Year 4 History Notes 2019

Navin Sivakumar (21) 4C

1. Rise and Rule of Dictators
a. Russia (Stalin)
b. Germany (Hitler)
c. China (Mao)
2. International Conflict and Resolution: Expansionism in the lead-up to
WWII
a. Germany
b. Japan
 Rise of Dictators/Leaders
Rise

• Refers to the assumption of power of an individual within an organizational hierarchy

• “Defeated” other potential leaders
• Emerges at the helm of decision-making

Factor: Strengths of Victor

• Personality: Character, charisma etc.

• Intellect/Ability: Reasoning, manipulation, political manoeuvring
• Vision/Direction: Ideology or direction which the society regards as favourable for
progress/ meets their needs/ holds mass appeal (Ideological Appeal)
• Background: Identity, positions held, trustworthy, reliable
• Support: People, Party members etc.

Factor: Weaknesses of Opponents

• Unacceptable ideology
• Poor timing/ Wrong judgment and assessment
• Underestimation
• No mass appeal or support as a result

Factor: Favourable Circumstances

• Systems/Institutions
o Systems or institutions that were put in place that could advantage certain
people
o Existing political systems e.g. Dictatorship/Authoritarian system/ Democracy
o Victory achieved because the individual took advantage of the system
o Furthermore, the system can accord a high degree of legitimacy to the individual
• Critical Historical Events
o Succession stage/power vacuum/highest position needs to be filled
o Spontaneous and unpredictable occasion/event
o Event or situation outside the control of all the competing candidates
o Note: These events can be the work of third parties, but by a stroke of fortune,
victors gained from it
o Note: These events are spontaneous but victors are able to adapt and capitalize
on it, underscoring their own strengths
• Systemic/Widespread discontent in society that could be capitalized on
Factor: Ideological Appeal
 Rise of Dictators Nazi Germany: Adolf Communist Russia: Communist China:
Hitler Joseph Stalin Mao Zedong
General Identified a common enemy, built a strong support base, and effectively
Observations exploited circumstances
Systems/Institutions • Proportional • Communist rule • Political
that were put in Representation, under the vacuum with
place to their where many Bolsheviks after the collapse of
advantage splinter parties the civil war central
regardless of size • No opposition authority and
would be parties rise of
represented in • Communist Party warlordism
the Reichstag bureaucracy that • Large
• Declining favoured Stalin peasantry
democracy- as General class?
ineffectiveness of Secretary
coalitions?

Weaknesses of • Underestimation • Trotsky’s • KMT not as

opponents of Hitler by weaknesses adept at
Hindenburg and • Underestimated military
Von Papen Stalin’s prowess strategies as
• Ineffectiveness of Mao
Weimar • CKS corrupted
government and unable to
• Decline of control KMT
moderate parties effectively
• Fear of • KMT’s weak
Communists and
among middle ineffective
class/elites government
Strengths of • Driven, • Driven, • Driven,
individual charismatic, ambitious, knew ambitious,
strong oratorical when to lie low adept and
skills, able to and when to knew how to
retain useful build support build a strong
people around base support base,
him especially
among the
peasants
Critical Historical • Great Depression • Lenin’s death • Death of Sun
Events • Trotsky’s Yat-Sen (?)
concession not to • World War 2
read will of Lenin (2nd Sino-
Japanese
War)
Rise and Rule of Dictators: Rise of Stalin
Stalin’s Early Years

• Indispensable Bolshevik organizer

• Humble, non-Russian (Georgian) origin
• Staunch loyalty to Lenin
Stalin’s Position by 1924

• Stalin’s appointments to key posts in the government proved instrumental in his pursuit
of power, particularly his role as General Secretary
o People’s Commissar for Nationalities (1917): In charge of the regions and
republics that made up the USSR
o Liaison Officer between Politburo and Orgburo (1919): Monitor both the Party’s
policy and Party personnel
o Head of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (1919): Able to oversee the
work of all government departments
o General Secretary of the Communist Party (1922-): Took charge of the
Secretariat, recorded and conveyed Party policy, and had files on Party members
• Power of patronage
o As General Secretary and by using his positions and authority, Stalin placed his
own supporters in key positions
o As they owed their place to him, Stalin could count on them for votes and
support in the various committees that made up the organisation of the Party
and the government
• Stalin had strong control over the Party machine, crucial in the succession struggle, as
he was able to outvote or outmaneouvre opponents
Lenin Enrolment

• Between 1923-25, the Party set out to increase the number of true proletarians among
its ranks, dubbed the ‘Lenin enrolment’
• Membership of the CPSU increased from 340,000 in 1922 to 600,000 by 1925
• New members were predominantly poorly educated and politically unsophisticated, but
cognizant that they had to be loyal to who had first invited them to the Bolshevik ranks
• Vetting the ‘Lenin enrolment’ fell to officials under the Secretariat, which Stalin oversaw
as General Secretary
• This change in Party structure contributed to Stalin’s growing power of patronage,
providing him with a reliable body of votes in the Party committees at local and central
levels
Building on Lenin’s legacy
 • Stalin strived to frame himself as the heir to the ‘Lenin legacy’, which would legitimize
his authority
• Should Stalin assume the mantle of Lenin and appear to carry on Lenin’s work, he would
establish a formidable claim to power
• Lenin’s Death and Funeral
o Immediately after Lenin’s death, the Politburo announced their intention to
function as collective leadership, but competition for individual authority had
begun
o Stalin gained a significant advantage by being the one to deliver the oration at
Lenin’s funeral
o The sight of Stalin as leading mourner suggested a continuity between him and
Lenin
o In his speech, he also dedicated himself, in the name of the Party, to follow the
tradition of the Party
• Furthermore, as Lenin was revered within the Party, his actions and decisions became
unchallengeable, with all arguments and disputes settled by referencing his writing, and
was a measure of correctness of Soviet theory and practice
• Lenin’s attack on factionalism was thus capitalized on by Stalin
o Lenin made an attack on factionalism in 1921 when arguing for the NEP
o He condemned divisions within the Party, frustrating any serious attempt to
criticize Party decisions and policies
o It became difficult to mount any form of legitimate opposition within the Party
o Stalin came to use this ban on criticism on the Party line as a tool to brand
opposition as factions and remove them, on the basis of Lenin’s condemnation
Lenin’s Testament

• There were two occasions where Stalin aroused Lenin’s anger

o Discussions with Georgians
▪ Stalin was curt and off-hand in discussions with Georgian representatives,
and Lenin had to personally intervene to prevent them from leaving as he
required the support of the national minorities for the Bolshevik regime
o Abuse of Lenin’s wife
▪ Stalin subjected Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya, to coarse abuse over the
telephone, calling her a “syphilic whore”
▪ The very day Lenin was informed of this, he dictated his Testament as a
direct response (22 December 1922)
• In response to Stalin’s abuse of his wife, Lenin criticized Stalin in his Last Testament,
saying that he had concentrated too much power in his hands, and that Stalin’s madness
made him unacceptable as General Secretary, urging that he be removed from his
position
 • However, this was not followed up upon by Lenin as he was ill and incapacitated

Suppression of Lenin’s Testament (Fortuitous Circumstance)

• Stalin would be gravely damaged by Lenin’s Testament should it be published

• However, Lenin had criticized other Politburo members so nearly all the members had
reason for suppressing the Testament
• When the Central Committee were presented with the document in May 1924, they
realised that it was too damaging to be used against one individual exclusively and
decided to shelve it indefinitely
• Should Lenin’s Testament have been published, it would have been damaging to the
image of a close relationship between Lenin and Stalin that Stalin had cultivated and
propagated
• The suppression meant that Stalin could continue to derive legitimacy from Lenin’s
legacy and their ostensibly close relationship
Weaknesses of Trotsky

• Lenin’s Funeral
o Trotsky was not even present at Lenin’s funeral, a conspicuous absence
o This was hardly the image of a dedicated Leninist
• Trotsky’s Character
o Trotsky had a complex personality, sometimes unreasonably self-assured while
at other times showed diffidence and a lack of judgment, allowing Stalin to take
advantage (e.g. Rejection of Lenin’s offer to be Deputy Chairman of Soviet
government in 1917)
o His Jewish race made him an outsider in Russia where anti-Semitism was deeply
ingrained
o Enjoyed support with the Army after leading them effectively during the Civil
War, but was isolated from the Party due to his intellectual nature which did not
appeal to Party members
• Defeat by the triumvirate
o Kamenev and Zinoviev joined Stalin in an official triumvirate within the Politburo
o They wanted to isolate Trotsky by exploiting his unpopularity in large sections of
the Party
o New proletarian members were not impressed by the cultured Trotsky, and
instead the down-to-earth Stalin appealed to them
o Trotsky was perceived as flamboyant, brilliant, and dangerously ambitious as
compared to the reliably self-effacing Stalin- he did not build a power base or
enjoy loyalty or popular support
 o Trotsky also had previously belonged to the Mensheviks, so older Bolsheviks
believed that his conversion had been a matter of expediency rather than
conviction and thus regarded him as a Menshevik turncoat
• Dispute over bureaucratization
o Trotsky fought back by arguing against the bureaucratization in the Party, which
he defined as the abandonment of genuine discussion and the growth in power
of the Secretariat
o He condemned the growth of bureaucracy and appealed for the return of Party
democracy, expanded upon in a series of essays, the most controversial of which
he criticized Kamenev and Zinoviev for their past disagreements with Lenin
o The assault was ill-judged, and Trotsky faced retaliation, with his Menshevik past
and divergence from Leninism highlighted
o Trotsky’s campaign for greater Party democracy was misjudged and left Stalin
unscathed
o Trotsky overlooked the fact that it was because the Soviet state functioned as a
bureaucracy that the Party members received privileges, and thus his campaign
was unlikely to gain traction or support
• Dispute over the NEP
o Trotsky’s disagreement with the NEP as deviating from the strict socialism he
advocated was used against him
o In the power struggle, differences such as the duration of the NEP deepened into
questions of Party loyalty
o Stalin exploited Trotsky’s attitude towards the NEP, establishing it as deviant
Marxist thinking and undermining him, suggesting that Trotsky was a disruptive
force
• Dispute over modernization (Stalin’s ideological appeal)
o Permanent Revolution (Trotsky)
▪ Individual nations did not matter, the interests of the international
working class were paramount
▪ True revolutionary socialism could be achieved in the USSR only if an
international uprising took place
▪ Trotsky believed that the USSR could not survive alone in a hostile
international environment
▪ Stalin exploited this and portrayed Trotsky as someone intent on
damaging the Soviet Union
o Socialism in one country (Stalin)
▪ Consolidate Lenin’s revolution and the rule of the CPSU by turning USSR
into a modern state
▪ Soviet Union had to overcome present agricultural problems on its own
effort, build a modern state, equal to any other nation, and the survival
 of the Soviet Union was an absolute priority, over international
revolution
o Stalin contrasted his programme and Trotsky’s to portray his rival as an enemy of
the Soviet Union
o Trotsky’s ideas were condemned as an affront to Lenin and the Bolshevik
Revolution
o An image was created of Trotsky as an isolated figure, a posturing Jewish
intellectual whose vague notions of international revolution threatened the
security of the Soviet Union
o Stalin assumed the role of the great Russian patriot concerned to save the nation
from the grave dangers that threatened it

