30.2: The Russian Revolution

30.2.1: The Russian Revolution of 1905

Learning Objective

Outline the events of the 1905 Revolution, along with its successes and failures

Key Points

• In January 1905, an incident known as “Bloody Sunday” occurred when Father Gapon led an enormous crowd to the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg to present a petition to the tsar. 
• When the procession reached the palace, Cossacks opened fire on the crowd, killing hundreds.
• The Russian masses were so aroused over the massacre that a general strike was declared demanding a democratic republic, which marked the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1905. 
• Soviets (councils of workers) appeared in most cities to direct revolutionary activity.
• In October 1905, Tsar Nicholas reluctantly issued the famous October Manifesto, which conceded the creation of a national Duma (legislature), as well as the right to vote, and affirmed that no law was to go into force without confirmation by the Duma. 
• The moderate groups were satisfied, but the socialists rejected the concessions as insufficient and tried to organize new strikes. 
• By the end of 1905, there was disunity among the reformers, and the tsar’s position was strengthened for the time being.

Key Terms

Russification

A form of cultural assimilation during which non-Russian communities, voluntarily or not, give up their culture and language in favor of the Russian one. In a historical sense, the term refers to both official and unofficial policies of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union with respect to their national constituents and to national minorities in Russia, aimed at Russian domination.

State Duma

The Lower House of the legislative assembly in the late Russian Empire, which held its meetings in the Taurida Palace in St. Petersburg. It convened four times between April 1906 and the collapse of the Empire in February 1917. It was founded during the Russian Revolution of 1905 as the Tsar’s response to rebellion.

Russian Constitution of 1906

A major revision of the 1832 Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire, which transformed the formerly absolutist state into one in which the emperor agreed for the first time to share his autocratic power with a parliament. It was enacted on May 6, 1906, on the eve of the opening of the first State Duma.

The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire, some of which was directed at the government. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies and led to constitutional reform, including the establishment of the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906.

Causes of Unrest

According to Sidney Harcave, author of The Russian Revolution of 1905, four problems in Russian society contributed to the revolution. First, newly emancipated peasants earned too little and were not allowed to sell or mortgage their allotted land. Second, ethnic minorities resented the government because of its “Russification,” discrimination, and repression, both social and formal, such as banning them from voting and serving in the Guard or Navy and limiting attendance in schools. Third, a nascent industrial working class resented the government for doing too little to protect them, by banning strikes and labor unions. Finally, the educated class fomented and spread radical ideas after a relaxing of discipline in universities allowed a new consciousness to grow among students.

Taken individually, these issues might not have affected the course of Russian history, but together they created the conditions for a potential revolution. Historian James Defronzo writes, “At the turn of the century, discontent with the Tsar’s dictatorship was manifested not only through the growth of political parties dedicated to the overthrow of the monarchy but also through industrial strikes for better wages and working conditions, protests and riots among peasants, university demonstrations, and the assassination of government officials, often done by Socialist Revolutionaries.”

Start of the Revolution

In December 1904, a strike occurred at the Putilov plant (a railway and artillery supplier) in St. Petersburg. Sympathy strikes in other parts of the city raised the number of strikers to 150,000 workers in 382 factories. By January 21, 1905, the city had no electricity and newspaper distribution was halted. All public areas were declared closed.

Controversial Orthodox priest Georgy Gapon, who headed a police-sponsored workers’ association, led a huge workers’ procession to the Winter Palace to deliver a petition to the Tsar on Sunday, January 22, 1905. The troops guarding the palace were ordered to tell the demonstrators not to pass a certain point, according to Sergei Witte, and at some point, troops opened fire on the demonstrators, causing between 200 and 1,000 deaths. The event became known as Bloody Sunday and is considered by many scholars as the start of the active phase of the revolution.

The events in St. Petersburg provoked public indignation and a series of massive strikes that spread quickly throughout the industrial centers of the Russian Empire. Polish socialists called for a general strike. By the end of January 1905, over 400,000 workers in Russian Poland were on strike. Half of European Russia’s industrial workers went on strike in 1905, and 93.2% in Poland. There were also strikes in Finland and the Baltic coast.

Nationalist groups were angered by the Russification undertaken since Alexander II. The Poles, Finns, and Baltic provinces all sought autonomy and freedom to use their national languages and promote their own cultures. Muslim groups were also active — the First Congress of the Muslim Union took place in August 1905. Certain groups took the opportunity to settle differences with each other rather than the government. Some nationalists undertook anti-Jewish pogroms, possibly with government aid, and in total over 3,000 Jews were killed.

Height of the Revolution

Tsar Nicholas II agreed on February 18 to the creation of a State Duma of the Russian Empire with consultative powers only. When its slight powers and limits on the electorate were revealed, unrest redoubled. The Saint Petersburg Soviet was formed and called for a general strike in October, refusal to pay taxes, and the withdrawal of bank deposits.

In June and July 1905, there were many peasant uprisings in which peasants seized land and tools. Disturbances in the Russian-controlled Congress Poland culminated in June 1905 in the Łódź insurrection. Surprisingly, only one landlord was recorded as killed. Far more violence was inflicted on peasants outside the commune with 50 deaths recorded.

The October Manifesto, written by Sergei Witte and Alexis Obolenskii, was presented to the Tsar on October 14. It closely followed the demands of the Zemstvo Congress in September, granting basic civil rights, allowing the formation of political parties, extending the franchise towards universal suffrage, and establishing the Duma as the central legislative body. The Tsar waited and argued for three days, but finally signed the manifesto on October 30, 1905, citing his desire to avoid a massacre and his realization that insufficient military force was available to pursue alternate options. He regretted signing the document, saying that he felt “sick with shame at this betrayal of the dynasty … the betrayal was complete.”

When the manifesto was proclaimed, there were spontaneous demonstrations of support in all the major cities. The strikes in St. Petersburg and elsewhere officially ended or quickly collapsed. A political amnesty was also offered. The concessions came hand-in-hand with renewed, brutal action against the unrest. There was also a backlash from the conservative elements of society, with right-wing attacks on strikers, left-wingers, and Jews.

While the Russian liberals were satisfied by the October Manifesto and prepared for upcoming Duma elections, radical socialists and revolutionaries denounced the elections and called for an armed uprising to destroy the Empire.

Some of the November uprising of 1905 in Sevastopol, headed by retired naval Lieutenant Pyotr Schmidt, was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included terrorism, worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies, and was only suppressed after a fierce battle. The Trans-Baikal railroad fell into the hands of striker committees and demobilized soldiers returning from Manchuria after the Russo–Japanese War. The Tsar had to send a special detachment of loyal troops along the Trans-Siberian Railway to restore order.

Between December 5 and 7, there was another general strike by Russian workers. The government sent troops on December 7, and a bitter street-by-street fight began. A week later, the Semyonovsky Regiment was deployed and used artillery to break up demonstrations and shell workers’ districts. On December 18, with around a thousand people dead and parts of the city in ruins, the workers surrendered. After a final spasm in Moscow, the uprisings ended.

Russian Revolution of 1905

A locomotive overturned by striking workers at the main railway depot in Tiflis in 1905.

A locomotive overturned by striking workers at the main railway depot in Tiflis in 1905

Results

According to figures presented in the Duma by Professor Maksim Kovalevsky, by April 1906, more than 14,000 people had been executed and 75,000 imprisoned.

Following the Revolution of 1905, the Tsar made last attempts to save his regime and offered reforms similar to those of most rulers pressured by a revolutionary movement. The military remained loyal throughout the Revolution of 1905, as shown by their shooting of revolutionaries when ordered by the Tsar, making overthrow difficult. These reforms were outlined in a precursor to the Constitution of 1906 known as the October Manifesto which created the Imperial Duma. The Russian Constitution of 1906, also known as the Fundamental Laws, set up a multiparty system and a limited constitutional monarchy. The revolutionaries were quelled and satisfied with the reforms, but it was not enough to prevent the 1917 revolution that would later topple the Tsar’s regime.

30.2.2: Rising Discontent in Russia

Learning Objective

Name a few reasons the Russian populace was discontented with its leadership

Key Points

• During the 1890s, Russia’s industrial development led to a large increase in the size of the urban middle-class and working class, which gave rise to a more dynamic political atmosphere and the development of radical parties.
• During the 1890s and early 1900s, bad living and working conditions, high taxes, and land hunger gave rise to more frequent strikes and agrarian disorders.
• Russia’s backwards systems for agricultural production, the worst in Europe at the time, influenced the attitudes of peasants and other social groups to reform against the government and promote social changes.
• The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a major factor of the February Revolutions of 1917, unleashing a steady current of worker unrest and increased political agitation.
• The onset of World War I exposed the weakness of Nicholas II’s government. 
• A show of national unity had accompanied Russia’s entrance into the war, with defense of the Slavic Serbs the main battle cry, but by 1915, the strain of the war began to cause popular unrest, with high food prices and fuel shortages causing strikes in some cities.

Key Terms

Tsar Nicholas II

The last Emperor of Russia, ruling from November 1894 until his forced abdication on March 15, 1917. His reign saw the fall of the Russian Empire from one of the foremost great powers of the world to economic and military collapse. Due to the Khodynka Tragedy, anti-Semitic pogroms, Bloody Sunday, the violent suppression of the 1905 Revolution, the execution of political opponents, and his perceived responsibility for the Russo-Japanese War, he was given the nickname Nicholas the Bloody by his political adversaries.

St. Petersburg Soviet

A workers’ council or soviet circa 1905. The idea of a soviet as an organ to coordinate workers’ strike activities arose during the January–February 1905 meetings of workers at the apartment of Voline (later a famous anarchist) during the abortive revolution of 1905. However, its activities were quickly repressed by the government. The model would later become central to the communists during the Revolution of 1917.

Bolshevik party

Literally meaning “one of the majority,” this party was a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903. They ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Under Tsar Nicholas II (reigned 1894–1917), the Russian Empire slowly industrialized while repressing political opposition in the center and on the far left. It recklessly entered wars with Japan (1904) and with Germany and Austria (1914) for which it was very poorly prepared, leading to the utter collapse of the old régime in 1917 and an era of civil war.

During the 1890s, Russia’s industrial development led to a large increase in the size of the urban middle-class and orking class, which gave rise to a more dynamic political atmosphere and the development of radical parties. Because the state and foreigners owned much of Russia’s industry, the Russian working class was comparatively stronger and the Russian bourgeoisie comparatively weaker than in the West. The working class and peasants became the first to establish political parties in Russia because the nobility and the wealthy bourgeoisie were politically timid. During the 1890s and early 1900s, bad living and working  conditions, high taxes, and land hunger gave rise to more frequent strikes and agrarian disorders. These activities prompted the bourgeoisie of various nationalities in the Russian Empire to develop a host of parties, both liberal and conservative.

The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a major factor in the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests. A council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, beginning the era of communist political protest.

Agrarian Backwardness

Russia’s systems for agricultural production influenced peasants and other social groups to reform against the government and promote social changes. Historians George Jackson and Robert Devlin write, “At the beginning of the twentieth century, agriculture constituted the single largest sector of the Russian economy, producing approximately one-half of the national income and employing two-thirds of Russia’s population.” This illustrates the tremendous role peasants played economically, making them detrimental to the revolutionary ideology of the populist and social democrats. At the end of the 19th century, Russian agriculture as a whole was the worst in Europe. The Russian system of agriculture lacked capital investment and technological advancement. Livestock productivity was notoriously backwards and the lack of grazing land such as meadows forced livestock to graze in fallow uncultivated land. Both the crop and livestock system failed to withstand the Russian winters. During the Tsarist rule, the agricultural economy diverged from subsistence production to production directly for the market. Along with the agricultural failures, Russia had rapid population growth, railroads expanded across farmland, and inflation attacked the price of commodities. Restrictions were placed on the distribution of food and ultimately led to famines. Agricultural difficulties in Russia limited the economy, influencing social reforms and assisting the rise of the Bolshevik party.

Worker Discontent

The social causes of the Russian Revolution mainly came from centuries of oppression of the lower classes by the Tsarist regime and Nicholas’s failures in World War I. While rural agrarian peasants had been emancipated from serfdom in 1861, they still resented paying redemption payments to the state, and demanded communal tender of the land they worked. The problem was further compounded by the failure of Sergei Witte’s land reforms of the early 20th century. Increasing peasant disturbances and sometimes actual revolts occurred, with the goal of securing ownership of the land they worked. Russia consisted mainly of poor farming peasants, with 1.5% of the population owning 25% of the land.

Workers had good reasons for discontent: overcrowded housing with often deplorable sanitary conditions; long hours at work (on the eve of the war, a 10-hour workday six days a week was the average and many were working 11–12 hours a day by 1916); constant risk of injury and death from poor safety and sanitary conditions; harsh discipline (not only rules and fines, but foremen’s fists); and inadequate wages (made worse after 1914 by steep wartime increases in the cost of living). At the same time, urban industrial life was full of benefits, though these could be just as dangerous, from the point of view of social and political stability, as the hardships. There were many encouragements to expect more from life. Acquiring new skills gave many workers a sense of self-respect and confidence, heightening expectations and desires. Living in cities, workers encountered material goods they had never seen in villages. Most importantly, they were exposed to new ideas about the social and political order.

The rapid industrialization of Russia also resulted in urban overcrowding. Between 1890 and 1910, the population of the capital, Saint Petersburg, swelled from 1,033,600 to 1,905,600, with Moscow experiencing similar growth. This created a new proletariat that due to being crowded together in the cities was much more likely to protest and go on strike than the peasantry had been in previous eras. In one 1904 survey, it was found that an average of sixteen people shared each apartment in Saint Petersburg with six people per room. There was no running water, and piles of human waste were a threat to the health of the workers. The poor conditions only aggravated the situation, with the number of strikes and incidents of public disorder rapidly increasing in the years shortly before World War I. Because of late industrialization, Russia’s workers were highly concentrated.

World War I

Tsar Nicholas II and his subjects entered World War I with enthusiasm and patriotism, with the defense of Russia’s fellow Orthodox Slavs, the Serbs, as the main battle cry. In August 1914, the Russian army invaded Germany’s province of East Prussia and occupied a significant portion of Austrian-controlled Galicia in support of the Serbs and their allies – the French and British. Military reversals and shortages among the civilian population, however, soon soured much of the population. German control of the Baltic Sea and German-Ottoman control of the Black Sea severed Russia from most of its foreign supplies and potential markets.

By the middle of 1915, the impact of the war was demoralizing. Food and fuel were in short supply, casualties were increasing, and inflation was mounting. Strikes rose among low-paid factory workers, and there were reports that peasants, who wanted reforms of land ownership, were restless. The tsar eventually decided to take personal command of the army and moved to the front, leaving Alexandra in charge in the capital.

By its end, World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II. It was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. After the entry of the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914, Russia was deprived of a major trade route through Ottoman Empire, which followed with a minor economic crisis in which Russia became incapable of providing munitions to its army in the years leading to 1917. However, the problems were merely administrative and not industrial, as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts.

The war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a considerable problem in Russia, but the cause did not lie in any failure of the harvests, which had not been significantly altered during wartime. The indirect reason was that the government, in order to finance the war, had been printing millions of ruble notes, and by 1917 inflation increased prices up to four times what they had been in 1914. The peasantry were consequently faced with the higher cost of purchases, but made no corresponding gain in the sale of their own produce, since this was largely taken by the middlemen on whom they depended. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, so the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for higher wages in the factories, and in January and February 1916 revolutionary propaganda aided by German funds led to widespread strikes. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule.

Discontent Leading up the Russian Revolution

Russian soldiers marching in Petrograd in February 1917.

Photo of a large number of Russian soldiers marching in the street of Petrograd in February 1917

30.2.3: The Provisional Government

Learning Objective

Detail the workings of Russia’s provisional government

Key Points

• The February Revolution of 1917 was focused around Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), then capital of Russia. 
• The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, resulting in Tsar Nicholas’s abdication and soon after, the end of the Tsarist regime altogether.
• To fill the vacuum of authority, the Duma (legislature) declared a provisional government headed by Prince Lvov, collectively known as the Russian Republic. 
• Meanwhile, the socialists in Petrograd organized elections among workers and soldiers to form a soviet (council) of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies as an organ of popular power that could pressure the “bourgeois” provisional government.
• The Soviets initially permitted the provisional government to rule, but insisted on a prerogative to influence decisions and control various militias.
• A period of dual power ensued during which the provisional government held state power while the national network of soviets, led by socialists, had the allegiance of the lower classes and the political left. 
• During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests, and strikes, such as the July Days.
• The period of competition for authority ended in late October 1917 when Bolsheviks routed the ministers of the Provisional Government in the events known as the October Revolution and placed power in the hands of the soviets, which had given their support to the Bolsheviks.

