Ww2

• Dictatorship


  Not new, but modern totalitarian state was
• Countries that went to fascism between the wars

  • Italy
  • Germany
• Countries that remained democratic between the wars

  • France
  • Great Britain
• Modern totalitarian state


  • Led by a single leader and a single party
  • Rejected liberal ideal of limited government power
  • Individual freedom was to be subordinated
• Modern totalitarian state


  • Had active loyalty goal whether it be war
  • Used modern mass propaganda techniques and high speed communications to conquer minds
  • Sought control of everything
• Modern tech


  Gave total states unprecedented police controls to enforce their wishes on their subjects
• Benito Mussolini


  • Established the first successful fascist movements in Europe
  • Veteran who had established new political group League of combat
  • Got support from middle class fearful of working class agitation
  • Threatened to march on Rome if not given power, made prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel
• Mussolini establishing fascist dictatorship

  1. Prime minister made head of government, given power to legislate by decree

  2. Government given power to dissolve political and cultural associations

  3. Mussolini ruled Italy as Il Duce (the leader)

  4. Fascists attempted to exercise control over all forms of mass media
• Hitler


  • Small rightist party leader who attempted to seize power in southern Germany
  • Went to Munich after WW1 and decided to enter politics
  • Joined and became leader of German Workers Party, later renamed Nazi party
  • Staged an armed uprising against the government and went to jail
  • Wrote Mein Kampf in jail, outlining his movement's ideology of extreme German nationalism, anti-semitism, and anti-communism linked by social darwinian theory of struggle
  • Realized the Nazis had to come to power by constitutional means when released from jail
  • Reorganized the Nazi Party and competed for votes, became largest party in Germany
• Germany's economic difficulties


  Were crucial to Hitler's rise
• Hitler


  • Promised he would create a free class of differences
  • Increasingly right-wing elites came to see him as the man with mass support to establish an authoritarian regime that would save Germany and prevent communist takeover
  • Became chancellor of Germany, new government created
  • Laid foundations of Nazi takeover, allowed government to pass laws without consent of German parliament
  • Acted quickly to bring all institutions under Nazi control, purged Jews and democrats and sent them to concentration camps
  • Established a totalitarian state, became der Fuhrer (sole ruler)
  • Felt real task was to develop the total state, with the goal of developing an Aryan racial state that would dominate
• Nazi pursuit of total state ideal

  1. Economically, used public works projects and grants to "help" grow Germany

  2. Used instruments of terror, Gestapo under Heinrich Himmler came to control police and secret police forces, murdered people and had execution squads

  3. Himmler's primary goal for the SS was to further the "Aryan" master race

  4. Impact on women - they were to bear children and help create the new race
• Nazis announced new racial laws which led to the discrimination of German Jews
• Night of Shattered Glass was the more violent phase of anti-Jewish activity
• Jews were barred from owning or working in any retail store
• Joseph Stalin


  • Made a shift in economics, announced 5-year plan to transform Soviet Union from agrarian to industrial country
  • Rapid industrialization accompanied by equally rapid collectivization of agriculture, goal was to eliminate private farms
  • Strengthened the Communist Party bureaucracy under his control, anyone who resisted was sent to Siberia
  • Purged army officers, diplomats, and more, 8 million arrested and millions died in labor camps, making him one of the greatest mass murderers in history
• Great Depression brought an end to the stability of the immediate post-war years
• Japan


  • Military grew in influence in the political hierarchy
  • Extreme military organization terrorized society, assassinated business men and public figures
  • Influence of military and extreme nationalists over the government steadily increased, even as national elections continued
• Junior army officers led a coup in Japan
• WW2 begins with ideas from Hitler due to his beliefs of the Aryan race
• Hitler


  • Thought Germany needed more land to support larger population, responded to Treaty of Versailles by creating an air force and expanding the army
  • Gained allies with Mussolini, they came up with agreements due to common fascist beliefs
  • Threatened Austria and coerced the chancellor into putting Austrian Nazis in charge, formally annexed Austria to Germany
  • Demanded the cession of the Sudetenland to Germany, Britain, France, and Italy arranged the Munich Agreement to meet his demands
  • Occupied all of Czechoslovakia while Slovakia became a puppet state
  • Demanded the return of Danzig to Germany, Britain offered to protect Poland, Hitler negotiated a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union which gave him freedom to attack Poland
• Germany and Japan concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact and agreed to maintain a common front against Communism
• Germany invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany
• Japan

  • Maintained a strong military and economic presence in Manchuria, launched a coup to bring about complete takeover
  • Steadily strengthened control over Manchuria and expanded, clashed with Chinese troops, Chiang Kai-shek formed a united front against Japan
  • Seized China's capital of Nanjing but Chiang refused to surrender, strategists hoped to force Chiang to join a Japan-dominated new order in Asia
  • Cooperated with Nazi Germany, eventually created a plan to attack the Soviet Union and divide up resources
  • Attacked American and European colonies in Asia in the hope of a quick victory that would kick the US out of the region
• Blitzkrieg


  • Hitler's lightning war tactic, armored columns supported by airplanes quickly broke through enemy lines, infantry then moved in to hold conquered territory
  • Used against Poland, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, and France, splitting the Allied armies and trapping the French at Dunkirk
• Germany was now in control of most of Europe but Britain still had not been defeated
• Hitler


  • Realized invasion of Britain would only be possible through the air, launched a major offensive by the Luftwaffe against British air and naval bases
  • British fought back with radar support, rebuilt their air strength and inflicted major losses on the Luftwaffe, Hitler lost the Battle of Britain and postponed the invasion
• Hitler didn't want to fight a two-front war, was convinced Britain was fighting back only because it expected Soviet support
• German invasion of the Soviet Union

  • Massive 1800-mile long attack, German troops advanced rapidly capturing Soviet soldiers, one army group swept through Ukraine
  • Winter and Soviet resistance brought a halt to the German advance, German armies were stopped
• Hitler's declaration of war on the US turned the European conflict into a global war
• Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor


  • Also launched attacks on the Philippines and advanced towards the British colony of Malaya, invaded the Dutch East Indies and occupied many islands
  • Declared the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, placed the occupied countries under wartime rule to access their resources for Japan's war machine
• Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized American opinion and won broad support for Roosevelt's war policy
• Hitler declared war on the US four days after Pearl Harbor, believing US involvement in the Pacific would render it ineffective in the European theater
• The rise of dictatorships in the 1930s had a great deal to do with the coming of WW2
• By 1939, only two major states in Europe, France and Great Britain, remained democratic
• Italy and Germany had succumbed to the political movement called fascism, and Soviet Russia under Stalin moved toward repressive totalitarianism
• A host of other European states and Latin American countries adopted authoritarian structures of various kinds, while a militarist regime in Japan moved that country down the path to war
• Dictatorship


  Not new, but the modern totalitarian state was
• Totalitarian regimes


  • Greatly extended the functions and power of the central state
  • Expected the active loyalty goal, whether it be war, a socialist society, or a thousand-year Reich (empire)
  • Used modern mass propaganda techniques and high-speed communications to conquer the minds and hearts of their subjects
  • Sought to control not only the economic, political, and social aspects of life but the intellectual and cultural aspects as well
• Modern totalitarian state


  • Led by a single leader and a single party
  • Ruthlessly rejected the liberal ideal of limited government power and constitutional guarantees of individual freedoms
  • Individual freedom was to be subordinated to the collective will of the masses, organized and determined for them by the leader or leaders