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The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes

In Europe, the first clear step to war took place two years later. On February 3, 1933, only four days after he had been appointed chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler met secretly with Germany’s leading generals. He revealed to them his desire to remove the ‘‘cancer of democracy,’’ create a new authoritarian leadership, and forge a new domestic unity.

His foreign policy objectives were equally striking. Since Germany’s living space was too small for its people, Hitler said, Germany must rearm and prepare for ‘‘the conquest of new living space in the east and its ruthless Germanization.’’

From the outset, Adolf Hitler had a clear vision of his goals, and their implementation meant another war.

There was thus a close relationship between the rise of dictatorial regimes in the 1930s and the coming of World War II. The apparent triumph of liberal democracy in 1919 had proven to be extremely short-lived. By 1939, only two major states in Europe, France and Great Brit-ain, remained democratic. Italy and Germany had in-stalled fascist regimes, and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was a repressive dictatorial state. A host of other European states, and Latin American countries as well, adopted authoritarian systems, while a militarist regime in Japan moved that country down the path to war.

Dictatorships, of course, were hardly a new phe-nomenon as a means of governing human societies, but the type of political system that emerged after World War I did exhibit some ominous new characteristics. The modern ‘‘totalitarian’’ state, as it is sometimes labeled, transcended the ideal of passive obedience expected in a traditional dictatorship or authoritarian monarchy. It required the active loyalty and commitment of all its citizens to the regime and its goals, and used modern mass propaganda techniques and high-speed communi-cations to conquer citizens’ minds and hearts. That control had a purpose: the active involvement of the

masses in the achievement of the regime’s goals, whether they be war, a classless utopia, or a thousand-year Reich.

The modern totalitarian state---whether of the right (as in Germany) or of the left (as in the Soviet Union)---was to be led by a single leader and a single party. It ruthlessly rejected the liberal ideal of limited government power and constitutional guarantees of individual free-doms. Indeed, individual freedom was to be subordinated to the collective will of the masses, organized and deter-mined for them by a leader or leaders. Modern technology also gave totalitarian states the ability to use unprece-dented police powers to impose their wishes on their subjects.

What explains the emergence of this frightening new form of government at a time when the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution had offered such a bright perspective on the improvement of the human condition?

According to the philosopher Hannah Arendt, in her renowned study, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), the totalitarian state was a direct product of the modern age. At a time when traditional sources of identity, such as religion and the local community, were in a state of de-cline, alienated intellectuals found fertile ground for their radical ideas among rootless peoples deprived of their communal instincts and their traditional faiths by the corrosive effects of the Industrial Age.

The Birth of Fascism The Birth of Fascism

In the early 1920s, in the wake of economic turmoil, political disorder, and the general insecurity and fear stemming from World War I, Benito Mussolini (1883--1945) burst upon the Italian scene with the first Fascist movement in Europe. Mussolini began his political career as a socialist but was expelled from the Socialist Party after supporting Italy’s entry into World War I, a position contrary to the socialist principle of ardent neutrality in imperialist wars. In 1919, Mussolini established a new political group, the Fascio di Combattimento, or League of Combat. It received little attention in the parliamentary elections of 1919, but Italy’s three major political parties were unable to form an effective governmental coalition.

When socialists began to speak of the need for revolution, provoking worker strikes and a general climate of class violence, alarmed conservatives turned to the Fascists, who formed armed squads to attack socialist offices and newspapers. By 1922, Mussolini’s nationalist rhetoric and ability to play to middle-class fears of radicalism, revo-lution, and disorder were attracting ever more adherents.

On October 29, 1922, after Mussolini and the Fascists threatened to march on Rome if they were not given power, King Victor Emmanuel III (r. 1900--1946) capit-ulated and made Mussolini prime minister of Italy.

By 1926, Mussolini had established the institutional framework for his Fascist dictatorship. Press laws gave the government the right to suspend any publication that fostered disrespect for the Catholic church, the monarchy, or the stat e. The prime minister was made ‘‘head of government’’ with the power to legislate by decree. A police law empowered the police to arrest and confine anybody for both nonpolitical and political crimes without due process of law. In 1926, all anti-Fascist par-ties were outlawed. By the end of 1926, Mussolini ruled Italy as Il Duce, the leader.

