G. Mick Smith, PhD: Honors World History II: 29 April 2011

Friday, April 29, 2011

Honors World History II: 29 April 2011

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Cf. http://shanawiki.wikispaces.com/Honors+World+History+II+Chapter+16+Section+2+Quiz+Prep+Page+Spring+2011

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Cf. http://shanawiki.wikispaces.com/Honors+World+History+II+Chapter+16+Section+1+Quiz+Prep+Page+Spring+2011

Cf. http://moodle.catholicschools-phl.org

Cf. http://www.cueprompter.com/

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Click on the words "Access e-Inquirer" located on the gray toolbar underneath the green locker on the opening page.
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Cf. http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en

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Cf. http://moodle.catholicschools-phl.org

Cf. http://www.cueprompter.com/

Cf. http://ant.umn.edu/vae.php

Cf. http://moodle.catholicschools-phl.org

Chapter 17 The West Between the Wars 1919-1939

Section 2 The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes

Five-Year Plans

With a partner, answer the following.

Stalin's Five Year Plans, 5:01

Why did Stalin pursue Five Year Plans?
When was the first Five Year Plan?
What kind of system did Stalin promote?
Who opposed Stalin?
What was Stalin's solution?
What did Stalin do to the Kulaks?
What was produced in the second Five Year Plan?
Why are the figures suspect?
What was the focus of the third Five Year Plan?
What are some assessments of Stalin?

The first Five Year Plan was launched in 1928, the second in 1932 and the third in 1937. Each plan laid out targets for industrial production. Targets were set for each factory in the USSR, every shift of workers and even for every individual worker.

The plans aimed at producing a surplus. Production targets were set very high to give the workers something to aim for. If workers did not achieve their targets, they were punished. Desperate factory managers fiddled the books or committed suicide as the pressure to produce more and more became too great. If the workers succeeded in reaching targets, they might be rewarded with increased wages. But usually their targets were increased as well.

Each year Stalin's government produced a report on progress. These reports were made available for foreign governments to see how successful communism was. Stalin was careful not to publicize any failures to the rest of the world. The picture that emerged from the USSR during the 1930s was one of success.

It is clear that production greatly increased and new factories, dams, railways and roads were built. However, there were problems with wastage and inefficiency in the plans. Official figures were exaggerated or gave only a partial picture of the targets met, so it is difficult to know the extent to which production increased.

Costs of Stalin's Programs

Even though Stalin’s power was absolute, he still feared that rival party leaders were plotting against him. In 1934, he launched the Great Purge. During this reign of terror, Stalin and his secret police cracked down especially on Old Bolsheviks, or party activists from the early days of the revolution. His net soon widened to target army heroes, industrial managers, writers, and ordinary citizens. They were charged with a wide range of crimes, from counterrevolutionary plots to failure to meet production quotas.

Trotsky, the hero of the Russian Revolution, was for years venerated like a saint.

For him the October Revolution and the civil war were merely stages on the way to his real aim: the world revolution.

Trotsky's last office: this is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.

The most famous incident of the Great Purge occurred on 20 August 1940, when Trotsky was attacked in his home in Mexico with an ice axe (not an ice pick as is often stated) by undercover NKVD agent Ramón Mercader.

With a partner, answer the following.

The Assassination of Leon Trotsky, 2:40

Who conspired against Trotsky?
What happened between Mercader and Trotsky?
What did Trotsky do after the attack?
How long afterwards did he die?
What happened to his assassin?

On August 20, 1940, Trotsky was successfully attacked in his home by a NKVD agent, Ramón Mercader, who drove the pick of an ice axe into Trotsky's skull.

The blow was poorly delivered and failed to kill Trotsky instantly, as Mercader had intended. Witnesses stated that Trotsky spat on Mercader and began struggling fiercely with him. Hearing the commotion, Trotsky's bodyguards burst into the room and nearly killed Mercader, but Trotsky stopped them, shouting, "Do not kill him! This man has a story to tell." Trotsky was taken to a hospital, operated on, and survived for more than a day, dying at the age of 60 on August 21, 1940 as a result of severe brain damage.