Defeat of Trotsky and the Left

• Trotsky’s failure in the propaganda war of the 1920s meant that he was in no position to
persuade the Politburo or Central Committee to vote for him
• Stalin’s ability to ‘deliver the votes’ in crucial divisions was decisive and Trotsky was
relieved of his position as Commissar of War following a vote against him at the 1925
Party Congress
• Now it was Kamenev and Zinoviev’s turn to be ousted
o Kamenev and Zinoviev publicly stated in 1925 that the USSR required the victory
of the proletarian revolution in capitalist nations in order for the USSR to achieve
socialism
o They called for the NEP to be abandoned
o Their viewpoint formed the basis of the ‘United Opposition’, which Trotsky
joined to form a ‘Trotskyite-Kamenevite-Zinovievite’ bloc
o Again, Stalin’s control over the Party machine prevented the Party Congress from
being pressurized by the ‘United Opposition’
o Stalin’s supporters included Rykov, Tomsky and Bukharin, who combined to
outvote the bloc
o Kamenev and Zinoviev were removed from their positions
o In 1927, Trotsky was expelled from the Politburo and Central Committee after
challenging Stalin’s authority, and exiled in 1929
o Stalin won because Trotsky lacked a power base. Trotsky’s intellectual gifts and
oratorical superiority counted for little against Stalin’s grip on the Party machine
Defeat of the Right

• Stalin’s defeat of the Right marked the end of any serious attempt to limit his power and
the last stage in the consolidation of his power over the Party and the USSR
• Representatives of the Right (Rykov, Tomsky, Bukharin) had loyally served Stalin in his
outflanking of Trotsky and the Left
• Politically, they were by no means as challenging to Stalin as the Trotskyite bloc
• Stalin moved against them as they stood in the way of agricultural schemes
(industrialisation and collectivization) that he began to implement in 1928
• Having defeated the Left politically, he may then have felt free to adopt their economic
policies as they were scattered
• Weaknesses of the Right
o Ideas
▪ Perceived as timid and unrealistic
▪ Soft line with the peasants did not accord with Party needs
o Organisation
▪ Stalin remained master of the Party’s organisation
▪ Right Opposition was also fearful of creating ‘factionalism’
o Support
▪ Right Opposition was incapable of organising resistance to this political
blitz
• Stalin’s ideological appeal and political astuteness
o Stalin reflected a shrewd understanding of the mentality of Party members
o The majority were far more likely to respond to the call for a return to hardline
policy, which helped them survive the Civil War days, then they were to risk the
Revolution itself by untimely concessions to a peasantry that had no real place in
the proletarian future
• Right Opposition was trounced beyond recovery by early 1929
• Stalin’s triumph over the Left and Right was complete and he was now in a position to
exercise power as the new vozhd
Rise and Rule of Dictators: Rule of Stalin
Stalin’s Economic Policies
Aims

• Transform the USSR from an agrarian to an industrial country

• Self-sufficiency
• Emerge as a modern world power (militarily strong socialist state)
• Ideological battle: Superiority of Communism over Capitalism (Western powers) by
outproducing leading capitalist nations
• Modernisation of the Soviet economy through collectivization and industrialisation
• Enact total state control
o Opportunity for Stalin to cement his authority over Party and government
o Removal of obstacles (towards Stalin’s ideas/policies/authority) at every level,
supported by terror and hardline economic policies
Collectivization

• Taking away land from peasants and giving it to the state

• End of private peasant ownership and agriculture would serve the state
• Collective farms (‘Kolkhoz’ as the main institution)
o Effective use of machinery (mechanization) to promote agricultural efficiency
o The motorized tractor became the symbol of agricultural efficiency and
mechanization of Soviet farming
o Surplus food supplies would be sold abroad to raise capital for Soviet industry
o Decrease number of rural workers and release workers for new factories
(increasing industrial workforce)
• Kulaks
o Kulaks were wealthier peasants who were identified by Stalin as class enemies
o Since the NEP, they hoarded farm produce, keeping food prices high, making
themselves rich at the expense of workers (who Stalin had to feed) and poorer
peasants
o Destroying the power of the Kulaks was necessary for the modernization of the
USSR
o Kulaks as ‘agricultural capitalists’ also ran contrary to socialist ideology
o Stalin branded Kulaks as class enemies and exploitative landowners and this
provided a strong ground for coercion
o In some regions, poorer peasants participated in this ‘de-Kulakisation’
enthusiastically, with land and property seized from better-off peasants
o Kulaks were also subject to arrest and terror tactics by state anti-Kulak squads
 o The renewal of terror served as a warning to the mass of the peasantry of the
likely consequences of resisting the state reorganization of Soviet agriculture,
and thus expedited the process of collectivization
o However, there was still a lack of surplus grain and significant food shortages
o Stalin thus used Kulaks as scapegoats (due to their grain hoarding), further
providing moral grounds for the continued onslaught on Kulaks
• Peasant resistance
o Peasants in their millions resisted collectivization (from 1929-30, there were
30,000 arson attacks and rural mass disturbances increased by one-third from
172 to 229)
o To peasants, collectivization was massive social upheaval- they could not or
would not cooperate in the deliberate destruction of their way of life
o Many peasants ate their crops and livestock, reducing crops and animals left to
rear
o However, peasant resistance did not stop collectivization, officials pressed on
with requisitioning
o By the end of the 1930s, virtually the whole of the peasantry had been
collectivized and most were using tractors, provided by the Machine Tractor
Stations supplied by the state
• Famine
o Persistent starvation throughout the USSR in the 1930s, especially from 1932-33,
when a national famine occurred
o The famine in the 1930s killed between 10-15 million peasants
o Official Stalinist line was that there was no famine
o As well as protecting the image of Stalin, the great planner, it effectively
prevented the introduction of measure to remedy the distress- the government
could not publicly take steps to relieve the famine that did not officially exist
• Success of collectivization?
Economic success Political success
o Sale of exported grain funded o Weapon to break peasant
industrialisation resistance and ‘sabotage’
o Rapidly growing workforce in o Established system of making
towns supplied by grain agriculture serve the towns and
o Relieved pressure on land and workers
provided workforce to kickstart o Key part of the Party’s
industrialisation modernization drive
o Peasants had experience of
socialism
Economic failure Human cost
o Overall grain harvest declined • Millions died as a result of the
and did not reach pre- famine
 collectivization level until late
1930s
o Famine of 1932-33 (Economic +
Social failure)
o Peasant resistance (Economic +
Political failure)

Industrialisation

• Stalin described his industrialisation plans for the USSR as an attempt to establish a war
economy
• Making a war on the failings of Russia’s past and class enemies within the nation, and
preparing against capitalist foes abroad
• Heavy industry such as iron, steel and oil would guarantee the USSR strength and
readiness to face enemies
• Took the form of a series of Five-Year Plans, with quotas set by Gosplan, the state
economic planning commission, for production across the whole of Soviet industry
(targets rather than plans)
• Development of heavy industries and new industrial centres, and spectacular projects
(gigantomania)
• Supported by terror and propaganda
• First Five-Year Plan
o Priority on heavy industry but shortage of consumer goods
o Extraordinary targets resulted in falsification of production figures by officials
and managers
o Workers heavily regulated
o Enormous increase in production (e.g. from 1928-33, coal production increased
from 35.4 to 64.4 million tons, steel from 4 to 18 million tons)
o Propaganda project- convince Soviet people that they were personally engaged
in a vast industrial enterprise, building a new and better Russia
o Mixture of idealism (Soviet Man) and coercion (eliminating resistance through
Show Trials)
o Overall: First Five Year Plan was an extraordinary achievement, with huge
increases in outputs of coal, iron and the generation of electricity, but low
priority given to improving material lives of Soviet people (lack of consumer
goods)
o However, this neglect of basic social needs was not accidental, the Plan’s
purpose was collective, not individual, and it called for a sacrifice on the part of
the workers in the construction of a socialist state
• Second (1933-37) and Third (1938-41) Five Year Plans
 o Similarly characterized by overproduction in some areas and underproduction in
others, which frequently led to whole branches of industry held up due to the
lack of vital supplies
o Fierce political purges by Stalin resulted in a lack of qualified personnel
o Stakhanovite movement (1935) was a notable propaganda tool to motivate
workers but it proved ineffective
o Heavy priority given to defence and armaments in the third Five Year Plan,
which ended in 1941 upon German invasion
• During the Five-Year Plans, although production was of poor quality, and there was
widespread overproduction and inefficiency, there was a significant increase in
industrial output, but a lack of increase in living standards. The Five-Year Plans also
enabled the USSR to resist Germany in WW2 and eventually triumph over Nazism

Stalin’s Great Terror

Context

• From 1932 onward, fear of social disorder following forced collectivization, famine and
the mass migration of millions of peasants to the towns became a major obsession of
Party and police authorities
• Suicide of Stalin’s wife
• Worsening international situation
o Hitler’s rise to power: Stalin was aware of the relationship between war and
revolution which brought down the Tsar
• Revelation of discontent within the Party
o The Ryutin Platform in 1932 was a 200-page comprehensive criticism of Stalin’s
leadership and policies and called for his removal
o Undercurrents of disenchantment with Stalin at the 17th Party Congress in early
1934
• The Great Terror targeted various “anti-Soviet” elements from 1937-38
‘Opposition elements’ in the Party and Show Trials

• Three infamous show trials of 1936-38

o Effective way to create an atmosphere of intimidation, a sense of danger and the
feeling that there were enemies, spies and wreckers around
o (August 1936) Zinoviev, Kamenev and fourteen others who had previously been
members of the oppositionist groups in the Party were accused of being part of a
counter-revolutionary bloc, being the ‘murderers’ of Kirov and planning to
assassinate the country’s leaders in order to seize personal power
 o (January 1937) Karl Radek, a Trotskyite and Pyatakov, Deputy Commissar for
Heavy Industry, both in prominent positions, were arrested, to scapegoat
economic officials and legitimize criticism of powerful Party members
o (March 1938) Most dramatic, involved Bukharin and 20 others, including Rykov
and the former head of the NKVD, Yagoda, and focused on the world conspiracy
against the USSR, providing justification for the mass arrests in 1937
The officer corps