Key Terms

July Days

Events in 1917 that took place in Petrograd, Russia, between July 3 and 7 when soldiers and industrial workers engaged in spontaneous armed demonstrations against the Russian Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks initially attempted to prevent the demonstrations and then decided to support them.

Soviet

Political organizations and governmental bodies, essentially workers’ councils, primarily associated with the Russian Revolutions and the history of the Soviet Union, that gave the name to the latter state.  

February Revolution

The first of two Russian revolutions in 1917. It involved mass demonstrations and armed clashes with police and gendarmes, the last loyal forces of the Russian monarchy. On March 12, mutinous Russian Army forces sided with the revolutionaries. Three days later, the result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire.

Russian Provisional Government

A provisional government of the Russian Republic established immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of the Russian Empire on 2 March.

Background: February Revolution

At the beginning of February 1917, Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) workers began several strikes and demonstrations. On March 7, workers at Putilov, Petrograd’s largest industrial plant, announced a strike.

The next day, a series of meetings and rallies were held for International Women’s Day, which gradually turned into economic and political gatherings. Demonstrations were organized to demand bread, supported by the industrial working force who considered them a reason to continue the strikes. The women workers marched to nearby factories, bringing out over 50,000 workers on strike. By March 10, virtually every industrial enterprise in Petrograd had been shut down along with many commercial and service enterprises. Students, white-collar workers, and teachers joined the workers in the streets and at public meetings.

To quell the riots, the Tsar looked to the army. At least 180,000 troops were available in the capital, but most were either untrained or injured. Historian Ian Beckett suggests around 12,000 could be regarded as reliable, but even these proved reluctant to move in on the crowd since it included so many women. For this reason, on March 11 when the Tsar ordered the army to suppress the rioting by force, troops began to mutiny. Although few actively joined the rioting, many officers were either shot or went into hiding; the ability of the garrison to hold back the protests was all but nullified, symbols of the Tsarist regime were rapidly torn down, and governmental authority in the capital collapsed – not helped by the fact that Nicholas had suspended the Duma (legislature) that morning, leaving it with no legal authority to act. The response of the Duma, urged on by the liberal bloc, was to establish a temporary committee to restore law and order; meanwhile, the socialist parties established the Petrograd Soviet to represent workers and soldiers. The remaining loyal units switched allegiance the next day.

The Tsar directed the royal train,  stopped on March 14 by a group of revolutionaries at Malaya Vishera, back to Petrograd. When the Tsar finally arrived at in Pskov, the Army Chief Ruzsky and the Duma deputees Guchkov and Shulgin suggested in unison that he abdicate the throne. He did so on March on behalf of both himself and his son, the Tsarevich. Nicholas nominated his brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, to succeed him, but the Grand Duke realized that he would have little support as ruler. He declined the crown on March 16, stating that he would take it only as the consensus of democratic action.

The immediate effect of the February Revolution was a widespread atmosphere of elation and excitement in Petrograd. On March 16, the provisional government was announced. The center-left was well represented, and the government was initially chaired by a liberal aristocrat, Prince Georgy Yevgenievich Lvov, a member of the Constitutional Democratic party (KD). The socialists had formed their rival body, the Petrograd Soviet (or workers’ council) four days earlier. The Petrograd Soviet and the provisional government competed for power over Russia.

Reign of the Provisional Government

The Russian Provisional Government was a provisional government of the Russian Republic established immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of the Russian Empire on March 2, 1917. It was intended to organize elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly and its convention.

Despite its short reign of power and implementation shortcomings, the provisional government passed very progressive legislation. The policies enacted by this moderate government (by 1917 Russian standards) represented arguably the most liberal legislation in Europe at the time. It abolished capital punishment, declared the independence of Poland, redistributed wealth in the countryside, restored the constitution of Finland, established local government on a universal suffrage basis, separated church and state, conceded language rights to all the nationalities, and confirmed liberty of speech, liberty of the Press, and liberty of assembly. 

The provisional government lasted approximately eight months, ceasing when the Bolsheviks seized power after the October Revolution in October 1917. According to Harold Whitmore Williams, the eight months during which Russia was ruled by the provisional government was characterized by the steady and systematic disorganization of the army.

The provisional government was unable to make decisive policy decisions due to political factionalism and a breakdown of state structures. This weakness left the government open to strong challenges from both the right and the left. Its chief adversary on the left was the Petrograd Soviet, which tentatively cooperated with the government at first but then gradually gained control of the army, factories, and railways. While the Provisional Government retained the formal authority to rule over Russia, the Petrograd Soviet maintained actual power. With its control over the army and the railroads, the Petrograd Soviet had the means to enforce policies. The provisional government lacked the ability to administer its policies. In fact, local soviets, political organizations mostly of socialists, often maintained discretion when deciding whether or not to implement the provisional government’s laws. 

A period of dual power ensued during which the provisional government held state power while the national network of soviets, led by socialists, had the allegiance of the lower classes and the political left. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests, and strikes. When the provisional government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers’ militias under their control into the Red Guards (later the Red Army), over which they exerted substantial control.

In July, following a series of crises known as the July Days (strikes by soldiers and industrial workers) that undermined its authority with the public, the head of the provisional government resigned and was succeeded by Alexander Kerensky. Kerensky was more progressive than his predecessor but not radical enough for the Bolsheviks or many Russians discontented with the deepening economic crisis and the continuation of the war. While Kerensky’s government marked time, the socialist-led soviet in Petrograd joined with soviets (workers’ councils) that formed throughout the country to create a national movement.

The period of competition for authority ended in late October 1917 when Bolsheviks routed the ministers of the provisional government in the events known as the October Revolution and placed power in the hands of the soviets, which had given their support to the Bolsheviks.

July Days

Street demonstration on Nevsky Prospekt in Petrograd just after troops of the Provisional Government opened fire in the July Days.

Photo shows people strewn across a large open street, some running, some injured or dead.

30.2.4: The October Revolution

Learning Objective

Explain the events of the October Revolution

Key Points

• In the October Revolution (November in the Gregorian calendar), the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the workers’ soviets overthrew the Russian Provisional Government in Petrograd.
• The Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. 
• The October Revolution ended the phase of the revolution instigated in February, replacing Russia’s short-lived provisional parliamentary government with government by soviets, local councils elected by bodies of workers and peasants.
• To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918.
• Soviet membership was initially freely elected, but many members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, anarchists, and other leftists created opposition to the Bolsheviks through the soviets themselves. 
• When it became clear that the Bolsheviks had little support outside of the industrialized areas of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, they simply barred non-Bolsheviks from membership in the soviets.
• The new government soon passed the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land, the latter of which redistributed land and wealth to peasants throughout Russia.
• A coalition of anti-Bolshevik groups attempted to unseat the new government in the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1922.

Key Terms

Decree on Land

Written by Vladimir Lenin, this law was passed by the Second Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies on October 26, 1917, following the success of the October Revolution. It decreed an abolition of private property and the redistribution of the landed estates among the peasantry.

Marxism–Leninism

A political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of Classical Marxism and Leninism that seeks to establish socialist states and develop them further. They espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of Marxism and Leninism, but generally support the idea of a vanguard party, one-party state, proletarian state-dominance over the economy, internationalism, opposition to bourgeois democracy, and opposition to capitalism. It remains the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, a number of Indian states, and certain governed Russian oblasts such as Irkutsk. It was the official ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the other ruling parties that made up the Eastern Bloc.

Vladimir Lenin

A Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism.

October Revolution

A seizure of state power by the Bolshevik Party instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917. It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on October 25, 1917. It followed and capitalized on the February Revolution of the same year.

The October Revolution, commonly referred to as Red October, the October Uprising, or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a seizure of state power instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917. It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on October 25, 1917.

It followed and capitalized on the February Revolution of the same year, which overthrew the Tsarist autocracy and resulted in a provisional government after a transfer of power proclaimed by Grand Duke Michael, brother of Tsar Nicolas II, who declined to take power after the Tsar stepped down. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils (Russian: Soviet) wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and its actions. The October Revolution in Petrograd overthrew the provisional government and gave the power to the local soviets. The Bolshevik party was heavily supported by the soviets. After the Congress of Soviets, now the governing body, had its second session, it elected members of the Bolsheviks and other leftist groups such as the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to key positions within the new state of affairs. This immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the world’s first self-proclaimed socialist state.

The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces. Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on October 24, 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace (the seat of the Provisional government located in Petrograd, then capital of Russia), was captured.

The long-awaited Constituent Assembly elections were held on November 12, 1917. The Bolsheviks only won 175 seats in the 715-seat legislative body, coming in second behind the Socialist Revolutionary party, which won 370 seats. The Constituent Assembly was to first meet on November 28, 1917, but its convocation was delayed until January 5, 1918, by the Bolsheviks. On its first and only day in session, the body rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, and was dissolved the next day by order of the Congress of Soviets.

As the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War (1917–22) and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922.

Leadership and Ideology

The October Revolution was led by Vladimir Lenin and was based upon Lenin’s writing on the ideas of Karl Marx, a political ideology often known as Marxism-Leninism. Marxist-Leninists espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of Marxism and Leninism, but generally support the idea of a vanguard party, one-party state, proletarian state-dominance over the economy, internationalism, opposition to bourgeois democracy, and opposition to capitalism. The October Revolution marked the beginning of the spread of communism in the 20th century. It was far less sporadic than the revolution of February and came about as the result of deliberate planning and coordinated activity to that end.

Though Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik Party, it has been argued that since Lenin was not present during the actual takeover of the Winter Palace, it was really Trotsky’s organization and direction that led the revolution, merely spurred by the motivation Lenin instigated within his party. Critics on the right have long argued that the financial and logistical assistance of German intelligence via agent Alexander Parvus was a key component as well, though historians are divided since there is little evidence supporting that claim.

Results

The Second Congress of Soviets consisted of 670 elected delegates; 300 were Bolshevik and nearly a hundred were Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who also supported the overthrow of the Alexander Kerensky Government. When the fall of the Winter Palace was announced, the Congress adopted a decree transferring power to the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, thus ratifying the Revolution.

The transfer of power was not without disagreement. The center and right wings of the Socialist Revolutionaries as well as the Mensheviks believed that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had illegally seized power and walked out before the resolution was passed. As they exited, they were taunted by Leon Trotsky who told them “You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on — into the dustbin of history!”

The following day, October 26, the Congress elected a Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) with Lenin as leader as the basis of a new Soviet Government, pending the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, and passed the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land. This new government was also officially called “provisional” until the Assembly was dissolved. The Council of People’s Commissars now began to arrest the leaders of opposition parties. Dozens of Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadet) leaders and members of the Constituent Assembly were imprisoned in The Peter and Paul Fortress. These would be followed by the arrests of Socialist Revolutionary Party and Menshevik leaders. Posters were pinned on walls and fences by the Socialist-Revolutionaries, describing the takeover as a “crime against the motherland and revolution.” There was also strong anti-Bolshevik opposition within Petrograd. All in all, the transfer of power was complex and replete with conflict within the revolutionaries.

The Decree on Land ratified the actions of the peasants who throughout Russia seized private land and redistributed it among themselves. The Bolsheviks viewed themselves as representing an alliance of workers and peasants and memorialized that understanding with the hammer and sickle on the flag and coat of arms of the Soviet Union. Other decrees:

• All private property was seized by the state.
• All Russian banks were nationalized.
• Private bank accounts were confiscated.
• The Church’s properties (including bank accounts) were seized.
• All foreign debts were repudiated.
• Control of the factories was given to the soviets.
• Wages were fixed at higher rates than during the war, and a shorter, eight-hour working day was introduced.

The success of the October Revolution transformed the Russian state into a soviet republic. A coalition of anti-Bolshevik groups attempted to unseat the new government in the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1922.

Lenin and Trotsky, Russian Revolutionaries

Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, speaking at a meeting in Sverdlov Square in Moscow, with Leon Trotsky and Lev Kamenev adjacent to the right of the podium.

Photo of Vladimir Lenin speaking at a raised podium to a crowd of people.

30.2.5: The Russian Civil War

Learning Objective

Describe the various parties that participated in the Russian Civil War

Key Points

• The Russian Civil War, which broke out in 1918 shortly after the revolution, brought death and suffering to millions of people regardless of their political orientation. 
• The war was fought mainly between the “Reds,” consisting of the uprising majority led by the Bolshevik minority, and the “Whites,” army officers and cossacks, the “bourgeoisie,” and political groups ranging from the far right to the Socialist revolutionaries who opposed the drastic restructuring championed by the Bolsheviks following the collapse of the Russian Provisional Government to the soviets (under clear Bolshevik dominance).
• The Whites had backing from Great Britain, France, the U.S., and Japan, while the Reds possessed internal support which proved to be much more effective. 
• Though the Allied nations, using external interference, provided substantial military aid to the loosely knit anti-Bolshevik forces, they were ultimately defeated.
• By 1921, the Reds defeated their internal enemies and brought most of the newly independent states under their control, with the exception of Finland, the Baltic States, the Moldavian Democratic Republic (which joined Romania), and Poland (with whom they had fought the Polish–Soviet War).

Key Terms

Cheka

The first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created on December 20, 1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin, and was subsequently led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat turned communist. These troops policed labor camps; ran the Gulag system; conducted requisitions of food; subjected political opponents to secret arrest, detention, torture, and summary execution; and put down rebellions and riots by workers or peasants, and mutinies in the desertion-plagued Red Army.

White Army

A loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces that fought the Bolsheviks, also known as the Reds, in the Russian Civil War (1917–1923) and, to a lesser extent, continued operating as militarized associations both outside and within Russian borders until roughly World War II.

Red Army

The army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution.

The Russian Civil War (November 1917 – October 1922) was a multi-party war in the former Russian Empire immediately after the Russian Revolutions of 1917, as many factions vied to determine Russia’s political future. The two largest combatant groups were the Red Army, fighting for the Bolshevik form of socialism, and the loosely allied forces known as the White Army, which included diverse interests respectively favoring monarchism, capitalism, and alternative forms of socialism, each with democratic and antidemocratic variants. In addition, rival militant socialists and non-ideological Green armies fought against both the Bolsheviks and the Whites. The Whites had backing from Great Britain, France, the U.S., and Japan, while the Reds possessed internal support which proved much more effective. 

The Red Army defeated the White Armed Forces of South Russia in Ukraine and the army led by Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in Siberia in 1919. The remains of the White forces commanded by Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel were beaten in Crimea and evacuated in late 1920. Lesser battles of the war continued on the periphery for two more years, and minor skirmishes with the remnants of the White forces in the Far East continued well into 1923. Armed national resistance in Central Asia was not completely crushed until 1934. There were an estimated 7-12 million casualties during the war, mostly civilians. The Russian Civil War has been described by some as the greatest national catastrophe that Europe had yet seen.

Many pro-independence movements emerged after the break-up of the Russian Empire and fought in the war. Several parts of the former Russian Empire—Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland—were established as sovereign states, with their own civil wars and wars of independence. The rest of the former Russian Empire was consolidated into the Soviet Union shortly afterwards.

British historian Orlando Figes has contended that the root of the Whites’ defeat was their inability to dispel the popular image that they were associated with Tsarist Russia and supportive of a Tsarist restoration.

Russian Civil War

Clockwise from top: Soldiers of the Don Army in 1919; a White Russian infantry division in March 1920; soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Army; Leon Trotsky in 1918; hanging of workers in Yekaterinoslav by Austro-Hungarian troups, April 1918.

Clockwise from top: Soldiers of the Don Army in 1919; a White Russian infantry division in March 1920; soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Army; Leon Trotsky in 1918; hanging of workers in Yekaterinoslav by Austro-Hungarian troups, April 1918.

The Red Army

In the wake of the October Revolution, the old Russian Imperial Army had been demobilized; the volunteer-based Red Guard was the Bolsheviks’ main military force, augmented by an armed military component of the Cheka, the Bolshevik state security apparatus. In January, after significant reverses in combat, War Commissar Leon Trotsky headed the reorganization of the Red Guard into a Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army to create a more professional fighting force. Political commissars were appointed to each unit of the army to maintain morale and ensure loyalty.

In June 1918, when it became apparent that a revolutionary army composed solely of workers would be far too small, Trotsky instituted mandatory conscription of the rural peasantry into the Red Army. Opposition of rural Russians to Red Army conscription units was overcome by taking hostages and shooting them when necessary in order to force compliance, the same practices used by the White Army officers. Former Tsarist officers were utilized as “military specialists,” and sometimes their families were taken hostage in order to ensure their loyalty.

The White Army

While resistance to the Red Guard began on the day after the Bolshevik uprising, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the political ban became a catalyst for the formation of anti-Bolshevik groups both inside and outside Russia, pushing them into action against the new regime.

