1939...LET THE BATTLES BEGIN!

1939 was an incredibly active year as far as World War II was concerned.  Hitler and his Nazi Party had not only managed to almost double the size of Germany by annexing Austria and taking over the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, he had managed to do this WITHOUT any interference from Great Britain, France, or the League of Nations.  In fact, Great Britain and France had played key roles in essentially GIVING him the Sudetenland.  Now, all that remained between Hitler and his desire to control Europe was Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Despite the fact that Great Britain, France, and many other countries had taken a position of appeasement toward Hitler and the Nazis, this did not mean that they were completely blind.  In fact, they knew something was up...they just didn't want to go to war over it.  So, in an effort to put more pressure on Hitler to just stop where he was at and to rein in the Nazi expansionism that was going on, Great Britain and France tried to form an alliance with Stalin and the Soviet Union.  In fact, Great Britain and France had been trying, unsuccessfully, to court Stalin's favor for a couple of years, but they were always turned away.

Hitler managed to do what Great Britain and France could not do....

In August of 1939, Hitler announced that he and Stalin had reached an agreement which is now referred to as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in which the two countries came up with a plan to conquer, and then divide, the lands that were owned by Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Finland.  Nobody knew all of the details of the pact until after the fact, but nobody believed this could be a good thing, either. 

Now, make no mistake...Hitler and Stalin hated each other and didn't trust each other, but Stalin had been watching what had been going on in Central Europe and he knew that Hitler's goal was to attack Russia.  As such, Stalin's two options pretty much boiled down to:

      1.  Form an alliance with Great Britain and end up fighting Hitler for control of Poland....

                                                                          OR

     2.   Form an alliance with Hitler, get half of Poland, and gain time to build up his own army...


The decision was pretty easy for Stalin.  By negotiating with Hitler, not only would Stalin gain back much of the territory Russia had lost following World War I, he would also not have to worry about Hitler invading the Soviet Union. 

Hitler:  "The scum of the earth, I believe?"  Stalin:  "The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?" 

Of course, Stalin had no way of knowing that Hitler had no intentions of keeping his word as far as not invading the Soviet Union...but Stalin likely didn't plan on being 100% honest either, so this "friendship" was likely doomed from the start.

Many historians point to this pact between the Nazis and the Soviets as the final straw as far as ushering in World War II.  The main reasons are that the Pact:

1. Freed up Hitler to invade Poland because he knew that Britain couldn't do anything to defend Poland, and he invaded the country just nine days later.
2. Ended Britain's hopes of an alliance with Russia to stop Hitler; people in Britain realised that nothing would stop Hitler now but war.
3. Improved morale of British people for war because the Pact showed Hitler as an opportunist and a trickster, who could never be trusted.

BLITZKREIG!

On September 1, 1939, the second world war was essentially started as Germany invaded Poland. 

Hitler used a quick strike method which he called blitzkreig or "lightning war" to make rapid offensive advances into Poland.  This was a new military tactic using fast-moving aircraft, tanks, and infantry forces in surprise attacks against the opposition with overwhelming force. 

Hitler sent nearly 1.5 million troops to the Polish border and attacked from the north, south, and west.  The first attack was an airstrike at 4:40 a.m. by the Luftwaffe against the Polish city of Wielun, in which 75% of the city was destroyed and nearly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed. 

Wielun after the German airstrike in 1939.

At 4:45 a.m., a German battleship launched an attack in the Baltic Sea against the Free City of Danzig (sort of its own city-state kind of thing), and by 8:00 a.m. the German infantry had engaged in undeclared war against Poland near the border town of Mokra.

Britain and France Declare War on Germany

Following the invasion of Poland by Germany, Great Britain and France felt they had no choice but to abandon their policy of appeasement.  On September 3, 1939, both countries declared war on Hitler's Third Reich, breaking the Munich Agreement.  However, the Brits and French made no impact on the German invasion of Poland and, as a result, many Poles felt abandoned by the rest of Europe as they scrambled to defend themselves.

The Soviets Enter the War

Phase Two of the Polish invasion began on September 17, 1939, when roughly 800,000 Soviet Red Army forces invaded from the east, holding up their end of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. The Red Army cut off any chance of a Polish retreat and reorganize along the Romanian border. 

