The Depression, Fascism, and the Road to War

This is Unit Sixteen of Western Civilization Two, part one of two: the Depression, fascism, and the road to war, the exam's thirteenth band. Unit fifteen ended with the men who offered order without capitalism or democracy. This unit is how they got it, and its governing idea, which part two pays off, is the anchor's answer to the exam's question about the Nazis' rise, and then the showing that the answer was general. The nineteenth century's movements had all won by nineteen twenty, and the reward was a war and a slump. Democracy was the form nearly every state took and the form nearly every people came to despise, because it delivered deadlock and then met the crash with cuts. Fascism offered order and a nation to die for, first in Italy, where a king appointed a man with a hundred followers, and then in Germany, a decade late, with a biological creed added. Part one runs from the debt triangle through both takeovers to the Führer state and Spain's old order. Part two takes Spain's war, appeasement, and the methods. By the end you will be able to describe the slump and the mood. To define fascism against communism. To describe Italy's takeover. To describe Germany from Weimar to the doctrine. And to describe the takeover of thirty-three, the Führer state, and Spain to thirty-one.

Three entries on the slump and the mood: the debt triangle and the crash, austerity and the gold standard, and why a bitter peace and a Depression fed extremism.

Loans called, businesses shut.

WC2 1501 The Debt Triangle, and October 24, 1929

American loans went to Germany, German reparations went to the Entente, and the Entente's war debts went back to America: the debt triangle. On the twenty-fourth of October nineteen twenty-nine the New York market crashed, and American banks called their European loans. Businesses shut, unemployment spread; German output was down about forty percent by thirty-two. The anchor's fifty percent in one year is recorded.

Cuts that drained capital further.

WC2 1502 Austerity, Keynes, and the Gold Standard

Governments answered with austerity, cuts and balanced budgets on liberal theory, which drained capital further. The gold standard, tying currencies to gold, transmitted the collapse from country to country, the witness says; the Credit Anstalt failed in Vienna in May thirty-one, and Britain left gold that year. Keynes argued for spending instead. Witness-built; the anchor has austerity only.

The reward for winning was a war and a slump.

WC2 1503 Disappointment: Why a Bitter Peace and a Depression Fed Extremism

The century's movements had won, nations had replaced empires, and nearly every state was a republican democracy; and the reward was a horrendous war and a slump, with better weapons as science's most notable product. Germans felt wronged twice, by the stab in the back and by the indemnity. The anchor's point, attributed: Nazi fortunes moved inversely to the economy.

Two entries on fascism defined: the state, hierarchy and the mythic nation behind the Roman bundle of rods, and the difference from communism, dying for the nation rather than the class.

Weak alone, strong together.

WC2 1504 Fascism Defined: State, Hierarchy, the Mythic Nation, the Fasces

Fascism glorified the state, rejected liberal individualism, and demanded hierarchy and authority: order without monarchy, populist not feudal. The nation was mythic and defined the person, in racial terms; Aryan is a pseudo-scholarly jumble, the anchor says. The name came from the fasces, the Roman bundle of rods and axe: weak alone, strong together. Action Française, monarchist since Dreyfus, turned fascist.

The nation, not the class.

WC2 1505 Fascism and Communism: Dying for the Nation, Not the Class

Many fascists were ex-socialists; Mussolini had edited the Socialist Party's paper until expelled in nineteen fourteen. Both creeds rejected parliamentary democracy for a transcendent order. The difference: people would die for the nation, not the class, so nationalism replaced class war and united all classes. The anchor calls him an ex-Communist; no such party existed, and the witness corrects it.

Four entries on Italy: a mutilated victory and a red scare, Blackshirts and a staged march, Il Duce's spectacle and corporatism, and a state that ran trains and little else.

A hundred members in Milan.

WC2 1506 Italy in 1919: A Mutilated Victory and a Red Scare

Italy had joined the Entente for Austrian land and got Trentino, Trieste and Istria, not Fiume or Dalmatia: the mutilated victory. Then came a strike wave, land seizures and a communist movement, and conservatives, the Church, business and the middle class feared revolution. Mussolini's party had a hundred members in Milan, the anchor says. The anchor says very little was gained; the witness names the gains.