According to James P. Cannon, the secretary of the Socialist Workers Party (USA), Trotsky's last words were "I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before."

The blow was poorly delivered and failed to kill Trotsky instantly, as Mercader had intended. Witnesses stated that Trotsky spat on Mercader and began struggling fiercely with him. Hearing the commotion, Trotsky's bodyguards burst into the room and nearly killed Mercader, but Trotsky stopped them, laboriously stating that the assassin should be made to answer questions. Trotsky was taken to a hospital, operated on, and survived for more than a day, dying at the age of 60 on 21 August 1940 as a result of severe brain damage. Mercader later testified at his trial:

I laid my raincoat on the table in such a way as to be able to remove the ice axe which was in the pocket. I decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself. The moment Trotsky began reading the article, he gave me my chance; I took out the ice axe from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed, dealt him a terrible blow on the head.

According to James P. Cannon, the secretary of the Socialist Workers Party (USA), Trotsky's last words were "I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before."

Trotsky's assassination was indicative of the brutality and ruthlessness of Stalin.

Between 1936 and 1938, Stalin staged a series of spectacular public “show trials” in Moscow. Former Communist leaders confessed to all kinds of crimes after officials tortured them or threatened their families or friends. Many of the purged party members were never tried but were sent straight to the Gulag. Secret police files reveal that at least four million people were purged during the Stalin years. Some historians estimate the toll to be much greater.

The purges increased Stalin’s power. All Soviet citizens were now well aware of the consequences of disloyalty. However, Stalin’s government also paid a price. Among the purged were experts in industry, economics, and engineering, and many of the Soviet Union’s most talented writers and thinkers. The victims included most of the nation’s military leaders and about half of its military officers, a loss that would weigh heavily on Stalin in 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

With a partner, answer the following.

Reading Check

Summarizing

What was Lenin's New Economic Policy?

Authoritarian States in the West
Like Germany, most new nations in Eastern Europe slid from democratic to authoritarian rule in the postwar era. In 1919, a dozen countries were carved out of the old Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and German empires. Although they differed from one another in important ways, they faced some common problems. They were small countries whose rural, agricultural economies lacked capital to develop industry. Social and economic inequalities separated poor peasants from wealthy landlords. None had much experience with the democratic process. Further complicating the situation, tensions leftover from World War I hindered economic cooperation between countries. Each country in the region tried to be independent of its neighbors, which hurt all of them. The region was hit hard by the Great Depression.

Eastern Europe

Old rivalries between ethnic and religious groups created severe tensions. In Czechoslovakia, Czechs and Slovaks were unwilling partners. Serbs dominated the new state of Yugoslavia, but restless Slovenes and Croats living there pressed for independence. In Poland, Hungary, and Romania, conflict flared among various ethnic groups.

Economic problems and ethnic tensions contributed to instability, which in turn helped fascist rulers gain power. In Hungary, military strongman Nicholas Horthy (hawr tay) overthrew a Communist-led government in 1919. By 1926, the military hero Joseph Pilsudski (peel soot skee) had taken control over Poland. Eventually, right-wing dictators emerged in every Eastern European country except Czechoslovakia and Finland. Like Hitler, these dictators promised order and won the backing of the military and wealthy. They also turned to anti-Semitism, using Jews as scapegoats for many national problems. Meanwhile, strong, aggressive neighbors eyed these small, weak states of Eastern Europe as tempting targets.

With a partner, answer the following.

Spain

Reading Check

Explaining

How did Czechoslovakia maintain its political democracy?

