Rise of the dictators

Rise of the Dictators,1918-1939

Chapter 7

Introduction

In the aftermath of the First World War, many believed that a new age of democratic government had dawned. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that the war’s great aim was to “make

the world safe for democracy.”

All of the new states of Central and Eastern Europe became democracies. Even Germany, a former stronghold of authoritarian rule, had adopted a

democratic form of government.

In East Asia, Japan also appeared to be making a transition towards democracy.

Introduction

During the 1920s, the democratic flame began to flicker and in the 1930s, it threatened to die out almost completely. Instead of an age of democracy, the interwar years, became an era of

dictatorship.

The road to the Second World War began at least two decades before it started.

Resentments growing out of the first global conflict mixed with a worldwide depression, set the stage for international political instability. In Italy, Germany, and Japan these circumstances created political conditions

that nurtured ultranationalist movements promising recovery through military buildup and territorial expansion.

Day 1: Soviet UnionJoseph Stalin

Rise of the Dictators: Russia

Joseph Stalin was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in December 18, 1878 to peasant parents in Gori, Georgia, the portion of the Russian empire located in the Caucasus Mountains.

Stalin grew up in poverty and as an only child.

His father was a cobbler (shoemaker) and an alcoholic who beat his son, and his mother was a laundress.

As a teen, he earned a scholarship to attend a seminary in the nearby city of Tblisi and studied for the priesthood in the Georgian Orthodox Church.

While there he began secretly reading the work of German social philosopher and “Communist Manifesto” author Karl Marx, becoming interested in the revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy.

In 1899, he was expelled from the seminary for missing exams, although he claimed that it was due to his reading of Marxist propaganda.

Age: 16 Age: 23


From an early age, Stalin displayed symptoms of ruthlessness, cruelty, and an excessive desire for power.

After leaving seminary, Stalin became an underground political agitator, taking part in labor demonstrations, strikes, and various criminal activities.

He was arrested multiple times between 1902-1913, and was subjected to imprisonment and exile in Switzerland.

It was at this time that he adopted the name “Stalin” derived from the Russian word for steel.

Although overshadowed by Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and others during the revolution, Stalin emerged as a major figure in the civil war and its aftermath.

In November 1917, the Bolshevik Party dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and established the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, commonly referred to as the Soviet Union or Soviet Russia.


In August 1918, Moisei Uritisky, chief of the Petrograd Secret Police, was assassinated; two weeks later, Lenin was shot in an attempt and severely wounded.

In response, Stalin advocated an “open and systematic mass terror” against those responsible – the Red Terror.

Within the first few month, 800 socialists were arrested and shot without trial.

In the first year, the official figure, which is a grave underestimate, suggested 6,300 had been executed.

After Lenin died in 1924, Stain had succeeded in purging his rivals and had emerged as the undisputed leader of the Communist Party and the country in 1928.


Stalin felt strong enough to launch a massive program to nationalize the economy and transform Soviet Russia into a first-class industrial power.

The first of many five-year plans was meant to sharply increase production goals for both agriculture and industry.

To do so, he brought the entire economy under state control by nationalizing all industry and abolishing private ownership of the land in favor of a system of collectivization.

Collectivization is the process of forming collectives whereby property and resources are owned and shared by the community and not individuals.

This program soon encountered resistance from the kulaks (well-off peasants), who burned their crops and slaughtered their livestock.


Stalin responded to this act of resistance with ruthless aggression – stratocide.

Stratocide is the elimination of a social class.

The Soviet secret police and army units intervened, killing a large number of kulaks and shipping numerous others into exile settlements.

1.8 million were sent to remote labor colonies with the empire or to concentration camps in Siberia, Kazakhstan, and the Ural Mountains.

Sources not that 1.3 million reached their destination while the fate of the remaining 500,000 cannot be verified.

Additionally, kulaks made up the majority of victims of the Great Purge of the 1930s with an estimated 669,929 arrested and 376,202 executed,


Stalin turned to famine as a tool of political repression.

His excessive and ruthless bread procurements starved millions to death in the Ukraine and Kazakhstan between 1930-1933.

6.5 million died as a result of the Holodomor famine – a recognized genocide of the Ukrainian people.

