European Dictators

• The Locarno Treaties - 1925 - had only settled the western borders of Germany. the borders on the east were vulnerable if Germany wanted to expand - people wanted strong leaders to protect them
• The Depression still affected most countries, causing widespread unemployment and poverty. People welcomed strong governments who promised to put things right
• Democracy was often blamed for the bad conditions - democratic governments seemed unable to prevent them happening or to improve the situation
• communism was seen as a threat to all of Europe after the russian revolution in 1917 - people looked to strong leaders to fight the threat of a worldwide communist revolution
• france was still suspicious of germany and was building strong defences behind its border with Germany - many Germans felt they needed a strong leader against what they saw as a French threat
• disarmament failed - most countries refused to disarm to the same level as Germany in 1932. Germany saw this as unfair and became determined to rebuild its armed forces
• the situation wasn't made any easier by the continued isolationism of the USA. The USA stayed out of world affairs, and Britain and France weren't strong enough to oppose the large numbers of foreign dictators
• Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933
• Hitler then established a dictatorship. He governed without a parliament, banned trade unions and opposition parties, and used violence and terror against his opponents. By August 1934, he called himself the Fuhrer - the leader
• Hitler's foreign policy:

  • he wanted the Treaty of Versailles to be overturned. Hitler hated the treaty, which he saw as unfairly weakening Germany
  • he wanted rearmament. Germany had been forced to reduce its armed forces under the ToV. Hitler wanted Germany to be a strong military power
  • he wanted all German-speaking peoples to be united in a German Reich. This would mean annexing Austria and taking territory from Poland and Czechoslovakia. This was known as Grossdeutschland
  • he wanted to expand Germany's territory by taking land from people he saw as inferior; this is known as Lebensraum