Polish Royal Castle at Warsaw on fire following Nazi bombing...

The Polish people attempted to defend themselves, but it was of little use, being crushed between the two military giants. By October 6, 1939, Poland's last forces had to surrender, prompting Hitler to declare in a speech in Danzig, "Poland never will rise again in the form of the Versailles Treaty. That is guaranteed not only by Germany...but by Russia." 

On October 8, Germany annexed its portion of Poland into the Third Reich.

APPEASEMENT and HITLER'S DOMINATION OF EUROPE

How, in fewer than 25 years, did Europe go from looking like this:

with all countries separate and supporting their own boundaries, to this:

a huge mess of countries in the Axis alliance or under control of the Axis?  How did the Soviet Union lose all that territory?  What happened in Northern Africa? 

To find the answers, we have to go back to the outcome of World War I, and specifically look at the cost of the War, both financially and in terms of human loss of life.  Billions of dollars of damage were caused, especially in France, Belgium, Great Britain, and Germany, and over 9 million people died, with estimates of the injured ranging from 10 to 20 million more people!  Most countries simply no longer had the desire to fight.  Great Britain was at the front of the list of countries who were, at this point, willing to do almost anything to stay out of another war.  This attitude became the British policy that is known as appeasement:  doing whatever is necessary to soothe or pacify another country that may be trying to start another war.

Hitler knew this....

Now, remember that as part of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had huge restrictions placed on their military, and Germany and Austria were forbidden to join together to become one massive super-powered country.  Hitler wanted to see just how far he could push the boundaries of the Treaty, so he began to rebuild his military...and then let Great Britain know about it!  In 1935, he all but told England that he had rebuilt an air force (the German Luftwaffe).  As Hitler had predicted, Great Britain, France, and the League of Nations did practically nothing (some people claim they already knew the air force existed but didn't want to anger Hitler so they never brought it up).  So...since he had been given this much rope, Hitler decided to take more, and he built up his army to nearly half a million men (remember, Germany had been restricted to an army of just 100,000 men by the Treaty of Versailles).  Still, no major response from the two countries Hitler was most concerned about, Great Britan and France. 

Now, keep in mind that while Hitler was DOING these things, he was SAYING all the right things.  Hitler had made numerous public speeches saying that he had a desire for peace and that war was foolish and would serve no purpose in the rebuilding of Germany.  He also announced that he had no intention of annexing Austria or of putting his military into the demilitarized zone along the Rhineland.  He even went so far as to say he would respect all the territorial clauses of the Versailles Treaty.  In fact, despite the fact that he openly rebuilt his air force and army, Hitler also announced that he was prepared to mutually disarm the heaviest of his weapons and limit the strength of his navy.  In one quote, Hitler stated, "Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos." 

This sure didn't sound like a man who wanted war...

But, by 1938, Hitler had become even more bold, and he went ahead and, in a move called the Anschluss, brought Austria into the Third Reich after the Austrian Nazi Party staged a coup d'etat and essentially overthrew the Austrian government.  Hitler said that he was doing this so that all of the German speaking people could be united into one country, so Britain and France, again, really didn't say a lot.  But then the people of Czechoslovakia who spoke German decided THEY wanted to be part of the Third Reich as well.  However, not all of Czechoslovakia wanted to join with Germany, so Hitler had a bit of a problem...sort of...because he didn't want to risk a war with the Soviet Union just yet, and the Czechs and Soviets were allies. 

But Britain and France did Hitler a favor because they didn't want a war to break out (appeasement again...).  Britain and France met with Hitler and his buddy, Mussolini, in what was called the Munich Conference.  At this conference, which Czechoslovakia was NOT invited to, Germany would occupy the German-speaking portion of Czechoslovakia (known as the Sudetenland), and the rest of the Czech country would be split between Poland and Hungary.  Czechoslovakia was then told they could go along with this plan...or they could face Germany by themselves, because the Soviet Union had no intention of going to war if Great Britain and France were not also involved.  Czechoslovakia agreed, which reorganized Central Europe to look like this:

At this point, Hitler told the rest of the European leaders that he had no intention of taking further lands.