• Seven of the country’s senior military commanders were arrested, accused of treachery,
brutally tortured, and shot after a secret trial
• Of the 767 members of the High Command, 512 were shot, 29 died in prison, 3
committed suicide and 59 remained in jail
• Unclear why Stalin decided to decapitate the Red Army
o Nazi intelligence service may have produced disinformation which may have
hoodwinked Soviet intelligence and Stalin into believing they were plotting
o Possible that Stalin suspected that they would not fight to the death in the
coming conflict
• Regime acted as if it believed there was a plot: the policy was to destroy anyone
suspected of present or potential disloyalty
Arrests of party-state bureaucracy

• Provided scapegoats for the crises in the economy and the difficulties faced by ordinary
people by placing the blame firmly on the Party leadership at republican, regional and
district levels and on economic managers
• Of the 17th Party Congress in 1934 at which voting appeared to have gone against Stalin:
o Of 1,996 delegates, 1,108 were arrested of whom 848 were executed
o Of 139 Central Committee members elected, 98 were shot
• Out of 385 regional Party secretaries, 318 were repressed, with the overwhelming
majority of secretaries of Party committees under 40, owing their education and
advancement to Stalin
• Officials, professionals and managers in all hierarchies risked being accused of wrecking,
sabotage or the abuse of power
o In August 1937 there were show trials of local rural officials unmasked as
wreckers
Mass Operations of the Great Terror

• Stalin’s attack on the political and military elites, the repression of real or imagined
oppositionists and the show trials of old Bolsheviks accounted for a small percentage of
the shocking total of victims
• NKVD Order 00447
 o Instruction sent by Stalin to conduct a sweep of former Kulaks, active ‘anti-
Soviet’ elements and criminals
o The order divided all these ‘anti-Soviet’ elements into two categories:
▪ The first category, ‘the most active of the above-mentioned elements’
were to be ‘immediately arrested and after consideration of their case by
the troiki, shot’
▪ People in the second category were ‘subject to arrest and confinement in
camps for a term ranging from eight to ten years’
o Quotas of people to be arrested were established for every region and republic
o Local leaders made requests to increase the quotas for repression, which were
always granted, and the NKVD, led by Yezhov, massively overfulfilled their target
o It was social cleansing on a massive scale, with its starting point seen in forced
collectivization and de-Kulakisation
o Driven by the fear that these socially harmful elements who had fallen foul of
the regime might provide broad-based support for a ‘fifth column’
• Mass campaign from August 1937 to uproot and deport national minorities, with at
least 250,000 killed during this ethnic cleansing
• Based on NKVD data and demographic statistics, an estimate of deaths is between
950,000 and 1.2 million deaths
• Most historians identify Stalin as the chief mover, agent and director of the Terror and
link it clearly to his personality and intentions

Conclusion

• Stalin called a halt to the Terror in November 1938 when a joint Sovnarkom- Central
Committee resolution forbade the carrying out of ‘mass operations for arrest and exile’
• Administrative systems were falling apart with key personnel missing and economic
growth was severely curtailed, with the purges destabilizing Russian society
• Yezhov was replaced as the head of the NKVD
• This merely gave the message that now the system had been stabilized, with no real
relaxation in state repression

Stalin’s Cult of Personality and Propaganda

• By the end of the 1940s, Stalin dominated the USSR physically as well as politically
• Presented as the heir of Lenin and the sole infallible interpreter of party ideology,
acquiring an almost god-like status
• Integration of the political system around Stalin’s persona
• Public spaces saturated with cult products (images etc.)
 • Personality cult conferred legitimacy on Stalin, with charismatic authority, and
embodying the revolutionary vision and ideals of society
Progression of Stalin’s Personality Cult

• 1924-29: Origins of the Cult

o After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin assumes a modest image, appearing as a
hardworking man of moderation
o Stalin takes on the mantle of Lenin’s disciple and servant of the Party
• 1929-33: Cult Underway
o Stalin portrayed as Lenin’s faithful pupil and companion-in-arms
o By 1931, huge portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin appear on special
occasions such as celebrations of the October Revolution
o There are also a few individual portraits of Stalin
• 1933-39: Cult Fully Established
o Stalin’s image is used to reassure people that they have a strong leader to help
them though the great disruption of the First Five-Year Plan and the confusion of
terror
o Public depictions e.g. paintings, poems, sculpture promote the Stalin cult
o Socialist Realist art glorifies Stalin’s role as leader
o The “History of the All-Union Communist Party” is published in 1938. History is
re-interpreted in Stalin’s favour
o As war looms, Stalin’s image becomes more that of an all-powerful leader
• Post-1945: Height of the Cult
o Stalin’s image in everywhere, cemented by his success as war leader
o Increasingly, portraits show him in god-like solitude, superior and apart
o Celebrations of his seventieth birthday are extremely elaborate

Socialist Realism

• The ideological philosophy that guided Soviet literature and the arts after 1934, all
creative writing and art had to celebrate the achievements of the proletarian in his
struggle to make a contribution to the Soviet achievement
Stalin’s Depictions (Propaganda posters, sculptures, paintings etc.)

• Cultivated a popular image of Stalin

o Stressed Stalin’s humanity and his active participation in the lives of ordinary
people
o Seen marching alongside workers or in the fields with the peasants, or inspecting
great projects
• Invoked presence and the force of legitimation, authorization and the power of
institution, creating subjects
 • Modelled ideal relationships between leader and subjects, institutionalizing hierarchy
and patterns of obligation
• Depictions of Stalin leading crowds also reflected a unified society working towards
mutually desired goals
• Ritualistic depictions with visual symbolism laden with semantic value

Historical Revisionism

• Reinterpretation of history in Stalin’s favour

o In the narrative of the October Revolution, Stalin was given a much more
important role as chief companion to Lenin and his closest friend and disciple,
while Trotsky was demoted to a bourgeois opportunist
• Other old Bolsheviks, especially Bukharin and his supporters, were designated ‘enemies
of the people’ or were relegated to minor roles
• All were dwarfed by the invincible heroes- Lenin and Stalin
Rise and Rule of Dictators: Rise of Hitler
Weimar’s Political Crisis
Weimar Constitution

• Proportional Representation
o Encouraged the formation of many new, small splinter parties
o Difficult to maintain governments- coalitions required
o Contributed to political instability due to negotiations and compromises
o Contributed to emergence of political extremism, especially in crisis of 1929-33
• President
o Elected every seven years, and possessed considerable powers including the
appointment of the Chancellor and the capacity to rule by decree at a time of
national emergency (Article 48)
o This created a complex relationship between the powers of the President and of
the Reichstag/Chancellor: uncertainty in constitutional matters
• Continuity of traditional institutions
o No provision to reform the old traditional institutions of Imperial Germany
▪ E.g. Civil service tended to conform to the conservative values of Imperial
Germany, judiciary biased to favour the extreme right, army sought to
maintain its influence and not sympathetic to democracy
o Powerful conservative forces were able to exert great influence in daily life
o While the spirit of the Weimar Constitution was democratic and progressive, the
institutions remained dedicated to the values of Imperial Germany
• Weimar Constitution had weaknesses, but was not fatally flawed; it just could not
control the circumstances in which it had to operate (victim of the time)
The Treaty of Versailles (May 1919)

• Germany forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles- a compromise between the Allied
powers
o Woodrow Wilson (USA): Idealist
▪ Outlined the Fourteen Points, with the main aims being international
disarmament, principle of self-determination and the creation of a
League of Nations to maintain international peace
o Georges Clemenceau (France): Nationalist
▪ Wanted the annexation of the Rhineland to create a ‘buffer state’, major
disarmament of Germany, the imposition of heavy reparations, and
compensation
o David Lloyd George (Britain): Pragmatist
 ▪ Wanted to guarantee British military security, keep communism at bay,
and limited French demands as he felt that excessively weakening
Germany would have serious consequences for the European economy
• Terms of the Treaty of Versailles
o Territorial arrangements, including:
▪ Alsace-Lorraine to be returned to France
▪ Union (Anschluss) of Germany with Austria was forbidden
▪ All Germany’s colonies distributed as ‘mandates’, under control of
countries supervised by the League
o War guilt
▪ Germany forced to sign the War Guilt clause, accepting blame for causing
the war and therefore responsibility for all losses and damage
o Reparations
▪ Reparations sum fixed at 6600 million pounds
▪ Coal-rich Saar was to be under the control of the League till 1935, when
there was to be a plebiscite, until then, all coal production was to be
given to France
o Disarmament
▪ Conscription abolished and army size reduced to 100,000
▪ Rhineland to be demilitarized
o Maintaining peace
▪ Treaty set out the Covenant of the League of Nations
▪ Germany had to accept the League, but was initially not allowed to join
• The ‘Diktat’
o Treaty’s terms seen as unfair and unreasonable in Weimar Germany, described
as a ‘Diktat’ (dictated peace), and received absolute condemnation
o Many Germans felt that Wilson’s principle of self-determination was not applied,
with many areas they considered ‘German’ excluded from the new German state
and placed under foreign rule (e.g. Austria, Danzig, Posen and West Prussia,
Memel, Upper Silesia, Sudetenland, Saar)
o Found it impossible to accept the War Guilt Clause, which was the Allies’
justification for demanding the payment of reparations, as many Germans felt
that Germany could not be held solely responsible for the war, and were
convinced that the war of 1914 had been fought for defensive reasons because
their country had been threatened by ‘encirclement’ from the Allies in 1914
o Imposition of disarmament clauses seen as grossly unfair as Britain and France
remained highly armed, so it seemed as if Germany had been unilaterally
disarmed, whereas Wilson had spoken in favour of universal disarmament
o Treatment by the Allies seen as undignified and unworthy of a great power, for
example, Germany was excluded from the League of Nations but was forced to
 accept the rules of its Covenant, reinforcing the views of those Germans who
saw the League as a tool of the Allies rather than a genuine international
organisation
• Significance of the Treaty of Versailles
o In the minds of many Germans, it was regarded as the real cause of the country’s
problems and they really believed that it was totally unfair
▪ In the war, German public opinion had been strongly shaped by
nationalist propaganda and they were shocked by the defeat
▪ Treaty of Versailles closely linked to the powerful ‘stab in the back’ myth
that the German Army had not really lost World War 1 in 1918
o New democracy of Weimar forced to take the responsibility and blame for it, a
serious handicap to the establishment of long-term political stability in Germany
The Threat from the Extreme Left

• The Extreme Left completely rejected the Weimar system and pressed for a workers’
revolution
• Wanted the creation of a one-party Communist state and the major restructuring of
Germany both socially and economically
• Organized revolutionary disturbances- protests, strikes, uprisings
The Threat from the Extreme Right