A loose confederation of anti-Bolshevik forces aligned against the Communist government, including landowners, republicans, conservatives, middle-class citizens, reactionaries, pro-monarchists, liberals, army generals, non-Bolshevik socialists who still had grievances, and democratic reformists voluntarily united only in their opposition to Bolshevik rule. Their military forces, bolstered by forced conscriptions and terror and by foreign influence and led by Gen. Yudenich, Adm. Kolchak, and Gen. Denikin, became known as the White movement (sometimes referred to as the “White Army”) and controlled significant parts of the former Russian Empire for most of the war.

The Western Allies armed and supported opponents of the Bolsheviks. They were worried about (1) a possible Russo-German alliance, (2) the prospect of the Bolsheviks making good on their threats to default on Imperial Russia’s massive foreign loans and (3) that the Communist revolutionary ideas would spread (a concern shared by many Central Powers). Hence, many of these countries expressed their support for the Whites, including the provision of troops and supplies. Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be “strangled in its cradle.” The British and French had supported Russia during World War I on a massive scale with war materials. After the treaty, it looked like much of that material would fall into the hands of the Germans. Under this pretext, the Allies intervened in the Russian Civil War, with the United Kingdom and France sending troops into Russian ports. There were violent clashes with troops loyal to the Bolsheviks.

Aftermath

The results of the civil war were momentous. Soviet demographer Boris Urlanis estimated the total number of men killed in action in the Civil War and Polish-Soviet War at 300,000 (125,000 in the Red Army, 175,500 White armies and Poles) and the total number of military personnel dead from disease (on both sides) as 450,000. During the Red Terror the Cheka carried out at least 250,000 summary executions of “enemies of the people” with estimates reaching above a million.

At the end of the Civil War the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was exhausted and near ruin. The droughts of 1920 and 1921, as well as the 1921 famine, worsened the disaster still further. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3 million dying of typhus alone in 1920. Millions more also died of widespread starvation, wholesale massacres by both sides, and pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia. By 1922 there were at least 7 million street children in Russia as a result of nearly ten years of devastation from the Great War and the civil war.

Another one to two million people, known as the White émigrés, fled Russia, many with Gen. Wrangel—some through the Far East, others west into the newly independent Baltic countries. These émigrés included a large percentage of the educated and skilled population of Russia.

The Russian economy was devastated by the war, with factories and bridges destroyed, cattle and raw materials pillaged, mines flooded, and machines damaged. The industrial production value descended to one-seventh of the value of 1913 and agriculture to one-third.

War Communism saved the Soviet government during the Civil War, but much of the Russian economy had ground to a standstill. The peasants responded to requisitions by refusing to till the land. By 1921 cultivated land had shrunk to 62% of the pre-war area, and the harvest yield was only about 37% of normal.

30.2.6: Formation of the Soviet Union

Learning Objective

Assess the reasons for creating the Soviet Union

Key Points

• The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian Provisional Government that had replaced Tsar Nicholas II. However, it only officially consolidated as the new government of Russia after the defeat of the White Army during the Russian Civil War in 1922.
• At that time, the new nation included four constituent republics: the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Belarusian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR.
• The period from the consolidation of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until 1921 is known as the period of war communism, in which land, all industry, and small businesses were nationalized and the economy was restricted.
• The constitution, adopted in 1924, established a federal system of government based on a succession of soviets set up in villages, factories, and cities in larger regions, which culminated in the All-Union Congress of Soviets. 
• However, while it appeared that the congress exercised sovereign power, this body was actually governed by the Communist Party, which in turn was controlled by the Politburo from Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union.
• Following Lenin’s death in 1924, a collective leadership (troika), and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s and established a repressive totalitarian regime.

Key Terms

Karl Marx

A German-born scientist, philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His theories about society, economics, and politics—collectively understood as Marxism—hold that human societies develop through class struggle; in capitalism, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and working classes (known as the proletariat) that enable these means by selling their labor for wages. Through his theories of alienation, value, commodity fetishism, and surplus value, he argued that capitalism facilitated social relations and ideology through commodification, inequality, and the exploitation of labor.

Great Purge

A campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants and the Red Army leadership, and widespread police surveillance, suspicion of “saboteurs,” imprisonment, and arbitrary executions.

First Five-Year Plan

A list of economic goals created by General Secretary Joseph Stalin and based on his policy of Socialism in One Country, implemented between 1928 and 1932. In 1929, Stalin edited the plan to include the creation of collective farming systems that stretched over thousands of acres of land and had hundreds of peasants working on them. 

Joseph Stalin

The leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a supranational union of national republics, but its government and economy were highly centralized in a state that was unitary in most respects. The Union’s capital was Moscow.

The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government that had replaced Tsar Nicholas II. This established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (Russian SFSR) and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary “Reds” and the counter-revolutionary “Whites.” The Red Army entered several territories of the former Russian Empire and helped local communists take power through workers’ councils called “soviets,” which nominally acted on behalf of workers and peasants. 

In 1922, the communists (Reds) were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian republics. Under the control of the party, all politics and attitudes that were not strictly of the Russian Communist Party (RCP) were suppressed, under the premise that the RCP represented the proletariat and all activities contrary to the party’s beliefs were “counterrevolutionary” or “anti-socialist.” Eventually crushing all opponents, the RCP spread soviet-style rule quickly and established itself through all of Russia. 

The original ideology of the state was primarily based on the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In its essence, Marx’s theory stated that economic and political systems went through an inevitable evolution in form by which the current capitalist system would be replaced by a Socialist state before achieving international cooperation and peace in a “Workers’ Paradise,” creating a system directed by, what Marx called, “Pure Communism.”

Following Lenin’s death in 1924, a collective leadership (troika), and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all political opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism (which he created), and initiated a centrally planned command economy. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Stalin also fomented political paranoia and conducted the Great Purge to remove opponents of his from the Communist Party through the mass arbitrary arrest of many people (military leaders, Communist Party members, and ordinary citizens alike) who were then sent to correctional labor camps (gulags) or sentenced to death.

Creation of the USSR and Early Years

On December 29, 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These documents were confirmed by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by heads of delegations.

On February 1, 1924, the USSR was recognized by the British Empire. The same year, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union.

An intensive restructuring of the economy, industry and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was done according to the Bolshevik Initial Decrees, government documents signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, which envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. The plan was developed in 1920 and covered a 10- to 15-year period. It included construction of a network of 30 regional power stations, including ten large hydroelectric power plants and numerous electric-powered large industrial enterprises. The plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was fulfilled by 1931.

During the Civil War (1917–21), the Bolsheviks adopted war communism, which entailed the breakup of the landed estates and the forcible seizure of agricultural surpluses. In the cities there were intense food shortages and a breakdown in the money system (at the time many Bolsheviks argued that ending money’s role as a transmitter of “value” was a sign of the rapidly approaching communist epoch). Many city dwellers fled to the countryside, often to tend the land that the Bolshevik breakup of the landed estates had transferred to the peasants. Even small-scale “capitalist” production was suppressed.

Strong opposition soon developed. The peasants wanted cash payments for their products and resented having to surrender their surplus grain to the government as a part of its civil war policies. Confronted with peasant opposition, Lenin began a strategic retreat from war communism known as the New Economic Policy (NEP). The peasants were freed from wholesale levies of grain and allowed to sell their surplus produce in the open market. Commerce was stimulated by permitting private retail trading. The state continued to be responsible for banking, transportation, heavy industry, and public utilities.

Although the left opposition among the Communists criticized the rich peasants, or kulaks, who benefited from the NEP, the program proved highly beneficial and the economy revived. The NEP would later come under increasing opposition from within the party following Lenin’s death in early 1924.

The Death of Lenin and the Rise of Stalin

Following Lenin’s third stroke, a troika made up of Grigory Zinoviev of the Ukrainian SSR, Lev Kamenev of the Russian SFSR, and Joseph Stalin of the Transcaucasian SFSR emerged to take day-to-day leadership of the party and the country and block Trotsky from taking power. Lenin, however, became increasingly anxious about Stalin and following his December 1922 stroke, dictated a letter (known as Lenin’s Testament) to the party criticizing him and urging his removal as general secretary, a position which was becoming the most powerful in the party. Stalin was aware of Lenin’s Testament and acted to keep Lenin in isolation for health reasons and increase his control over the party apparatus.

Lenin and Stalin (1922)

Toward the end of his life, Lenin became increasingly anxious about Stalin and began criticizing him and urging his removal as general secretary. Despite these misgivings, Stalin eventually replaced Lenin as the leader of the USSR.

Photo of Lenin and Stalin seated outdoors.

Zinoviev and Bukharin became concerned about Stalin’s increasing power and proposed that the Orgburo which Stalin headed be abolished and Zinoviev and Trotsky be added to the party secretariat, thus diminishing Stalin’s role as general secretary. Stalin reacted furiously and the Orgburo was retained, but Bukharin, Trotsky, and Zinoviev were added to the body.

On April 3, 1922, Stalin was named the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lenin had appointed Stalin the head of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, which gave Stalin considerable power. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and outmaneuvering his rivals within the party, Stalin became the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union and, by the end of the 1920s, established totalitarian rule. 

Lenin died in January 1924 and in May his Testament was read aloud at the Central Committee, but Zinoviev and Kamenev argued that Lenin’s objections had proven groundless and that Stalin should remain General Secretary. The Central Committee decided not to publish the testament.

In October 1927, Grigory Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky were expelled from the Central Committee and forced into exile.

In 1928, Stalin introduced the First Five-Year Plan for building a socialist economy. In place of the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the Revolution, it aimed to build Socialism in One Country. In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization. In agriculture, rather than adhering to the “lead by example” policy advocated by Lenin, forced collectivization of farms was implemented all over the country.

Famines ensued, causing millions of deaths; surviving kulaks were persecuted and many sent to Gulags to do forced labor. Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s. Stalin’s Great Purge resulted in the execution or detainment of many “Old Bolsheviks” who had participated in the October Revolution with Lenin. According to declassified Soviet archives, in 1937 and 1938 the NKVD arrested more than 1.5 million people, of whom 681,692 were shot. Over two years, that averages to over one thousand executions a day. According to historian Geoffrey Hosking, “…excess deaths during the 1930s as a whole were in the range of 10–11 million.” Yet despite the turmoil of the mid-to-late 1930s, the Soviet Union developed a powerful industrial economy in the years before World War II.

30.3: The Great Depression

30.3.1: The Financial Crisis of the 1930s

The Great Depression was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century, put into motion after the devastating stock market crash in 1929 in the United States known as Black Tuesday.

Learning Objective

Compose a list of factors that contributed to the global depression of the early 1930s

Key Points

• The Great Depression was a global economic depression, the worst by far in the 20th century.
• It began in October 1929 after a decade of massive spending and increased production throughout much of the world after the end of World War I. The American stock market crashed on October 29, which became known as “Black Tuesday.”
• The market lost over $30 billion in two days.
• When stocks plummeted on Black Tuesday, the world noticed immediately, creating a ripple effect on the global economy.
• The gold standard was the primary transmission mechanism of the Great Depression, driving down the currency of even nations with no banking crisis.
• The sooner nations got off the gold standard, the sooner they recovered from the depression.
• In many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II.

Key Terms

speculation

The purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable at a future date. In finance, it is the practice of engaging in risky financial transactions to profit from short-term fluctuations in the market value of a trade-able financial instrument rather than from its underlying financial attributes such as capital gains, dividends, or interest.

Black Tuesday

The most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects. The crash, which followed the London Stock Exchange’s crash of September, signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries.

gold standard

A monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression during the 1930s. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations; in most countries it started in 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the world’s economy can decline.

The depression originated in the United States after a major fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929, and became worldwide news with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929 (known as Black Tuesday). Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II.

The Great Depression had devastating effects in countries both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits, and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25% and in some countries as high as 33%.

Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few alternative sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as mining and logging suffered the most.

Black Tuesday

Economic historians usually attribute the start of the Great Depression to the sudden devastating collapse of U.S. stock market prices on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday. However, some dispute this conclusion and see the stock crash as a symptom rather than a cause of the Great Depression.

The Roaring Twenties, the decade that followed World War I and led to the crash, was a time of wealth and excess. Building on post-war optimism, rural Americans migrated to the cities in vast numbers throughout the decade with the hopes of finding a more prosperous life in the ever-growing expansion of America’s industrial sector. While the American cities prospered, the overproduction of agricultural produce created widespread financial despair among American farmers throughout the decade. This would later be blamed as one of the key factors that led to the 1929 stock market crash.

Despite the dangers of speculation, many believed that the stock market would continue to rise forever. On March 25, 1929, after the Federal Reserve warned of excessive speculation, a mini-crash occurred as investors started to sell stocks at a rapid pace, exposing the market’s shaky foundation.

Selling intensified in mid-October. On October 24 (“Black Thursday”), the market lost 11 percent of its value at the opening bell on very heavy trading. The huge volume meant that the report of prices on the ticker tape in brokerage offices around the nation was hours late, so investors had no idea what most stocks were actually trading for at that moment, increasing panic.

Over the weekend, these events were covered by the newspapers across the United States. On October 28, “Black Monday,” more investors facing margin calls decided to get out of the market, and the slide continued with a record loss in the Dow for the day of 38.33 points, or 13%.

The next day, “Black Tuesday,” October 29, 1929, about 16 million shares traded as the panic selling reached its peak. Some stocks actually had no buyers at any price that day (“air pockets”). The Dow lost an additional 30 points, or 12 percent. The volume of stocks traded on October 29, 1929, was a record that was not broken for nearly 40 years.

On October 29, William C. Durant joined with members of the Rockefeller family and other financial giants to buy large quantities of stocks to demonstrate to the public their confidence in the market, but their efforts failed to stop the large decline in prices. Due to the massive volume of stocks traded that day, the ticker did not stop running until about 7:45 p.m. that evening. The market had lost over $30 billion in the space of two days.

Great Depression

Crowd at New York’s American Union Bank during a bank run early in the Great Depression. The widespread panic after the Stock Market Crash of 1929 resulted in a bank crisis with massive bank runs, which occur when a large number of customers withdraw cash from deposit accounts with a financial institution at the same time because they believe that the institution is or might become insolvent.

A large crowd gathered at New York’s American Union Bank during a bank run early in the Great Depression.

Causes

The two classical competing theories of the Great Depression are the Keynesian (demand-driven) and the monetarist explanations. There are also various heterodox theories that downplay or reject these explanations. The consensus among demand-driven theorists is that a large-scale loss of confidence led to a sudden reduction in consumption and investment spending. Once panic and deflation set in, many people believed they could avoid further losses by keeping clear of the markets. Holding money became profitable as prices dropped lower and a given amount of money bought ever more goods, exacerbating the drop in demand. Monetarists believe that the Great Depression started as an ordinary recession, but the shrinking of the money supply greatly exacerbated the economic situation, causing a recession to descend into the Great Depression.

Global Spread: Gold Standard

The stock market crash of October 1929 led directly to the Great Depression in Europe. When stocks plummeted on the New York Stock Exchange, the world noticed immediately. Although financial leaders in England, as in the United States, vastly underestimated the extent of the crisis that would ensue, it soon became clear that the world’s economies were more interconnected than ever. The effects of the disruption to the global system of financing, trade, and production and the subsequent meltdown of the American economy were soon felt throughout Europe.

The gold standard was the primary transmission mechanism of the Great Depression. Even countries that did not face bank failures and a monetary contraction first-hand were forced to join the deflationary policy, since higher interest rates in countries that did so led to a gold outflow in countries with lower interest rates. Under the gold standard, countries that lost gold but nevertheless wanted to maintain the gold standard had to permit their money supply to decrease and the domestic price level to decline (deflation).

The Great Depression hit Germany hard. The impact of the Wall Street Crash forced American banks to end the new loans that had been funding the repayments under the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan. The financial crisis escalated out of control and mid-1931, starting with the collapse of the Credit Anstalt in Vienna in May. This put heavy pressure on Germany, which was already in political turmoil.

Some economic studies have indicated that just as the downturn was spread worldwide by the rigidities of the Gold Standard, it was suspending gold convertibility (or devaluing the currency in gold terms) that did the most to make recovery possible.

Every major currency left the gold standard during the Great Depression. Great Britain was the first to do so. Facing speculative attacks on the pound and depleting gold reserves, in September 1931 the Bank of England ceased exchanging pound notes for gold and the pound was floated on foreign exchange markets.

Great Britain, Japan, and the Scandinavian countries left the gold standard in 1931. Other countries, such as Italy and the U.S., remained on the gold standard into 1932 or 1933, while a few countries in the so-called “gold bloc,” led by France and including Poland, Belgium, and Switzerland, stayed on the standard until 1935–36.

According to later analysis, how soon a country left the gold standard reliably predicted its economic recovery. For example, Great Britain and Scandinavia, which left the gold standard in 1931, recovered much earlier than France and Belgium, which remained on gold much longer. 

30.3.2: Decline in International Trade

Many economists have argued that the sharp decline in international trade after 1930 helped to worsen the Great Depression, and many historians partly blame this on the American Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (enacted June 17, 1930) for reducing international trade and causing retaliatory tariffs in other countries.