Appointed first, then the march.

WC2 1507 The Blackshirts and the March on Rome, 1922

The Blackshirts, squads of veterans, broke strikes, beat communists, wrecked newspapers and intimidated voters while police looked away and business paid. In October nineteen twenty-two Victor Emmanuel the Third, fearing bloodshed, appointed Mussolini prime minister; the March on Rome that followed was staged theater, Mussolini arriving by train after the appointment. Weak-willed is the anchor's verdict on the king.

Believe, obey, fight.

WC2 1508 Il Duce: Democracy Destroyed From Within, Spectacle, Corporatism

From nineteen twenty-two to twenty-six Mussolini manipulated parliament, had opponents murdered, a Socialist deputy in twenty-four among them, disclosed and not named, and ended parties and the press; one legal party, a police apparatus, Il Duce. Radio and rallies made the spectacle: believe, obey, fight. Corporatism promised worker-owner committees; owners took all and unions were banned. The press could not mention his age.

Trains on time, sycophants in office.

WC2 1509 The Fascist State's Limits: Trains, Sycophants, and an Army Unready in 1939

Fascism gave ideology and emotion, youth movements, clubs and national pride, and police who sent dissidents to prison or to internal exile in closed villages. Foreigners praised trains on time. The state was inefficient, its military decisions arbitrary, its officials sycophants; by nineteen thirty-nine the forces were poorly trained, equipped and led. The Lateran Accords are in no source the course holds, and are disclosed.

Six entries on Germany to the doctrine: Weimar's constitution and lie, the year of the Ruhr and hyperinflation, Hitler before politics, the party and the Putsch, why the Nazis grew, and their racial creed.

A liberal constitution and a lie.

WC2 1510 Weimar: Liberalism's Constitution, the Stab-in-the-Back Lie, and an Army of 100,000

The constitution written at Weimar in nineteen nineteen gave universal suffrage to men and women and fundamental rights. The stab-in-the-back was a lie: the General Staff had told the Kaiser the war was lost. Versailles left an army of a hundred thousand and reparations of one hundred thirty-two billion gold marks in total, unconverted; the anchor says annually, but the schedule set the sum.

Million-mark notes as scratch paper.

WC2 1511 Thirty-Two Parties, the Ruhr, Hyperinflation, and Stabilization, 1923 to 1924

Proportional representation seated thirty-two parties, the anchor says. When payments lapsed France seized the Ruhr in nineteen twenty-three; Germany paid the strikers with printed money, and by November a dollar cost four point two trillion marks, million-mark notes serving as scratch paper. Dawes and a new currency stabilized it in twenty-four. The anchor's ten billion understates by orders of magnitude.

Flophouses, gas, and a fringe party to watch.

WC2 1512 Hitler Before Politics: Vienna, the War, Munich

Born in Austria in eighteen eighty-nine, Hitler was rejected by Vienna's art academy twice, his landscapes boring in the anchor's verdict, and lived in flophouses, absorbing anti-Semitism and racial pseudo-scholarship. He volunteered for Germany in nineteen fourteen, was gassed and wounded, the moustache trimmed for the gas mask, and found the trenches exhilarating. The army sent him to watch a Munich fringe party.

A failed putsch, a trial as a stage.

WC2 1513 The NSDAP, the SA, the Beer Hall Putsch, and Mein Kampf

The German Workers' Party became the NSDAP in nineteen twenty; Hitler became its Führer in twenty-one and gave it the swastika and the SA. In November twenty-three the Beer Hall Putsch failed. A sympathetic court gave nine months after a trial he used as a national stage, and he dictated Mein Kampf in prison. The anchor merges renaming and leadership; the witness separates them.

Not Jews, not unions: order.

WC2 1514 Why the Nazis Grew: Depression and Disenchantment With Weak Liberalism

The Nazis were a fringe, two point six percent in nineteen twenty-eight. The Depression gave them mass appeal, but the message was not Jews: pride, unity, order, prosperity, and a solution to the Weimar Republic's inefficiency. Germans' experience of democracy, the anchor says, had been disastrous: disenchantment with liberalism as weak and ineffective. Not unions either; the Nazis banned them in thirty-three.

Creators, preservers, destroyers.

