The Depression, Fascism, and the Road to War

This is Unit Sixteen of Western Civilization Two, part two of two: Spain's war, the road to war, three procedures, and why democracies fell. Part one ended with Spain's republic of nineteen thirty-one and the right closing ranks. This part is the war that followed and the peace that was not kept, and it pays off the unit's governing idea: democracy blamed for the war and the slump, fascism appointed rather than elected, and the answer to the Nazis' rise shown to be general. Spain's republic was strangled by its own army with German bombs. The democracies that survived rearmed too late, let the Rhineland and Ethiopia go, gave away the Sudetenland and called it preserving peace until Prague showed the price. Stalin signed with Hitler instead. Then the methods: the two dictatorships by year, the election chart that is the exam's calibration case, and the two seizures compared under a same road and two differences. By the end you will be able to describe Spain's war. To describe the road to war. To sequence the two dictatorships. To read the chart and compare the seizures. And to state why democracies fell.

Three entries on Spain's war: the Popular Front and Franco's rising, a war of reprisals with volunteers, non-intervention and Guernica, and the one-party state that lasted to nineteen seventy-five.

Loyalists against nationalists.

WC2 1522 Popular Front Against Franco, 1936

After two years the anchor calls anarchy, a Popular Front of liberals, socialists, communists and anarchists won the election of February nineteen thirty-six. General Franco, with the army, the Falange, the Church and the nobility, rose in July and seized key regions, backed by Germany and Italy: loyalists against nationalists. The anchor's thirty-five is corrected to thirty-six.

Guernica as practice.

WC2 1523 A War of Reprisals: Volunteers, Non-Intervention, Guernica

Both sides killed prisoners; the anchor counts six hundred thousand dead and two hundred thousand loyalists executed, the witness half a million dead, totals contested and attributed with no verdict. Over twenty thousand foreigners fought for the republic in the International Brigades. Britain and France chose non-intervention; Germany and Italy sent troops, and the Luftwaffe bombed Madrid and Guernica as practice.

El Caudillo, who avoided expansion.

WC2 1524 Franco's Spain, 1939 to 1975

The nationalists won in early nineteen thirty-nine and were recognized abroad; reprisals followed despite promises. Franco, El Caudillo, ruled a one-party state of nobles, army and Church until seventy-five, among the last fascistic states in Europe, fascistic being the anchor's word, attributed. Knowing Spain's weakness he avoided expansion, and Hitler's day of courting him came to nothing.

Four entries on the road to war: rearmament, the Rhineland and Ethiopia; appeasement defined and defended; the Anschluss and Munich; and Prague and the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

Playing chicken.

WC2 1525 Versailles Dismantled: Rearmament, the Rhineland, Ethiopia

Germany rearmed secretly from nineteen thirty-four and openly from thirty-five. On the second of March thirty-six three thousand troops reoccupied the demilitarized Rhineland and France did not move: playing chicken, in the anchor's phrase. Italy invaded Ethiopia in October thirty-five, the anchor's thirty-four corrected; the League's sanctions failed. The Rome-Berlin Axis followed in thirty-six.

Preserving peace, not caving, until Poland.

WC2 1526 Appeasement Defined, and Defended

Appeasement meant giving Hitler what he asked, territory, unions with German lands, an army, as legitimate grievances. The anchor defends it: the last war's horror, publics against fighting, unstable French governments, Daladier unwilling to fight alone. It was preserving peace, not caving, until Poland in September nineteen thirty-nine proved otherwise. The defense is the anchor's, attributed; historians differ.

Peace for our time.

WC2 1527 The Anschluss and Munich, 1938

In March nineteen thirty-eight Germany absorbed Austria, welcomed by most Austrians; anti-Semitic law and looting followed. In September Hitler demanded the Sudetenland, and at Munich Britain and France agreed to the annexation over Czech objections, the Czechs not at the table, Chamberlain photographed beside Hitler and speaking of peace for our time on his return.

Prague, the Pact of Steel, and a secret protocol.

WC2 1528 Czechoslovakia Occupied, and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939

In March nineteen thirty-nine Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia, the Czech lands a protectorate, Slovakia a puppet. In May the Pact of Steel bound Italy to Germany. In August the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, Molotov-Ribbentrop on the witness, with a secret protocol dividing Poland, freed Hitler's eastern flank; Stalin expected a capitalist squabble. Appeasement ended with Prague, not Munich.

Three procedures: the two dictatorships run side by side by year, the anchor's election chart read three ways, and the two seizures compared as the same road with two differences.

Violence, an appointment, then legality used to end legality.