The death toll is roughly 8,450,000 people throughout the Soviet Union.

Many historians criticize this number as too low – Stalin, himself, estimated a minimum of ten million total.

Ukrainian historians cite that in 1933, citizens were dying at a rate of 25,000 per day, totaling close to ten million in the Ukraine alone.


Between 1936-1939, Stalin moved against his enemies in a series of massive purges the “old Bolsheviks” for various crimes against the state and the party.

Among those found guilty was Leon Trotsky.

Not content with eliminating these leaders, he ordered thousands of lesser party and military officials either shot or imprisoned in Siberian “labor” camps.

In all, perhaps 800,000 party members died in the purges.

By 1937-1938, an average of 1000 executions occurred each day.


By 1940, Stalin had purged his largest critic, Leon Trotsky..

In 1928, Trotsky was deported by Stalin to Alma-Ata in remote Soviet Central Asia where he lived in exile until he was banished from Soviet Russia forever.

After four years in Turkey, Trotsky lived in France and Norway until he was granted asylum in Mexico in 1936.

Settling with his family in a suburb of Mexico City, he was found guilty of “treason in absebtia” during Stalin’s purges of his political foes.

He survived a machine gun attack carried out by Stalinist agents, but fell prey to Ramon Mercador.

Mercador had won the confidence of the Trotsky household and he was able to fatally wound Trotsky with an ice-axe.


Nikolai Yezhov, leader of the NKVD, inspecting the White Sea canal with Stalin.

Yezhov, having been purged, has been replaced by a stretch of the canal bank and canal.


Stalin did not mellow with age.

He prosecuted a reign of terror, purges, executions, exiles to labor camps and persecution in the postwar Soviet Russia, suppressing all dissent and anything that smacked of foreign influence.

He grew increasingly paranoid in his later years and died on March 5, 1953, at the age of seventy-four, after suffering a massive heart attack.

He is remembered to this day as the man who helped save his nation from Nazi domination and as the mass murdered of the century.

By some estimates, Stalin is responsible for having overseen the deaths of 20 million people.

Day 2: ItalyBenito Mussolini

Rise of the Dictators: Italy

Benito Mussolini, the eldest of three children, was born in July 29, 1883 in Dovia di Predappio, Forli, Italy.

Mussolini’s father, Alessandro, named his son after the Mexican revolutionary, Benito Juarez.

His father was a blacksmith and an impassioned socialist who spent much of his time on politics and much of his money on his mistress.

It was from his father that he acquired a deep resentment of the privileged classes and the clergy.

He especially disliked his upper-class school mates and even attacked one of them with a pen knife.

His mother, Rosa Maltoni, was a devout Catholic schoolteacher, who provided the family with some stability and income.


As a youth, Mussolini showed much intelligence but was animated and disobedient.

Though he was expelled from several Catholic schools for bullying and defying school authorities, he eventually obtained a teaching certificate in 1901 and, for a brief time, worked as an elementary school teacher.

After an unsuccessful career as a schoolmaster, he turned to socialism and rose rapidly throughout the Socialist Party leadership.

In 1902, he moved to Switzerland to promote socialism but he caught the attention of Swiss authorities and was eventually expelled from the country.

By 1904, Mussolini had returned to Italy and continued to promote his socialist agenda.

After being imprisoned, he became the editor of the organization’s newspaper, Avanti (Forward), which gave him a larger megaphone and expanded his influence.


Mussolini initially condemned Italy’s entry into the First World War, but soon saw the war as an opportunity for his country to become a great power.

This heresy outraged his fellow Socialists, which led to his ouster from the party.

Mussolini joined the Italian army in 1915 and served capably, seeing action on the front lines and rising to the rank of corporal.

He was discharged from the military after being wounded by a grenade launcher that blew up, showering him with fragments.

After the war, he resumed his political activities, criticizing the Italian government for not achieving more at the Versailles conference and for failing to resolve the economic dilemmas of Italy.

Mussolini decided his destiny was to rule Italy as a modern day Caesar and to re-create the Roman Empire.


In 1919, Mussolini’s band of disgruntled veterans and ardent nationalists organized the nucleus of what became known as the Fascist Party.