Learning Objective

Describe the effect the Great Depression had on international trade

Key Points

•  The Great Depression and international trade are deeply linked, with the decline in the stock markets affecting consumption and production in various countries. This slowed international trade, which in turn exacerbated the depression.
• The situation was made worse by the rise of protectionism throughout the globe, which is the economic policy of restraining trade between countries through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and other government regulations. 
• Protectionist policies protect the producers, businesses, and workers of the import-competing sector in a country from foreign competitors.
• This attitude was put into effect most forcibly by the 1930 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, passed by the U.S. Congress.
• The Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act aimed to protect American jobs and farmers from foreign competition by encouraging the purchase of American-made products by increasing the cost of imported goods.
• Other nations increased tariffs on American-made goods in retaliation, reducing international trade and worsening the Depression.

Key Terms

autarky

The quality of being self-sufficient, usually applied to political states or their economic systems that can survive without external assistance or international trade. If a self-sufficient economy also refuses all trade with the outside world then it is called a closed economy.

protectionism

The economic policy of restraining trade between states (countries) through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and other government regulations. 

tariff

A tax on imports or exports.

International Trade During the Great Depression

Many economists have argued that the sharp decline in international trade after 1930 worsen the depression, especially for countries significantly dependent on foreign trade. Most historians and economists partly blame the American Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act for worsening the depression by seriously reducing international trade and causing retaliatory tariffs in other countries. 

While foreign trade was a small part of overall economic activity in the U.S. concentrated in a few businesses like farming, it was a much larger factor in many other countries. The average rate of duties on dutiable imports for 1921–25 was 25.9%, but under the new tariff it jumped to 50% during 1931–35.

In dollar terms, American exports declined over the next four years from about $5.2 billion in 1929 to $1.7 billion in 1933; not only did the physical volume of exports fall, but the prices fell by about 1/3 as written. Hardest hit were farm commodities such as wheat, cotton, tobacco, and lumber.

Economist Paul Krugman argues against the notion that protectionism caused the Great Depression or made the decline in production worse. He cites a report by Barry Eichengreen and Douglas Irwin and argues that increased tariffs prevented trade from rebounding even after production recovered. Figure 1 in that report shows trade and production dropping together from 1929 to 1932, but production increasing faster than trade from 1932 to 1937. The authors argue that adherence to the gold standard forced many countries to resort to tariffs, when instead they should have devalued their currencies.

Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

The Tariff Act of 1930, otherwise known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, was an act sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley and signed into law on June 17, 1930. The act raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods.

The intent of the Act was to encourage the purchase of American-made products by increasing the cost of imported goods while raising revenue for the federal government and protecting farmers. Other nations increased tariffs on American-made goods in retaliation, reducing international trade and worsening the Depression.

The tariffs under the act were the second-highest in the U.S. in 100 years, exceeded by a small margin by the Tariff of 1828. The Act and following retaliatory tariffs by America’s trading partners helped reduce American exports and imports by more than half during the Depression, but economists disagree on the exact amount.

As the global economy entered the first stages of the Great Depression in late 1929, the U.S.’s main goal was to protect American jobs and farmers from foreign competition. Reed Smoot championed another tariff increase within the U.S. in 1929, which became the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill. In his memoirs, Smoot made it abundantly clear:

The world is paying for its ruthless destruction of life and property in the World War and for its failure to adjust purchasing power to productive capacity during the industrial revolution of the decade following the war.

Threats of retaliation by other countries began long before the bill was enacted into law in June 1930. As it passed the House of Representatives in May 1929, boycotts broke out and foreign governments moved to increase rates against American products, even though rates could be increased or decreased by the Senate or the conference committee. By September 1929, Hoover’s administration had received protest notes from 23 trading partners, but threats of retaliatory actions were ignored.

In May 1930, Canada, the country’s most loyal trading partner, retaliated by imposing new tariffs on 16 products that accounted altogether for around 30% of U.S. exports to Canada. Canada later also forged closer economic links with the British Empire via the British Empire Economic Conference of 1932. France and Britain protested and developed new trade partners. Germany developed a system of autarky, a self-sufficient, closed-economy with little or no international trade.

In 1932, with the depression having worsened for workers and farmers despite Smoot and Hawley’s promises of prosperity from a high tariff, the two lost their seats in the elections that year.

Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

Willis C. Hawley (left) and Reed Smoot in April 1929, shortly before the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act passed the House of Representatives. Many historians contend that the Act worsened the worldwide economic depression.

A photo of Willis C. Hawley (left) and Reed Smoot in April 1929, standing together outside a building. It is a close-up photo.

Protectionism

In economics, protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states (countries) through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and other government regulations. Protectionist policies protect the producers, businesses, and workers of the import-competing sector in a country from foreign competitors. According to proponents, these policies can counteract unfair trade practices by allowing fair competition between imports and goods and services produced domestically. Protectionists may favor the policy to decrease the trade deficit, maintain employment in certain sectors, or promote the growth of certain industries.

There is a broad consensus among economists that the impact of protectionism on economic growth (and on economic welfare in general) is largely negative, although the impact on specific industries and groups of people may be positive. The doctrine of protectionism contrasts with the doctrine of free trade, where governments reduce barriers to trade as much as possible.

30.4: The Rise of Fascism

30.4.1: Mussolini and Fascist Italy

After aligning itself with Italian conservatives, the fascist party rose to prominence using violence and intimidation, eventually seizing power in Rome in 1922 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini.

Learning Objective

Evaluate why Mussolini was able to seize power in Italy

Key Points

• The rise of fascism in Italy began during World War I, when Benito Mussolini and other radicals formed a political group (called a fasci) supporting the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary.
• The first meeting of Mussolini’s Fasci of Revolutionary Action was held on January 24, 1915.
• For the next several years, the small group of fascists took part in political actions, taking advantage of worker strikes to incite violence.
• Around 1921, the fascists began to align themselves with mainstream conservatives, increasing membership exponentially.
• Beginning in 1922, Fascist paramilitaries escalated their strategy from attacking socialist offices and homes of socialist leadership figures to violent occupation of cities, eventually setting their sites on Rome.
• During the so-called “March on Rome,” Mussolini was appointed Prime Minister of Italy.
• From 1925 to 1929, Fascism steadily became entrenched in power. Opposition deputies were denied access to parliament, censorship was introduced, and a December 1925 decree made Mussolini solely responsible to the King.

Italian Fascism, also known simply as Fascism, is the original fascist ideology as developed in Italy. The ideology is associated with the Fascist Revolutionary Party (PFR), founded in 1915; the succeeding National Fascist Party (PNF) in 1921, which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943; the Republican Fascist Party that ruled the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945; and the post-war Italian Social Movement and subsequent Italian neo-fascist movements.

Italian Fascism was rooted in Italian nationalism and the desire to restore and expand Italian territories, deemed necessary for a nation to assert its superiority and strength and avoid succumbing to decay. Italian Fascists claimed that modern Italy is the heir to ancient Rome and its legacy, and historically supported the creation of an Italian Empire to provide spazio vitale (“living space”) for colonization by Italian settlers and to establish control over the Mediterranean Sea.

Italian Fascism promoted a corporatist economic system whereby employer and employee syndicates were linked together in associations to collectively represent the nation’s economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy. This economic system intended to resolve class conflict through collaboration between the classes

The Rise of Fascism in Italy

The first meeting of the Fasci of Revolutionary Action was held on January 24, 1915, led by Benito Mussolini. In the next few years, the relatively small group was various political actions. In 1920, militant strike activity by industrial workers reached its peak in Italy. Mussolini and the Fascists took advantage of the situation by allying with industrial businesses and attacking workers and peasants in the name of preserving order and internal peace in Italy.

Fascists identified their primary opponents as the majority of socialists on the left who had opposed intervention in World War I. The Fascists and the Italian political right held common ground: both held Marxism in contempt, discounted class consciousness, and believed in the rule of elites. Fascism began to accommodate Italian conservatives by making major alterations to its political agenda—abandoning its previous populism, republicanism, and anticlericalism, adopting policies in support of free enterprise, and accepting the Roman Catholic Church and the monarchy as institutions in Italy. 

To appeal to Italian conservatives, Fascism adopted policies such as promoting family values, including policies designed to reduce the number of women in the workforce by limiting the woman’s role to that of a mother. The fascists banned literature on birth control and increased penalties for abortion in 1926, declaring both crimes against the state. Though Fascism adopted a number of positions designed to appeal to reactionaries, the Fascists sought to maintain Fascism’s revolutionary character, with Angelo Oliviero Olivetti saying “Fascism would like to be conservative, but it will [be] by being revolutionary.” The Fascists supported revolutionary action and committed to secure law and order to appeal to both conservatives and syndicalists.

Prior to Fascism’s accommodation of the political right, Fascism was a small, urban, northern Italian movement that had about a thousand members. After Fascism’s accommodation of the political right, the Fascist movement’s membership soared to approximately 250,000 by 1921.

Fascists Seize Power

Beginning in 1922, Fascist paramilitaries escalated their strategy from attacking socialist offices and homes of socialist leadership figures to violent occupation of cities. The Fascists met little serious resistance from authorities and proceeded to take over several northern Italian cities. The Fascists attacked the headquarters of socialist and Catholic labor unions in Cremona and imposed forced Italianization upon the German-speaking population of Trent and Bolzano. After seizing these cities, the Fascists made plans to take Rome.

On October 24, 1922, the Fascist party held its annual congress in Naples, where Mussolini ordered Blackshirts to take control of public buildings and trains and converge on three points around Rome. The Fascists managed to seize control of several post offices and trains in northern Italy while the Italian government, led by a left-wing coalition, was internally divided and unable to respond to the Fascist advances. King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy thought the risk of bloodshed in Rome to disperse the Fascists was too high. Victor Emmanuel III decided to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy, and Mussolini arrived in Rome on October 30 to accept the appointment. Fascist propaganda aggrandized this event, known as “March on Rome,” as a “seizure” of power because of Fascists’ heroic exploits.

March on Rome

Benito Mussolini with three of the four quadrumvirs during the March on Rome: from left to right: unknown, de Bono, Mussolini, Balbo and de Vecchi. 

A photo of a crowd of mostly men, with Mussolini and other fascist leaders in the center.

Mussolini in Power

Upon becoming Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini had to form a coalition government, because the Fascists did not have control over the Italian parliament. Mussolini’s coalition government initially pursued economically liberal policies under the direction of liberal finance minister Alberto De Stefani, a member of the Center Party, including balancing the budget through deep cuts to the civil service. Initially, little drastic change in government policy occurred and repressive police actions were limited.

The Fascists began their attempt to entrench Fascism in Italy with the Acerbo Law, which guaranteed a plurality of the seats in parliament to any party or coalition list in an election that received 25% or more of the vote. Through considerable Fascist violence and intimidation, the list won a majority of the vote, allowing many seats to go to the Fascists. In the aftermath of the election, a crisis and political scandal erupted after Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteoti was kidnapped and murdered by a Fascist. The liberals and the leftist minority in parliament walked out in protest in what became known as the Aventine Secession. 

On January 3, 1925, Mussolini addressed the Fascist-dominated Italian parliament and declared that he was personally responsible for what happened, but insisted that he had done nothing wrong. He proclaimed himself dictator of Italy, assuming full responsibility over the government and announcing the dismissal of parliament. From 1925 to 1929, Fascism steadily became entrenched in power; opposition deputies were denied access to parliament, censorship was introduced, and a December 1925 decree made Mussolini solely responsible to the King.

In the 1920s, Fascist Italy pursued an aggressive foreign policy that included an attack on the Greek island of Corfu, aims to expand Italian territory in the Balkans, plans to wage war against Turkey and Yugoslavia, attempts to bring Yugoslavia into civil war by supporting Croat and Macedonian separatists to legitimize Italian intervention, and making Albania a de facto protectorate of Italy, achieved through diplomatic means by 1927. In response to revolt in the Italian colony of Libya, Fascist Italy abandoned previous liberal-era colonial policy of cooperation with local leaders. Instead, claiming that Italians were superior to African races and thereby had the right to colonize the “inferior” Africans, it sought to settle 10 to 15 million Italians in Libya. This resulted in an aggressive military campaign known as the Pacification of Libya against natives in Libya, including mass killings, the use of concentration camps, and the forced starvation of thousands of people. Italian authorities committed ethnic cleansing by forcibly expelling 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica in Libya, from their settlements, slated to be given to Italian settlers.

30.4.2: Fascism

Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe, characterized by one-party totalitarian regimes run by charismatic dictators, glorification of violence, and racist ideology.

Learning Objective

Define fascism

Key Points

• Fascism is a far-right authoritarian political ideology that emerged in the early 20th century and rose to prominence after World War I in several nations, notably Italy, Germany, and Japan.
• Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state, led by a dictator, as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and respond effectively to economic difficulties.
• Fascist regimes are often preoccupied “with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity,” culminating in nationalistic and racist ideologies and practices, such as the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
• The term originated in Italy and is derived from fascio, meaning a bundle of rods, and is used to symbolize strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break. 
• After the end of the World War I, fascism rose out of relative obscurity into international prominence, with fascist regimes forming most notably in Italy, Germany, and Japan, the three of which would be allied in World War II. 
• Fascist Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy in 1922 and Adolf Hitler had successfully consolidated his power in Germany by 1933.

Key Terms

Social Darwinism

A name given to various ideologies emerging in the second half of the 19th century, trying to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest in human society. It was largely developed by Herbert Spencer, who compared society to a living organism and argued that just as biological organisms evolve through natural selection, society evolves and increases in complexity through analogous processes.

fascism

A form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. It holds that liberal democracy is obsolete and that the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state is necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.

fin-de-siècle

French for end of the century, a term which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom turn of the century and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. The term is typically used to refer to the end of the 19th century. This was widely thought to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time one of hope for a new beginning. It often refers to the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, including ennui, cynicism, pessimism, and “…a widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence.”

Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, then spread to other European countries. Opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, fascism is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum.

Fascist Ideologies

Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A “military citizenship” arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war. The war resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.

Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete, and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and respond effectively to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature, and views political violence, war, and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a mixed economy with the principal goal of achieving autarky (self-sufficiency) through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.

Historian Robert Paxton says that fascism is “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

Since the end of World War II in 1945, few parties have openly described themselves as fascist, and the term is instead now usually used pejoratively by political opponents. The terms neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe parties of the far right with ideologies similar to or rooted in 20th century fascist movements.

The term fascist comes from the Italian word fascismo, derived from fascio meaning a bundle of rods, ultimately from the Latin word fasces. This was the name given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates. At first, it was applied mainly to organizations on the political left. In 1919, Benito Mussolini founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan, which became the Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party) two years later. The Fascists came to associate the term with the ancient Roman fasces or fascio littorio—a bundle of rods tied around an axe, an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate carried by his lictors, which could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command. The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.

Early History of Fascism

The historian Zeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s, and in particular to the fin-de-siècle (French for “end of the century”) theme of that time. This ideology was based on a revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society, and democracy. The fin-de-siècle generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism, and vitalism. The fin-de-siècle mindset saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution. Its intellectual school considered the individual only one part of the larger collectivity, which should not be viewed as an atomized numerical sum of individuals. They condemned the rationalistic individualism of liberal society and the dissolution of social links in bourgeois society.

Social Darwinism, which gained widespread acceptance, made no distinction between physical and social life, and viewed the human condition as being an unceasing struggle to achieve the survival of the fittest. Social Darwinism challenged positivism’s claim of deliberate and rational choice as the determining behavior of humans, focusing on heredity, race, and environment. Its emphasis on biogroup identity and the role of organic relations within societies fostered legitimacy and appeal for nationalism. New theories of social and political psychology also rejected the notion of human behavior being governed by rational choice, and instead claimed that emotion was more influential in political issues than reason.

At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Italian political left became severely split over its position on the war. The Italian Socialist Party (PSI) opposed the war but a number of Italian revolutionary syndicalists supported war against Germany and Austria-Hungary on the grounds that their reactionary regimes had to be defeated to ensure the success of socialism. Angelo Oliviero Olivetti formed a pro-interventionist fascio called the Fasci of International Action in October 1914. Benito Mussolini, upon expulsion from his position as chief editor of the PSI’s newspaper Avanti! for his anti-German stance, joined the interventionist cause in a separate fascio. The term “Fascism” was first used in 1915 by members of Mussolini’s movement, the Fasci of Revolutionary Action.

The first meeting of the Fasci of Revolutionary Action was held in January 1915 when Mussolini declared that it was necessary for Europe to resolve its national problems—including national borders—of Italy and elsewhere “for the ideals of justice and liberty for which oppressed peoples must acquire the right to belong to those national communities from which they descended.” Attempts to hold mass meetings were ineffective, and the organization was regularly harassed by government authorities and socialists.