Mussolini left no doubt of his intentions. Fascism, he said, ‘‘is totalitarian, and the Fascist State, the synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops and gives strength to the whole life of the people.’’

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His regime attempted to mold Italians into a single-minded community by devel-oping Fascist organizations. By 1939, about two-thirds of the population between eight and eighteen had been en-rolled in some kind of Fascist youth group. Activities for these groups included Saturday afternoon marching drills and calisthenics, seaside and mountain summer camps, and youth contests. Beginning in the 1930s, all young men were given some kind of premilitary exercises to develop discipline and provide training for war.

Mussolini hoped to create a new Italian: hardwork-ing, physically fit, disciplined, intellectually sharp, and martially inclined. In practice, the Fascists largely re-inforced traditional social attitudes, as is evident in their policies toward women. The Fascists portrayed the family as the pillar of the state and women as the foundation of the family. ‘‘Woman into the home’’ became the Fascist slogan. Women were to be homemakers and baby pro-ducers, ‘‘their natural and fundamental mission in life,’’

according to Mussolini, who viewed population growth as an indicator of national strength. A practical consider-ation also underlay the Fascist attitude toward women:

working women would compete with males for jobs in the depression economy of the 1930s. Eliminating women from the market reduced male unemployment.

Hitler and Nazi Germany Hitler and Nazi Germany

As Mussolini began to lay the foundations of his Fascist state in Italy, a young admirer was harboring similar dreams in Germany. Born on April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler was the son of an Austrian customs official. He had done poorly in secondary school and eventually made his way to Vienna to become an artist. Through careful obser-vation of the political scene, Hitler became an avid Ger-man nationalist who learned from his experience in mass politics in Austria how political parties could use pro-paganda and terror effectively. But it was only after World War I, during which he had served as a soldier on the

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Western Front, that Hitler became actively involved in politics. By then, he had become convinced that the cause of German defeat had been the Jews, for whom he now developed a fervent hatred.

The Roots of Anti-Semitism

The Roots of Anti-Semitism Anti-Semitism, of course, was not new to European civilization. Since the Middle Ages, Jews had been portrayed as the murderers of Christ and were often subjected to mob violence and official persecution. Their rights were restricted, and they were physically separated from Christians in residential quar-ters known as ghettos. By the nineteenth century, as a result of the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, Jews were increasingly granted legal equality in many European countries. Nevertheless, Jews were not completely accepted, and this ambivalence was apparent throughout Europe.

Nowhere in Europe did Jews play a more active role in society than in Germany and the German-speaking areas of Austria-Hungary. During the nineteenth century, many Jews in both countries had left the ghettoes where they had previously been restricted and become assimi-lated into the surrounding Christian population. Some entered what had previously been the closed world of politics and the professions. Many Jews became successful as bankers, lawyers, scientists, scholars, journalists, and stage performers. In 1880, for example, Jews made up 10 percent of the population of Vienna but accounted for 39 percent of its medical students and 23 percent of its law students.

All too often, such achievements provoked envy and distrust. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, conservatives in Germany and Austria founded parties that used dislike of Jews to win the votes of tra-ditional lower-middle-class groups who felt threatened by changing times. Such parties also played on the rising sentiment of racism in German society. Spurred by social Darwinian ideas that nations, like the human species, were engaged in a brutal struggle for survival, rabid German nationalists promoted the concept of the Volk (nation, people, or race) as an underlying idea in German history since the medieval era. Portraying the German people as the successors of the pure ‘‘Aryan’’ race, the true and original creators of Western culture, nationalist groups called for Germany to take the lead in a desperate struggle to fight for European civilization and save it from the destructive assaults of such allegedly lower races as Jews, blacks, and Asians.