The movement gained its name from the fasces, a symbol of authority during the Roman Empire.

The Fasces consists of a bundle of rods surrounding an axe.

Capitalizing on public discontent, Mussolini organized a paramilitary unit known as the “Black Shirts,” who terrorized political opponents and helped increase fascist influence.

By 1922, as Italy slipped into further chaos, Mussolini declared that he and only he could restore order if given the authority.

In October 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III, who saw the upcoming Fascist Party as a safeguard against communism, asked Mussolini to become Premier of his coalition cabinet.


Between 1924-1926, the Fascists use intimidation and violence to gain the majority of the coalition government, and by the end of 1926, Italy was a one-party dictatorship.

In 1929, Mussolini made himself dictator, taking the title “Il Duce.”

To his credit, Mussolini carried out an extensive public works program and reduced unemployment, making him very popular with the people.

Additionally, Mussolini made relatively little change in the official structure of the old governmental system:

monarchy

Catholic Church

capitalism


In 1935, determined to show the strength of his regime, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia.

The ill-equipped Ethiopians were no match for Italy’s modern tanks and aircrafts, and the capital, Addis Ababa, was quickly captured.

Mussolini incorporated Ethiopia into the new Italian Empire.

Italy’s early military successes impressed Germany’s dictator Adolf Hitler, who sought to establish a relationship with Mussolini that would carry on until 1945.

By April 1945, Mussolini believed that defeat of the Axis Powers was all but certain so he began to consider his options:

Fall into the hands of either the British or the Americans.

Be tried as a war criminal by communist partisans, who were slowing gaining political power in Italy.

Escape to a neutral nation.


Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, attempted to escape to Switzerland but were captured by the Italian underground on April 27, 1945.

They were executed the following day in Mezzegra, Italy and transported by truck to Milan.

There they were hung upside down and displayed publicly for revilement by the masses.

Mussolini had promised his people Roman glory, but his megalomania had overcame his common sense, bringing them only war and misery.

Day 3: GermanyAdolf Hitler

Rise of the Dictators: Germany

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, to poor peasants at the Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn located in the small Austrian town of Braunau near the German border.

He was the fourth of six children to Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl.

At the age of three, the family moved from Austria to Germany.

As a child, Hitler clashed frequently with his father and after his younger brother, Edmund, died, he became detached and introverted.

Hitler was an indifferent student and dropped out at the age of sixteen.

Leopold Potsch, his history master, taught him about the noble German values, victories over France in 1870-1871, and preached for the unification of Austria and Germany.

Age: Infant Age: Young Boy


Alois died suddenly in 1903 and by 1905, Klara allowed her son to drop out of school.

In 1907, Klara was diagnosed with a tumor in her breast and died after a long series of painful iodoform treatments administered by Dr. Eduard Bloch.

Hitler moved to Vienna and worked as a casual laborer and a watercolor painter.

He dreamt of becoming an artist or architect, but failed to gain admission into the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and the Vienna School of Architecture.

Between 1910-1914, Hitler remained in the Austrian capital; however, he was living an aimless life and made ends meat on an orphan’s pension.

He later pointed to these years as a time when he first cultivated his anti-Semitism, though this is the cause of much debate.


When the First World War broke out, he joined the German army and served as a dispatch runner on the front lines.

Hitler was present at a number of significant battles and was wounded at the Somme.

Additionally, in October 1918, he was temporarily blinded by a British chlorine gas attack.

Though he never rose above the rank of lance corporal, he was decorated with five medals, including the prestigious Iron Cross and the Black wound Badge.


On November 10, 1918, an elderly pastor came to the hospital and announced that the Kaiser and the House of Hollenzollern had fallen.

Their beloved Fatherland was now the Weimar republic.

Hitler is recorded as stating, “I knew all was lost…in these nights hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for this deed” – not the military but the politicians, the Marxists, and the Jews.

After the war, Hitler was stationed in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, as an intelligence officer where he monitored the activities of the German Worker’s Party.

Here he adopted many of the anti-Semitic, nationalist and anti-Marxist ideas that the party was founded on.

In 1919, Hitler joined the German Worker’s Party.