• The Extreme Right in theory

o Anti-democracy: Rejection of the Weimar system and its principles, aimed to
destroy the democratic constitution
o Anti-Marxism: Fear of communism, which was seen as a real threat to traditional
values and the ownership of property and wealth
o Authoritarianism: Favoured the restoration of some authoritarian, dictatorial
regime
o Nationalism: Reinforced the ideas of the ‘stab in the back’ myth and the
‘November Criminals’
▪ ‘Stab in the back’ myth: The war, it was argued, had been lost not
because of any military defeat suffered by the army, but as a result of
betrayal by unpatriotic forces within Germany, such as pacifists,
socialists, democrats, and Jews
▪ ‘November Criminals’: Right-wing politicians found a whole range of
scapegoats to take the blame for the German acceptance of the
Armistice, who they believed had been prepared to overthrow the
monarchy, and establish a republic, and accepted the ‘shameful peace’ at
Versailles
 ▪ The extreme right accepted such distorted interpretations, which were
used against the leaders of Weimar Germany
• By the early 1920s, there were around 70 relatively small splinter nationalist parties
which were also racist and anti-Semitic (e.g. Nazi Party)
• Not until the mid-1920s, when Hitler began to bring the different groups together under
the leadership of the NSDAP, was a powerful political force created
• Extreme Right Uprising: Kapp Putsch (March 1920)
o Wolfgang Kapp and General Luttwitz encouraged 12,000 troops to march on
Berlin and seize the main buildings of the capital virtually unopposed, but the
putsch eventually collapsed
o Significantly, the Germany army did not provide resistance, reflecting its right-
wing attitudes and lack of sympathy for the republic
• Extreme Right Uprising: Munich Beer Hall Putsch (8-9 November 1923)
o On 8 November 1923, Hitler, together with his Nazi supporters, stormed in and
took control of a large rally, which leader of the Bavarian state government and
ultra-conservative Gustav von Kahr, was addressing in one of Munich’s beer
halls, and declared a ‘national revolution’
o Under pressure, Kahr and General von Lossow, the Army’s commander in
Bavaria, cooperated and agreed to proceed with the uprising, but in reality, they
had lost their nerve when General von Seeckt, Chief of Army Command, used his
powers to command the armed forces to resist the putsch
o On the next day, when the Nazis attempted to take Munich, they had insufficient
support and the Bavarian police easily crushed the putsch, with Hitler arrested
on a charge of treason
o Hitler was subsequently treated extremely leniently by the judiciary, being
sentenced to a mere five years imprisonment (the minimum for treason), and
was released after less than 10 months
o Hitler’s astuteness: Understood that the Nazis had to now seek power through
democratic means instead of working to achieve power by armed conspiracy
• The Extreme Right enjoyed support from influential people like judges, senior
government officials, and senior military officers
Political and Economic Crisis of 1923

• When the French occupied the Ruhr and began to seize industrial assets and products
because of the German failure to pay reparations, the German population of the region,
encouraged by the government, which announced a policy of non-cooperation,
embarked on a campaign of passive resistance
• To pay these non-productive citizens and to keep up with the welfare payments,
industrial subsidies and civil servants’ wages, the government printed ever-increasing
 amounts of money, which sparked a devastating decline of the mark’s value against the
dollar, which was unprecedented
• In Jan 1919, the US dollar was worth 8.9 marks, by Jan 1923 it was worth 17,792 marks,
on October 25, 260 million marks, and in December, four million million marks
• Huge wave of crime swept the country and the country descended into chaos amidst
the hyperinflation crisis
• It was against this backdrop that Hitler first tried to seize power in the Munich Beer Hall
putsch
• Financial stability was eventually achieved by the masterful policies of Hjalmar Schacht
Note: The Weimar Republic entered a period of relative stability, the ‘Golden Age’ from 1924-
29, and were welcomed back into the international community via the Locarno Treaties (1925)
and entry into the League of Nations (1926), and reparations were made more manageable and
reduced via the Dawes Plan (1924). Extremist parties became increasingly marginalized in the
1928 elections.

Hitler’s Rise to Power (1929-33)

The Great Depression

• Foreign loans, especially from the United States, played a vital part in the recovery of
the German economy after the war
• The Dawes Plan opened the floodgates to short-term loans (over 16 billion Reichmarks
flowed into Germany, largely from the United States)
• However, this reliance on short-term credit also made the economy particularly
vulnerable to any downturn in the US economy
• With the Wall Street Crash, American banks and businesses went bankrupt, and needed
to recall the money they had loaned out
• With the loss of financial backing, German businesses went bankrupt and had to cut
back on production
• Fewer workers were thus employed, and with fewer wage earners, less goods were
bought, so production further declined and unemployment increased
• Between 1928 and 1932,
o Industrial production fell by 41% and exports fell by 54%
o Unemployment rose from 1.4 million to 5.6 million and wages fell by 31%
o Agricultural prices fell by 41% and industrial prices fell by 25%
• There was a huge pressure on the government, which was unable to cope, resulting in a
succession of short-lived administrations, while votes cast for extremist parties
skyrocketed
• People suffered, living in terrible conditions, and were unhappy with the Weimar
government
 • Hitler and the Nazis promised to create jobs, solve unemployment and bring Germany
out of the economic crisis, which was attractive to Germans
• Nazis successfully exploited the disastrous impact of the Wall Street Crash

Nazi Appeal & Leadership Qualities of Hitler

• The Nazi electoral machine was highly effective and it targeted disaffected members of
almost all social classes, unlike other parties, which aimed at a particular group
• Nazis utilized emotional appeal, via a charismatic leader, Hitler (no other party had such
a charismatic leader), symbols and mass rallies, to the many people who felt alienated,
tapping this unease and offering them security, a sense of direction, and a bright future
• Nazism thus seemed like the logical answer to their problems
• Mass meetings and rallies held strong appeal to the emotions, where people were
surrounded by thousands of others, exhilarated by the carefully choreographed display
• The idea of Volksgemeinschaft (National Community) enabled all classes to feel at home
in the Party
• Leadership qualities of Hitler: Charismatic Führer
o Met people’s desire for a strong leader
o Brilliant public speaker, capable of rousing the people’s feelings
o Kept on attacking the same issues: he would overthrow the Treaty of Versailles,
he would overthrow the corrupt democracy, he would destroy the Communists,
he would offer a vision of a united Germany, a racial community working
together, a new Reich in which Germany’s economic strength would be restored
and the country would once again take its rightful place in the world
o Hitler’s compelling oratory, energy, comparative youth and charisma made him
attractive to those disillusioned with conventional politics
• With the Wall Street Crash and the appeal of the Nazi Party, the Nazi Party went from a
paltry 2.5% of the vote in 1928 to 37% in the summer of 1932
Fear of Communism

• In the Reichstag elections of 1932, the majority of voters supported the two extremist
parties (Communists and Nazis), with the Communists receiving 17% of the vote
• Many of the unemployed and members of the working class supported the Communists
(although the Nazis did still enjoy significant working-class baking at the polls)
• The Communists violent revolutionary rhetoric, promising the destruction of capitalism
and the creation of a Soviet Germany, terrified the country’s middle classes, who knew
only too well what had happened to their counterparts in Russia after 1918, leading to
the middle class turning to the Nazis en masse
• The Communists’ electoral support and massive presence in the streets (especially its
paramilitary wing) encouraged members of the elite in their hostility to the weak
Weimar state and their preparedness to cooperate with the anti-Communist Nazis.
 Eventually, the elite played a key role in persuading President Hindenburg to appoint
Hitler as Chancellor.
• Thus, the middle and upper classes Germans feared this growing power of the
Communists, as a Communist victory would mean an end to their wealth and property,
they gave their support to the Nazis

Failure of Democracy

• Democracy was proving to be ineffective, with the coalition government weak and
disunited (e.g. Müller’s coalition government failed to agree on how to fund the rising
unemployment payments brought about by the Great Depression)
• Many ordinary Germans were disillusioned with Weimar democracy, which further had
a fundamental problem in that it lacked legitimacy in the eyes of millions of Germans,
and thus they turned to the Nazis who offered a better political alternative
• In the 1932 Reichstag elections, the majority of voters supported the two extremist
parties who were hostile to the parliamentary system, with traditional parties
abandoned and discredited
• Many members of the elite, key industrialists and landowners were very concerned
about the lack of effective government, never having been committed to parliamentary
democracy, and hoped that the Nazis would steer the political system in a more
authoritarian direction, and hence persuaded President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as
Chancellor
Hitler, as leader of the largest party in the Reichstag, was eventually legally appointed by
President Hindenburg as Chancellor in January 1933, with Hindenburg persuaded by members
of the elite that Hitler had to be brought into government, with political realism forcing them to
work with him, and under the impression that they could control him (underestimation).

Creation of Nazi Dictatorship (1933-34)

The Reichstag Election, 5 March 1933

• The campaign for the Reichstag election was characterized by violence and terror which
was used to break up meetings of the Communists and Socialists
• Other unfair tactics, such as control over the radio, were used by the Nazis
• The Reichstag Fire
o On 27 February 1933, a week prior to the elections that Hitler had called after his
appointment as Chancellor, the Reichstag building was set on fire, and a
Communist was arrested in incriminating circumstances
o Hitler blamed the fire on the Communists, and persuaded the President to sign a
decree where most civil and political liberties were suspended and the power of
the central government strengthened- giving the police power to hold people
 indefinitely in custody and to repress political opponents such as the
Communists
o This incident reflected the cynical way in which Nazis exploited situations to their
advantage
• Surprisingly, despite the atmosphere of fear, the Nazis only secured 44% of the vote,
which was a disappointing political blow, as even with the help of the seats won by the
Nationalists, Hitler only held 51% of the Reichstag, short of the two-thirds majority
required for a change in the existing Weimar Constitution
The Enabling Act of 1933

• Despite this hurdle, Hitler decided to propose to the new Reichstag an Enabling Bill
which would effectively do away with parliamentary procedure and which would
instead transfer full powers to the Chancellor and his government, allowing Hitler’s
dictatorship to be grounded in legality
• To get the two-thirds majority needed to pass the Enabling Bill, and on the assumption
that the Social Democrats would vote against, the Communists (those not already in
prison) were refused admittance while the deputies in attendance faced a barrage of
intimidation from the ranks of SA who surrounded the building
• To get the backing of the Centre Party, Hitler further made false promises to cater to
Catholic interests
• Eventually, only the Social Democrats voted against, and the Enabling Bill was passed by
444 to 94 votes
• Germany had succumbed to a ‘legal revolution’, with Hitler having legally dismantled
the Weimar Constitution, thus allowing him to create a one-party totalitarian
dictatorship
• The Enabling Act served as the constitutional foundation stone of the Third Reich,
providing the basis for the dictatorship that evolved from 1933
• In this legal way, the intolerance and violence used by the Nazis to gain power (e.g. SA/
SS) could now be used as tools of the government by the dictatorship of Hitler and the
Party
Co-ordination: Gleichschaltung

• The degeneration of Weimar democracy into to the Nazi state system is referred to as
Gleichschaltung or co-ordination
• Nazifying of German society
o ‘Revolution from below’: Power and freedom exploited by SA at the local level
o ‘Revolution from above’: Directed by Nazi leadership from political centre in
Berlin
o Together, these two political forces attempted to ‘co-ordinate’ as many aspects
of German life as possible along Nazi lines
 • Securing political supremacy
o Destruction of autonomy of federal states
o Intolerance shown to any kind of political opposition, with the Nazi Party as the
only legal political party in Germany
o Reduction of Reichstag to complete impotence

