A New Era in the Soviet Union
Lenin's New Economic Policy
Soviet animated propaganda 1924 (Lenin's Kino Pravda), 4:54
The Rise of Stalin
Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, 1:57
In addition to tactics like the Terror Famine, Stalin’s Communist party used secret police, torture, and violent purges to ensure obedience. Stalin tightened his grasp on every aspect of Soviet life, even stamping out any signs of dissent within the Communist elites.
Stalin ruthlessly used terror as a weapon against his own people. He perpetrated crimes against humanity and systematically violated his people’s individual rights. Police spies did not hesitate to open private letters or plant listening devices. Nothing appeared in print without official approval. There was no free press, and no safe method of voicing protest. Grumblers or critics were rounded up and sent to the Gulag, a system of brutal labor camps, where many died.
People in History
Joseph Stalin
Stalin (trailer), 1:29
Stalin's rise from obscure revolutionary to feared leader of Russia is documented in vivid detail in this outstanding, critically acclaimed docudrama.
Five-Year Plans
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.
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.
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.
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.
Spain
Reading Check
Explaining
How did Czechoslovakia maintain its political democracy?
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
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.
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.
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.
Reading Check
Explaining
What factors helped the Nazi Party to gain power in Germany?
Victory of Nazism
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
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/
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
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
www.1938movie.com
'1938' is available for public viewing.
'1938' is about a young German soldier named Albert Werner stationed in Austria just before the war.
Like any young soldier, Albert wants to do the right thing and serve his country well - but he soon learns that the only enemy he will be fighting are his morals, as he gets caught up in a whole world of revenge, prejudice and bitter hatred.
BACKGROUND:
1938 marked the year that Hitler made his first military move as leader of Nazi Germany.
Tensions in Austria were mounting as the people decided whether or not to join forces with their old ally.
The Austrian Chancellor attempted to hold a vote in March to decide the fate of Austria, but the Austrian Nazi party formed a takeover before it could begin, leading the way for German troops to march across the border and claim Austria for the Führer.
Hitler was declared leader overnight, without a single shot ever being fired.
When questions were asked about the legality of the takeover, the Nazis held another vote where they were awarded 99.73% in favour, to prove their right to command Austria.
The Germans had moved the first piece in the chess-game of the Second World War.|
INFO:
'1938' was filmed in 2009, directed by George Eastmead.
The film was shot on location in AUSTRIA and ENGLAND.
Albert Werner - Alex Bland
Peter - Peter Barfield
Johan - Eddie Rex
The Austrian - John Horgan
Music in the film is under the Creative Commons licence and is attributed to Jason Shaw: http://www.youtube.com/audionautix/
"1938" Copyright © 2009 George Eastmead. All Rights Reserved.
Nazi Germany Anschluss with Austria, 1938.
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 from the BBC:
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
Email to gmsmith@shanahan.org
Tuesday: p. 546, #6, #7 can simply be a list instead of a diagram.
