify Main Ideas
Find the main points of the Mussolini section under the first two headings and record them in a flowchart like the one below.
“[Only joy at finding such a leader] can explain the enthusiasm [Mussolini] evoked at gathering after gathering, where his mere presence drew the people from all sides to greet him with frenzied acclamations. Even the men who at first came out of mere curiosity and with indifferent or even hostile feelings gradually felt themselves fired by his personal magnetic influence. . . .”
—Margherita G. Sarfatti, The Life of Benito Mussolini (tr. Frederic Whyte)
Mussolini and the People
An excited crowd of women and children greets the Italian leader in 1940.
“I hated politics and politicians,” said Italo Balbo. Like many Italian veterans of World War I, he had come home to a land of economic chaos and political corruption. Italy’s constitutional government, he felt, “had betrayed the hopes of soldiers, reducing Italy to a shameful peace.” Disgusted and angry, Balbo rallied behind a fiercely nationalist leader, Benito Mussolini. Mussolini’s rise to power in the 1920s served as a model for ambitious strongmen elsewhere in Europe.
Reading Check
Summarizing
What is the goal of a totalitarian state?
Fascism in Italy
Rise of Fascism
When Italy agreed to join the Allies in 1915, France and Britain secretly promised to give Italy certain Austro-Hungarian territories. When the Allies won, Italy received some of the promised territories, but others became part of the new Yugoslavia. The broken promises outraged Italian nationalists.
Disorders within Italy multiplied. Inspired in part by the revolution in Russia, peasants seized land, and workers went on strike or seized factories. Amid the chaos, returning veterans faced unemployment. Trade declined and taxes rose. The government, split into feuding factions, seemed powerless to end the crisis.
Into this turmoil stepped Benito Mussolini. The son of a socialist blacksmith and a teacher, Mussolini had been a socialist in his youth. During the war, however, he rejected socialism for intense nationalism. In 1919, he organized veterans and other discontented Italians into the Fascist party. They took the name from the Latin fasces, a bundle of sticks wrapped around an ax. In ancient Rome, the fasces symbolized unity and authority.
The fasces is an ancient symbol of authority and power derived from the Romans. A Roman official called a lictor carried the fasces. The elm whips could be removed from the bundle and used to punish and the ax could be used to execute thus the symbolism should be clear from the illustration.
Nonetheless, the fasces symbol appears also in some unexpected places.
Mussolini organized his supporters into “combat squads.” The squads wore black shirts to emulate an earlier nationalist revolt. These Black Shirts, or party militants, rejected the democratic process in favor of violent action. They broke up socialist rallies, smashed leftist presses, and attacked farmers’ cooperatives. Fascist gangs used intimidation and terror to oust elected officials in northern Italy. Many Italians accepted these actions because they, too, had lost faith in constitutional government.
In 1922, the Fascists made a bid for power. At a rally in Naples, they announced their intention to go to Rome to demand that the government make changes. In the March on Rome, tens of thousands of Fascists swarmed towards the capital. Fearing civil war, King Victor Emmanuel III asked Mussolini to form a government as prime minister. Mussolini entered the city triumphantly on October 30, 1922. He thus obtained a nominally legal, constitutional appointment from the king to lead Italy.
People in History
Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini — History.com Video, (2:36)
For a quarter of a century, Italy is controlled by the Fascist dictator known as "I1 Duce."
Warning: some of these scenes may make some people uncomfortable; please feel free to excuse yourself from the room if need be.
http://www.history.com/videos/benito-mussolini
Benito Mussolini — History.com Video
Reference:
“Benito Mussolini,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/videos/benito-mussolini (accessed Apr 5, 2010).
The Fascist State
At first, Fascists held only a few cabinet posts in the new government. By 1925, though, Mussolini had assumed more power and taken the title Il Duce (eel doo chay), “The Leader.” He suppressed rival parties, muzzled the press, rigged elections, and replaced elected officials with Fascist supporters. In 1929, Mussolini received support from Pope Pius XI in return for recognizing Vatican City as an independent state, although the pope continued to disagree with some of Mussolini’s goals. In theory, Italy remained a parliamentary monarchy. In fact, it was a dictatorship upheld by terror. Critics were thrown into prison, forced into exile, or murdered. Secret police and propaganda bolstered the regime.