Similar political ideas arose in Germany after the outbreak of the war. German sociologist Johann Plenge spoke of the rise of a “National Socialism” in Germany within what he termed the “ideas of 1914” that were a declaration of war against the “ideas of 1789” (the French Revolution). According to Plenge, the “ideas of 1789” that included rights of man, democracy, individualism and liberalism were being rejected in favor of “the ideas of 1914” that included “German values” of duty, discipline, law, and order. Plenge believed that racial solidarity (Volksgemeinschaft) would replace class division and that “racial comrades” would unite to create a socialist society in the struggle of “proletarian” Germany against “capitalist” Britain. He believed that the “Spirit of 1914” manifested itself in the concept of the “People’s League of National Socialism.”

After the end of the World War I, fascism rose out of relative obscurity into international prominence, with fascist regimes forming most notably in Italy, Germany, and Japan, the three of which would be allied in World War II. Fascist Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy in 1922 and Adolf Hitler had successfully consolidated his power in Germany by 1933.

Hitler and Mussolini

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were the two most prominent fascist dictators, rising to power in the decades after World War I.

Photo of Hitler and Mussolini in official military uniforms overlooking a crowd of people.

30.4.3: Fascism in Japan

During the 1930s, Japan moved into political totalitarianism, ultranationalism, and fascism, culminating in its invasion of China in 1937.

Learning Objective

Examine how fascism manifested itself in Japan

Key Points

• Similar to European nations like Italy and Germany, nationalism and aggressive expansionism began to rise to prominence in Japan after World War I.
• The 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I did not recognize the Empire of Japan’s territorial claims, which angered the Japanese and led to a surge in nationalism.
• Throughout the 1920s, various nationalistic and xenophobic ideologies emerged among right-wing Japanese intellectuals, but it was not until the early 1930s that these ideas gained full traction in the ruling regime.
• During the Manchurian Incident of 1931, radical army officers bombed a small portion of the South Manchuria Railroad and, falsely attributing the attack to the Chinese, invaded Manchuria.
• International criticism of Japan following the invasion led to Japan withdrawing from the League of Nations, which led to political isolation and a redoubling of ultranationalist and expansionist tendencies.
• In 1932, a group of right-wing Army and Navy officers succeeded in assassinating the Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. 
• The plot fell short of staging a complete coup d’état, but it effectively ended rule by political parties in Japan and consolidated the power of the military elite under the dictatorship of Emperor Hirohito.

Key Terms

Meiji Restoration

An event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji, leading to enormous changes in Japan’s political and social structure and spanning both the late Edo period (often called the Late Tokugawa shogunate) and the beginning of the Meiji period. The period spanned from 1868 to 1912 and was responsible for the emergence of Japan as a modernized nation in the early 20th century, and its rapid rise to great power status in the international system.

Shinto

A Japanese ethnic religion that focuses on ritual practices carried out diligently to establish a connection between present-day Japan and its ancient past. Its practices were first recorded and codified in the written historical records of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki in the 8th century. This term applies to the religion of public shrines devoted to the worship of a multitude of gods (kami), suited to various purposes such as war memorials and harvest festivals.

Shōwa period

The period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of the Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito, from December 25, 1926, through January 7, 1989. This period was longer than the reign of any previous Japanese emperor. During the pre-1945 period, Japan moved into political totalitarianism, ultranationalism, and fascism culminating in Japan’s invasion of China in 1937. This was part of an overall global period of social upheavals and conflicts, such as the Great Depression and World War II. Defeat in World War II brought radical change to Japan.

statism

The belief that the state should control either economic or social policy or both, sometimes taking the form of totalitarianism, but not necessarily. It is effectively the opposite of anarchism.

Statism in Japan

Statism in Shōwa Japan was a right-wing political ideology developed over a period of time from the Meiji Restoration of the 1860s. It is sometimes also referred to as Shōwa nationalism or Japanese fascism.

This statist movement dominated Japanese politics during the first part of the Shōwa period (reign of Hirohito). It was a mixture of ideas such as Japanese nationalism and militarism and “state capitalism” proposed by contemporary political philosophers and thinkers.

Development of Statist Ideology

The 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I did not recognize the Empire of Japan’s territorial claims, and international naval treaties between Western powers and the Empire of Japan (Washington Naval Treaty and London Naval Treaty) imposed limitations on naval shipbuilding that limited the size of the Imperial Japanese Navy. These measures were considered by many in Japan as refusal by the Occidental powers to consider Japan an equal partner.

On the basis of national security, these events released a surge of Japanese nationalism and resulted in the end of collaboration diplomacy that supported peaceful economic expansion. The implementation of a military dictatorship and territorial expansionism were considered the best ways to protect Japan.

In the early 1930s, the Ministry of Home Affairs began arresting left-wing political dissidents, generally to exact a confession and renouncement of anti-state leanings. Over 30,000 such arrests were made between 1930 and 1933. In response, a large group of writers founded a Japanese branch of the International Popular Front Against Fascism and published articles in major literary journals warning of the dangers of statism. 

Ikki Kita was an early 20th-century political theorist who advocated a hybrid of state socialism with “Asian nationalism,” which blended the early ultranationalist movement with Japanese militarism. Kita proposed a military coup d’état to replace the existing political structure of Japan with a military dictatorship. The new military leadership would rescind the Meiji Constitution, ban political parties, replace the Diet of Japan with an assembly free of corruption, and nationalize major industries. Kita also envisioned strict limits to private ownership of property and land reform to improve the lot of tenant farmers. Thus strengthened internally, Japan could then embark on a crusade to free all of Asia from Western imperialism.

Although his works were banned by the government almost immediately after publication, circulation was widespread, and his thesis proved popular not only with the younger officer class excited at the prospects of military rule and Japanese expansionism, but with the populist movement for its appeal to the agrarian classes and to the left wing of the socialist movement.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the supporters of Japanese statism used the slogan Showa Restoration, which implied that a new resolution was needed to replace the existing political order dominated by corrupt politicians and capitalists, with one which (in their eyes), would fulfill the original goals of the Meiji Restoration of direct Imperial rule via military proxies.

Early Shōwa statism is sometimes given the retrospective label “fascism,” but this was not a self-appellation and it is not entirely clear that the comparison is accurate. When authoritarian tools of the state such as the Kempeitai were put into use in the early Shōwa period, they were employed to protect the rule of law under the Meiji Constitution from perceived enemies on both the left and the right.

Nationalist Politics During the Shōwa Period

Emperor Hirohito’s 63-year reign from 1926 to 1989 is the longest in recorded Japanese history. The first 20 years were characterized by the rise of extreme nationalism and a series of expansionist wars. After suffering defeat in World War II, Japan was occupied by foreign powers for the first time in its history, then re-emerged as a major world economic power.

Left-wing groups had been subject to violent suppression by the end of the Taishō period, and radical right-wing groups, inspired by fascism and Japanese nationalism, rapidly grew in popularity. The extreme right became influential throughout the Japanese government and society, notably within the Kwantung Army, a Japanese army stationed in China along the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railroad. During the Manchurian Incident of 1931, radical army officers bombed a small portion of the South Manchuria Railroad and, falsely attributing the attack to the Chinese, invaded Manchuria. The Kwantung Army conquered Manchuria and set up the puppet government of Manchukuo there without permission from the Japanese government. International criticism of Japan following the invasion led to Japan withdrawing from the League of Nations.

The withdrawal from the League of Nations meant that Japan was politically isolated. Japan had no strong allies and its actions had been internationally condemned, while internally popular nationalism was booming. Local leaders such as mayors, teachers, and Shinto priests were recruited by the various movements to indoctrinate the populace with ultra-nationalist ideals. They had little time for the pragmatic ideas of the business elite and party politicians. Their loyalty lay to the Emperor and the military. In March 1932 the “League of Blood” assassination plot and the chaos surrounding the trial of its conspirators further eroded the rule of democratic law in Shōwa Japan. In May of the same year, a group of right-wing Army and Navy officers succeeded in assassinating the Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. The plot fell short of staging a complete coup d’état, but effectively ended rule by political parties in Japan.

Japan’s expansionist vision grew increasingly bold. Many of Japan’s political elite aspired to have Japan acquire new territory for resource extraction and settlement of surplus population. These ambitions led to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. After their victory in the Chinese capital, the Japanese military committed the infamous Nanking Massacre. The Japanese military failed to defeat the Chinese government led by Chiang Kai-shek and the war descended into a bloody stalemate that lasted until 1945. Japan’s stated war aim was to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a vast pan-Asian union under Japanese domination. Hirohito’s role in Japan’s foreign wars remains a subject of controversy, with various historians portraying him as either a powerless figurehead or an enabler and supporter of Japanese militarism.

The United States opposed Japan’s invasion of China and responded with increasingly stringent economic sanctions intended to deprive Japan of the resources to continue its war in China. Japan reacted by forging an alliance with Germany and Italy in 1940, known as the Tripartite Pact, which worsened its relations with the U.S. In July 1941, the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands froze all Japanese assets when Japan completed its invasion of French Indochina by occupying the southern half of the country, further increasing tension in the Pacific.

Statism in Japan

Emperor Shōwa riding his stallion Shirayuki during an Army inspection, August 1938. By the 1930’s, Japan had essentially become a military dictatorship with increasingly bold expansionist aims.

Emperor Shōwa riding his stallion Shirayuki alongside other military officers riding horses during an Army inspection, August 1938.

30.4.4: Franco’s Spain

Several historians believe that during the Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco’s goal was to turn Spain into a totalitarian state like Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, which he largely succeeded in doing.

Learning Objective

Summarize the rise of the Franco regime in Spain

Key Points

• As in Germany and Italy, fascism gained prominence in Spain during the interwar period, especially from the 1930s through World War II.
• Francisco Franco, a Spanish general, rose to prominence in the mid-1930s, but his right-wing party failed to gained power in the 1936 elections.
• Franco and other military leaders staged a failed coup that led to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936-1939.
• Franco emerged victorious and established a one-party military dictatorship, naming himself the leader under the name El Caudillo, a term similar to Il Duce (Italian) for Benito Mussolini and Der Führer (German) for Adolf Hitler.
• Franco’s regime committed a series of violent human rights abuses against the Spanish people, causing an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 deaths.
• The consistent points in Franco’s ideology (termed Francoism) included authoritarianism, nationalism, national Catholicism, militarism, conservatism, anti-communism, and anti-liberalism.

Key Terms

Francisco Franco

A Spanish general who ruled over Spain as a dictator for 36 years from 1939 until his death. He took control of Spain from the government of the Second Spanish Republic after winning the Civil War, and was in power 1978, when the Spanish Constitution of 1978 went into effect.

personality cult

When an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods to create an idealized, heroic, and at times worshipful image, often through unquestioned flattery and praise.

Spanish Civil War

A war from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans, who were loyal to the democratic, left-leaning and relatively urban Second Spanish Republic in an alliance of convenience with the Anarchists, and the Nationalists, a falangist, Carlist, and a largely aristocratic conservative group led by General Francisco Franco.

Falangism

A Fascist movement founded in Spain in 1933 and the one legal party in Spain under the regime of Franco.

Francisco Franco: El Caudillo

Francisco Franco (December 4, 1892 – November 20, 1975) was a Spanish general who ruled over Spain as a dictator for 36 years from 1939 until his death.

As a conservative and a monarchist, he opposed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic in 1931. With the 1936 elections, the conservative Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-wing Groups lost by a narrow margin and the leftist Popular Front came to power. Intending to overthrow the republic, Franco followed other generals in attempting a failed coup that precipitated the Spanish Civil War. With the death of the other generals, Franco quickly became his faction’s only leader. In 1947, he declared Spain a monarchy with himself as regent.

Franco gained military support from various regimes and groups, especially Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Italy, while the Republican side was supported by Spanish communists and anarchists as well as the Soviet Union, Mexico, and the International Brigades. Leaving half a million dead, the war was eventually won by Franco in 1939. He established a military dictatorship, which he defined as a totalitarian state. Franco proclaimed himself Head of State and Government under the title El Caudillo, a term similar to Il Duce (Italian) for Benito Mussolini and Der Führer (German) for Adolf Hitler. Under Franco, Spain became a one-party state, as the various conservative and royalist factions were merged into the fascist party and other political parties were outlawed.

Franco’s regime committed a series of violent human rights abuses against the Spanish people, which included the establishment of concentration camps and the use of forced labor and executions, mostly against political and ideological enemies, causing an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 deaths in more than 190 concentration camps. Spain’s entry into the war on the Axis side was prevented largely by, as was much later revealed, British Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) efforts that included up to $200 million in bribes for Spanish officials to keep the regime from getting involved. Franco was also able to take advantage of the resources of the Axis Powers and chose to avoid becoming heavily involved in the Second World War.

Francisco Franco

A photo of Francisco Franco in 1964. Franco strove to establish a fascist dictatorship similar to that of Germany and Italy, but in the end did not join the Axis in WWII.

A close-up photographic portrait of Francisco Franco in a military uniform.

Ideology of Francoist Spain

The consistent points in Francoism included authoritarianism, nationalism, national Catholicism, militarism, conservatism, anti-communism, and anti-liberalism. The Spanish State was authoritarian: non-government trade unions and all political opponents across the political spectrum were either suppressed or controlled by all means, including police repression. Most country towns and rural areas were patrolled by pairs of Guardia Civil, a military police for civilians, which functioned as a chief means of social control. Larger cities and capitals were mostly under the heavily armed Policía Armada, commonly called grises due to their grey uniforms. Franco was also the focus of a personality cult which taught that he had been sent by Divine Providence to save the country from chaos and poverty.

Franco’s Spanish nationalism promoted a unitary national identity by repressing Spain’s cultural diversity. Bullfighting and flamenco were promoted as national traditions, while those traditions not considered Spanish were suppressed. Franco’s view of Spanish tradition was somewhat artificial and arbitrary: while some regional traditions were suppressed, Flamenco, an Andalusian tradition, was considered part of a larger, national identity. All cultural activities were subject to censorship, and many were forbidden entirely, often in an erratic manner.

Francoism professed a strong devotion to militarism, hypermasculinity, and the traditional role of women in society. A woman was to be loving to her parents and brothers and faithful to her husband, and reside with her family. Official propaganda confined women’s roles to family care and motherhood. Most progressive laws passed by the Second Republic were declared void. Women could not become judges, testify in trial, or become university professors.

The Civil War had ravaged the Spanish economy. Infrastructure had been damaged, workers killed, and daily business severely hampered. For more than a decade after Franco’s victory, the economy improved little. Franco initially pursued a policy of autarky, cutting off almost all international trade. The policy had devastating effects, and the economy stagnated. Only black marketeers could enjoy an evident affluence. Up to 200,000 people died of starvation during the early years of Francoism, a period known as Los Años de Hambre (the Years of Hunger).

Falangism: Spanish Fascism

Falangism was the political ideology of the Falange Española de las JONS and, afterwards, of the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (both known simply as the “Falange”), as well as derivatives of it in other countries. Falangism is widely considered a fascist ideology. Under the leadership of Francisco Franco, many of the radical elements of Falangism considered fascist were diluted, and it largely became an authoritarian, conservative ideology connected with Francoist Spain. Opponents of Franco’s changes to the party include former Falange leader Manuel Hedilla. Falangism places a strong emphasis on Catholic religious identity, though it held some secular views on the Church’s direct influence in society as it believed that the state should have the supreme authority over the nation. Falangism emphasized the need for authority, hierarchy, and order in society. Falangism is anti-communist, anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, and anti-liberal, although under Franco, the Falange abandoned its original anti-capitalist tendencies, declaring the ideology to be fully compatible with capitalism.

The Falange’s original manifesto, the “Twenty-Seven Points,” declared Falangism to support the unity of Spain and the elimination of regional separatism; established a dictatorship led by the Falange; used violence to regenerate Spain; promoted the revival and development of the Spanish Empire; and championed a social revolution to create a national syndicalist economy to mutually organize and control economic activity, agrarian reform, industrial expansion, and respect for private property with the exception of nationalizing credit facilities to prevent capitalist usury. It supports criminalization of strikes by employees and lockouts by employers as illegal acts. Falangism supports the state to have jurisdiction of setting wages. The Franco-era Falange supported the development of cooperatives such as the Mondragon Corporation, because it bolstered the Francoist claim of the nonexistence of social classes in Spain during his rule.

30.4.5: The Decline of European Democracy

The conditions of economic hardship caused by the Great Depression brought about significant social unrest around the world, leading to a major surge of fascism and in many cases, the collapse of democratic governments.