He lied...

THE NORTH PLATTE CANTEEN

This memorial park is all that remains of the North Platte Canteen that operated from 

Christmas of 1941 until April 1, 1946.  During that run, more than six million servicemen and women travelled through North Platte's depot, receiving gifts of food, coffee, magazines, cards, cigarettes, and, most importantly, friendship and love.

This marker was built using bricks from the Canteen. 

"Once Upon A Town" is written about the North Platte Canteen and is available pretty much anywhere you want to buy books.

THE FINAL SOLUTION...

The term Final Solution is commonly used as part of any extensive discussion about the Holocaust during World War II.  The term refers to the Nazi plan to remove the Jewish population, not just from Germany, but from all of Europe, as the German goal was to take over as much of Europe as possible.  As far as the Nazis could determine, the "Jewish problem" could only be solved one way...total annihilation. 

As we have already started looking at, the Germans began ramping up their pressure on the Jewish population to leave Germany in a number of ways.  The Nuremburg Laws of 1935 started things off by putting serious restrictions (and consequences) on the Jews as far as how they could live their lives.  Then, in 1938, Kristallnacht stepped things up further as the Nazis began physically attacking the Jews following the killing of a Nazi party member by a Jewish youth.  Businesses were destroyed, synagogues were burned, people were killed, and thousands of Jews were rounded up and taken to concentration camps where they were pressured to promise to leave the country and, in many cases, turn over all of their possessions to the Nazi party on their way out the door.

But, believe it or not, things would get worse.

GHETTOS

In 1939, the Nazis began the wholesale relocation of the Jews to specific regions of various cities throughout Germany and German-occupied Poland called ghettos.  Roughly 1,000 of these districts were created by the Nazis so that they could isolate the Jews from the rest of the German population and keep them under constant suveilance and control.    Entire Jewish families were relocated to these ghettoes and were frequently forced to live with complete strangers in cramped, dirty, sometimes bombed-out, often fenced-in regions with the constant threat of death hanging in the air.  In the largest ghetto, the Warsaw ghetto, approximately 400,000 Jews were crowded into a section that was just 1.3 miles square; the Lodz Ghetto was the second largest, with between 150,000 and 200,000 residents.  The people in the photo above are from the Kielce Ghetto which had around 6,500 Jews.  Jews in these ghettos were required to wear either armbands or the Star of David symbols to signify that they were Jewish so they could be more easily identified by Nazi guards.  Schooling of the children in the ghettos was often banned.   There were shortages of food, medicine, and basic human necessities, so smuggling operations were not uncommon in the ghettos.  Sometimes, though not often, there were Jewish uprisings in the ghettos, with the Jewish citizenry gathering up whatever weapons they could and attempting to revolt against their Nazi captors.  These revolts rarely ended up well for the Jews, but sometimes people were able to escape the ghettos and gain at least temporary freedom. 

Lodz Ghetto

Warsaw Ghetto
To many Nazi leaders, the ghettos were becoming more of a problem than they were worth, so in 1941, the Nazis began tearing down the ghettos.  The Jews residing in the ghettos were either shot and then buried in mass graves on-site, or they were transported out, usually extermination camps. 

EXTERMINATION CAMPS



The first Nazi exetermination camp was called Chelmno.  This small camp used sealed vans as gas chambers, but with only 152,000 estimated kills at Chelmno, this method was slow and comparitively ineffective.  Later in Poland, the extermination camps either consisted of a trio known as the Operation Reinhard camps, which were Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, or the most famous (infamous) of all the camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau.  The Operation Reinhard camps accounted for the killing of more than 1.5 million Jews between 1942 and 1943, but Aushwitz-Birkenau, the largest of all the extermination camps, managed to be worse.  By 1943, Aushwitz had four Zyklon-B gas chambers in full use and as many as 6,000 Jews were killed there every day. More than a million Jews, and tens of thousands of Gypsies, Poles, and others, were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau alone.  It was also at Auschwitz-Birkenau that many of the Nazi experiments involving sterilization, genetics, and other biomedical fields, were carried out on the "fittest, healthiest" Jewish men, women, and children who were held captive there.