From Chancellor to Führer

• The Night of the Long Knives, June 1934

o The SA, led by Ernst Rohm, representing largely the radical, left-wing of the Nazi
Party, played a vital role in the years of struggle by winning the political battle on
the streets, and many members were embittered and frustrated over the limited
nature of the Nazi revolution, and disappointed by their own lack of personal
gain from this acquisition of power
o Rohm was increasingly disillusioned with Hitler’s politics, and felt that Hitler was
holding back for the sake of satisfying the elites
o Rohm’s plans to increase the SA’s power was anathema to the German army,
which saw its traditional role and status being directly threatened
o Hitler was thus caught between two powerful, but rival forces, which could
create considerable political difficulties for him
o The army was the one organisation that could unseat Hitler from his position of
power, so political realities dictated that Hitler needed the backing of the army
o Increasingly, Rohm and the SA resented Hitler’s apparent acceptance of the
privileged position of the army, while the unrestrained actions and ill discipline
of the SA increased feelings of dissatisfaction among generals
o On the night of the 30th of June 1934, Hitler eliminated the SA as a political and
military force once and for all, with Rohm and main leaders of the SA shot by
members of the SS, and weapons and transport provided by the army
o Hitler also used the opportunity to move against enemies such as Vice-
Chancellor Papen, shooting former Chancellor Schleicher and Papen’s associates
o In one bloody action, Hitler overcame the radical left in his own Party, and the
conservative right of traditional Germany, with the Germany army subsequently
aligning itself behind the Nazi regime, and German soldiers even agreeing to take
a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler
o The incident also marked the emergence of the SS, the Party’s elite institution of
terror
o Hitler secured his own personal political supremacy, and from this moment
onwards, it was clear that the Nazi regime was a personal dictatorship with
frightening power
• Consequently, when Hindenburg died on the 2nd of August, there was no political crisis,
with Hitler merging the offices of Chancellor and President, taking on the title of Führer
Rise and Rule of Dictators: Rule of Hitler
Social Policy
Propaganda and Censorship

• All aspects of life were Nazified

• Propaganda’s role was to win the hearts and minds of the people- 100% support for the
Nazi regime
• Vital tools were thus utilized to ensure that people accepted and agreed with Nazi ideas
• Controlled by the Ministry of People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda, headed by
Joseph Goebbels
• Führer cult
o Hitler was the nationally unifying force- the charismatic personification of the
state
o Promotion of führerprinzip (leadership principle)
o Hitler portrayed as a man whom all sectors of German society could identify with
• Volksgemeinschaft (National Community) propaganda
o Nazis wanted to replace loyalties to region, religion, class and even family with a
devotion to the National Community, a concept that was rooted in the idealized
medieval past
o Such propaganda included Blut und Boden (blood and soil) propaganda which
reinforced the link between the master race and the sacred land
o Social policy: Every month the members of the national community were
encouraged to eat a simple one-pot meal (Eintopfessen) and donate the money
saved to the winter help (Winterhilfe) scheme
o In the workplace, labour relations were bound by the common ethic of the
Volksgemeinschaft
▪ KdF (strength through joy) awarded prizes, organised sports competitions
and holidays (in 1938, 8.2 million went on relatively short trips)
• Posters
o Provided particular Nazi ideas/images a high profile
o Images of Hitler as a wise and strong leader appeared in many poster campaigns
• Radio
o A new media that the Nazis placed great importance on, and could be put to
good use in conveying the Nazi message
o Used to broadcast Hitler’s speeches, dance, military and folk music, and
propaganda programmes, such as the series ‘German nation on German soil’
o By 1942, 16 million of 23 million households (70%) had radios
• Censorship (books, newspaper, film)
o Books
 ▪ All authors, publishers, booksellers and libraries had to join the Reich
Chamber of Literature, membership of which was denied to Jews and the
politically suspect
▪ Literature was also the victim of a huge range of censoring bodies
▪ Suppression of dangerous books e.g. book burning in 1933, critical books
or titles by Marxist or Jews banned
▪ Hitler’s Mein Kampf was promoted as the highest literary form, with 6
million copies sold by 1940
▪ Books were required to have politically and morally sound ideas, and
Nazis particularly favoured books that supported their ideology, such as
those that glorified heroes of National Socialism or those with racial
themes stressing the superiority of the Germans
o Newspapers
▪ Hitler was aware of the power of the press
▪ All anti-Nazi publications were banned
▪ Newspapers came under strict government control in terms of ownership
and content, with editors forced to follow the Party line
o Film
▪ Films were used to spread the Nazi view of history and world events, and
Nazi messages
▪ Germany became isolated from the international film community
▪ Goebbels embedded propaganda messages in enjoyable drama
▪ One famous film ‘The Eternal Jew’, compared Jews to rats and portrayed
them as enemies of the Germans
• Education
o Young people were subject to systemic indoctrination, to produce tough, fit,
obedient, unquestioning, conformist young people who were loyal to Hitler and
Germany
o Education was ‘Nazified’- organised and controlled to reflect Nazi beliefs and
goals, with all textbooks needing to be officially approved by 1935
o Key subjects such as German, biology, and history, were given special priority,
and had to reflect Nazi racial and national perspectives
o Nazi regime also purged the teaching profession of Jews and those considered
politically unreliable
o National Socialist Teachers’ League established, with 97% membership by 1937,
to ‘create new German educators in the spirit of National Socialism’
o Students and teachers alike indoctrinated with Nazi ideas
• Youth movements
o By 1936, the Nazi Youth Movements were made compulsory for young people
o Little Fellow (Pimpf): For boys between 6-10
 ▪ Hiking, camping, learning sessions based on Hitler’s ideas
o German Young People (Deutsche Jungvolk): For boys between 10-14
▪ Introduced military training and discipline
o Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend): For boys between 14-18
▪ Military training enhanced, and taught how to march, shoot and behave
like soldiers
▪ Helped create young Nazis who were discipline and fit for war
o Youth Maidens (Jungmadel): For girls up to 14
o League of German Maidens (Bund deutscher Madel): For girls between 14-21
▪ Encouraged to be fit and healthy so that they could later be German
mothers and bear children for Germany
▪ Taught that the place of German women was the home
o Many organised activities such as camp and sport, which was enjoyed by the
children
o Youth organisations were generally successful in winning support
• Women
o Nazi ideology emphasized the role of women as mothers and home-makers
o Huge amount of propaganda celebrating motherhood
• Racial control
o Nazis desired a German ‘national community’ which conformed to clear norms:
genetically healthy, social efficient and politically and ideologically reliable
o Desired a Nazi state of the Aryan race (strong, healthy people with pure German
blood)
o Nazis acted against those that were ‘undesirable’, particularly the Jews
o Anti-Semitism was at the heart of Hitler’s ideological worldview
o Jews were heavily discriminated against
▪ Hitler believed that they were responsible for Germany’s defeat in WW1
▪ Hitler believed that Jews were an inferior race who had to be eliminated
or they would impurify the German, and believed that they had a
corrupting influence on German nationhood
o Anti-Jewish policies
▪ April 1933: One-day boycott of Jewish businesses
▪ April 1933: Jewish civil servants dismissed, though Hitler had to yield to
Hindenburg’s demand that Jews who fought in WW1 had to be exempted
▪ April 1933: Number of Jewish students in public schools limited to 1.5%
▪ September 1935: ‘Nuremberg Laws’ which took away the German
citizenship of Jews and disallowed non-Jews from marrying Jews
▪ 1937-38: Jewish businesses were expropriated as the Nazi regime aimed
to Aryanise the economy, removing all Jews from economic activity, and
many professions were closed to Jews
 ▪ November 1938 (Night of Broken Glass): Attack on Jewish synagogues
and property, resulting in the death of 91 Jews
o In 1941, the Nazis devised the ‘Final Solution’
▪ Jews were taken to extermination camps where they would be killed
▪ The intention was to exterminate Europe’s 11 million Jews
▪ The healthy worked until they were too weak to carry on, before being
killed
▪ Others were used for inhumane medical experiments, or brutally treated
▪ 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis

Economic Policy
Economic Aims

• Put the country back to work while getting ready for inevitable war by re-arming and
become as near to self-sufficient (autarky) as possible
• To Hitler, economic policy served political and military aims
• Economic policy between 1933-39 was dominate by the conflicting priorities of
preparing for war and at the same time ensuring a reasonable standard of living for the
people, with this conflict of goals often referred to as ‘guns or butter’
Schacht’s Initial Economic Policies (1933-34)

• Hjalmar Schacht was appointed President of the Reichsbank in 1933 and Minister of
Economics in 1934
• Aim of initial economic policy was to revive public investment
• Greatly increased state expenditure to stimulate demand and raise national income
(tripled public investment by 1936 and government expenditure increased by 70%)
• State adopted deficit financing (government spending more than its income in the short
term in the hope of long-term rewards) , which made possible the continuing reductions
in unemployment
• State investment in public works
o Namely transportation, construction, rearmament
o This created jobs and helped to reduce unemployment and stimulate economic
recovery
• Monetary subsidies to provide a favourable climate for businesses to flourish
• State controlled capital in economy

Schact’s New Plan (1934-36)

• Introduced in September 1934, providing comprehensive control on the economy,

controlling trade, tariffs, capital and currency exchange, to prevent excessive imports
while satisfying needs of heavy industries
 • Bilateral trade treaties: barter agreements with European countries to avoid currency
exchange and prevent draining of Germany’s foreign currency reserves, as spending on
rearmament and public works necessitated raw materials from abroad
• Mefo bills
o Special government credit notes that guaranteed payment for goods that was
held for up to 5 years (with 4% interest per annum), to disguise government
expenditure/spending
• Successes
o Unemployment fell from 6 million in Jan 1932 to 1.5 million in June 1936
o Industrial production increased by 60% since 1933
o Gross National Product (GNP) grew by 40% in the same period
Goering’s Four-Year Plan

• Schact fell out of favour with Hitler by arguing against Hitler’s priorities, criticizing the
prioritization of spending on rearmament and recommending the abandonment of
autarky
• Hitler intervened into economic affairs, writing a long, detailed memorandum,
announcing his new Four-Year Plan, with Hermann Goering given overall charge of
economic affair
• Hitler had two main aims:
o German armed forces must be operational within four years
o German economy must be fit for war within four years
• The Four-Year Plan thus focused on expanding rearmament and achieving autarky (self-
sufficiency, especially in food and industrial production)
• The plan entailed:
o Regulation of imports and exports, with priority given to strategic sectors such as
metals
o Control of labour force, with controls on wages and restrictions of workers’
freedom, giving the state powers to force people to work where the country
most needed them
o Absolute priority given to the manufacture of essential war materials,
particularly ‘ersatz’ products (substitutes), such as synthetic rubber and oil, as
well as a focus on extracting more of Germany’s raw materials, particularly coal
and iron
• Successes
o Increase in production of key materials, such as aluminum and explosives
o Reliance on imports had not increased, trade deficit did not grow
• Failures
o Production levels did not reach the targeted goals
o Arms product increased but not to the extent desired by Hitler
 o Targets for valuable commodities, rubber and oil were far from being met
o Germany was still about one third dependent on foreign supply (of raw
materials)

Overall: Was Nazi Germany an economic miracle?