Learning Objective

Formulate an explanation for the decreasing number of democratic governments in Europe during this period

Key Points

• Mussolini’s seizure of power in Italy with the March on Rome brought fascism international attention.
• One early admirer of the Italian Fascists was Adolf Hitler. Less than a month after the March, he began to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists.
• The Nazis, led by Hitler and the German war hero Erich Ludendorff, attempted a “March on Berlin” modeled upon the March on Rome, which resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923.
• Other early admirers of Italian Fascism were Gyula Gömbös, leader of the Hungarian National Defense Association, and Milan Pribićević of Yugoslavia, who led the Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists (ORJUNA).
• The Great Depression, which caused significant social unrest throughout the world, led to the major surge of fascism.
• Economic depression was one of the major causes of the rise of Nazism in Germany.
• Fascism was also popular during the Depression era outside of Europe, in Japan, Brazil, and Argentina among other nations.
• Historian and philosopher Ernst Nolte argues that fascism arose as a form of resistance to and a reaction against modernity.

Key Terms

modernity

A term used in the humanities and social sciences to designate both a historical period as well as the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes, and practices that arose in post-medieval Europe and have developed since, in various ways and at various times, around the world. As a historical category, it refers to a period marked by a questioning or rejection of tradition; the prioritization of individualism, freedom, and formal equality; faith in inevitable social, scientific, and technological progress and human perfectibility; rationalization and professionalization; a movement from feudalism (or agrarianism) toward capitalism and the market economy; industrialization, urbanization, and secularization; and the development of the nation-state and its constituent institutions (e.g. representative democracy, public education, modern bureaucracy).

Iron Guard

The name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. It was ultra-nationalist, antisemitic, anti-communist, anti-capitalist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith. Its members were called “Greenshirts” because of the predominantly green uniforms they wore.

Beer Hall Putsch

A failed coup attempt by the Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, during November 8-9, 1923. About two thousand men marched to the center of Munich where they confronted the police, resulting in the death of 16 Nazis and four policemen.

Initial Surge of Fascism

The March on Rome, through which Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy, brought Fascism international attention. One early admirer of the Italian Fascists was Adolf Hitler, who, less than a month after the March, had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists. The Nazis, led by Hitler and the German war hero Erich Ludendorff, attempted a “March on Berlin” modeled upon the March on Rome, which resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923. The Nazis briefly captured Bavarian Minister President Gustav Ritter von Kahr and announced the creation of a new German government to be led by a triumvirate of von Kahr, Hitler, and Ludendorff. The Beer Hall Putsch was crushed by Bavarian police, and Hitler and other leading Nazis were arrested and detained until 1925. 

Another early admirer of Italian Fascism was Gyula Gömbös, leader of the Hungarian National Defence Association (known by its acronym MOVE) and a self-defined “national socialist” who in 1919 spoke of the need for major changes in property and in 1923 stated the need of a “march on Budapest.” Yugoslavia briefly had a significant fascist movement, the Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists (ORJUNA), that supported Yugoslavism, supported the creation of a corporatist economy, opposed democracy, and took part in violent attacks on communists, though it was opposed to the Italian government due to Yugoslav border disputes with Italy. ORJUNA was dissolved in 1929 when the King of Yugoslavia banned political parties and created a royal dictatorship, though ORJUNA supported the King’s decision. 

Amid a political crisis in Spain involving increased strike activity and rising support for anarchism, Spanish army commander Miguel Primo de Rivera engaged in a successful coup against the Spanish government in 1923 and installed himself as a dictator as head of a conservative military junta that dismantled the established party system of government. Upon achieving power, Primo de Rivera sought to resolve the economic crisis by presenting himself as a compromise arbitrator figure between workers and bosses, and his regime created a corporatist economic system based on the Italian Fascist model. In Lithuania in 1926, Antanas Smetona rose to power and founded a fascist regime under his Lithuanian Nationalist Union.

Beer Hall Putsch

Nazis in Munich during the Beer Hall Putsch, a failed coup attempt by the Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, during November 8-9, 1923. About two thousand men marched to the center of Munich where they confronted the police, resulting in the death of 16 Nazis and four policemen.

Nazis in Munich during the Beer Hall Putsch. It depicts a crowd of people outside surrounded by tall buildings. Several Nazis in uniforms are up on a platform.

The Great Depression and the Spread of Fascism

The events of the Great Depression resulted in an international surge of fascism and the creation of several fascist regimes and regimes that adopted fascist policies. According to historian Philip Morgan, “the onset of the Great Depression…was the greatest stimulus yet to the diffusion and expansion of fascism outside Italy.” Fascist propaganda blamed the problems of the long depression of the 1930s on minorities and scapegoats: “Judeo-Masonic-bolshevik” conspiracies, left-wing internationalism, and the presence of immigrants. 

In Germany, it contributed to the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which resulted in the demise of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of the fascist regime, Nazi Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. With the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to power in 1933, liberal democracy was dissolved in Germany, and the Nazis mobilized the country for war, with expansionist territorial aims against several countries. In the 1930s the Nazis implemented racial laws that deliberately discriminated against, disenfranchised, and persecuted Jews and other racial and minority groups.

Fascist movements grew stronger elsewhere in Europe. Hungarian fascist Gyula Gömbös rose to power as Prime Minister of Hungary in 1932 and attempted to entrench his Party of National Unity throughout the country; he created an eight-hour work day and a 48-hour work week in industry, sought to entrench a corporatist economy, and pursued irredentist claims on Hungary’s neighbors. 

The fascist Iron Guard movement in Romania soared in political support after 1933, gaining representation in the Romanian government, and an Iron Guard member assassinated Romanian prime minister Ion Duca. During the February 6, 1934 crisis, France faced the greatest domestic political turmoil since the Dreyfus Affair when the fascist Francist Movement and multiple far-right movements rioted en masse in Paris against the French government resulting in major political violence. A variety of para-fascist governments that borrowed elements from fascism were formed during the Great Depression, including those of Greece, Lithuania, Poland, and Yugoslavia.

Fascism Beyond Europe

Fascism also expanded its influence outside Europe, especially in East Asia, the Middle East, and South America. In China, Wang Jingwei’s Kai-tsu p’ai (Reorganization) faction of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China) supported Nazism in the late 1930s. In Japan, a Nazi movement called the Tōhōkai was formed by Seigō Nakano. The Al-Muthanna Club of Iraq was a pan-Arab movement that supported Nazism and exercised its influence in the Iraqi government through cabinet minister Saib Shawkat, who formed a paramilitary youth movement.

Several, mostly short-lived fascist governments and prominent fascist movements were formed in South America during this period. Argentine President General José Félix Uriburu proposed that Argentina be reorganized along corporatist and fascist lines. Peruvian president Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro founded the Revolutionary Union in 1931 as the state party for his dictatorship. It was later taken over by Raúl Ferrero Rebagliati who sought to mobilize mass support for the group’s nationalism in a manner akin to fascism. He even started a paramilitary Blackshirts arm as a copy of the Italian group, although the Union lost heavily in the 1936 elections and faded into obscurity. In Paraguay in 1940, Paraguayan President General Higinio Morínigo began his rule as a dictator with the support of pro-fascist military officers, appealed to the masses, exiled opposition leaders, and only abandoned his pro-fascist policies after the end of World War II. The Brazilian Integralists, led by Plínio Salgado, claimed as many as 200,000 members, although following coup attempts it faced a crackdown from the Estado Novo of Getúlio Vargas in 1937. In the 1930s, the National Socialist Movement of Chile gained seats in Chile’s parliament and attempted a coup d’état that resulted in the Seguro Obrero massacre of 1938.

Fascism in its Epoch

Fascism in its Epoch is a 1963 book by historian and philosopher Ernst Nolte, widely regarded as his magnum opus and a seminal work on the history of fascism. The book, translated into English in 1965 as The Three Faces of Fascism, argues that fascism arose as a form of resistance to and a reaction against modernity. Nolte subjected German Nazism, Italian Fascism, and the French Action Française movements to a comparative analysis. Nolte’s conclusion was that fascism was the great anti-movement: it was anti-liberal, anti-communist, anti-capitalist, and anti-bourgeois. In Nolte’s view, fascism was the rejection of everything the modern world had to offer and was an essentially negative phenomenon. Nolte argued that fascism functioned at three levels: in the world of politics as a form of opposition to Marxism, at the sociological level in opposition to bourgeois values, and in the “metapolitical” world as “resistance to transcendence” (“transcendence” in German can be translated as the “spirit of modernity”). In regard to the Holocaust, Nolte contended that because Adolf Hitler identified Jews with modernity, the basic thrust of Nazi policies towards Jews had always aimed at genocide: “Auschwitz was contained in the principles of Nazi racist theory like the seed in the fruit.” Nolte believed that for Hitler, Jews represented “the historical process itself.”

30.5: Hitler and the Third Reich

30.5.1: Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born and raised in Austria-Hungary, was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I, and began to rise to prominence in German politics with his vitriolic speeches promoting German nationalism, anti-semitism, and anti-communism.

Learning Objective

Discuss Adolf Hitler’s upbringing and character

Key Points

• Hitler was born in 1889 in Austria, then part of Austria-Hungary, and raised near Linz. 
• He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I. 
• He joined the German Workers’ Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919 and became leader of the Nazi Party in 1921. 
• In 1923 he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power, called the Beer Hall Putsch.
• The failed coup resulted in Hitler’s imprisonment, during which he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”). 
• After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, anti-semitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. 
• Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as part of a Jewish conspiracy.

Key Terms

Mein Kampf

A 1925 autobiographical book by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work outlines Hitler’s political ideology and future plans for Germany. In it, Hitler used the main thesis of “the Jewish peril,” which posits a Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership. The narrative describes the process by which he became increasingly antisemitic and militaristic, especially during his years in Vienna. He speaks of not having met a Jew until he arrived in Vienna, and that at first his attitude was liberal and tolerant. When he first encountered the anti-semitic press, he says, he dismissed it as unworthy of serious consideration. Later he accepted the same anti-semitic views, which became crucial in his program of national reconstruction of Germany.

Beer Hall Putsch

A failed coup attempt by the Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler — along with Erich Ludendorff and others — to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, during November 8-9, 1923. About two thousand men marched to the center of Munich where they confronted the police, which resulted in the death of 16 Nazis and four policemen.

National Socialist German Workers Party

A political party in Germany that was active between 1920 and 1945 and practiced the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist, and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany. The party was created to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism.

Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP), Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Führer (“Leader”) of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator of the German Reich, he initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and was central to the Holocaust.

By 1933, the Nazi Party was the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, which led to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Following fresh elections won by his coalition, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of National Socialism. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain and France. His first six years in power resulted in rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the effective abandonment of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War I, and the annexation of territories that were home to millions of ethnic Germans — actions that gave him significant popular support.

Hitler sought Lebensraum (“living space”) for the German people in Eastern Europe. His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the primary cause of the outbreak of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and on September 1, 1939, invaded Poland, resulting in British and French declarations of war on Germany. In June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941 German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe and North Africa. Failure to defeat the Soviets and the entry of the United States into the war forced Germany onto the defensive, and it suffered a series of escalating defeats. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time lover, Eva Braun. On April 30, 1945, less than two days later, the two killed themselves to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned.

Childhood and Education

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (in present-day Austria), close to the border with the German Empire. He was one of six children born to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl. Three of Hitler’s siblings—Gustav, Ida, and Otto—died in infancy. When Hitler was three, the family moved to Passau, Germany. There he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect rather than Austrian German, which marked his speech throughout his life. The family returned to Austria and settled in Leonding in 1894, and in June 1895 Alois retired to Hafeld, near Lambach, where he farmed and kept bees. Hitler attended Volksschule (a state-owned school) in nearby Fischlham.

The move to Hafeld coincided with the onset of intense father-son conflicts caused by Hitler’s refusal to conform to the strict discipline of his school. Alois Hitler’s farming efforts at Hafeld ended in failure, and in 1897 the family moved to Lambach. The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even considered becoming a priest. In 1898 the family returned permanently to Leonding. Hitler was deeply affected by the death of his younger brother Edmund, who died in 1900 from measles. Hitler changed from a confident, outgoing, conscientious student to a morose, detached boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.

After Alois’s sudden death on January 3, 1903, Hitler’s performance at school deteriorated and his mother allowed him to leave. He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in September 1904, where his behavior and performance improved. In 1905, after passing a repeat of the final exam, Hitler left the school without any ambitions for further education or clear plans for a career.

Early Adulthood

From 1905, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna, financed by orphan’s benefits and support from his mother. He worked as a casual laborer and eventually as a painter, selling watercolors of Vienna’s sights. The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna rejected him in 1907 and again in 1908, citing “unfitness for painting.” The director recommended that Hitler study architecture, which was another of his interests, but he lacked academic credentials as he had not finished secondary school. On December 21, 1907, his mother died of breast cancer at the age of 47. Hitler ran out of money and was forced to live in homeless shelters and men’s hostels.

At the time Hitler lived there, Vienna was a hotbed of religious prejudice and racism. Fears of being overrun by immigrants from the East were widespread, and the populist mayor Karl Lueger exploited the rhetoric of virulent anti-Semitism for political effect. German nationalism had a widespread following in the Mariahilf district where Hitler lived. German nationalist Georg Ritter von Schönerer, who advocated Pan-Germanism, anti-Semitism, anti-Slavism, and anti-Catholicism, was one influence on Hitler. Hitler read local newspapers such as the Deutsches Volksblatt that fanned prejudice and played on Christian fears of being swamped by an influx of Eastern European Jews.

World War I

In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Hitler was living in Munich and voluntarily enlisted in the Bavarian Army. Posted to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16, he served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium, spending nearly half his time at the regimental headquarters in Fournes-en-Weppes, well behind the front lines. He was present at the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the Battle of Passchendaele, and was wounded at the Somme. He was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914.

Hitler in World War I

Hitler (far right, seated) with his army comrades of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (c. 1914–18)

Hitler (far right, seated) with his army comrades of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16. Seven men in army uniforms pose for a photo outdoors on a lawn.

Entry into Politics

After World War I, Hitler returned to Munich. With no formal education or career prospects, he remained in the army. In July 1919 he was appointed an intelligence agent, assigned to influence other soldiers and infiltrate the German Workers’ Party (DAP).

At the DAP, Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of the party’s founders and a member of the occult Thule Society. Eckart became Hitler’s mentor, exchanging ideas with him and introducing him to a wide range of Munich society. To increase its appeal, the DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party; NSDAP). Hitler designed the party’s banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background.

Hitler was discharged from the army on March 31, 1920, and began working full-time for the NSDAP. The party headquarters was in Munich, a hotbed of anti-government German nationalists determined to crush Marxism and undermine the Weimar Republic. In February 1921 — already highly effective at speaking to large audiences — he addressed a crowd of over 6,000. To publicize the meeting, two truckloads of party supporters drove around Munich waving swastika flags and distributing leaflets. Hitler soon gained notoriety for his rowdy polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, and especially Marxists and Jews.

Hitler’s vitriolic beer hall speeches began attracting regular audiences. He became adept at using populist themes, including the use of scapegoats, who were blamed for his listeners’ economic hardships. Hitler used personal magnetism and an understanding of crowd psychology to his advantage while engaged in public speaking. Historians have noted the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups. Alfons Heck, a former member of the Hitler Youth, later recalled:

We erupted into a frenzy of nationalistic pride that bordered on hysteria. For minutes on end, we shouted at the top of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil! From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler body and soul.

Arrest, Imprisonment, and Mein Kampf

In 1923 Hitler enlisted the help of World War I General Erich Ludendorff for an attempted coup known as the “Beer Hall Putsch.” The NSDAP used Italian Fascism as a model for their appearance and policies. Hitler wanted to emulate Benito Mussolini’s “March on Rome” of 1922 by staging his own coup in Bavaria, to be followed by a challenge to the government in Berlin.

On November 8, 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting of 3,000 people organized by Gustav Ritter von Kahr (Bavaria’s de facto ruler) in the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich. Interrupting Kahr’s speech, he announced that the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government with Ludendorff. 

Hitler’s forces initially succeeded in occupying the local Reichswehr and police headquarters, but Kahr and his cohorts quickly withdrew their support. Neither the army nor the state police joined forces with Hitler. The next day, Hitler and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government, but police dispersed them. Sixteen NSDAP members and four police officers were killed in the failed coup.

Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl and by some accounts contemplated suicide. He was depressed but calm when arrested on November 11, 1923 for high treason. On April 1, Hitler was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment at Landsberg Prison.

While at Landsberg, Hitler dictated most of the first volume of Mein Kampf (My Struggle; originally entitled Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice) to his deputy, Rudolf Hess. The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was an autobiography and exposition of his ideology. The book laid out Hitler’s plans for transforming German society into one based on race. Some passages implied genocide. Published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926, it sold 228,000 copies between 1925 and 1932. One million copies were sold in 1933, Hitler’s first year in office.

Beer Hall Putsch

Defendants in the Beer Hall Putsch trial. From left to right: Pernet, Weber, Frick, Kiebel, Ludendorff, Hitler, Bruckner, Röhm, and Wagner.

Photo of the defendants in the Beer Hall Putsch trial standing in front of a brick building.

