Rise of Dictators

Rise of Dictators

CONNECTION

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Joseph Stalin - Soviet Union

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Connection: What encouraged the rise of dictatorships? The economic problems that resulted from World War I and the Depression led people to question whether democratic government could improve their lives. Totalitarian governments appeared to provide a sense of security and offered a strong direction for the future. A totalitarian ruler leads a government that maintains complete control over every part of public and private life of the citizens in that country. Both Communism and Fascism used aspects of totalitarianism as part of their governments. In general, both used dictators, only allowed one political party, and denied many individual rights. Police terror was used for control and to get rid of any opposition. Controlling media sources (newspapers, television, radio etc.) with propaganda and limiting what was reported helped influence what people thought. During the 1920s and 1930s, four major totalitarian governments developed – one was Communist, the other three were Fascist. The Treaty of Versailles, along with the economic depression that followed, contributed to the rise of antidemocratic governments in both Europe and Asia. These antidemocratic states would eventually break the peace agreement that ended World War I.

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Benito Mussolini - Italy

Adolf Hitler - Germany

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The Holocaust

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Hideki Tojo - Japan

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LIberation

As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Nazi Germany, they began to encounter tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Throughout the spring of 1945, American and Allied forces liberated numerous concentration camps as they closed in on Berlin. The battle-hardened Allied soldiers were shocked at what they discovered. US soldier Aaron A. Eiferman, with the 12th Armored Division, writes a letter to his wife describing conditions in Kaufering IV, one of the Nazi concentration camps in the Landsberg area.. He wrote "we have seen what can be called the living dead."

Aggressive Actions

• By the early 1930s, Stalin had established a totalitarian dicatatorship - a system in which government controls ALL aspects of society.
• Those who resisted Stalin were forced to do hard labor in prisonlike labor camps (gulags)
• Stalin used brutal methods to stregthen his control of the Communist Party
• Soviet secret police rounded up and killed millions of citizens who opposed him
• In August 1939, Stalin and Garmany sign a Non-Aggression Pact , agreeing that neither would attack the other

Aggressive Actions

• Mussolini wanted to build an empire like the great former Italian empire, the Romans
• Italy attempted to colonize Ethiopia in the late 1880s during the "Scramble for Africa"

• Invaded and conquered Ethiopia and the League of Nations did nothing to help Ethiopia

• Formed violent Blackshirt squads and used violence against those who opposed him

Aggressive Actions

Hitler Violates the Treaty of Versailles -Built up the military -Annexed territories to the German state Secured his popularity with physical violence against any opposition Dedicated to promoting German ethnic pride -promoted anti-semitism, or hatred of Jewish peoples -Jews and other "undersirables" were targeted with new laws and shipped off to concentration camps as forced laborers Final Solution - use of death camps to commit genocide

Aggressive Actions

• Before WW1, Japan began to industrialize. They relied on a strong military to obtain raw materials from other countries
• In the 1930s, Japan moved toward a policy of militarism - the military began to increase and play a greater role in politics. As militarists took control of the government, the Japanses emperor Hirohito, could not stop them
• These "militarists" wanted to conqure territory in East Asia and the Pacific.

• 1931 - Japan invades Manchuria in China
• 1937 - Full invasion of China - Chinese were treated brutally