World War II 1

1. Before World War I, Italy was a liberal state with civil rights and a constitutional monarchy. It was fairly modern by that there were universal male suffrage and somewhat of a democracy. However, the ma-jority of Italians was poor and was attached more to local interests than national ones. The papacy, de-vout Catholics, conservatives, and landowners were strongly opposed to liberal institutions and to the heirs of Cavour and Garibaldi, the middle-class lawyers and politicians who governed for their own ben-efit. Class differences were extreme, and a strong socialist movement had developed. The Socialist par-ty gained leadership as early as 1912 and unanimously opposed the war from the beginning. The war worsened Italy’s situation, as Italy had wanted territorial expansion while the workers and peasants wanted social and land reform; Italy would receive modest gains while the workers and peasants re-ceived nothing. The Russian Revolution inspired and energized Italy’s socialist movement, as the Social-ist party lined up with the Bolsheviks and radical workers and peasants began seizing factories and land in 1920. This scared and mobilized the property-owning classes. After the war, the pope lifted his ban on participation by Catholics in Italian politics, causing a strong Catholic party to emerge. By 1921, so-cialists, antiliberal conservatives, and frightened property owners all opposed the liberal parliamentary government.

2. After being kicked out of the Italian Socialist party, Benito Mussolini fought at the front and was wounded in 1917. After the war was over, he began organizing bitter war veterans into a band of fasc-ists. He made radical nationalist and socialist demands, including territorial expansion, benefits for workers, and land reform for peasants. His attacks on the Socialists gained him support from conserva-tives and the middle classes. Mussolini and his Black Shirts began to grow violent, randomly beating up Socialist organizers and killing them, causing socialist newspapers, union halls, and local Socialist party headquarters to be destroyed and the Socialists to be pushed out of the city governments of northern Italy. The government was breaking down in 1922 largely because of the chaos created by his direct-action bands. Mussolini presented himself as the savior of order and piece and demanded the resigna-tion of the existing government and his appointment by the king. In October 1922, a large group of fasc-ists marched on Rome, causing Victor Emmanuel III to ask Mussolini to form a cabinet and thus seize power legally and completely.

3. With Mussolini becoming dictator based on the Italians’ rejection of parliamentary government and So-viet-style revolution, his ministers included old conservatives, moderates, and reform-minded Socialists. A new electoral law was passed giving two-thirds of the representatives in the parliament to the party that won the most votes, allowing the Fascist party and its allies to win a great majority in 1924. His party then consolidated their power by murdering Giacomo Matteotti, the leader of the Socialists in the parliament. Faced with pressure, Mussolini imposed the repressive measures of abolishing the freedom of the press, fixing elections, and forced government rule. Mussolini arrested his political opponents, disbanded all independent labor unions, and put dedicated Fascists in control of Italy’s schools. He created a fascist youth movement, labor unions, and other organizations. However, his party was not able to destroy the old power structure or succeed in dominating it. Mussolini was concerned with per-sonal power and was thus content to compromise with the old conservative classes that controlled the army, the economy, and the state. Mussolini supported the Catholic church when he signed the Lateran Agreement of 1929 that recognized the Vatican as a tiny independent state. Mussolini abolished divorce and told women to stay at home and produce children. He decreed a special tax on bachelors in 1934, and in 1938, women were confined by law to a maximum of 10% of the better-paying jobs in industry and government. There was little racial persecution and no ruthless suppression.

1. After Adolf Hitler moved to Vienna, he began formulating his beliefs. He became an extreme German nationalist and advocating for union of the German people and the expulsion of inferior peoples. He was deeply impressed by Vienna’s mayor, Karl Lueger. He became an ardent anti-Semitist, racists, and hater of Slavs. He developed a strong belief in the crudest, most exaggerated distortions of the Darwi-nian theory of survival, the superiority of German races, and the inevitability of racial conflict. He even-tually began to blame the Jews for everything. He extolled World War I and served as a dispatch carrier on the western front for the Germans. The struggle and discipline of war gave war meaning; that was shattered after the Germans lost. He blamed the Jews and Marxists for Germany’s lose. In late 1919, Hitler joined an extremist group in Munich called the German Workers’ party. The party denounced Jews, Marxists, and democrats as well as promised unity under a German national socialism that would abolish the injustices of capitalism. By 1921, Hitler had gained absolute control of this party and was al-ready a master of mass propaganda and political showmanship. He used the mass rally to work his au-dience into a frenzy and criticize the Versailles treaty, the Jews, the war profiteers, and the Weimar Re-public. He hated the war reparations as well as the loss of German territory. Party membership in-creased tenfold after early 1922. In late 1923, the Weimar Republic seemed to be collapsing, and Hitler, inspired by Mussolini’s easy victory, decided on an armed uprising in Munich that ultimately failed and led to Hitler’s arrest. Hitler denounced the Weimar Republic at his trial, gaining great publicity and attention as well as realizing that he had to legally come to power.