Preview

Section 3 Hitler and Nazi Germany, Preview

Section 3 Hitler and Nazi Germany
Adolf Hitler, a failed student and artist, built up a small racist, anti-Semitic political party in Germany after World War I. Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch failed. In prison, he wrote Mein Kampf—an account of his movement and his views. As democracy broke down, right-wing elites looked to Hitler for leadership. In 1933 Hitler became chancellor. Amid constant chaos and conflict, Hitler used terror and repression to gain totalitarian control. Meanwhile, a massive rearmament program put Germans back to work. Mass demonstrations and spectacles rallied Germans around Hitler's policies. All major institutions were brought under Nazi control. Women's primary role was to bear Aryan children. Hitler's Nuremberg Laws established official persecution of Jews. A more violent anti-Semitic phase began in 1938 with a destructive rampage against Jews and the deportation of thousands to concentration camps. Increasingly drastic steps barred Jews from attending school, earning a living, or engaging in Nazi society.

Weimar:

Cf.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/germany/weimaract.shtml

Nazis:

Cf.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/germany/nazisact.shtml

Information on Nazi Germany, Hitler

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

Hitler and His Views Cf. http://www.pearsonsuccessnet.com/snpapp/iText/products/0-13-133374-7/audio.html?fname=audio/audio_WH07Y03252.mov

With a partner, answer the following.

Note Taking
Reading and Listening Skills: Identify Main Ideas

As you read and listen to this section of material, summarize the section’s main ideas in a flowchart like the one below.

Hitler depicted with a member of a Nazi youth organization

In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party brought hope to Germans suffering from the Great Depression. On the dark side of Hitler’s promises was a message of hate, aimed particularly at Jews. A German Jewish woman recalls an attack on her family during Kristallnacht, a night in early November 1938 when Nazi mobs attacked Jewish homes and businesses.

“They broke our windowpanes, and the house became very cold. . . . We were standing there, outside in the cold, still in our night clothes, with only a coat thrown over. . . . Then they made everyone lie face down on the ground . . . ‘Now, they will shoot us,’ we thought. We were very afraid.”

In 1923, as you may have read, Hitler made a failed attempt to seize power in Munich. He was arrested and found guilty of treason. While in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”). It would later become the basic book of Nazi goals and ideology.

Mein Kampf reflected Hitler’s obsessions—extreme nationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism. Germans, he said, belonged to a superior “master race” of Aryans, or light-skinned Europeans, whose greatest enemies were the Jews. Hitler’s ideas were rooted in a long tradition of anti-Semitism. In the Middle Ages, Christians persecuted Jews because of their different beliefs. The rise of nationalism in the 1800s caused people to identify Jews as ethnic outsiders. Hitler viewed Jews not as members of a religion but as a separate race. (He defined a Jew as anyone with one Jewish grandparent.) Echoing a familiar right-wing theme, he blamed Germany’s defeat in World War I on a conspiracy of Marxists, Jews, corrupt politicians, and business leaders.

In his recipe for revival, Hitler urged Germans everywhere to unite into one great nation. Germany must expand, he said, to gain Lebensraum (lay buns rowm), or living space, for its people. Slavs and other inferior races must bow to Aryan needs. To achieve its greatness, Germany needed a strong leader, or Führer (fyoo rur). Hitler was determined to become that leader.

With a partner, answer the following.

Reading Check

Summarizing

What main ideas does Hitler express in his book Mein Kampf?

Rise of Nazism

Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in 1889. When he was 18, he went to Vienna, then the capital of the multinational Hapsburg empire. German Austrians made up just one of many ethnic groups in Vienna. Yet they felt superior to Jews, Serbs, Poles, and other groups. While living in Vienna, Hitler developed the fanatical anti-Semitism, or prejudice against Jewish people, that would later play a major role in his rise to power.

Hitler went to Germany and fought in the German army during World War I. In 1919, he joined a small group of right-wing extremists. Like many ex-soldiers, he despised the Weimar government, which he saw as weak. Within a year, he was the unquestioned leader of the National Socialist German Workers, or Nazi, party. Like Mussolini, Hitler organized his supporters into fighting squads. Nazi “storm troopers” fought in the streets against their political enemies.