• According to official figures, unemployment fell to only 0.2 million by 1938, big
businesses improved economically and salaries increased too
• However,
o This economic progress was set against a more positive post-Depression
economic climate
o The reality of peoples’ lives was different from what propaganda depicted
o Unemployment figures were reduced by conscription into the armed forced
o National debt spiralled
o Shortage of foreign exchange
o Small businesses (Mittelstand) suffered, and were outshone by big businesses
Rise and Rule of Dictators: Rise of Mao
Introduction (Context)
The Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911, largely as a result of its failure to withstand the challenge
of European nations and Japan, who had inflicted devastating military defeats and imposed
humiliating treaties which had given them territory and commercial privileges. The country had
fallen behind the West both technically and economically. Deep poverty was widespread
among the peasantry; communications and financial institutions were primitive.

As the Revolutionary Alliance was too weak on its own to topple the Imperial government, they
brokered a deal with the most powerful of the Imperial Generals, Yuan Shikai, and Yuan took
over as President of the Republic of China. Yuan held parliamentary elections in 1913, but in
fact had no intention of sharing power with the dominant political force, the Kuomintang
(Nationalist Party), which the Revolutionary Alliance had reconstituted itself as. Banning the
Kuomintang (KMT), Yuan emerged as an autocratic ruler. Subsequently, with Yuan’s death in
1916, there was no effective central government in China, and China descended into the chaos
of the Warlord Era between 1916 and 1928. During this period, Sun Yat-Sen, the leader of the
KMT, attempted to set up a KMT government at Guangzhou, planning to mount a northern
military expedition with the aim of reunifying China. However, KMT’s positions remained
precarious and Sun was dependent on support from local warlords.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was established in 1921, with Mao Zedong, a university
librarian of peasant background a founding member, but of limited influence at this stage. A
confluence of factors contributed to the founding of the CCP, including the May Fourth
Movement of 1919, where massive student demonstrations, joined by workers in major cities,
were organised in protest at the Chinese government’s weak response to the Treaty of
Versailles, allowing Japan to receive Germany’s former concessions in Shandong, resulting in an
upsurge in Chinese nationalism, with many founding CCP members involved in the
demonstrations. Furthermore, the first Chinese translation of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto
had recently been published, Lenin’s Bolsheviks had been successful in seizing power in Russia
in 1917, and the Soviet government had sent Comintern agents (the Russian Communist Party’s
agency for spreading worldwide revolution) to China in 1920. The CCP was tiny at first,
numbering only 432 members even by 1923.
Neither KMT nor CCP were strong enough to achieve power in China in the early/mid 1920s but
in 1923 the USSR helped to broker an alliance, known as the First United Front, between the
two Chinese parties, which would facilitate the establishment of a KMT government in 1927.
In 1925, Sun Yat-Sen died, just as he was planning the Northern Expedition to take on the
warlords, and Chiang Kai-shek emerged as the new KMT leader. In 1926-27, Chiang led the
Northern Expedition to defeat the various warlords and create an effective national
government, whose authority extended over all of China. The CCP only provided a limited
number of troops for the Northern Expedition but made a major contribution in terms of
organizing peasant uprisings and urban strikes and distributing propaganda among peasants
and factory workers.

Chiang became increasingly concerned about the growing strength and influence of the CCP-
50,000 members by 1927, so at Shanghai, in April 1927, just after the capture of the city, Chiang
treacherously ended the First United Front by ordering a massacre of thousands of CCP
members, triggering the Chinese Civil War. Chiang proceeded to establish a new Nationalist
government at Nanjing, which became the new capital of China, and foreign governments duly
recognized the new KMT government as the official government of China. Chiang’s persecution
of the Communists continued, and a major KMT victory at Jiangxi in 1931 forced the
Communists to retreat, undertaking the Long March from 1934-35. With the outbreak of the
2nd Sino-Japanese War, the Second United Front was formed from 1937 to 1941, a brief alliance
before the resumption of Civil War from 1946 to 1949 upon the end of the World War 2.

Rise of Mao
Weaknesses of the KMT/ Ineffectiveness of Chiang

• Chiang reputation was gradually tarnished, by the White Terror in Shanghai in 1927, and
subsequently after the Manchurian Crisis and Sino-Japanese War and other events
• Chiang was also unable to solve China’s problems (e.g. economic, foreign domination)
• Incompetent KMT government
o KMT lost its revolutionary outlook and failed to introduce parliamentary
government
o Corruption became a growing problem
o Economic Problems
o Limited social reform
▪ E.g. rural illiteracy
o Lack of popular support
▪ The KMT failed to unite China, although the KMT did undertake the
generally successful Northern Expedition, it had best only controlled
areas containing two-thirds of China’s population, and this fell drastically
after the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the outbreak of the Sino-
Japanese War in 1937
▪ Failed to develop support beyond the ruling elite, despite the fact that
the peasantry comprised 85% of China’s population
o Failed to end foreign domination
▪ Did not provide a vigorous defence against the Japanese (e.g. invasion of
Manchuria), and his policy throughout this early stage of Japanese
conflict was non-resistance, at odds with the aggressively anti-Japanese
public mood
 ▪ Chiang preferred to concentrate on destroying the CCP
▪ The fact that Chiang saw the threat of the Communists as greater than
that of the Japanese and wanting to wipe them out before attacking
foreign invaders made him unpopular with the Chinese people, who
wanted to see their own government fight the Japanese
▪ Xi’an Incident 1936: Chiang kidnapped by KMT general to force an end to
the conflict between KMT and CCP, which led to the formation of the
Second United Front
o Cared about city business interests and rural landlords, helping landlords take
back lands that the Communists gave to the peasants, and punished peasants for
participating in Mao’s land redistribution programme
• With the outbreak of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, the KMT emerged from the Sino-
Japanese War divided, demoralized and discredited, with their best troops destroyed
and the economy in crisis
o KMT cut off from traditional power base as Japanese made advances
o KMT mismanaged the economy, fuelling hyperinflation by printing vast
quantities of paper currency, prices increased to more than 6000 times the level
of 1937
o KMT lost many of its best troops during the war
o KMT alienated the peasantry through high levels of conscription and
requisitioning of horses and equipment
o KMT corruption worsened, with military supplies sent by the USA sold by KMT
officials on the black market
o Behaviour of Nationalist troops contrasted sharply with that of the Communists,
who observed a strict code of conduct- Nationalist looting and vandalism were
common
o Chiang ordered, without warning, the blowing up of the dykes holding the Yellow
River in June 1938, destroying 4,000 villages and drowning hundreds of
thousands, dealing a serious blow to potential support after the war
Communist Ideological Appeal & Support/ Strengths of Mao

• Strengths of the Communists

o CCP leadership showed great resilience in surviving the White Terror, the various
KMT extermination campaigns, and the Long March, which provided the CCP
with an inspiring legend to draw on and use for propaganda purposes
o The Long March also allowed the CCP to live and work alongside the Chinese
peasantry, who were often overlooked by the CCP, and these peasants grew to
support the Communists due to their work and cooperation with them, with the
Communists redistributing land to the peasants and arming them with captured
KMT weapons
 o PLA unified under tightly controlled central command, dedicated Communist
generals and superior military leaders, which transformed small guerilla bands
into a modern conventional army
o Officers in the PLA respected soldiers, which motivated them
• Local Support
o Support from the Peasantry
▪ Economically, China was ripe for revolution, with the poverty of the
Chinese peasantry deep-seated and long standing
▪ The Nationalist government failed to tackle the serious problems faced
by the peasantry who comprised 85% of the population (social structure)
▪ On the other hand, Mao exploited peasant discontent by carrying out
land reform (the redistribution of land from rich landowners to peasants),
in the areas that he controlled
▪ Furthermore, the generally moderate nature of land reform ensured that
the support of the richer peasants was not lost to the CCP
▪ Won the hearts of the peasants
o Educational reforms, village struggle meetings, debt cancellation and land
redistribution further resulted in a massive advantage when advancing into
territories and was something they fought for
o The CCP also helped the peasants organize associations, and Mao advocated for
CCP officials to live among peasants and learn from them
o Membership grew from 100,000 in 1937 to 1.2 million by 1945
• With the outbreak of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, the CCP emerged from the Sino-
Japanese War united, with an enlarged arm and control over a much greater area than
previously
o Mao fought a guerilla war, aided by peasants, behind enemy lines
o The CCP had the opportunity to expand massively the area under its control, by
the end of the war, the CCP controlled an area occupied by about 90 million
Chinese
Strengths of Mao

• Mao was born into a poor peasant family and believed in the power of the people
• Mao’s leadership during the Long March gained him the support of the members of the
party, and secured his position
• Mao was ruthless in dealing with his opponents, as demonstrated in the Futian Incident
(December 1930-January 1931), when thousands of CCP members were tortured or
executed allegedly because they were KMT agents but in fact because they supported
Mao’s rivals
• Mao was eventually chosen as CCP Chairman in January 1935 during the Long March
• Mao united the CCP
 o Mao asserted his dominance over the CCP, by a combination of intellectual
brilliance and ruthlessness
o Mao’s ideas were established as official CCP ideology
o A leadership cult began to develop from 1943, when CCP ideology was referred
to as ‘Mao Zedong Thought’
• Mao used ‘Rectification’ to maintain his own ascendancy over the party
o Party members had to scrutinize their behaviour and engage in self-criticism and
criticism of each other
• Mao adapted Marxism to Chinese conditions: the peasantry was now the main
revolutionary class- appeal to peasants
• (Strengths of Communists above also included under Strengths of Mao)

Subsequent Civil War Period (1946-49)