2. In prison, he expanded on his views of race in Mein Kampf with a stress on anti-Semitism, living space for Germans through war and conquered territory, and the leader-dictator with unlimited and arbitrary power. During the Roaring Twenties, Hitler focused on strengthening the National Socialist German Workers’ part, or Nazi party, and had 100,000 followers by 1928. To appeal to middle-class voters, Hit-ler lessened the anticapitalist elements of national socialism and vowed to fight Bolshevism. With only twelve seats in the Reichstag, Hitler used the Great Depression to strengthen his cause after 1929. Un-employment was at 5 million in 1930, and industrial production had fallen by half between 1929 and 1932. By the end of 1932, 43% of the labor force was unemployed. He then began promising German voters economic, political, and international salvation. Hitler rejected free-market capitalism and advo-cated government programs to bring recovery, a sort of compromise between centralized state plan-ning and laissez-faire capitalism. He geared his audience to small business people, office workers, arti-sans, and peasants as well as skilled workers. With the deepening depression, the Nazi and Communist parties grew. In the election of 1930, the Nazis became the second largest group only to the Social Democrats. With worsening economic and political situations, the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag in July 1932 with 38% of the total votes. Hitler had played down his anti-Semitism and racist nationalism. He believed in national rebirth and repudiating the Versailles treaty. Hitler and the Nazis appealed greatly to the German youth. In 1931, 40% of Nazi party members were under thirty, as na-tional recovery, exciting and rapid change, and personal advancement appealed to millions. Unable to gain the support of the majority of the Reichstag in May 1930, Chancellor Heinrich Brüning convinced President General Hindenburg to authorize rule by decree and overcome the economic crisis by cutting back government spending and forcing down prices and wages. This backfired, as they were ineffective and worsened the situation. President Hindenburg forced Brüning to resign in May 1932. The Commun-ists refused to cooperate with the Social Democrats, as they hated socialists and their ideology. An at-tempt for the Socialists to form an alliance with the Communists to block Hitler failed. Hitler gained the additional support from people in the army and big business, who thought they could use him to get in-creased military spending, fat contracts, and tough measures against workers, with many conservative and nationalistic politicians thinking similarly. They allowed Hitler to be chancellor only if he could be controlled with two other Nazis and nine conservatives, and in doing so, he was legally appointed chan-cellor on January 30, 1933.

3. After the Reichstag was partly destroyed by fire, Hitler asserted that the Communist party was respon-sible and convinced President Hindenburg to sign dictatorial emergency acts that abolished freedom of speech and assembly as well as other personal liberties. After the Nazis only won 44% of the vote, Hitler outlawed the Communist party and arrested its parliamentary representatives. On March 23, 1933, the Nazis passed the Enabling Act, giving Hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years. With this, Hitler and the Nazis destroyed or controlled all independent organizations. Germany became a one-party state where only the Nazi party was legal and elections were jokes. The top positions of the government bureaucracy were given to Nazis. Hitler and the Nazis created a series of Nazi party organizations re-sponsible only to Hitler. He outlawed strikes and abolished independent labor unions in favor of the Nazi Labor Front. Professional people had their independent organizations swallowed by Nazi associations. Publishing houses, universities, and writers were controlled, no democratic, socialist, or Jewish litera-ture was allowed and then burned, and modern art and architecture were prohibited.

4. Because the SA remained independent, expected top positions in the army, and talked of a second revolution against capitalism, Hitler attacked the SA leaders on the night of June 30, 1934. His personal guard, the SS, arrested and shot without trial about a thousand SA leaders and other political enemies. His propagandists then spread lies about SA conspiracies. Army leaders had to swear a binding oath. As the SS grew rapidly, it joined with the political police, the Gestapo, to expand its network of special courts and concentration camps. By the end of 1934, most Jewish lawyers, doctors, professors, civil ser-vants, and musicians had lost their jobs and the right to practice their jobs. They were targeted because Hitler wanted to cleanse Germany of inferior groups. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of all rights of citizenship. After a German diplomat was killed by a young Jewish boy to criticize persecution, the attack on the Jews accelerated, leading to the Kristallnacht. There were smashed windows, looted shops, and destroyed homes and synagogues, but German Jews were forced to pay for the damage. Some Germans privately opposed these demands, but many went along or looked the other way.