As a boy, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) became obsessed with Germany’s 1871 victory in the Franco–Prussian War. “The great historic struggle would become my greatest spiritual experience,” he later wrote. “I became more and more enthusiastic about everything . . . connected with war.”

In school, young Hitler was known as a ringleader. One of his teachers recalled, “He demanded of his fellow pupils their unqualified obedience.” He failed to finish high school and was later crushed when he was rejected by art school.

After his attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government, for which he was in prison for less than a year, Hitler was released. He soon renewed his table-thumping speeches. The Great Depression played into Hitler’s hands. As unemployment rose, Nazi membership grew to almost a million. Hitler’s program appealed to veterans, workers, the lower middle classes, small-town Germans, and business people alike. He promised to end reparations, create jobs, and defy the Versailles treaty by rearming Germany.

Inflation Rocks Germany

A man uses German marks to paper his wall because it costs less than buying wallpaper. At the height of the inflation, it would have taken 84,000 fifty-million mark notes like the one below, to equal a single American dollar. Why would inflation hit middle class people with modest savings hard?

With the government paralyzed by divisions, both Nazis and Communists won more seats in the Reichstag, or lower house of the legislature. Fearing the growth of communist political power, conservative politicians turned to Hitler. Although they despised him, they believed they could control him. Thus, with conservative support, Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933 through legal means under the Weimar constitution.

Within a year, Hitler was dictator of Germany. He and his supporters suspended civil rights, destroyed the socialists and Communists, and disbanded other political parties. Germany became a one-party state. Like Stalin in Russia, Hitler purged his own party, brutally executing Nazis he felt were disloyal. Nazis learned that Hitler demanded unquestioning obedience.

After Hitler came to power, he used his elite guard of storm troopers to terrorize his opponents. But when he felt his power threatened, Hitler had leaders of the storm troopers murdered during the “Night of the Long Knives” on June 30, 1934.

With a partner, answer the following.

Reading Check

Explaining

What factors helped the Nazi Party to gain power in Germany?

Victory of Nazism

With a partner, answer the following.

Reading Check

Examining

Why was the Enabling Act important to Hitler's success in controlling Germany?

The Nazi State

The State and Terror

Economic Policies

Spectacles and Organizations

Women and Nazism

Anti-Semitic Policies

With a partner, answer the following.

Reading Check

Summarizing

What steps did Hitler take to establish a Nazi totalitarian state in Germany?

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

How To Take Effective Notes

References

Chapter 17 References

The BBC on Weimar:

Cf. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/germany/weimaract.shtml

The BBC on Nazis:

Cf. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/germany/nazisact.shtml

Wagner - RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES - Furtwangler, 5:09

The Ride of the Valkyries, by Richard Wagner, in a classic recording with Wilhelm Furtwangler and the Vienna Philharmonic. Illustrations are by Arthur Rackham.

The music: probably the most famous and instantly identifiable of Wagner's works is this short orchestral prelude from Die Walkure, the second opera in the monumental Der Ring des Nibelungen. It has gone on to enter popular culture, being used in many films, most notably the helicopter attack sequence in Apocalypse Now. In terms of composition it perfectly demonstrates Wagner's epic sense of drama, and also his masterful orchestration.

The conductor: Wilhelm Furtwangler is probably unrivalled as an interpreter of the core Austro-German Romantic repertoire, setting benchmarks in the performance of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner and others. His recordings include two complete Ring Cycles, both of them classics.

The illustrations: Arthur Rackham was one of the greatest illustrators at the turn of the 19th century, creating classic visions for fairy tales and fantasies (Alice, Peter Pan, etc.).

His work on Der Ring des Nibelungen is often considered one of the finest visual depictions of Wagner's epic.