30.5.2: The Nazi Party

The Nazi Party, which rose to prominence in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s, was a right-wing political party that sought to improve the stock of the Germanic people through racial purity and eugenics, broad social welfare programs, and a collective subordination of individual rights, sacrificed for the good of the state and the “Aryan master race.”

Learning Objective

Analyze the reasons for the success of the Nazi Party

Key Points

• The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, was founded in 1920 by Anton Drexler, an avid German nationalist.
• It evolved out of Drexler’s earlier party, the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP), started in 1919.
• Drexler followed the typical views of militant nationalists of the day, such as opposing the Treaty of Versailles, having antisemitic, anti-monarchist and anti-Marxist views, and believing in the superiority of Germans, whom nationalists claimed to be part of the Aryan “master race.”
• Adolf Hitler joined the DAP in 1919 and quickly became their main orator and spokesperson.
• Around that time, the party only had around 6o members.
• During 1921 and 1922, the Nazi Party grew significantly, partly through Hitler’s oratorical skills, partly through the SA’s (party militia) appeal to unemployed young men, and partly because there was a backlash against socialist and liberal politics in Bavaria as Germany’s economic problems deepened and the weakness of the Weimar regime became apparent.
• In 1923, Hitler and other Nazi Party members attempted a coup, which landed Hitler in prison for one year.
• Upon his release, Hitler continued to expand the Nazi base and by 1929, the party had 130,000 members.
• Despite its growth in popularity, the Nazi Party might never have come to power if not for the Great Depression and its effects on Germany.

Key Terms

Aryan

A racial grouping term used in the period of the late 19th century to the mid-20th century to describe multiple peoples. It has been variously used to describe all Indo-Europeans in general (spanning from India to Europe), the original Aryan people specifically in Persia, and most controversially through Nazi misinterpretation, the Nordic or Germanic peoples. The term derives from the Aryan people from Persia, who spoke a language similar to those found in Europe.

Hitler Youth

The youth organization of the Nazi Party in Germany, which originated in 1922. From 1933 until 1945, it was the sole official youth organization in Germany and was partially a paramilitary organization.

eugenics

A set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population.

Nuremberg Rally

The annual rally of the Nazi Party in Germany, held from 1923 to 1938. They were large Nazi propaganda events, especially after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. 

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, abbreviated NSDAP), commonly referred to in English as the Nazi Party, was a political party in Germany that was active between 1920 and 1945 and practiced the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920.

The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist, and populist paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany. The party was created to draw workers away from communism and into populist (German: völkisch) nationalism. Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although such aspects were later downplayed to gain the support of industrial entities. In the 1930s the party’s focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.

Pseudo-scientific racism theories were central to Nazism. The Nazis propagated the idea of a “people’s community.” Their aim was to unite “racially desirable” Germans as national comrades, while excluding those deemed either to be political dissidents, physically or intellectually inferior, or of a foreign race. The Nazis sought to improve the stock of the Germanic people through racial purity and eugenics, broad social welfare programs, and a collective subordination of individual rights, sacrificed for the good of the state and the “Aryan master race.” To maintain the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally handicapped. They imposed exclusionary segregation on homosexuals, Africans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and political opponents. The persecution reached its climax when the party-controlled German state organized the systematic murder of approximately six million Jews and five million people from the other targeted groups in what has become known as the Holocaust.

The party’s leader since 1921, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on January 30, 1933. Hitler rapidly established a totalitarian regime known as the Third Reich. Following the defeat of the Third Reich at the conclusion of World War II in Europe, the party was “declared to be illegal” by the Allied powers, who carried out denazification in the years after the war.

Origins and Early History

The party grew out of smaller political groups with nationalist orientation that formed in the last years of World War I. In 1918, a league called the Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden (Free Workers’ Committee for a good Peace) was created in Bremen, Germany. On March 7, 1918, Anton Drexler, an avid German nationalist, formed a branch of this league in Munich. Drexler was a local locksmith who had been a member of the militarist Fatherland Party during World War I and was bitterly opposed to the armistice of November 1918 and the revolutionary upheavals that followed. Drexler followed the typical views of militant nationalists of the day, such as opposing the Treaty of Versailles, having antisemitic, anti-monarchist and anti-Marxist views, and believing in the superiority of Germans, whom nationalists claimed to be part of the Aryan “master race.” He also accused international capitalism of being a Jewish-dominated movement and denounced capitalists for war profiteering in World War I. Drexler saw the situation of political violence and instability in Germany as the result of the new Weimar Republic being out-of-touch with the masses, especially the lower classes.

Though very small, Drexler’s movement did receive attention and support from some influential figures. Supporter Dietrich Eckhart brought military figure Count Felix Graf von Bothmer, a prominent supporter of the concept of “national socialism,” to address the movement. On January 5, 1919, Drexler created a new political party, the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP). To ease concerns among potential middle-class supporters, Drexler made clear that unlike Marxists, the party supported the middle-class, and that the party’s socialist policy was meant to give social welfare to German citizens deemed part of the Aryan race. The DAP was a comparatively small group with fewer than 60 members. Nevertheless, it attracted the attention of the German authorities, who were suspicious of any organization that appeared to have subversive tendencies. 

Adolf Hitler joined the DAP in 1919 and quickly became the party’s most active orator, appearing in public as a speaker 31 times within the first year. Hitler’s considerable oratory and propaganda skills were appreciated by the party leadership as crowds began to flock to hear his speeches.

To increase its appeal to larger segments of the population, on February 24, 1920, the same day as the biggest Hitler’s speech to date, the DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party). That year, the Nazi Party officially announced that only persons of “pure Aryan descent” could become party members; if the person had a spouse, the spouse also had to be a “racially pure” Aryan. Party members could not be related either directly or indirectly to a so-called “non-Aryan.”

The SA (“storm troopers”, also known as “Brownshirts”) were founded as a party militia in 1921 and began violent attacks on other parties.

During 1921 and 1922, the Nazi Party grew significantly, partly through Hitler’s oratorical skills, partly through the SA’s appeal to unemployed young men, and partly because there was a backlash against socialist and liberal politics in Bavaria as Germany’s economic problems deepened and the weakness of the Weimar regime became apparent. The party recruited former World War I soldiers, to whom Hitler as a decorated frontline veteran particularly appealed, as well as small businessmen and disaffected former members of rival parties. Nazi rallies were often held in beer halls, where downtrodden men could get free beer. The Hitler Youth was formed for the children of party members, although it remained small until the late 1920s.

After a failed coup (Beer Hall Putsch) in 1923, Hitler was arrested and the Nazi Party was largely disbanded.

Nazi Party Rises to Prominence

Adolf Hitler was released from prison on December 20, 1924. In the following year he re-founded and reorganized the Nazi Party with himself as its undisputed leader. The new Nazi Party was no longer a paramilitary organization and disavowed any intention of taking power by force. In any case, the economic and political situation had stabilized and the extremist upsurge of 1923 had faded, so there was no prospect of further revolutionary adventures.

In the 1920s the Nazi Party expanded beyond its Bavarian base. The areas of strongest Nazi support were in rural Protestant areas such as Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and East Prussia. Depressed working-class areas such as Thuringia also produced a strong Nazi vote, while the workers of the Ruhr and Hamburg largely remained loyal to the Social Democrats, the Communist Party of Germany, or the Catholic Centre Party. Nuremberg remained a Nazi Party stronghold, and the first Nuremberg Rally, a large annual propaganda rally, was held there in 1927. These rallies soon became massive displays of Nazi paramilitary power and attracted many recruits. The Nazis’ strongest appeal was to the lower middle-classes – farmers, public servants, teachers, small businessmen – who had suffered most from the inflation of the 1920s and thus feared Bolshevism more than anything else. The small business class was receptive to Hitler’s antisemitism, since it blamed Jewish big business for its economic problems. University students, disappointed at being too young to have served in the War of 1914–1918 and attracted by the Nazis’ radical rhetoric, also became a strong Nazi constituency. By 1929, the party had 130,000 members.

Despite its growth in popularity, the Nazi Party might never have come to power if not for the Great Depression and its effects on Germany. By 1930 the German economy was beset with mass unemployment and widespread business failures. The Social Democrats and Communists were bitterly divided and unable to formulate an effective solution. This gave the Nazis their opportunity; Hitler’s message, blaming the crisis on the Jewish financiers and the Bolsheviks, resonated with wide sections of the electorate. At the September 1930 Reichstag elections, the Nazis won 18.3% of the votes and became the second-largest party in the Reichstag after the SPD. Hitler proved a highly effective campaigner, pioneering the use of radio and aircraft for this purpose. His dismissal of Strasser and appointment of Goebbels as the party’s propaganda chief were major factors. While Strasser used his position to promote his own leftish version of national socialism, Goebbels was totally loyal to Hitler and worked only to improve Hitler’s image. Over the next several years, Hitler’s Nazi Party would continue to gain power and influence.

Nazi Party

Hitler with Nazi Party members in 1930. By 1929, the party had 130,000 members.

Hitler with a few dozen Nazi Party members in 1930.

30.5.3: Hitler’s Rise to Power

In 1933, the Nazi Party became the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, Hitler was appointed Chancellor, and the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act. This began the transformation of the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of National Socialism.

Learning Objective

Describe the events that led to Hitler becoming chancellor

Key Points

• Hitler’s rise to power occurred throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. He first gained prominence in the right-wing German Workers’ Party, which in 1920 changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party.
• In the early 1930s, the Nazi Party gained more seats in the German Reichstag (parliament), and by 1933 it was the largest elected party, which led to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933.
• Following fresh elections won by his coalition, the Reichstag passed the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended key civil liberties of German citizens, and Enabling Act, which gave the Hitler’s Cabinet the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag.
• With the passing of these two laws, Hitler’s power in government became nearly absolute and he soon used this power to eliminate all political opposition through both legal and violent means.
• On August 2, 1934, President Hindenburg died. Based on a law passed by the Reichstag the previous day, Hitler became head of state as well as head of government, and was formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor), thereby eliminating the last legal avenue by which he could be removed from office.
• Over the next few years, Hitler continued to consolidate his power, taking care to give his dictatorship the appearance of legality, by eliminating many military officials and taking personal command of the armed forces.

Key Terms

Enabling Act

A 1933 Weimar Constitution amendment that gave the German Cabinet – in effect, Chancellor Adolf Hitler – the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag. It passed in both the Reichstag and Reichsrat on March 24, 1933, and was signed by President Paul von Hindenburg later that day.

Night of the Long Knives

A purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate Hitler’s absolute hold on power in Germany. Many of those killed were leaders of the SA (Sturmabteilung), the Nazis’ own paramilitary Brownshirts organization; the best-known victim was Ernst Röhm, the SA’s leader and one of Hitler’s longtime supporters and allies.

Reichstag Fire Decree

This decree was issued by German President Paul von Hindenburg on the advice of Chancellor Adolf Hitler in direct response to the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933. The decree nullified many of the key civil liberties of German citizens. With Nazis in powerful positions in the German government, the decree was used as the legal basis for the imprisonment of anyone considered an opponent of the Nazis and to suppress publications not considered “friendly” to the Nazi cause. The decree is considered by historians to be one of the key steps in the establishment of a one-party Nazi state in Germany.

Hitler Runs for President

The Great Depression provided a political opportunity for Hitler. Germans were ambivalent about the parliamentary republic, which faced challenges from right- and left-wing extremists. The moderate political parties were increasingly unable to stem the tide of extremism, and the German referendum of 1929, which almost passed a law formally renouncing the Treaty of Versailles and making it a criminal offence for German officials to cooperate in the collecting of reparations, helped to elevate Nazi ideology. The elections of September 1930 resulted in the break-up of a grand coalition and its replacement with a minority cabinet. Its leader, chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party, governed through emergency decrees from President Paul von Hindenburg. Governance by decree became the new norm and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government. The Nazi Party (NSDAP) rose from obscurity to win 18.3 percent of the vote and 107 parliamentary seats in the 1930 election, becoming the second-largest party in parliament.

Brüning’s austerity measures brought little economic improvement and were extremely unpopular. Hitler exploited this by targeting his political messages specifically at people who had been affected by the inflation of the 1920s and the Depression, such as farmers, war veterans, and the middle class.

Hitler ran against Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential elections. A January 1932 speech to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf won him support from many of Germany’s most powerful industrialists. Hindenburg had support from various nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, and republican parties, as well as some social democrats. Hitler used the campaign slogan “Hitler über Deutschland” (“Hitler over Germany”), a reference to his political ambitions and campaigning by aircraft. He was one of the first politicians to use aircraft travel for political purposes and utilized it effectively. Hitler came in second in both rounds of the election, garnering more than 35 percent of the vote in the final election. Although he lost to Hindenburg, this election established Hitler as a strong force in German politics.

Appointment as Chancellor

The absence of an effective government prompted two influential politicians, Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg, along with several industrialists and businessmen, to write a letter to Hindenburg. The signers urged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as leader of a government “independent from parliamentary parties,” which could turn into a movement that would “enrapture millions of people.”

Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler as chancellor after two further parliamentary elections—in July and November 1932—did not result in the formation of a majority government. Hitler headed a short-lived coalition government formed by the NSDAP and Hugenberg’s party, the German National People’s Party (DNVP). On January 30, 1933, the new cabinet was sworn in during a brief ceremony in Hindenburg’s office. The NSDAP gained three posts: Hitler was named chancellor, Wilhelm Frick Minister of the Interior, and Hermann Göring Minister of the Interior for Prussia. Hitler had insisted on the ministerial positions to gain control over the police in much of Germany.

Hitler, Chancellor of Germany

Hitler, at the window of the Reich Chancellery, receives an ovation on the evening of his inauguration as chancellor, January 30, 1933.

Hitler, at the window of a large stone building, receives an ovation from a large crowd.

Reichstag Fire and March Elections

As chancellor, Hitler worked against attempts by the NSDAP’s opponents to build a majority government. Because of the political stalemate, he asked Hindenburg to again dissolve the Reichstag, and elections were scheduled for early March. On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Göring blamed a communist plot, because Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found in incriminating circumstances inside the burning building. According to the British historian Sir Ian Kershaw, the consensus of nearly all historians is that van der Lubbe actually set the fire. Others, including William L. Shirer and Alan Bullock, are of the opinion that the NSDAP itself was responsible. At Hitler’s urging, Hindenburg responded with the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February, which suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. The decree was permitted under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which gave the president the power to take emergency measures to protect public safety and order. Activities of the German Communist Party (KPD) were suppressed, and some 4,000 KPD members were arrested.

In addition to political campaigning, the NSDAP engaged in paramilitary violence and the spread of anti-communist propaganda in the days preceding the election. On election day, March 6, 1933, the NSDAP’s share of the vote increased to 43.9 percent, and the party acquired the largest number of seats in parliament. Hitler’s party failed to secure an absolute majority, necessitating another coalition with the DNVP.

The Enabling Act

To achieve full political control despite not having an absolute majority in parliament, Hitler’s government brought the Enabling Act to a vote in the newly elected Reichstag. The Act—officially titled the Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich (“Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich”)—gave Hitler’s cabinet the power to enact laws without the consent of the Reichstag for four years. These laws could (with certain exceptions) deviate from the constitution. Since it would affect the constitution, the Enabling Act required a two-thirds majority to pass. Leaving nothing to chance, the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to arrest all 81 Communist deputies (in spite of their virulent campaign against the party, the Nazis allowed the KPD to contest the election) and prevent several Social Democrats from attending.

On March 23, 1933, the Reichstag assembled at the Kroll Opera House under turbulent circumstances. Ranks of SA (Nazi paramilitary) men served as guards inside the building, while large groups outside opposing the proposed legislation shouted slogans and threats toward the arriving members of parliament. The position of the Centre Party, the third largest party in the Reichstag, was decisive. After Hitler verbally promised party leader Ludwig Kaas that Hindenburg would retain his power of veto, Kaas announced the Centre Party would support the Enabling Act. The Act passed by a vote of 441–84, with all parties except the Social Democrats voting in favor. The Enabling Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler’s government into a de facto legal dictatorship.

Dictatorship

Having achieved full control over the legislative and executive branches of government, Hitler and his allies began to suppress the remaining opposition. The Social Democratic Party was banned and its assets seized. While many trade union delegates were in Berlin for May Day activities, SA stormtroopers demolished union offices around the country. On May 2, 1933, all trade unions were forced to dissolve and their leaders were arrested. Some were sent to concentration camps.

By the end of June, the other parties had been intimidated into disbanding. This included the Nazis’ nominal coalition partner, the DNVP; with the SA’s help, Hitler forced its leader, Hugenberg, to resign on June 29. On July 14, the NSDAP was declared the only legal political party in Germany. The demands of the SA for more political and military power caused anxiety among military, industrial, and political leaders. In response, Hitler purged the entire SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives, which took place from June 30 to July 2, 1934. Hitler targeted Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders who, along with a number of Hitler’s political adversaries (such as Gregor Strasser and former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher), were rounded up, arrested, and shot. While the international community and some Germans were shocked by the murders, many in Germany believed Hitler was restoring order.