WC2 1529 Sequencing Italy and Germany, 1919 to 1934

Run the two dictatorships side by side by year and the German one repeats the Italian one a decade late. Italy: the Fasci founded in Milan in nineteen nineteen; Blackshirt violence through twenty and twenty-one; the March on Rome and Mussolini's appointment in October twenty-two; a deputy murdered in twenty-four; opposition and press gone by twenty-six. Germany: the German Workers' Party joined in nineteen, renamed in twenty, Hitler its Führer in twenty-one; the Ruhr and hyperinflation in twenty-three and the Beer Hall Putsch that November; stabilization in twenty-four; two point six percent in twenty-eight; the Depression from twenty-nine; thirty-seven percent in thirty-two; the chancellorship in January thirty-three, the fire in February, the Enabling Act in March, one party by July; the Long Knives in June thirty-four and the Führer that August. The pattern: violence, an appointment by the head of state, then legal means to end legality. Name the year of each before checking. Dates are on the witness where the anchor lacks them.

Never a majority; the jump follows the crash; the middle collapses.

WC2 1530 Reading the Weimar Election Chart

The anchor's chart of Reichstag elections is the calibration case, and three readings answer three questions. First, the Nazi line: two point six percent in nineteen twenty-eight, eighteen percent of seats in thirty, thirty-seven percent in July thirty-two, a fall in November thirty-two, forty-four percent in March thirty-three under intimidation. It never crosses fifty, so Hitler was appointed, not elected. Second, the timing: the jump comes between twenty-eight and thirty, exactly when the Depression arrives, so the economy, not the message, moved the vote. Third, the other lines: the Communists rise too, the moderate middle collapses, and the Social Democrats hold. That is the exam's answer in a picture. Voters did not turn to the Nazis for anti-Semitism, which the party muted, nor for unions, which it banned; they turned away from a parliament of thirty-two parties that had failed at hyperinflation and now failed at the slump. Disenchantment with liberalism as weak and ineffective is what the chart shows. Percentages are the anchor's; the March thirty-three figure is the witness's forty-three point nine.

Same road; a bigger vote and a biological creed.

WC2 1531 Comparing Mussolini's and Hitler's Seizures of Power

The honest answer is the same way, with two differences. Same: a paramilitary, Blackshirts or SA, that made the streets unsafe and the party look like order; a fear of communism that made conservatives, business and the Church prefer the fascist to the alternative; a head of state, Victor Emmanuel the Third or Hindenburg, who appointed the leader as a bulwark and expected to control him; and then the legal destruction of legality, Italy's from twenty-two to twenty-six, Germany's in six months of thirty-three. First difference: the vote. Mussolini's party was tiny when appointed and won its majority afterward under intimidation; Hitler's was the largest party at thirty-seven percent before appointment. Second: doctrine. Italian Fascism was about the state; Nazism was about blood, and the Nuremberg Laws followed within three years while Italy's racial laws waited until thirty-eight. Practice on six items and say which regime, or both: corporatism, the Enabling Act, the March on Rome, the Long Knives, banned unions, sterilization. The comparison is the anchor's material ordered by the course.

One capstone entry: the anchor's answer to the Nazis' rise, and the showing that it was general, from Milan to Munich to the Pact.

Democracy blamed; fascism appointed.

WC2 1532 Why Democracies Fell: Disenchantment, Depression, and the Men Who Used Them

This unit answers the exam's question about the Nazis' rise with the anchor's answer, and then shows the answer was general. The nineteenth century's movements had all succeeded by nineteen twenty, nations for empires, republics for kings, and the reward was a war that killed twenty million and a peace that satisfied no one. Democracy was the form nearly every state took and the form nearly every people came to despise, because it delivered deadlock, thirty-two parties in Germany, a mutilated victory and a red scare in Italy, anarchy in Spain, and then, in twenty-nine, a slump its governments met with cuts. Fascism offered what democracy could not, order and a nation to die for, and it offered it first in Italy, where a king appointed a man with a hundred followers because the alternative looked like Russia. Germany repeated the sequence a decade late with a biological creed added: a fringe at two point six percent became the largest party the moment the Depression arrived, and a president appointed its leader to control him. The takeover was legal, a fire, a decree, an Enabling Act, and the state that followed enrolled everyone and excluded Jews by law. Spain's republic was strangled by its own army with German bombs. The democracies that survived watched. They rearmed too late, let the Rhineland go, let Ethiopia go, gave away the Sudetenland at Munich, and called it preserving peace until Prague showed the price. Stalin, who trusted no democracy, signed with Hitler instead. Democracy blamed for the war and the slump; fascism appointed, not elected. The calibration answer is disenchantment with weak liberalism. Unit seventeen begins in Poland, in September nineteen thirty-nine.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe the Popular Front and Franco's rising, a war of reprisals with two figures and no verdict, and El Caudillo to seventy-five. You can describe the Rhineland and Ethiopia, appeasement defended and then proved wrong at Poland, the Anschluss and Munich with the Czechs absent, and Prague and the Pact. You can sequence the two dictatorships as violence, appointment, then legality used to end legality, a decade apart. You can read the chart for never a majority, a jump after the crash and a collapsing middle, and compare the seizures as the same road with a bigger vote and a biological creed. And you can state why democracies fell: blamed for the war and the slump, with fascism appointed rather than elected, which is this unit's one idea. Unit seventeen begins in Poland.