By 1921, the party now known as the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) party voted Hitler the official title of Fuhrer with virtually dictatorial powers.

He soon revealed his exceptional gift for oratory and an astonishing ability to dominate his fellow party members by sheer force of personality.

In 1923, Hitler took part in the Beer Hall Putsch, a Nazi attempt to seize the state government of Bavaria, which was to be followed by a march to Berlin.

Hitler and several other party leaders were arrested and put on trial for high treason.

His trial transformed him into a national figure as he accepted full responsibility for the putsch and turned his defense into an appeal for German nationalism.


Although sentenced to five years, he only served nine months.

It was here that he dedicated most of his time to the first volume of Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), which laid out his plan for transforming German society into one based on race.

Hitler’s most important belief was in the superiority of what he referred to as the Aryan race.

He identified all Germanic peoples as Aryans.

Additionally, he believed that the Aryan race should avoid interbreeding with lesser peoples – like the Jews – who would pollute Aryan blood and weaken the race.


Hitler first denounced the Versailles peace settlement of 1919, and promised to build a new empire – the Third Reich.

He insisted n the need for Germany to absorb the ethnic Germans of Austria, the Sudetenland, Danzig, and Poland.

His ultimate goal was the conquest of lebensraum (living space) for the German people in Soviet Russia.

Hitler secondly blamed Germany’s plight on a Jewish conspiracy.

Jews were not only inferior but a sinister influence on German society.

He associated the Jews with Marxist socialism and the Weimar republic, both of which he detested.

By the spring of 1932, the German people began to lose confidence in the republic, which set the stage for Hitler’s ascension to power.


When the 1932 elections took place, Hitler ran against Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency but came up short.

The Nazis Party, however, captured over thirty-seven percent of the vote and became the nation’s largest party within the Reichstag.

To ease political tensions, von Hindenburg reluctantly appointed Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933.

Hitler used his position as chancellor to form a de facto legal dictatorship.

He first eliminated all other political parties and ousted unacceptable members of his cabinet.

Then on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building mysteriously caught fire and burned down.


Hitler took the fire as an opportunity “to exterminate” the Communist separatists.

Thousands of members of the Social Democratic Party and the German Communist Party were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

Hitler named these camps after those used by the British during the Boer war as the idea was to “concentrate” the enemy into a restricted area.

By 1934, there only remained two potential sources of opposition within Germany:

The army

Sturmabteilung (S.A./Storm Detachment/Brown-shirts)

On June 29, Hitler ordered the purge of the Sturmabteilung.


During the next twenty-four hours, the Schutzstaffel (S.S. troopers/Protection Squadron) took Ernst Rohm and 200 other senior S.A. leaders by surprise and executed them without trial.

Operation Hummingbird or the “Night of the Long Knives”

In a speech on July 13, Hitler gave this purge a name and explained why he had not relied on the courts to deal with the conspirators:

“In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I become the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason.”

Shortly after this purge, President Hindenburg died, and Hitler announced that the offices of the chancellor and president were now combined in his new position as Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor.


The army agreed to support his acquisition of presidential powers and swore an oath of allegiance to him.

Hitler now wielded absolute power over both the party and state and initiated the greatest conflict known to mankind.

By early 1945, Hitler’s realized that he was losing his beloved Germany and he burrowed himself away in a refurbished air-raid bunker.

The shelter was fifty-five feet under the chancellery, contained eighteen small rooms, and was fully self-sufficient with its own water and electrical supply.

Within the bunker, Hitler directed the last great siege of the war with Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler, and Joachim von Ribbentrop.

By his side was his girlfriend, Eva Braun, and his dog, Blondi.


Hitler was warned by his officers that the Russians were only a day or so from overtaking the chancellery and urged him to escape to Berchtesgarden.

Instead of escape, he chose suicide.

After midnight on April 29, 1945, Hitler married Eva Braun, in a small civic ceremony in his Berlin bunker.

It is believed that both he and his wife swallowed cyanide capsules, which were tested first on his “beloved” dogs and her pups.

For good measure, he shot himself with his service pistol.

The bodies of Hitler and Eva were cremated in the chancellery garden by the bunker survivors and reportedly later recovered in part by Russian troops.