Imprisoned children at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Madjanek was another extermination center, although it also served as a holding facility/concentration camp.  While the numbers pale in comparison to any of the camps listed above, tens of thousands of Jews, mostly those who were too sick or weak to be of any use in labor cams, were killed in gas chambers at Madjanek.

A Guided Tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau
        
Dachau Concentration Camp Video


EINSATZGRUPPEN

Another method of killing the Jews was the Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing squads.  Made up mostly of German SS and police units, these killing squads would follow the German military as they advanced the eastern frontline into Russia, and kill anyone behind the German lines who were Jewish, Russian P.O.W.'s, Communist party members, people in mental hospitals, or anyone viewed as a threat to Germany.  When Heinrich Himler, the leader of the SS, noted that all of the shooting had started to cause psychological problems among his men, the Einsatzgruppen began using mobile gas chambers created out of moving vans, such as those used at Chelmno.  It is estimated that by the spring of 1943, the Einsatzgruppen had killed more than 1 million Soviet Jews, as well as tens-perhaps-hundreds of thousands of others.

THE HOLOCAUST BEGINS

Outside of America*, it is likely that no other event is so closely tied to World War II than the Holocaust (sometimes called the Shoah), in which more than 6 million Jews were killed in what can only be labeled as genocide.  Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group"; the Jews fit at least three of these (ethnic, religious, and national). 

(*I say outside of America because, according to some research, the bombing of Pearl Harbor is typically the first thing mentioned when American students are asked about World War II. The Holocaust is almost always second, however...)

At the outset of World War II, more than 9 million Jews lived in Europe; by the end of the War, there were fewer than three million, with some estimates as low as 1.5 million, with hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing the region prior to the rounding up of the Jews and after the creation of the Nuremburg Laws.



The Nuremburg Laws were put into place by Hitler's regime in 1935.  These laws were actually a strict set of guidelines about behavior and expectations put on the Jews.

The poster reads:

The Laws for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour

(September 15, 1935) Moved by the understanding that the purity of German blood is essential to the further existence of the German people, and inspired by the uncompromising determination to safeguard the future of the German nation, the Reichstag has unanimously resolved upon the following law, which is promulgated herewith:

Section 1

1. Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages concluded in defiance of this law are void, even if, for the purpose of evading this law, they were concluded abroad.
2. Proceedings for annulment may be initiated only by the Public Prosecutor.

Section 2

Extramarital sexual intercourse between Jews and subjects of the state of Germany or related blood is forbidden.

Section 3

Jews will not be permitted to employ female citizens under the age of 45, of German or kindred blood, as domestic workers.

Section 4

1. Jews are forbidden to display the Reich and national flag or the national colours.
2. On the other hand they are permitted to display the Jewish colours. The exercise of this right is protected by the State.

Section 5

1. A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 1 will be punished with hard labour.
2. A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 2 will be punished with imprisonment or with hard labour.
3. A person who acts contrary to the provisions of Sections 3 or 4 will be punished with imprisonment up to a year and with a fine, or with one of these penalties.

Section 6

The Reich Minister of the Interior in agreement with the Deputy Führer and the Reich Minister of Justice will issue the legal and administrative regulations required for the enforcement and supplementing of this law.

Section 7

The law will become effective on the day after its promulgation; Section 3, however, not until 1 January 1936.

Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass)

On November 7, 1938, an 18 year old Jewish man named Herschel Grunspan assassinated a Nazi party member, and German diplomat, named Ernst vom Rath, in Paris.  This gave the Nazis even more fuel for their arguments against the Jews as being "uncivilized" and allowed the Nazis to now use full-scale physical retaliation.  The Nazis claimed that what happened next was "spontaneous", but there is little doubt it was planned:  over the next three days, in what is now called Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, more than 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses, and nearly 1,700 Jewish synagogues were damaged or destroyed; 91 Jews were "officially" killed (it is believed that this number should be many times higher); more than 30,000 Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps such as Dachau and Buchenwald.  Those who were captured were released a few weeks later if they could prove they were going to leave Germany OR if they agreed to transfer their property over to the Nazi Party.  Following this, on November 11, Jews were banned from owning firearms or other weapons.  Jews were also levied an additional tax, called the "atonement tax", which was used to repair everything damaged during Krystallnacht... 

