The Inter-War Period
Senior 6 · History (Languages)
The Inter-War Period
Lesson 3 of 4
25 min
The photograph shows Fascist squads marching towards Rome in October 1922. They did not storm the capital. On 29 October King Victor Emmanuel III, unwilling to use the army against them, invited their leader, Benito Mussolini, to become Prime Minister. Eleven years later, on 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany. In both countries the men who destroyed democracy were handed power by its own leaders. This lesson asks why.
Definition
Totalitarian regime: a dictatorship that seeks to control every part of public and private life (politics, economy, culture, religion, education and even thought) through one party, a leader, propaganda and terror.
Fascism: an extreme nationalist movement, founded by Mussolini in Italy, that glorified the state, the leader, violence and war and rejected democracy and communism.
Nazism: the German form of fascism led by Hitler, built on racism, especially antisemitism, and on the conquest of "living space" in eastern Europe.
Propaganda: information, often false or one-sided, spread to shape what people believe.
| Feature | Fascist Italy (Mussolini) | Nazi Germany (Hitler) | Soviet Union (Stalin) |
|---|---|---|---|
| One party, no opposition | Fascist Party only, from 1926 | Nazi Party only, from July 1933 | Communist Party only |
| Cult of the leader | "Il Duce" | "Der Führer" | Stalin as "father of the peoples" |
| Propaganda and censorship | Controlled press and radio | Ministry of Propaganda under Goebbels | State-controlled press, art and science |
| Secret police and terror | OVRA | Gestapo, SS, concentration camps | NKVD, Gulag labour camps, purges |
| Control of youth | Balilla youth movement | Hitler Youth | Komsomol |
| State direction of the economy | Corporate state | Rearmament, public works | Five-Year Plans, forced collectivisation |
| Targets of persecution | Opponents; later Jews (racial laws, 1938) | Jews above all, Roma, disabled people, opponents | "Class enemies", whole peoples deported |
Figure 1. The Depression years turned a fringe party into the largest in Germany. Even at its peak in a free election (July 1932) the Nazi Party never won a majority.
After the Reichstag fire (27 February 1933) an emergency decree suspended civil liberties. The Enabling Act (23 March 1933) let Hitler make laws without Parliament. Other parties were banned by July 1933, rivals inside the movement were murdered in the "Night of the Long Knives" (June 1934), and when Hindenburg died in August 1934 Hitler combined the offices of President and Chancellor.
TED-Ed, "How did Hitler rise to power?" by Alex Gendler and Anthony Hazard (animated, about 6 minutes). Watch for the legal steps by which a democracy was dismantled, and match them to the paragraph above.
Warning
"Hitler was elected dictator" is wrong. The Nazis won at most 37.3% in a free election; Hitler was appointed Chancellor and then used decrees, the Enabling Act and terror to make himself dictator.
Tip
Conditions plus choices. Explain a dictator's rise in two halves: the conditions (war, crisis, fear of communism, weak democracy) and the choices (of the leader, his militias, and the elites who let him in). Examiners reward answers that show both.
Important
A lesson for peace. Totalitarian regimes taught people to see neighbours as enemies by repeating lies about them. Rwanda knows from the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi where such propaganda can lead. Discuss: which features in the table above would warn you that a society is moving towards dictatorship today?
Practice
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the chart, the table, the analysis and the exercises.