Ian Kershaw declares that “never in history has such ruination – physical and moral – been associated with the name of one man.”

Hitler’s political program brought about a world war, leaving behind a devastated and impoverished Eastern and Central Europe.

Germany itself suffered wholesale destruction.

His policies inflicted human suffering on an unprecedented scale.

The Nazi regime was responsible for the democidal killing of an estimated twenty million civilians and prisoners of war.

In addition, twenty-nine million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre of the Second World War.

Hitler’s role has been described as “the main author of a war leaving over fifty million dead and millions more grieving their lost ones.”

Day 4: JapanHirohito


Hirohito, the eldest son of Crown Prince Yoshihito, was born April 29, 1901, within the confines of the Aoyama Palace in Tokyo.

According to custom, imperial family members were not raised by their parents; instead, he spent his early years in the care of a retired vice-admiral and an imperial attendant.

From age seven to nineteen, Hirohito attended schools set up for the children of nobility.

He received rigorous instruction in military and religious matters, along with other subjects such as math and physics.

In 1921, Hirohito and a thirty-four man entourage traveled to Western Europe for a six month tour.

It was the first time a Japanese crown prince had ever gone abroad.

Age: Infant Age: 20


Upon his return to Japan, Hirohito became regent for his chronically ill father and assumed the duties of emperor.

In September 1923, an earthquake struck the Tokyo area, killing about 100,000 and destroying sixty-three percent of the city’s housing.

Rampaging Japanese mobs murdered several thousand ethnic Koreans and leftists, who were accused of setting fires and looting in the quake’s aftermath.

That December, Hirohito survived an assassination attempt while he was on his way to the opening of the forty-eighth session of the Imperial Diet.

Daisuke Namba, the young son of a member of the Diet, fired a small pistol at the emperor’s carriage, injuring the chamberlain but not Hirohito.

Namba was declared insane and sentenced to death for his actions.


In January 1924, Hirohito married Princess Nagako, with whom he would have seven children.

At this time, he ended the practice of imperial concubine.

Hirohito officially became emperor when his father died in December 1926.

Hirohito was the nation’s highest spiritual authority and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

When Hirohito assumed the throne, his pro-democracy government was facing a crisis.

He fired the prime minister in 1928, the next prime minister was shot and mortally wounded, and in 1932, yet another prime minister was assassinated by naval officers.

From then on, all prime ministers came from the military rather than political parties.


From then on, political violence was the norm.

In 1935, a lieutenant colonel slashed a general to death with a samurai sword and in 1936, over 1,400 soldiers mutinied in Tokyo, seizing the army ministry and murdering several high-ranking politicians,

Throughout the 1930s, the Japanese military grew increasingly more aggressive and implemented policies reflecting that stance, which led to their involvement in the Second World War.

In 1937, war broke out between China and Japan.

That winter, the Japanese army massacred an estimated 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war in and around the city of Nanking.

Hirohito did not condone the invasion but he did worry that the military would force him to abdicate the throne; therefore, he did not punish those responsible.


Although he was unenthusiastic about Japan’s involvement in the Second World War, he consented to the decision for his government to battle the Americans.

By 1944, Japanese military leaders recognized that victory was unlikely; yet, they did not stop fighting until two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On August 15, 1945, Hirohito made a radio broadcast announcing Japan’s surrender.

A postwar constitution preserved Hirohito’s position but defined him merely as a symbol of the state.

Unlike many of his top military brass, Hirohito was not indicted as a war criminal, in part because American authorities feared it could throw their occupation into chaos.


Hirohito became Japan’s first democrat and was able to lead Japan into political and financial stability.

As the head of state, he played an important role in rebuilding Japan’s image to the rest of the world.

From 1945 to 1951, Hirohito toured the nation and oversaw all reconstruction efforts.

On January 7, 1989, having spent nearly sixty-four years on the throne, Hirohito died of cancer at the place of his birth – Tokyo’s Ayoma Palace.

This was the longest imperial reign in Japanese history.

Rise of the dictators

Education

russiajoseph stalin

soviet unionjoseph stalin

age of democracy

early age

world war

russian empire

russian monarchy

russian word