• KMT weaknesses became further pronounced

o Economic Problems
▪ The War against Communists in 1946 delayed reconstruction, diverted
tax revenue, investment and resources
▪ With a huge government debt, heavy taxes imposed, inflation,
unemployment and food shortages, there was a loss of faith in the
government, resulting in labour strikes and intellectual protests to
demand an end to the Civil War
o Many Chinese blamed the KMT for the resumption of the civil war
o KMT became increasingly repressive, conducting political assassinations
o KMT army morale low, and discipline was brutal
▪ Many KMT soldiers were conscripts and were often roped together to try
to stop them from deserting
▪ Desertion rates were commonly 6% a month
▪ Poor treatment of recruits meant that resources of manpower were not
fully exploited
▪ Officer quality was poor, and officers were incapable, inept and untrained
▪ Army was exhausted after Sino-Japanese War
• Strengths of CCP during Civil War
o Had not undertaken the bulk of the fighting against Japan, and were fresh and
vigorous
o Superior spy network
o Superior military tactics
o Able generals, particularly Lin Biao
o Grew dramatically in number, recruits generally came from local militia forces
and as deserters from KMT armies
o Were better clothed and fed than the Nationalist armies
 o Were ideologically committed
▪ Knew what they were fighting for, especially under Mao’s strong
leadership
o Gained weapons from Russians, and seized KMT weapons
o Enjoyed the support of many Chinese
▪ Peasants were impressed with the land reform that continued during the
war
▪ High standard of conduct of the PLA
▪ CCP’s style of government also allowed local people to take part in
‘revolutionary committees’ to discuss issues such as land reform, which
helped to boost their popularity further
• By early 1949, Beijing had fallen to the CCP and as other major cities across China fell,
the CCP declared victory by proclaiming the People’s Republic of China in October 1949
• Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan and set up the Republic of China
Rise and Rule of Dictators: Rule of Mao
Early Communist Rule
Context

• Little industry, destroyed after many years of Civil War and war with Japan
• Money was valueless
• High unemployment in towns
• Food shortages in the countryside and cities
• Exacerbated by China’s increasing population (estimated 14 million a year)
• Burdened by involvement in 1950 Korean War
Consolidation: Economic

• 1950 Agrarian Reform Law

o Communist Party officials encouraged peasants to take over in a series of land
reforms
o Animals, machinery and land given to peasants
o Persecution of former landlords started
o Speak bitterness meetings: Peasants were encouraged to come to meetings and
display their anger at the way that their landlords had treated them in the past,
and often they resulted in landlords being beaten up or harassed
o People’s courts: The CCP encouraged peasants to put their landlords on trial in
“people’s courts” where their crimes could be heard, and the landlords’ fate
would be decided by a jury of peasants
o As many as 1 million ex-landlords were executed between 1949 while other
were sent to special camps to be re-educated
• Controlled inflation by fixing wages and prices
• Closed down all private banks and established a People’s Bank which had control of all
financial transactions as well as of the issue of money
• The state took control of railways and much heavy industry

Consolidation: Social

• Mao was determined to change old attitudes to women who had been seen as second-
class citizens
• 1950 Marriage Law which placed women legally on an equal basis with man and broke
the power of the traditional male-dominated family which had kept women in
subjection
o Prohibited polygamy, sale of women into prostitution, forced marriages and
killing of unwanted female babies
Impact of Changes
 • Largest support base (peasants) rewarded for their support of the Communists
• Potentially large threat (the landlords) eradicated
• Changes in the cities
o Foreigners, foreign businesses all disappeared
o Favoured means of transport was the bicycle
o Beggars also disappeared
Consolidation: Political (Mao’s Thought Reform)

• From 1949, China became a one-party state

o All other parties were suppressed in a series of purges from 1950 to 1952
o Anyone who showed opposition to communism was labelled a counter-
revolutionary or imperialist
• Mao Zedong Thought was the official doctrine of the Communist Party
o Set of ideas that changed and adapted over time, with much of it based on
Marxism, but he adapted it to Chinese conditions
o Most important ideas:
▪ Self-reliance: Should not be reliant on foreign powers, desire to become a
powerful independent nation
▪ Continuing revolution: New generation involved in revolutionary struggle
(helped to prevent counter revolution and ensure support)
▪ Class struggle: Mao was worried that the CCP would become the ruling
class, and thus the CCP was periodically rectified using struggle meetings,
criticism sessions and re-education
▪ Learning from the People: Listen to the people/masses as a check
▪ Mass mobilization: Mobilise people in mass campaigns to achieve specific
objectives (exert social and psychological control)
• Mao engaged in a Thought Reform from 1951-52 to reform the thinking of Chinese
people into accepting Mao’s thoughts and ideas, through a series of methods including
struggle sessions, propaganda and self-criticism
• Mass Campaigns to consolidate rule
o Propaganda campaigns, the use of police, courts, imprisonment and execution
was Mao’s machinery of repression
o Between 1950-52, Mao used mass mobilization campaigns against corruption
and the bourgeoisie, to create a stable socialist society, and to further increase
his control
▪ 1950: ‘Three Mountains’ Campaign against feudalism, capitalism and
imperialism
▪ 1951: ‘Three Antis Campaign’ against corruption, waste, bureaucracy
▪ 1952: ‘Five Antis Campaign’ against bribery, tax evasion, fraud, theft of
government property and spying
 First Five-Year Plan (1953-1957)
• Mao introduced further changes in agriculture and industry
• Main areas of concentration were coal, steel and petro-chemicals
• All remaining private industry was taken over by the government
• Light industry neglected in favour of heavy industry, which meant that there was a slow
growth in the standard of living with a shortage of consumer goods
• Introduction of cooperative farms where families pooled their land and their labour to
make one bigger, more efficient farm
• First Five-Year Plan was a success, with Soviet advisers to help to organise the Chinese
economy and propaganda of the Communists to motivate the workforce
o E.g. Coal production increased from 63 million tons in 1952 to 124 million tons in
1957

Hundred Flowers Campaign and Anti-Rightist Campaign (1956-1959)

Hundred Flowers Campaign

• In 1956, Mao launched what became known as the Hundred Flowers campaign which
allowed free discussion and criticism of the government and its work
• The first months of the Hundred Flowers campaign yielded only a gentle wave of public
criticism and comment
• However, soon there was a rush to respond and criticism of Mao, the government and
the CCP gathered momentum
• Many people openly criticized the Five-Year Plan, especially intellectuals
• Party individuals and policies were attacked as being corrupt, inefficient or unrealistic
• Even Mao himself was included

Anti-Rightist Campaign

• This was too much for Mao, who in June 1957, suddenly cracked down on his critics
• Everything went into reverse as a time of free expression was replaced by an anti-
Rightist campaign designed to flush out any critics of the CCP and the government and
purge the Party
• Leading critics were forced to retract their statements, make public confessions and
submit themselves to ‘re-education’, sent off to camps in the countryside for ‘thought
reform’
• Others were sacked from their jobs; people were forbidden to speak freely and the
press was censored
• Mao’s reaction has led to different schools of thought about the motives for his
Hundred Flowers Campaign
o One school of thought argues that he genuinely encouraged free speech and
criticism but was shocked by the reactions and then clamped down on his critics
 o The other school of through believes that the Campaign was a deliberate plan by
Mao to flush out critics of the government and CCP

The Great Leap Forward (1958-1962)

Context

• In 1958 Mao decided on a second Five-Year plan which became known as the Great
Leap Forward
• Mao’s aim was to turn the PRC into a modern industrial state in the shortest time
possible
• He believed that by revolutionizing China’s agriculture and industry, the PRC could build
an economy that would catch up with those of the major nations and then overtake
them
• Mao wanted to get rid of middle class “experts” who controlled agriculture and industry
• Necessity of ‘continuous revolution’ to increase vitality of Chinese Communism
• Peasantry the revolutionary class and thus the emphasis on rural communes
• Mao was also the undisputed leader of the CCP and had become accustomed to
imposing his will on the Party, with the Anti-Rightist Campaign that intimidated Party
members
Features of the Great Leap Forward

• Communes
o Mao decided on a new method of organizing agricultural life- the commune
o Collective farms were joined into 24,000 communes with an average population
of 30,000 people
o The people in the communes were organised into brigades of workers of
between 1000 to 2000 and then into teams of workers of 50 to 200 people
o The government tried to persuade people to join communes through a
tremendous propaganda campaign, and by the end of 1958, about 90% of the
population were organised into 26,578 communes
o Abolished private, family sphere of peasant life in favour of a communal life,
where peasants were to eat in mess halls and nurseries were provided for
children
• Industry
o New, higher targets for industry and agriculture were introduced
o Communes were also ordered to be the centres of industrial production
o ‘Backyard furnaces’ were established to produce iron and steel from small family
kilns
▪ Communal activity which all the people could participate in, conscious
that by their own efforts they were helping to build the new society
 ▪ It became a national movement, and 600,00 backyard steel furnaces
were established in towns and villages all across China
▪ Before long, these furnaces had turned out 11 million tonnes of steel
which was 65% more than the output for 2017, however, it was generally
of poor quality and thus worthless
o Small commune factories set up to make all kinds of industrial products such as
cement, ball-bearings and chemical fertilizer
• Propaganda
o Posters, slogans and newspaper articles were used to encourage mass
enthusiasm as well as long hours of work no matter what the conditions or
weather
o Wherever people worked, loudspeakers played revolutionary music and stirring
speeches encouraging workers to go beyond their targets
o As a result of Party propaganda, many impressive construction projects were
finished in record time
Consequences of the Great Leap Forward

• Agricultural collapse and famine

o 1958: Good harvest mainly due to weather conditions
o 1959-61: Three bad years- Disastrous harvest made worse by floods and
droughts
o Some 20 million people died of starvation between 1959 and 1962
o Party cadres reported absurdly inflated production figures so more grain was
collected by the state
o Melting down of farm implements left peasants with too few tools to cultivate
the land
o Implementation of misguided practices that were publicized (e.g. Lysenko’s
theories- close planting, deep ploughing etc.)
o Large numbers of new workers hired from nearby collective farms exacerbated
the famine
o In the midst of this, grain was still being exported to pay for industrial equipment
o Peasants resented the loss of private plots and the attack on family life
• Industrial depression
o Party secretaries denounced technical staff and engineers who raised objections
about waste, quality or safety
o Factories experienced a wave of industrial accidents due to worker fatigue and
safety regulations being ignored
o Equipment breakdown resulted in injuries or fatalities and costly, time-
consuming repairs
 o Backyard furnaces and small factories proved to be inefficient and wasteful, with
much of the iron and steel produced of too poor quality and unable to be used
o Furnaces used much of the country’s coal supplies which meant that many
steam locomotives could not operate
o Split with the USSR in 1960 led to withdrawal of Soviet expertise and loans
Reasons for Failure of the Great Leap Forward

• Series of natural disasters badly affected the harvests

o In 1960, north and central China had their worst drought in a hundred years,
with The Yellow River, which irrigated half cultivated land in the country drying
up
o Further south there was serious and widespread flooding
• Khrushchev’s order for all scientists and engineers working in China to return home in
1960
o Mao fell out with the Soviet leader, Khrushchev as Khrushchev strongly
disapproved of what Mao was doing
o As a result, China was seriously short of technicians and the expertise needed to
build up its economy
o Factories under construction could not be finished without Soviet assistance
o Some factories already built had to be closed down as the supply of spare parts
from the Soviet Union dried up
• Mao was also responsible, as he was in too much of a hurry and did not give enough
thought to the practical problems that would be created by the Great Leap Forward
o Politics got in the way of proper industrial management
o Mao also lacked knowledge of agricultural science to understand the reports
received from the countryside and was limited in his understanding of the
industrial process
• The Great Leap Forward fundamentally was illogical as major industrial development
needed capital investment, technology and planning, which Mao rejected as revisionist
o He was afraid that if he allowed a creation of a class of experts he would lose
control of the revolution
Positive Consequences?