AMERICA AND THE NEW DEAL...RUSSIA, AND...WHAT'S THEIR DEAL?

While the Great Depression hit Europe pretty hard, no one had it worse than the United States (well...except Germany...).  After the stock market crash of 1929, things fell apart at a pretty rapid pace.  By 1932, some estimates say that industrial production in the United States dropped off by HALF of what it was before the crash.  Great Britain was struggling with more than two million unemployed people...but America had more than four million unemployed by 1930...and as many as sixteen million unemployed people by 1933!   

Then, in 1933, the Dust Bowl hit, ripping away the topsoil that farmers relied upon to grow crops and earn a living.  It is estimated that more than 30 million tons of topsoil blew away, which would be enough to fill up half of the Grand Canyon.  More than half a million people were homeless due directly to the Dust Bowl.  More than 2.5 million people left the Dust Bowl regions of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas.  More than 200,000 of these people ended up moving to California, searching for mythical jobs that were rumored along the rail lines that ran out of the Dust Bowl and into the hopeful Californian oasis.

President Herbert Hoover, in the eyes of most, did virtually nothing to help the people or the situation, and he was soundly defeated in the 1932 elections by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the governeor of New York.  Roosevelt, seeing that the "wait and see" approach wasn't working, pushed through a massive package of social programs and economic intervention programs known as the New Deal.  As part of the New Deal, Roosevelt established the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) which created jobs for single, unemployed men between the ages of 17 and 23.  Later, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) in  1935, which put unemployed people to work building bridges, roads, post offices, airports, parks, canals, dams, etc.  Roughly three million people were employed by the WPA at one time, sparking hope.  The Social Security Act of 1935 gave even more hope to desperate people who whispered of revolution.  Things were far from great, and millions were still without full-time (or even part-time) work, but many people were able to at least see a glimmer of hope, not realizing that World War II was on the horizon.

Russia

By this time (1921), the Russian Revolution is over, and Russia, like practically every other major nation in the world, is struggling economically, and the Russian president, Vladamir Lenin, institutes what he refers to as the New Economic Policy (catchy title, huh?).  This system blends the communism Lenin preached with bits and pieces of capitalism, allowing small business ownership and individuals were allowed to sell produce and hand-crafted items on their own.  The government still controlled all major industries, the banks, the mines, etc. 

In 1922, Russia is no longer known as Russia, but as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), and Lenin's NEP keeps the country from going under.  But in 1924, Lenin dies and Josef Stalin takes over as president after a massive struggle in the Politburo, which is kind of like the Communist version of Parliament or Congress.  Stalin manages to sieze control away from others such as Leon Trotsky (the leader of the Communist army) and others.  Stalin and Trotsky hated each other, with Trotsky now holding the position of commissioner of war, and Stalin being the communist party general secretary.  Stalin was able to win support among key members of the Communist party, and he eventually takes control of the Communist party.  Once Stalin gains control of the party, he then starts taking steps to eliminate anyone who might pose a threat to his reign.  He gets rid of the original Bolsheviks, including Trotsky, who leaves for Mexico in 1927 (where he is later murdered in 1940...most likely under Stalin's orders).

Once Stalin has got rid of most of his rivals, he then shuts down the NEP that Lenin had put in place, and Stalin starts instituting what he calls Five Year Plans.  These Five Year Plans are sets of economic goals for the U.S.S.R. which he believes will transform the U.S.S.R. from being an agricultural country to an industrial power.  He ramps up steel production, oil production, and manufacturing in huge chunks and large numbers of workers switch from agricultural jobs to industrial jobs, which, of course, causes large numbers of people to move into the cities which, as we saw during the American Industrial Revolution, were not capable of handling such large numbers of people.  Private farms were eliminated in favor of government-owned farms (a process called collectivization), which angered peasant farmers who hoarded their crops and killed their livestock so the government couldn't take them.  This led to massive problems with famine and disease and between 1932 and 1933, it is estimated (by Stalin, himself) that as many as 10 million Soviets died of starvation or hunger-related diseases. 