5. Hitler’s economic programs worked very well, as his large public works program of building superhigh-ways, offices, sports stadiums, and public housing lessened the depression. Hitler appointed Hjalmar Schacht as Germany’s central banker, restoring credit and business. Then, in 1936, Hitler broke with him and turned toward rearmament and preparation for war. Unemployment dropped for 6 million if January 1933 to 1 million in late 1936. By 1938, there was a shortage of workers, and women began to work. The standard of living for the average employed worker rose moderately while businesses profit-ed greatly. Along with the Jews, the Slavs, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, communists, and homosexuals were prosecuted. In 1933, the traditional German elites, the landed aristocracy, the wealthy capitalists, and the well-educated professional classes, were still very strong, as barriers between classes were high. Hitler relaxed stiff educational requirements, selected young and poorly educated dropouts for the Nazi elite, and tolerated privilege and wealth as long as they served the needs of the party.

6. Not all Germans supported Hitler, and many German groups actively resisted him after 1933. This led to tens of thousands of political enemies to be imprisoned and thousands to be executed. However, they were not unified. The earliest resisters were the communists and the socialists in the trade unions, and then came Catholics and Protestants. In 1938 and in 1942 to 1944, some high-ranking army officers plotted against him, though unsuccessfully. Many Germans did not support Hitler because his views were too radical and destructive.

1. Hitler ultimately wanted space and race, the territorial expansion of the superior German race. Be-tween 1924 and 1933, Hitler called for the overthrow of the unjust system established by the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno, but only legally. Because Germany was limited to only 100,000 men by the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler had to camouflage his aggression. He loudly proclaimed his peaceful inten-tions to the entire world and resigned a disarmament conference and from the League of Nations in October 1933. Hitler wanted to incorporate Austria into a greater Germany, and so indirectly convinced Austrian Nazis to murder their chancellor in July 1934. However, he was checked by Mussolini. Hitler in March 1935 then established a general military draft and declared the unequal disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles void. France, Italy, and Great Britain protested strongly, but this broke down af-ter Britain adopted a policy of appeasement. An Anglo-German naval agreement in June 1935 was signed that broke Germany’s isolation. Then in March 1936, Hitler marched his armies into the demilitarized Rhineland, violating the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno. France was prevented to take action due to lack of British support, as the occupation of German soil by German armies seemed right and just to Britain. The British also didn’t fight back because of feelings of guilt toward Germany and trying to avoid war. They believed that Soviet communism was the real danger. Hitler supported Mussolini’s attack on Ethiopia generously, leading to the late 1936 agreement known as the Rome-Berlin Axis. Japan would later join the alliance. Hitler then threatened Austria with invasion, causing the Austrian chancellor in March 1938 to put local Nazis in control of the government. The next day, German armies moved in unopposed, and Austria became a province of Greater Germany. Hitler then demanded that the pro-Nazi, German-speaking minority of western Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, be turned over to Germany. However, Czechoslovakia would not agree, and France and the Soviet Unions were both allies of it. In September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany and met with the French and Hitler. He agreed that the Sudetenland should be ceded to Germany immediately in the Munich Conference. Hitler had said that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demand, but in March 1939, his armies occupied the Czech lands, making Slovakia a puppet state. He had now seized Czechs and Slovaks as captive peoples. When Hitler demanded Poland, Chamberlain rebelled and declared that Britain and France would fight if Hitler attacked it. On September 1, 1939, Germany defeated Poland, and two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.


1. Existentialism is the view of the individual as being unique or alone in an indifferent and hostile envi-ronment.

2. Many times his activism and philosophy were seen as empty, irresponsible, licentious, incoherent, and evil. He was controversial because of his claims about responsibility and that we are individually and to-tally responsible for all of our actions.

3. Existentialism can improve life by serving to unlock human potential and make modern life more bear-able.

4. The first principle of existentialism is that existence precedes essences and that subjectivity must be the starting point. After man has existed does it prove to define himself.

5. The three overwhelming emotions are anguish, forlornness, and despair. They mean duty to others, to-tal individual responsibility, and the realization that one cannot change the world in which he is forced to exist. Anguish is how men feel totally and deeply responsible about events. Forlornness states that God does not exist and that everything must be done by the person of his or her own account. Despair comes from the realization that only one’s individual actions make up one’s life.