WC2 1515 Nazi Racial Ideology: Creators, Preservers, Destroyers

Nazism's distinction was biology. Races were biological entities whose blood set their capacity for culture: Aryans created it, Persians and Japanese preserved it, Jews and Slavs destroyed it. Jews were to be pushed aside, blamed for communism and capitalism at once, and Slavs enslaved. The German race stood at extinction's brink. The three-tier scheme is the anchor's summary of a false doctrine.

Six entries on the takeover, the state, and Spain's old order: the vote and the chancellorship, the fire and the Enabling Act, working towards the Führer, the enemies and the first camps, the SS and the Long Knives, and Spain to nineteen thirty-one.

Never a majority; appointed, not elected.

WC2 1516 2.6 to 37 Percent, and the Chancellorship, January 1933

Eighteen percent of seats in nineteen thirty, thirty-seven percent of the vote in thirty-two, the most any party won in a free election and never a majority. Hitler lost the presidency to Hindenburg and lost votes that autumn. In January thirty-three Papen persuaded Hindenburg to make him chancellor, meaning to control him from the vice-chancellorship. Figures are the anchor's.

A fire, a decree, an Act, one party.

WC2 1517 The Reichstag Fire, the Enabling Act, and One Party by July 1933

On February twenty-seventh the Reichstag burned; van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist, was caught inside, and whether he acted alone is disputed. A decree suspended civil rights and crushed the Communists, twenty thousand in new camps. March's election gave forty-four percent. The Enabling Act allowed laws by decree; by July one party remained. The anchor's forty-nine percent and unknown arsonist are corrected.

Anticipating the Führer's will.

WC2 1518 Working Towards the Führer: Volksgemeinschaft, Youth, Mothers

The Weimar constitution was never repealed; overlapping bureaucracies competed to anticipate the Führer's will, the only principle, working towards the Führer in a historian's phrase the anchor borrows. The Volksgemeinschaft enrolled everyone: leagues for workers, mothers sent home from work, the Hitler Youth, the League of German Girls. Public works and then rearmament ended unemployment; Heil Hitler became nearly universal lip service.

Citizenship stripped, a camp within weeks.

WC2 1519 Sterilization, the Nuremberg Laws, the First Camps

Enemies were Jews, the disabled and the Romani. Involuntary sterilization began in nineteen thirty-three. The Nuremberg Laws of September thirty-five stripped Jews of citizenship, barred professions and made sex between Jews and Germans a crime. The first camp, Dachau near Munich, named on the witness, opened within weeks of January thirty-three; Kristallnacht in November thirty-eight is the witness's addition.

The SA's leaders murdered, the army won.

WC2 1520 The SS, the Gestapo, and the Night of the Long Knives

The SS held protective custody without trial; the Gestapo, part of it, dispatched violence. In June nineteen thirty-four Hitler had the SA's leaders murdered, the Night of the Long Knives, winning the army, which swore its oath to him; on Hindenburg's death he became Führer. Incentives plus threats explain the absence of resistance. Witness-built; the anchor has SS and Gestapo only.

The old order kept, then a republic.

WC2 1521 Spain's Old Order, Primo de Rivera, and the Republic of 1931

Spain kept the old order: army, Church and nobility over a poor rural majority. Primo de Rivera ruled as dictator from nineteen twenty-three to thirty. In thirty-one the king left the country, without abdicating, though the anchor says abdicated, and a republic separated church and state and redistributed the largest estates. Peasants attacked churches; the right closed ranks.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe the debt triangle and the crash, austerity and gold, and why the reward for winning fed extremism. You can define fascism by state, hierarchy and mythic nation, and set it against communism by the nation rather than the class. You can describe the mutilated victory, Blackshirts and a staged march, Il Duce's spectacle, and a state that ran trains and little else. You can describe Weimar's constitution and lie, hyperinflation, Hitler before politics, the Putsch, why the Nazis grew, and creators, preservers and destroyers. And you can describe never a majority and appointed, a fire and an Act, the Führer state, its laws and camps, the Long Knives, and Spain to thirty-one. Part two takes Spain's war, Versailles dismantled, appeasement defended and ended, the two takeovers compared, the election chart read, and the capstone.