Stalin, in what is called The Great Purge, continued to get rid of the old Bosheviks that were associated with the Russian Revolution.  From 1936 to 1938, as many as 8 million people, including these Bolsheviks, were arrested and sent to Siberian prison camps, or executed. 

MORE "-ISMS"...including the rise of NAZISM....

When the Great Depression hit Europe, an entire continent that had been very carefully pieced back together after World War I, was rocked and shattered once again.  Fragile economies that were just starting to build up momentum, and just beginning to participate in the idea of America's "Roaring Twenties", came crashing back down.  As a result, new leaders with new ideas about government and reform began to take center stage and rise to prominence throughout much of Europe.

FRANCE

France came out of World War I as probably the most powerful country in Europe, with the exception of Great Britain.  France had a stronger, more balanced economy than most European nations, so it did not suffer from the immediate problems caused by the Great Depression like many countries.  The Great Depression would take strong hold in France in 1932 (it hit in America in 1929...).  Despite the fact that it held on longer than most countries would, France was not immune to governmental upheaval.  Between 1932 and 1933, France would go through SIX DIFFERENT CABINETS!  (How stable would that government be?)  Eventually, a group called the Popular Front Government, made up of communists, socialists, and radicals, would take over the French government and put into place a large set of socialistic programs and ideas, commonly nicknamed the French New Deal.   In 1936, the Popular Front would win the French prime minister's office with a man named Leon Blum, who was a Jew, who would serve two very tumultuous stints in office from June 1936 to June 1937, and again from April to October in 1938.   He managed to survive a stint in Buchenwald concentration camp, avoided Nazi-ordered execution, and eventully returned to the Prime Minister's post for a little over a month from December 1946 to January 1947 as the French were setting up their post-war government.

GREAT BRITAIN

Despite the fact that they "won" World War I, Great Britain suffered a pretty severe economic downturn when the war was over.  Over two million Britons, incluing over 500,000 women, were unemployed after the war because the steel, coal, and textile industries settled back to pre-war levels of production and tens of thousands of people were laid off.  There was a brief pick-up in the economy from 1925 to 1929, but when the Great Depression hit in late 1929, Great Britain was just as vulerable as most other countries.  The ruling Labor Party would be ousted in 1931 and replaced by the Conservative Party, which managed to pull Britain out of the worst parts of the depression through the use of balanced budgets, protective tariffs (taxes on imported goods), and ignoring the deficit spending ideas (basically, going into debt, if necessary, to continue to buy goods, thus driving up demand and creating jobs) of a noted British economist by the name of John Maynard Keynes, whose Keynsian theories are still used by many economists today.

ITALY

Italy's problems started almost as soon as World War I ended...never mind the Great Depression!  Inflation skyrocketed, people in all sectors of work went on strike, and revolution was threatened by, you guessed it, communists and socialists.  People were afraid of a situation like that which had developed in Russia (remember, Italy and Russia were fairly close friends at this time).  All this unrest left a wide-open door for a man named Benito Mussiolini. 

Similar to Hitler, Mussolini fought in World War I and was dismayed by the events of the
War, even though Italy was on the "winning" side.  Mussolini was originally a socialist, but he didn't think that worked 100% the way he wanted, so he came up with the Fascio di Combattimento (League of Combat), which is where the word facism comes from.  He published his Fascist Manifesto in 1921, which outlined his beliefs and, ideally, those of all fascists.  Fascists glorify the state above all else, including individual people.  Fascists seek to drive out any foreign influence that is believed to be harmful to the homeland.  Fascists hold a strong belief in Social Darwinism (survival of the fittest on a cultural level), by arguing that society, Italian society in this case, must weed out those who are not socially or biologically beneficial to the general culture.  Fascist governments are always led by dictators who control the people and eliminate opposition.  Political violence and war are actually PROMOTED by fascist governments to eliminate opponents or to bolster the fascist party's strength. 

