LINKS

The Depression and the 
Rise of Totalitarianism

During the 1930s, Adolf Hitler began the process of rebuilding the beleaguered German army. By the end of the decade, German forces once again stood ready for battle.

From the ashes of WWI arose a new international political and economic system. Runaway inflation devastated Germany. Reparations mandated by the Treaty of Versailles led a desperate government to print excess marks. As a result, German savings accounts were wiped out. Many families took wheelbarrows of money to the market only to return with an armful of groceries. Right-wing and left-wing extremism was on the rise. Despite the promise of its liberal constitution, Germany's Weimar Republic was a "candle burning at both ends."

The U.S. Congress did approve the 1924 Dawes Plan, which helped to stabilize the European economy. The United States lent money to Germany, which could then pay reparations to Britain and France. Britain and France could then repay their war debts to the United States. The cycle of debt ultimately depended upon a stable U.S. economy.

The Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that ensued ended hopes of recovery. Many American. banks ran out of money. Germans and Austrians could not pay their reparations to England and France, and the English and French defaulted on their loans. And after the U.S. Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, trade barriers arose again. European nations established protective tariffs to help their economies rebound, and trade suffered as a result. Industrial production plummeted and unemployment soared.

Benito Mussolini became the fascist dictator of Italy in 1922 by harnessing the economic frustration of the Italian people. His regime, which was rife with propaganda, violence, and terror, would rule until 1943.

The depression spread throughout Europe and ruined any hope of Germany staying on a moderate course. As Nazi groups battled communists in the streets, Adolf Hitler used the economic crisis to seize power. He both tapped into dormant militaristic and anti-Semitic German traditions and exploited the past memory of the Versailles Treaty and the raging depression to present a future of a resurrected Germany.

The trauma of World War I and the Great Depression led to the emergence of fascist or totalitarian political movements in Italy, Germany, Spain, and the Soviet Union. Leaders such as Benito Mussolini of Italy, Hitler of Germany, Francisco Franco of Spain, and Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union constructed police states that exerted enormous influence on most or all sectors of society — economic, social, political, and religious.

These states worshiped the "cult of the leader." Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco were all seen as strong dictators who could protect their countries from communist infiltrators and corrupt liberals. Mussolini and Hitler in particular employed new political strategies to mobilize public support, introducing propaganda techniques distributed through new mass media such as radio broadcasts, billboards, newsreels, and mass rallies.

Colorful and dramatic posters appeared all over Spain during its Civil War in an effort to spur resistance against fascism. This poster reads: "This is fascism! Misery, destruction, persecution, and death."

Stalin took the reins of power after Lenin's death in 1924, and constructed a totalitarian state in which the Communist party controlled virtually every aspect of Soviet life. Although Stalin disagreed with fascist philosophy, he mirrored their propaganda techniques to mobilize the Soviet people.

The Spanish Civil War revealed an ideological split between fascists and communists that would carry into World War II. In Spain, the fascist Falange (phalanx) Party was founded in 1933 in response to rising socialist political power. When civil war broke out in 1936, Spain became the epicenter of rising European tensions. The war pitted the rebellious Nationalists against the leftist Popular Front government, which Stalin supported. Italy and Germany supported the Nationalists' leader, General Francisco Franco, and used the war to test new weapons and strategies against their hated communist enemies from Russia.

The Spanish Civil War signaled the further erosion of European stability. The League of Nations proved unable to defuse the crisis in Spain. It had also done nothing about Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 or Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.

During the Spanish Civil War, Italy and Germany formed a loose alliance called the Axis powers. Europe was once again choosing sides and forming alliances. After Hitler initiated German remilitarization, British and French diplomats attempted to appease him in 1938, allowing him to unite with Austria and annex the Sudetanland of Czechoslovakia. As 1938 came to an end, an anxious Europe waited for Hitler's next move.

Mussolini's Italy

Hitler's Rise to Power

"Stalin took the bird by its legs and slowly, one by one, he plucked all the feathers from the bird's little body. Then he opened his palm. The bird was laying there naked, shivering, helpless..."

The International Brigades hoped to "make Madrid the tomb of fascism." Did they?

By 1935, Jews and others were considered "enemies of the people" according to the racist and anti-Semetic Nazi policies and were forced to wear badges stating their status.