Interwar years DBQ

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Directions: The following question is based on the accompanying Documents (The documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise.) This question is designed to test your ability to work with and understand historical documents. Write an essay that: Has a relevant thesis and supports that thesis with evidence from the documents. Uses a majority of the documents Addresses all parts of the question Analyzes the documents by organizing them in as many appropriate ways as possible. Do not simply summarize the documents individually. Takes into account both the sources of the documents and the authors points of view. You may refer to relevant historical information not mentioned in the documents. Questions: Analyze the major principles/values of fascism/totalitarianism and describe its appeal
to Europeans during the inter-war years (1919-1939).

Historical Context: With the end of World War I, the old international system was torn down,
Europe was reorganized, and a new world was born. The European nations that had fought in the Great War emerged economically and socially crippled. Economic depression prevailed in Europe for much of the inter-war period. Germany especially was destroyed economically by World War I and its aftermath: the payments to Britain and France forced on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles were impossibly high. The political atmosphere of the inter-war years was sharply divided; there were very few people who were willing to compromise. This situation kept the governments of Britain, France, and Eastern Europe in constant turmoil, swinging wildly between one extreme and the next. Extreme viewpoints won out in the form of totalitarian states in Europe during the inter-war years, and communism took hold in the Soviet Union, while fascism controlled Germany, Italy and Spain. The extremist nature of these ideologies turned European politics into an arena of sharp conflicts, erupting in Spain during the late 1930s in the form of the Spanish Civil War, after which Francisco Franco became dictator. In Germany, Adolf Hitler's fascist Nazi Party came to power during the 1930s and prepared once again to make war on Europe. With Britain and France tied up in their own affairs, the path to World War II lay clear.

Document 1: SOURCE: Benito Mussolini, On the Meaning of Fascism, 1932. Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions not influenced by moneyAnd above all Fascism denies that class-war be a force in todays society. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone should govern which left un checked creates universal suffrage. The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism believes that the State should have absolute power. Question: How does Mussolini argue that a country should not be lead by a majority of it people? Is this a good argument?

Document 2: SOURCE: Dr. Alice Hamilton, International Authority, article entitled The Youth Who Are Hitlers Strength, 1933. To understand Hitlers enormous success with the young we must understand what life has meant to the post-war generation in Germany, not only the children of the poor but of the middle class as well. They were children during the years of the war when the food blockade kept them half starved, when fathers were away at the fighting WWI and mothers distracted with the effort to keep their families fed. They came to manhood in a country which seemed to have no use for them. Even required military training was no more and there was nothing to take its place. Hitler told the young men that the fate of Germany was in their hands, that if they joined his army they would battle with the Communists for the streets, they would see Jewish blood flow in streams, they would capture the government, deliver Germany from the Versailles treaty and then sweep triumphantly over the borders to reconquer Germanys lost land. Question: Why would young people agree with the ideals of Hitlers new fascist government?

Document 3: SOURCE: An excerpt from Heinrich Hausers periodical, Die Tat, on conditions in Germany, 1932. An almost unbroken chain of homeless men extends the whole length of the great HamburgBerlin highway. Some of them were guild memberscarpentersmilkmenbricklayers. Far more numerous were unskilled young people, for the most part, who had been unable to find a place for

themselves in any city or town in Germany, and who had never had a job and never expected to have onewhole familiespiled all their goods intocarriages and wheelbarrows that they were pushing along as they plodded forward in dumb despair. It was a whole nation on the march. Question: Does the economic conditions in Germany during the interwar years have any impact on the people giving Hitler total control, why?

Document 4: SOURCE: An excerpt from The Rise of the New Nationalism, by Friedrich Junger, 1926. The new nationalism wants to awaken a sense of the greatness of the German past. Life must be evaluated according to power, which reveals the warlike character of all life. The value of the individual is assessed according to his military value for the state, and the state is recognized as the most creative and toughest source of power. Nationalism is born of the new awareness of blood-bonded community. Nationalism must apply its force to the masses and try to set them afire by means of military units mobilized by a fierce loyalty to a leader. These units alone are called to carry out the will of the new nationalism. They will be more powerful and successful the more they act in an organized and disciplined manner, the more they subject themselves to the ideal of the nationalist state According to German Nationalism when is a nation at its highest power?

Document 5: SOURCE: Passages from the sacred writing of the Nazi movement, Mein Kampf, on the primacy of race and lebensraum, 1923 A people gain its freedom of existence only by occupying a large space on earth. The Nationalist Socialist movement must try to end the problem between our large population and its limited living space, the source of our food as well as the base of our power We National Socialists must stick to our goals, namely to secure the German people the land to which they are entitledIn future we will not secure the living space of our people by grace, but by the might of the victorious sword. If we speak today about gaining territory in Europe, we think primarily of Russia and its border states. Question: What does Hitler promise the German people? Why was this a popular idea to the Germans?

Document 6:

Question: What does this graph tell you about the changing conditions in Germany under Hitlers rule compared to the Western Democracies (Great Britain/United States)?