CHAPTER 26: EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS, 1919-1939
READING QUESTIONS
1. The decade of the 1920s has been characterized as both an "age of anxiety" and a "period of hope."
Why?
2. What were the causes of the Great Depression? How did the European states respond to the Great
Depression?
3. What are the chief characteristics of totalitarianism? To what extent was Fascist Italy a totalitarian
state?
4. Compare and contrast fascism in Italy with Nazism in Germany. What were the similarities and what
were the differences between the two regimes?
5. What were Hitler's core ideas or assumptions? What were the methods used to implement them once
he and the Nazis had established the Nazi state in Germany?
6. Why does the author state that the Stalinist era inaugurated an "economic, social, and political
revolution that was more sweeping in its results than the revolutions of 1917"?
7. How were the totalitarian revolutions in the Soviet Union, Italy, and Germany similar? How were they
different?
8. How do the cultural and intellectual trends of the 1920s and 1930s reflect a crisis of confidence in
Western Civilization?
Identifications:
1. League of Nations
2. Little Entente
3. Dawes Plan
4. Treaty of Locarno
5. Kellogg-Briand pact
6. Great Depression
7. John Maynard Keynes
8. the Popular Front
9. the New Deal
10. Ataturk and Mohandas Gandhi
11. totalitarianism
12. Benito Mussolini
13. Fascio di Combattimento
14. squadristi
15. the blackshirts
16. “Women into the home”
17. WeimarRepublic
18. Adolph Hitler
19. Mein Kampf
20. Nazis
21. Lebensraum
22. Fuhrerprinzip
23. the Enabling Act
24. “Germany Awake”
25. Aryanism
26. Hitler Jugend
27. Nuremberg laws
28. Kristallnacht
29. “war communism”
30. New Economic Policy
31. Joseph Stalin
32. five-year plans
33. Stakhanov cult
34. collective farms
35. Francisco Franco and the Spanish Civil War
38. Dopolavoro and Kraft durch Freude
39. Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West
42. Bauhaus School and Walter Gropius
43. Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera
44. “degenerate art”
45. “socialist realism”
46. Arnold Schoenberg and atonal music
47. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and “stream of consciousness”
48. Carl Jung
49. Werner Heisenberg and the uncertainty principle
50. Ernest Rutherford and the atom
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR THE PRIMARY SOURCES (BOXED DOCUMENTS)
1. “The Great Depression: Unemployed and Homeless in Germany”: Discuss the plight of the homeless in Germany in 1932. To what does the writer compare to the impact and effects of the depression? How did the growing misery of many ordinary Germans promote the rise of extremist political parties like the Nazis and facilitate seizure of political power in Germany by racist and anti-democratic forces? Would Hitler have come to power if prosperity had continued in WeimarGermany? (page 754)
2. “The Struggles of a Democracy: Unemployment and Slums in Great Britain”: What economic and social problems are described in these documents? What might be the psychological or emotional impact on someone who has held a job for decades and now is out of work with no prospect of gaining employment again? What do these pieces tell you about the quality of life and politics in Great Britain during the inter-war years? (page 755)
3. “The Voice of Italian Fascism”: Based on this article, for Mussolini, what were the basic principles of Italian Fascism? What movements and ideologies does Mussolini vehemently oppose, and why? Why might such principles and claims that he espouses in this document appeal to a broad public in the aftermath of World War One? (page 761)
4. “Adolf Hitler’s Hatred of the Jews”: What was Hitler's attitude toward the Jews? What fueled his irrational hatred of Jews? What role might nineteenth century German nationalism have played in fueling anti-Semitism? Why do you think that such crazed views became acceptable (or at least tolerable) to large numbers of ordinary Germans in the aftermath of World War One? (page 763)
5. “Propaganda and Mass Meetings in Nazi Germany”: How did Hitler envision the role of propaganda and mass meetings in the totalitarian state? How did the stage- management of Nazi spectacles possibly contribute to the acceptance of corrupt and inhuman Nazi ideology by many ordinary Germans, such as the teacher quoted? What role does propaganda and mass meetings play in today’s society, and not merely in the realm of politics? (page 767)
6. “The Formation of Collective Farms”: What is a collective farm and how was it created? What was the reason that Stalin ordered the collectivization of agriculture? What traditions of Russian life and character did this novel unit of agricultural production attack? What social and economic costs were involved in the formation of the collectives? Were the collective farms successful? Why or why not? (page 772)
7. “Mass Leisure: Strength through Joy”: Based on these documents, what were the attitudes of ordinary Germans toward the Nazi regime's “Strength through Joy” programs? What do the content and tone of these reports tell you about the nature of public support for Nazism? Did all Germans approve of and participate in the Nazis’ programs? What groups or ranks in society did the Nazis apparently single out for special efforts at indoctrination and recruitment? Was Nazism most successful in capitalizing on the fears, hatreds, and self-serving ambitions of the lower middle classes, the petty German bourgeoisie? (page 775)
8. “Hesse and the Unconscious”: How might the German Nazis have capitalized on the psychic uncertainties and confusion among ordinary people that Hesse describes here afflicting a central character in one of the author's most popular novels? What are the political dangers inherent in a populace comprised of too many people vulnerable to the problems of Hesse's literary character? Why was Hesse popular among young Germans in the aftermath of World War I and young Americans in the counter-culture of the 1960s? (page 779)