Hitl

Hitler’er’s s Rise Rise to to PowPower, er, 1911919–199–193333 At the end of World War I, Hitler joined the obscure German Workers’

Party, one of a number of radical nationalist parties in

Munich. By the summer of 1921, he had assumed total control over the party, which he renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), or Nazi for short. Hitler worked assiduously to develop the party into a mass political movement with flags, party badges, uniforms, its own newspaper, and its own police force or party militia known as the SA---the Sturmabteilung, or Storm Troops. The SA added an element of force and terror to the growing Nazi movement. Hitler’s own ora-torical skills as well as his populist message were largely responsible for attracting an increasing number of followers.

In November 1923, Hitler staged an armed uprising against the government in Munich, but the so-called Beer Hall Putsch was quickly crushed, and Hitler was sen-tenced to prison. During his brief stay in jail, he wrote Mein Kampf ( My Struggle), an autobiographical account

of his movement and its underlying ideology. Virulent German nationalism, anti-Semitism, and anticommu-nism were linked together by a social Darwinian theory of struggle that stressed the right of superior nations to Lebensraum (‘‘living space’’) through expansion and the right of superior individuals to secure authoritarian lead-ership over the masses.

After his release from prison, Hitler reorganized the Nazi Party and expanded it to all parts of Germany, in-creasing its size from 27,000 members in 1925 to 178,000 by the end of 1929. Especially noticeable was the youth-fulness of the regional, district, and branch leaders of the Nazi organization. Many young Germans were fiercely committed to Hitler because he gave them the promise of a new life.

By 1932, the Nazi Party had 800,000 members and had become the largest party in the Reichstag, the Ger-man parliament. No doubt, GerGer-many’s economic diffi-culties were a crucial factor in the Nazis’ rise to power.

Unemployment rose dramatically, from 4.35 million in 1931 to 6 million by the winter of 1932. The economic and psychological impact of the Great Depression made extremist parties more attractive. But Hitler claimed to stand above politics and promised to create a new Ger-many free of class differences and party infighting. His appeal to national pride, national honor, and traditional militarism struck chords of emotion in his listeners, and the raw energy projected by his Nazi Party contrasted sharply with the apparent ineptitude emanating from its democratic rivals.

Increasingly, the conservative elites of Germany---the industrial magnates, landed aristocrats, military estab-lishment, and higher bureaucrats---came to see Hitler as the man who had the mass support to establish an au-thoritarian regime that would save Germany from a Communist takeover. Under pressure, President Paul von

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Hindenburg agreed to allow Hitler to become chancellor on January 30, 1933, and form a new government.

Within two months, Hitler had laid the foundations for the Nazis’ complete control over Germany. On Feb-ruary 27, he convinced Hindenburg to issue a decree suspending all basic rights for the full duration of the emergency---declared after a mysterious fire destroyed the Reichstag building in downtown Berlin---thus enabling the Nazis to arrest and imprison anyone without redress.

The crowning step in Hitler’s ‘‘legal’’ seizure of power came on March 23, when the Reichstag passed the En-abling Act by a two-thirds vote. This legislation, which empowered the government to dispense with constitu-tional forms for four years while it issued laws that dealt with the country’s problems, provided the legal basis for Hitler’s subsequent acts. In effect, Hitler became a dic-tator appointed by the parliamentary body itself.

With their new source of power, the Nazis acted quickly to consolidate their control. The civil service was purged of Jews and democratic elements, concentration camps were established for opponents of the new regime, trade unions were dissolved, and all political parties ex-cept the Nazis were abolished. When Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934, the office of Reich president was abol-ished, and Hitler became sole ruler of Germany. Public officials and soldiers were all required to take a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler as the ‘‘Fu¨hrer (leader) of the

German Reich and people,’’ while Nazi Storm Troops rampaged through German cities harassing and beating Jews and other

‘‘undesirables.’’