To encourage economic growth and end conflicts between owners and workers, Mussolini brought the economy under state control. However, he preserved capitalism. Under Mussolini’s corporate state, representatives of business, labor, government, and the Fascist party controlled industry, agriculture, and trade. Mussolini’s system favored the upper classes and industrial leaders. Although production increased, success came at the expense of workers. They were forbidden to strike, and their wages were kept low.
In Mussolini’s new system, loyalty to the state replaced conflicting individual goals. To Fascists, the glorious state was all-important, and the individual was unimportant except as a member of the state. Men, women, and children were bombarded with slogans glorifying the state and Mussolini. “Believe! Obey! Fight!” loudspeakers blared and posters proclaimed. Men were urged to be ruthless, selfless warriors fighting for the glory of Italy. Women were pushed out of paying jobs. Instead, Mussolini called on women to “win the battle of motherhood.” Those who bore more than 14 children were given a medal by Il Duce himself.
Shaping the young was a major Fascist goal. Fascist youth groups toughened children and taught them to obey strict military discipline. Boys and girls learned about the glories of ancient Rome. Young Fascists marched in torchlight parades, singing patriotic hymns and chanting, “Mussolini is always right.” By the 1930s, a generation of young soldiers stood ready to back Il Duce’s drive to expand Italian power.
The Makings of a Totalitarian State
http://www.pearsonsuccessnet.com/ebook/products/0-13-133374-7/view1_WH07A02134.pdf
Reading Check
Examining
How did Mussolini gain power in Italy?
Rare Mussolini's Speech in English! (1929 Fox Movietone Newsreel), 1:24
A New Era in the Soviet Union
Lenin's New Economic Policy
The Rise of Stalin
People in History
Joseph Stalin
Five-Year Plans
Costs of Stalin's Programs
Reading Check
Summarizing
What was Lenin's New Economic Policy
Authoritarian States in the West
Eastern Europe
Spain
Reading Check
Explaining
How did Czechoslovakia maintain its political democracy?
Ch. 17 References
The Great Depression
Photo Essay on the Great Depression
Cf. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus/tools/browser12.html
Diaries of people who lived during the Depression
Cf. http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/our_america/great_depression/
People and events of the Dust Bowl
Cf. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/dustbowl/
Original photographs from the times
Cf. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fatop1.html
Cf. Click on links to view original documents from Mussolini's life and times.
Cf. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/heroesvillains/g3/
Click on "Germany Image Gallery" for the slideshow.
Cf. http://www.worldwar2database.com/cgi-bin/slideviewer.cgi?list=preludegermany.slides
Read a detailed account of the life of Hitler
Cf. http://library.thinkquest.org/19092/hitler.html
Test yourself on how Hitler came to power
Cf. http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/lessons/riseofhitler/index.htm
Nazi propaganda posters: Election, Sower of peace, 'One People, One Nation, One Leader,' Saving for a Volkswagen, Jews, Anti-Bolshevism.
Cf. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nazi_propaganda_gallery.shtml
Soviet Russia
Stalin and Industrialization of the USSR
See original documents and learn more about Stalin's methods.
Cf. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/heroesvillains/g4/
View Soviet posters
Cf. http://www.internationalposter.com/country-primers/soviet-posters.aspx
Review Stalin's takeover of power
Cf. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/russia/stalinsact.shtml
Find out more about jazz
Cf. http://www.smithsonianjazz.org/class/whatsjazz/wij_start.asp
Be sure to consider the Ch. 16 Test Study Prep Page before Thursday.
Email to gmsmith@shanahan.org
Tuesday: p. 532, History and You (either diagram or more simply just make a list as a reference)
p. 533, Preview Questions, #1-2
p. 534, Comparing Cultures
p. 535, #1-2
Wednesday: What did John Maynard Keynes think would resolve the Great Depression?
What is the goal of a totalitarian state?
Geography Skills, p. 541, #1
How did Mussolini gain power in Italy?
Thursday: Geography Skills, p. 544, #1-2
What was Lenin's New Economic Policy
Friday: How did Czechoslovakia maintain its political democracy?
p. 546, #2