On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died. The previous day, the cabinet had enacted the “Law Concerning the Highest State Office of the Reich.” This law stated that upon Hindenburg’s death, the office of president would be abolished and its powers merged with those of the chancellor. Hitler thus became head of state as well as head of government and was formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor). With this action, Hitler eliminated the last legal avenue by which he could be removed from office.

As head of state, Hitler became supreme commander of the armed forces. The traditional loyalty oath of servicemen was altered to affirm loyalty to Hitler personally, by name, rather than to the office of supreme commander or the state. On August 19, the merger of the presidency with the chancellorship was approved by 90 percent of the electorate voting in a plebiscite.

In early 1938, Hitler used blackmail to consolidate his hold over the military by instigating the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair. Hitler forced his War Minister, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, to resign by using a police dossier that showed that Blomberg’s new wife had a record for prostitution. Army commander Colonel-General Werner von Fritsch was removed after the Schutzstaffel (SS paramilitary) produced allegations that he had engaged in a homosexual relationship. Both men fell into disfavor because they objected to Hitler’s demand to make the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) ready for war as early as 1938. Hitler assumed Blomberg’s title of Commander-in-Chief, thus taking personal command of the armed forces. On the same day, sixteen generals were stripped of their commands and 44 more were transferred; all were suspected of not being sufficiently pro-Nazi. By early February 1938, 12 more generals had been removed.

Hitler took care to give his dictatorship the appearance of legality. Many of his decrees were explicitly based on the Reichstag Fire Decree and hence on Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag renewed the Enabling Act twice, each time for a four-year period. While elections to the Reichstag were still held (in 1933, 1936, and 1938), voters were presented with a single list of Nazis and pro-Nazi “guests” which carried with well over 90 percent of the vote. These elections were held in far-from-secret conditions; the Nazis threatened severe reprisals against anyone who didn’t vote or dared to vote no.

30.5.4: Antisemitism in Nazi Germany

Racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the Nazi regime, based on a pseudo-scientific doctrine asserting the superiority of the Aryan “master race.”

Learning Objective

Give examples of antisemitism in Germany before the outbreak of World War II

Key Points

• One of the central tenets of the Nazi regime was a pseudo-scientific racial hierarchy placing the Nordic or Aryan races at the top and Slavs, Romani, and especially Jews at the bottom.
• Antisemitism in the Nazi regime was manifested in propaganda that scapegoated all of Germany’s problems on the Jews, various discriminating laws, and finally mass-scale violence and murder culminating in the Holocaust, or in Nazi terms, the “Final Solution.”
• In April 1933, Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses and passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which forced all non-Aryan civil servants to retire from the legal profession and civil service.
• On September 15, 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were passed, which included the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour. This forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans. The Reich Citizenship Law declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens.
• In November 1938, persecution of the Jews became violent when Nazi paramilitary damaged or destroyed synagogues and Jewish property throughout Germany during what became known as Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass.”
• Up until the outbreak of World War II, when the racist policies of the Nazis turned into outright genocide, the persecution of Jews and other “subhumans” continued under mostly legal means.

Key Terms

“master race”

A pseudo-scientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the Nordic or Aryan races, thought to predominate among Germans and other northern European peoples, were deemed the highest in an assumed racial hierarchy.

stab-in-the-back legend

The notion, widely believed in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by the civilians on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918-19. Advocates denounced the German government leaders who signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, as the “November Criminals.”

Kristallnacht

A pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany on November 9-10, 1938, carried out by SA paramilitary forces and German civilians. German authorities looked on without intervening. The name comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed.

Nuremberg Laws

Antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced on September 15, 1935, by the Reichstag at a special meeting convened at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households, and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were classed as state subjects without citizenship rights.

Racism and antisemitism were basic tenets of the NSDAP and the Nazi regime. The Germanic peoples (the Nordic race) were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race and therefore viewed as the master race. The Nazis postulated the existence of a racial conflict between the Aryan master race and inferior races, particularly Jews, who were viewed as a mixed race that had infiltrated society and were responsible for the exploitation and repression of the Aryan race. 

Nazi policies placed centuries-long residents in German territory who were not ethnic Germans such as Jews (a Semitic people of Levantine origins), Romanis (also known as Gypsies, an Indo-Aryan people of Indian Subcontinent origins), European non-Nordic peoples including Slavs (Poles, Serbs, Russians, etc.), and all other persons of color as inferior non-Aryan subhumans (i.e. non-Nordics, under the Nazi misinterpretation of the term “Aryan”) in a racial hierarchy with the Herrenvolk (“master race”) of the Volksgemeinschaft (“people’s community”) at the top. Jews were at the bottom, considered inhuman and thus unworthy of life.

Using the “stab-in-the-back legend,” the Nazis blamed poverty, hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, unemployment, and the loss of World War I and surrender by the “November Criminals” all on the Jews and “cultural Bolsheviks,” the latter considered in conspiracy with the Jews. German woes were attributed to the effects of the Treaty of Versailles, also considered a Jewish conspiracy. The Nazi Party used these populist antisemitic views to gain votes.

Early Persecution of Jews

Discrimination against Jews began immediately after the Nazi seizure of power. Following a month-long series of attacks by members of the SA (Nazi paramilitary) on Jewish businesses, synagogues, and members of the legal profession, on April 1, 1933, Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on April 7, forced all non-Aryan civil servants to retire from the legal profession and civil service. Similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of their right to practice. On April 11, a decree was promulgated that stated anyone with even one Jewish parent or grandparent was considered non-Aryan. As part of the drive to remove Jewish influence from cultural life, members of the National Socialist Student League removed from libraries books considered un-German, and a nationwide book burning was held on May 10.

Violence and economic pressure were used by the regime to encourage Jews to voluntarily leave the country. Jewish businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden to advertise in newspapers, and deprived of access to government contracts. Citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks. Many towns posted signs forbidding entry to Jews.

In November 1938, a young Jewish man requested an interview with the German ambassador in Paris. He met with a legation secretary, whom he shot and killed to protest his family’s treatment in Germany. This incident provided the pretext for a pogrom the NSDAP incited against the Jews on November 9, 1938. Members of the SA damaged or destroyed synagogues and Jewish property throughout Germany. At least 91 German Jews were killed during this pogrom, later called Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass.” Further restrictions were imposed on Jews in the coming months. They were forbidden to own businesses or work in retail shops, drive cars, go to the cinema, visit the library, or own weapons. Jewish pupils were removed from schools. The Jewish community was fined one billion marks to pay for the damage caused by Kristallnacht and told that any money received via insurance claims would be confiscated. 

By 1939, around 250,000 of Germany’s 437,000 Jews emigrated to the United States, Argentina, Great Britain, Palestine, and other countries. Many chose to stay in continental Europe. Nonetheless, emigration was problematic, as Jews were required to remit up to 90 percent of their wealth as a tax upon leaving the country. By 1938 it was almost impossible for potential Jewish emigrants to find a country willing to take them. Mass deportation schemes such as the Madagascar Plan proved to be impossible for the Nazis to carry out, and starting in mid-1941, the German government started mass exterminations of the Jews of Europe.

Kristallnacht

Damage caused during Kristallnacht. On November 9-10, 1938, a pogrom against Jews was carried out by SA paramilitary forces and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany.

Photo of a storefront with the windows and signs destroyed.

Nuremberg Laws

The Nuremberg Laws were introduced on September 15, 1935, by the Reichstag at a special meeting convened at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans (seen as “race disgrace”) and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households, and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were classed as state subjects without citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on November 14, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on November 26, 1935, to include Romani people and Afro-Germans. This supplementary decree defined Gypsies as “enemies of the race-based state,” the same category as Jews.

The Nuremberg laws had a crippling economic and social impact on the Jewish community. Persons convicted of violating the marriage laws were imprisoned, and (subsequent to March 8, 1938) upon completing their sentences were rearrested by the Gestapo and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Non-Jews gradually stopped socializing with Jews or shopping in Jewish-owned stores, many of which closed due to lack of customers. As Jews were no longer permitted to work in the civil service or government-regulated professions such as medicine and education, many middle-class business owners and professionals were forced to take menial employment.

30.5.5: Lebensraum and Anschluss

The ideology of Nazism brought together elements of antisemitism, racial hygiene, and eugenics with pan-Germanism (“Heim ins Reich“) and territorial expansionism with the goal of obtaining more Lebensraum (“living space”) for the Germanic people.

Learning Objective

Define the terms Lebensraum and Anschluss

Key Points

• The foreign policy of the Nazi regime, outlined by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf in 1925, expanded upon the German ideas of a “Greater Germany” that had been discussed and enacted in various ways since the 19th century.
• Similar to the Italian expansionist policy of Spazio vitale (“vital space”) under Mussolini, Hitler sought to expand the territory of Germany to give room (Lebensraum: “living space”) for ethnic Germans to live and work.
• This territorial aim was combined with the racist ideologies of the Nazis to form the idea that people deemed to be part of inferior races (Slavs and Jews, for example), within the territory of Lebensraum expansion, were subjected to expulsion or destruction.
• Thus under the Nazi policies and military plans, the indigenous populations of Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently, either through mass deportation to Siberia, death, or enslavement.
• The invasion of Poland, which started World War II, was motivated by this Lebensraum principle.
• Similar to the Lebensraum principle, the Nazis wanted to build a Great Germany by annexing ethnically-German territories, especially Austria.
• The annexation of Austria (termed Anschluss) occurred in 1938 when Hitler ordered troops into Austria to pressure its president to appoint a Nazi chancellor who would orchestrate the unification.
• Within two days of installation, Nazis transferred power to Germany, and Wehrmacht troops entered Austria to enforce the Anschluss, which was then ratified by a controlled popular vote.

Key Terms

settler colonialism

A form of colonial formation whereby foreign people move into a region. An imperial power oversees the immigration of these settlers who consent, often only temporarily, to government by that authority. This colonization sometimes leads, by a variety of means, to depopulation of the previous inhabitants, and the settlers take over the land left vacant by the previous residents.

“Heim ins Reich”

A foreign policy pursued by Adolf Hitler during World War II, beginning in 1938. The aim of Hitler’s initiative was to convince all Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) living outside of Nazi Germany (in Austria and the western districts of Poland) that they should strive to bring these regions “home” into Greater Germany and relocate from outside German-controlled territories following the conquest of Poland in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet pact.

Lebensraum

German for “living space,” this term refers to policies and practices of settler colonialism proliferated in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s.

Anschluss

This is the term used to describe the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938, but the idea goes back to the 19th century.

Lebensraum

The German concept of Lebensraum (English: “living space”) refers to policies and practices of settler colonialism proliferated in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. The most extreme form of this ideology was supported by the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in the Third Reich until the end of World War II. First popularized around 1901, Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I (1914–1918).

In Mein Kampf (1925), Adolf Hitler dedicated a full chapter titled “Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy,” outlining the need for the new living space for Germany. He claimed that achieving Lebensraum required political will, and that the National Socialist Movement should strive to expand the population area of the German people and acquire new sources of food. Hitler rejected the restoration of the pre-war borders of Germany as an inadequate half-measure toward reducing purported national overpopulation. From that perspective, he opined that the nature of national borders is always unfinished and momentary, and that their redrawing must continue as Germany’s political goal. Hence, Hitler identified the geopolitics of Lebensraum as the ultimate political will of his Party:

And so, we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre–War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the East. At long last, we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre–War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.

Following Hitler’s rise to power, Lebensraum became an ideological principle of Nazism and provided justification for the German territorial expansion into East-Central Europe. The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy (the Master Plan for the East) was based on its tenets. It stipulated that most of the indigenous populations of Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently (either through mass deportation to Siberia, death, or enslavement) including Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and other Slavic nations considered racially inferior. The Third Reich aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during World War II and thereafter. The entire populations were to be decimated by starvation, allowing for their own agricultural surplus to feed Germany. The invasion of Poland, which started WWII, was motivated by the Lebensraum principle and planned under Generalplan Ost.

Hitler’s strategic program for world domination was based on the belief in the power of Lebensraum, pursued by a racially superior society. People deemed to be part of inferior races within the territory of Lebensraum expansion were subjected to expulsion or destruction. The eugenics of Lebensraum assumed the right of the German Aryan master race (Herrenvolk) to remove indigenous people they considered to be of inferior racial stock (Untermenschen) in the name of their own living space. Nazi Germany also supported other “Arian” nations pursuing their own Lebensraum, including Fascist Italy’s Spazio vitale.

Greater Germany and Lebensraum

The Greater Germanic Reich, to be realized with the policies of Lebensraum, had boundaries derived from the plans of the Generalplan Ost.

A map of Europe showing the German plan for “Greater Germany” in green, a state that expands the German borders into Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.

Anschluss

Anschluss (English: “connection” or “joining”) is the term used to describe the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938. The idea of an Anschluss (Austria and Germany uniting to form a “Greater Germany”) began after the Unification of Germany excluded Austria and the Austrian Germans from the Prussian-dominated German nation-state in 1871. The idea of grouping all Germans into a nation-state country had been the subject of debate in the 19th century from the end of the Holy Roman Empire until the end of the German Confederation. 

Following the end of World War I in 1918, the Republic of German-Austria attempted union with Germany, but the Treaty of Saint Germain (September 10, 1919) and the Treaty of Versailles (June 28, 1919) forbade both the union and the continued use of the name “German-Austria.”

The constitutions of the Weimar Republic and the First Austrian Republic included the political goal of unification, which was widely supported by democratic parties. In the early 1930s, popular support in Austria for union with Germany remained overwhelming, and the Austrian government looked to a possible customs union with German Republic in 1931.

When the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, rose to power in the Weimar Republic, the Austrian government withdrew from economic ties. Austria shared the economic turbulence of the Great Depression, with a high unemployment rate and unstable commerce and industry. During the 1920s it was a target for German investment capital. By 1937 rapid German rearmament increased Berlin’s interest in annexing Austria, rich in raw materials and labor. It supplied Germany with magnesium and the products of the iron, textile, and machine industries. It had gold and foreign currency reserves, many unemployed skilled workers, hundreds of idle factories, and large potential hydroelectric resources.

The Nazis aimed to re-unite all Germans either born or living outside of the Reich to create an “all-German Reich.” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that he would create a union between his birth country Austria and Germany by any means possible (“German-Austria must be restored to the great German Motherland.” “People of the same blood should be in the same Reich.”).

Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany on March 12, 1938. There had been several years of pressure from supporters in Austria and Germany (both Nazis and non-Nazis) for the “Heim ins Reich” (“back home to the Reich”) movement. Earlier, Nazi Germany provided support for the Austrian National Socialist Party (Austrian Nazi Party) in its bid to seize power from Austria’s Fatherland Front government.

On March 9, 1938, Iin the face of rioting by the small but virulent Austrian Nazi Party and ever-expanding German demands on Austria, Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg called a plebiscite referendum (popular vote) on the issue, to be held on March 13. Infuriated, on March 11 Adolf Hitler threatened invasion of Austria and demanded Chancellor von Schuschnigg’s resignation and the appointment of the Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart as his replacement. Hitler’s plan was for Seyss-Inquart to call immediately for German troops to rush to Austria’s aid, restoring order and giving the invasion an air of legitimacy. In the face of this threat, Schuschnigg informed Seyss-Inquart that the plebiscite would be cancelled.

Nevertheless, the Hitler underestimated his opposition. Schuschnigg did resign on the evening of March 11, but President Wilhelm Miklas refused to appoint Seyss-Inquart as chancellor. At 8:45 p.m., Hitler, tired of waiting, ordered the invasion to commence at dawn on March 12 regardless. Around 10 p.m., a forged telegram was sent in Seyss-Inquart’s name asking for German troops, since he was not yet chancellor and was unable to do so himself. Seyss-Inquart was not installed as chancellor until after midnight, when Miklas resigned himself to the inevitable.

As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edgar A Mowrer, reporting from Paris for CBS, observed: “There is no one in all France who does not believe that Hitler invaded Austria not to hold a genuine plebiscite, but to prevent the plebiscite planned by Schusschnigg from demonstrating to the entire world just how little hold National Socialism really had on that tiny country.” Clearly it was Hitler and not Schuschnigg who was terrified by the potential results of the scheduled plebiscite, and that was the best indication of where Austrians’ loyalty lay.

The newly installed Nazis within two days transferred power to Germany, and Wehrmacht troops entered Austria to enforce the Anschluss. The Nazis held a controlled plebiscite in the whole Reich within the following month, asking the people to ratify the annexation, and claimed that 99.7561% of the votes cast in Austria were in favor. Austrian citizens of Jewish origin were not allowed to vote.

Anschluss

German and Austrian border police dismantle a border post in 1938.

A photo of German and Austrian border police dismantle a border post in 1938.