Th

The e NazNaz i i StStateate , , 19193333–1–1939399 Having smashed the Weimar Re-public, Hitler now turned to his larger objective, the creation of an Aryan racial state that would dominate Europe and possibly the world for generations to come. The Nazis pursued the vision of this totalitarian state in a variety of ways. Most dramatic were the mass demonstrations and spectacles em-ployed to integrate the German nation into a collective fellowship and to mobilize it as an instrument for Hitler’s policies. In the eco-nomic sphere, the Nazis pursued the use of public works projects and

‘‘pump-priming’’ grants to private construction firms to foster em-ployment and end the depression.

But there is little doubt that rearmament contributed far more to solving the unemployment problem. Unemploy-ment, which had stood at 6 million in 1932, dropped to 2.6 million in 1934 and less than 500,000 in 1937. The regime claimed full credit for solving Germany’s economic woes, although much of the success must be ascribed to decisions made at the initiative of local officials. Hitler himself had little interest in either economics or administration, and his prestige undoubtedly benefited enormously from sponta-neous efforts undertaken throughout the country by his followers.

For its enemies, the Nazi totalitarian state had its instruments of terror and repression. Especially impor-tant was the SS ( Schutzstaffel, or ‘‘protection echelon’’).

Originally created as Hitler’s personal bodyguard, the SS, under the direction of Heinrich Himmler (1900--1945), came to control all of the regular and secret police forces.

Himmler and the SS functioned on the basis of two principles, ideology and terror, and would eventually play a major role in the execution squads and death camps for the extermination of the Jews.

Other institutions, including the Catholic and Prot-estant churches, primary and secondary schools, and universities, were also brought under the control of the state. Nazi professional organizations and leagues were formed for civil servants, teachers, women, farmers, doctors, and lawyers, and youth organizations---the Hitler

The Nazi

The Nazi Mass Spectacle.Mass Spectacle. Hitler and the Nazis made cleve r use of mass spectacles to rally the German people behind the Nazi regime. These mass demonstrations evoked intense enthusiasm, as is evident in this photograph of Hitler arriving at the Bu ¨ckeberg near Hamelin for the Harvest Festiva l in 1937. Almost one million people were present for the celebration.

 c H u g o J a e g e r / T i m e L i f e P i c t u r e s / G e t t y I m a g e s

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Jugend (Hitler Youth) and its female counterpart, the Bund Deutscher Ma¨del (League of German Maidens)---were given special attention.

The Nazi attitude toward women was largely deter-mined by ideological considerations. Women played a crucial role in the Aryan racial state as bearers of the chil-dren who would ensure the triumph of the Aryan race. To the Nazis, the differences between men and women were quite natural. Men were warriors and political leaders, while women were destined to be wives and mothers. Certain professions, including university teaching, medicine, and law, were considered inappropriate for women, especially married women. Instead, the Nazis encouraged women to pursue professional occupations that had direct practical application, such as social work and nursing. In addition to restrictive legislation against females, the Nazi regime pushed its campaign against working women with such poster slogans as ‘‘Get hold of pots and pans and broom and you’ll sooner find a groom!’’

From the beginning, the Nazi Party reflected the strong anti-Semitic beliefs of Adolf Hitler. Many of the early attacks on Jews, however, were essentially sponta-neous in character. The regime quickly took note, and in September 1935, the Nazis announced new racial laws at the annual party rally in Nuremberg. These Nuremberg laws excluded German Jews from German citizenship and forbade marriages and extramarital relations between Jews and German citizens. But a more violent phase of anti-Jewish activity was initiated on November 9--10, 1938, the infamous Kristallnacht, or night of shattered glass. The assassination of a German diplomat in Paris became the excuse for a Nazi-led destructive rampage against the Jews, in which synagogues were burned, seven thousand Jewish businesses were destroyed, and at least one hundred Jews were killed. Moreover, twenty thou-sand Jewish males were rounded up and sent to con-centration camps. Jews were now barred from all public buildings and prohibited from owning, managing, or working in any retail store. Finally, under the direction of the SS, Jews were encouraged to ‘‘emigrate from Germany.’’ Many countries, however, refused to accept them. Hitler would soon turn to more gruesome measures.

The Spread of Authoritarianism in Europe

The Spread of Authoritarianism in Europe