The Italians in the early 1920's were very fearful of outside influences, such as communism, which made Mussolini and his fascists look very attractive on the surface, because Mussolini preached all-things-Italian.  In 1922, Italy elected Mussolini as Prime Minister.  By 1925, he had begun referring to himself as Il Duce (The Leader) and had siezed dictatorial control of the country, but many people didn't mind.  He appeared to be trying to do good things for the country.  He recognized the Vatican as an independent Catholic state, gave large amounts of money to the Vatican and the Catholic Church, and he recognized Catholicism as the only religion of Italy; in return, the Vatican encouraged people to support fascism.  He set up numerous government construction plans to combat unemployment, ordered more than 5,000 government farms to be established, and drained lakes and marshes to take back land that he hoped could be used for economic development.  By 1935, it is estimated (and claimed by Mussolini, himself) that the government controlled nearly 3/4 of all businesses in Italy, and practically banned foreign trade (with any country except Germany) by instituting sky-high tariffs and taxes on imports.

GERMANY

Germany had been struggling in just about every way imaginable following the end of the War.  Crushed by nearly every single point of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany seemed to be in a hole that had no bottom...and no ladder to the top.  The democratic government that had been rapidly put into place had to fight constant battles against communists who were trying to take over.  Inflation was at insane levels, unemployment was skyrocketing, many people who had jobs went on strike against the government, and there seemed to be little hope for improvement.  The Dawes Plan had started to turn things around, giving Germany's economy a boost for a period from about 1925 until 1929, but the Great Depression ended that, and Germany once again fell into disarray.

In 1923, a small movement known as the National Socialist German Worker's Party, better known as the Nazi Party, began to make a lot of noise thanks largely to it's leader, Adolf Hitler.  Contrary to what most people believe, Hitler did not start the Nazi party, nor was he the party's first leader; that distinction belongs to Anton Drexler, who led the party from 1920-1921.  Hitler, however, took control of the party in 1921 and would retain that leadership role until he committed suicide in 1945.  In 1923, Hitler attemted to start a revolution in what is called the Beer Hall Putsch, or Beer Hall Riots.  While the revolution failed, Hitler became a household name almost immediately, which gave the Nazi Party instant recognition.  Hitler was arrested and imprisoned for his role in the failed revolution; it was in in prison for "political crimes", as Hitler called them, that he started writing Mein Kampf ("My Struggle" or "My Battle"), his combination autobiography/political manifesto.  (He reportedly wanted to call it "Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice", but was convinced to change it by his publisher.)

By 1933, the German economy was in such a disastrous state that the German president, Paul von Hindenburg, appointed Hitler as Chancelor of Germany, which is the German equivalent of Prime Minister.  The move was done, in part, because the German government didn't know what else to try, and also partly because the Nazi party had grown very loud and very strong and the government felt that if Hitler failed, like everyone else had, to pull the government out of its current mess, the Nazis would disappear.  However, rather than fail, Hitler's policies actually started to show positive effects and his strengthy and popularity grew.  Hitler used heavy governmental spending to rebuild Germany's outlawed military, which resulted in the creation of thousands of jobs, bringing an end to the crippling unemployment Germany had struggled with.  He ordered the building of the Autobahn road system, as well as other massive public works projects, to rebuild the demolished country and to create even more jobs, further stimulating the economy. 

Hitler quickly solidified his power by declaring Germany a totalitarian regime, called The Third Reich.  (Hitler referred to Germany as the Third Reich, which fits the definition provided below).  Hitler was referred to as Fuhrer (leader) and he instilled a system referred to as  Führerprinzip, which means "leader principal" in which Hitler's word was considered to be above all other laws.

Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its power or authority and attempts to sieze control of ALL aspects of public and private life.  Heavy usage of propoganda help to keep totalitarian regimes in control, as does the restriction of virtually all individual rights.  Totalitarian states control all media, including the radio, television, and newspapers.  Opposition political parties are usually outlawed.

Nazism can be thought of as a combination of totalitarianism and fascism.  Hitler had complete and total control of his government and his country (totalitarianism) and also applied the ideas of purging his country of outside influences and of those who were not considered to be socially or biologically beneficial to society (fascism), as exampled by his extermination of not only the Jews, but also Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, blacks, homosexuals, the physically and mentally handicapped, criminals...and political opponents.

Tomorrow, we will look at how America and Russia are faring in the Great Depression era, and see what happens as Hitler begins the push towards thrusting the world into World War...again...