• Communal development provided people which increased access to education

• Mass mobilization through successful flood and irrigation schemes which enabled the
development of previously infertile regions, but many reservoirs collapsed with
disastrous consequences
• Women were in the workforce for the first time- liberated women in China
• However, set against the enormous cost in human lives, such “achievements” pale in
comparison
Retreat from the Great Leap Forward

• Mao resigned as China’s head of state in late 1958 and China was thus now controlled
by three leading Communists: Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping
• The three introduced policies which abandoned the Great Leap Forward

Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)

Mao’s Reasons for launching the Cultural Revolution

• After the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s own political position was weakened whilst his
economic policies had been rejected, thus he wanted to defeat his opponents, regain his
political supremacy and ensure that his economic policies were accepted
• Mao also wanted to ensure that his concept of revolution would continue after his
death by remolding Chinese society and culture in such a way that they could never be
changed back
• He also wanted to break the power of the urban bureaucrats and restore the peasant
character of China’s Communist revolution
• Relaxed policies under President Liu Shaoqi had helped China partially recover from a
famine that killed millions, and thus fearing the return of revisionism and being
sidelined by his own party, and Mao signalled his reassertion of control with the famous
July 1966 swim in the Yangtze River
o This was the scene of the 1911 Revolution against the Qing dynasty, and this
symbolic gesture excited the whole of China
• Lin Biao’s speech in September 1965 campaign also contributed in the lead-up to the
Cultural Revolution
o Urged pupils in schools and colleges to return to the basic principles of the
revolutionary movement
o Youths encouraged to openly criticize the liberals in the CCP and those
influenced by Nikita Khrushchev
o Educational establishments were considered to be too academic and therefore
too elitist
• The Cultural Revolution officially began in 1966, marking a period of massive disruption,
enlisting the youth, and creating a new type of Chinese society
The Red Guards

• The support of the People’s Liberation Army was crucial but Mao also decided to
mobilise young people to promote his policies
o In choosing the youth to be the instruments of the Cultural Revolution, Mao
showed an astute grasp of mass psychology
o The young were made to feel that they had a special role to play not only in the
regeneration of the nation but also in the creation of a new socialist world order
 o Mao held extraordinary hold over the young, who held him in awe, and the cult
of Mao also prepared the way (see below)
• The Red Guards began with a ‘Four Olds’ campaign against Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old
Customs and Old Habits, and expressed their criticisms in hundreds of wall posters and
marches through Beijing in parades numbering over a million at a time, attacking
anything which seemed to be ‘capitalist’ or ‘bourgeois’
• Red Terror
o The Red Guards became a terrifying and destructive young movement
o Mao’s policies deliberately brutalized China’s idealistic young people
o By presenting chaos as more virtuous than order, Mao effectively declared that
there was no moral restriction on what could be done in the name of the
revolution
o Students trained in the Chinese tradition of obedience to parents and teachers
were suddenly told to insult and abuse them
o They burnt down bookshops and libraries and closed museums and art galleries,
churches, temples and theatres, and many priceless and irreplaceable treasures
of Chinese civilization were destroyed in this wave of organised vandalism
o The Red Guards targeted almost anyone in a position of authority such as school
teachers, doctors and factory managers
o Self-criticism and struggle sessions
▪ Given free rein, the Red Guards seized public transport and took over
radio and television networks, where anyone showing signs of decadent
tendencies (clinging on to bourgeois values e.g. Western-style
clothes/makeup) was likely to be manhandled and publicly humiliated
▪ Intellectuals, schoolteachers, university staff, writers and even doctors
were prey to Red Guard squads, who denounced them as ‘bad elements’
and made them publicly confess their class crimes
▪ Those particularly culpable were forced to undergo ‘struggle sessions’,
and were made to study Mao’s writings followed by periods of intense
self-criticism and confession
o Revolutionaries struggled to prove their proletarian integrity by becoming ever
more extreme, and those who faltered or showed signs of being sickened by the
horrors were condemned as reactionaries and found themselves subjected to
the savagery that they had recently meted out
o Genuine idealism was corrupted into unthinking brutishness, with the savagery
seemingly limitless
o In Beijing itself, apart from daily scenes of beatings in the street, theatres and
sports grounds became the venues of systematic killings of bound victims
 o By 1967 law and order had broken down in many parts of China as Red Guards
fought against ‘reactionaries’ with the death of as many as 400,000, and many
more beaten up, tortured or imprisoned
• In all its essentials, the Cultural Revolution was directed from the top by Mao and the
Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG) -which included figures like Jiang Qing and
secret police chief Kang Sheng
• It often may have had the air of spontaneity, and it is true that once it started it seemed
to generate a momentum of its own, but there were guiding hands behind the marches
and the thuggery, and much of it was orchestrated
• The Maoists were prepared to let things run to extreme but always seemed to be able
to call a halt when it suited them
• The idealistic youngsters who appeared to lead the Cultural Revolution were pawns in
the power struggle in the CCP
Attacks on the Party

• Urged on by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, the Red Guards also turned their attention to party
officials within the Communist Party
• A main target was Liu Shaoqi, who had taken over from Mao as Head of State, and the
Red Guards broke into his house, physically attacked him and he was forced to undergo
a series of ‘struggle sessions’ before being imprisoned in conditions which were
deliberately intended to break his health
• Deng Xiaoping was also forced to undergo public humiliation and was sentenced to
solitary confinement before being sent to perform corrective labour in Jiangxi province
• The Red Guards attacked thousands of other party officials, and many died whilst others
committed suicide
The Cult of Mao

• During the Cultural Revolution, the cult of Mao developed and Mao was worshipped
• Peasant and factory workers gathered together before work in front of a portrait of Mao
and read messages from his ‘Little Red Book’
• 740 million copies of the book were printed in the years 1966 to 1969
• Everywhere in China there were statues and portraits of Chairman Mao whilst
loudspeakers blared out the songs of the Cultural Revolution
• Many bowed before his picture after getting up in the morning and before getting into
bed at night
The PLA and the winding down of the Cultural Revolution

• Initially, the PLA had tolerated and indeed encouraged the students and workers in
hunting down class enemies but it was unwilling to share its prestige as the creator and
defender of China’s revolution
• The Red Guards were also allowed to run wild only because Mao knew that he could use
the PLA to pull them back into line, and Mao eventually decided in 1967 bring in the
military to restore order in areas of Red Guard violence
• Another great campaign was announced, which called on the youngsters ‘to go up to
the mountains and down to the villages’ and were urged to go into the countryside and
live among the peasants, and learn what life was like for 80% of the Chinese people,
deepening their understanding of the revolution
o The real motive was to rid the urban areas of the gangs of delinquent youths
who had threatened to become uncontrollable in the general turmoil
o The campaign may also be seen as an extension of Mao’s policy for making city
intellectuals experience the harsh realities of life experienced by most Chinese
o Between 1967 and 1972, over 12 million young people moved from the towns
into the countryside
o Their experience proved to be very different from what they had expected, most
having a miserable time, being wholly unprepared for the primitive conditions
they encountered, and the idealism of the young rarely survived the misery and
appallingly low standards of living
o Their experiences in the countryside gave them the chance to re-evaluate the
very premise of the revolution
• PLA ‘cleansing the class ranks’ campaign 1968-71
o The dispersal in the Red Guards did not mean a weakening of the movement
against the anti-Maoists
o The PLA squads who replaced the Red Guards were if anything even more vicious
in the persecution of ‘counter-revolutionaries’, and the CCRG, with Jiang Qing’s
Gang of Four playing the most prominent role, developed a new campaign
known as cleansing the class ranks
o Committees were established in all the major regions of China and given the task
of eradicating any signs of capitalism
o Widespread killing, destruction and torture
o In Inner Mongolia, 22,900 were killed and 120,000 were maimed
o In Hebei province, 84,000 were arrested, 2955 of whom then died after being
tortured
• By 1971, Mao or those closest to him became disturbed by the growing influence of
Marshal Lin Biao of the PLA, the man most responsible for the Mao cult, the nominated
successor of Mao and an individual who had played an instrumental role in engineering
the Cultural Revolution
o The PLA’s success in bringing the Red Guards under control had obviously
pleased Mao, but it led to increased tension within the Party, with the fear that
the PLA would assert its strength over the politicians
 o Lin Biao died in a plane crash on September 13 1971 in Mongolia, alleged to have
tried to flee China after conspiring to assassinate Mao
o Lin Biao, Mao’s nominated successor, the compiler of the Little Red Book, the
creator and propagator of the cult of Mao, was now revealed to be the betrayer
of his great leader and a traitor to the Cultural Revolution, the very movement
that he himself had helped to form
o The sudden and baffling changes in the reputation of political leaders created
the gravest doubts as to whether any government statement was trustworthy
Final phase of the Cultural Revolution

• From 1972 to Mao’s death in 1976, elite-level power struggles continued, but the
extreme policies of earlier years essentially fizzled out
o Mao, in failing health, relaxed state interference in daily life
o People were exhausted by the continuous purges, rallies and criticism sessions
o The party wished to impress the USA, who President, Richard Nixon made an
official visit to the PRC in 1972
Mao’s Responsibility in the Cultural Revolution

• It is noteworthy that once Mao had begun the Cultural Revolution, he tended to remain
in the background, allowing others to organise it
• While policies were carried out under his authority, he was rarely involved in the
everyday details
• Yet none of this absolves Mao from responsibility for what occurred; everything was
done in his name
• He could have called of the terror any time had he so chosen, and by leaving Jiang Qing
and the extremists in control, he sanctioned what they did to the Chinese people
• Mao was the originator of the movement that overtook China
• Without him, there would have been no Cultural Revolution with all its convulsive
consequences
• Sincere of Self-serving?
o Sincere
▪ Restore ideological purity (vs. expertise)
▪ Reinfuse revolutionary fervor into the party
▪ Intensify class struggle
o Self-serving
▪ Build Mao’s personality cult and make Mao the figurehead
▪ Attack the current party leadership and reassert Mao’s authority in the
Party
Impacts of the Cultural Revolution
• Political
o Weak governance and instability due to destruction of local organisations
o Factionalised CCP
o Political disgrace for some members
o Destroyed organisation of the CCP
o Rise of moderates
• Economic
o The disruption caused by the Cultural Revolution led to serious economic
setbacks
o Rationing became the norm
o In theory, the PRC ran a third Five-Year Plan from 1966 to 1971, but the social
turmoil result in it being abandoned, even though this was not officially admitted
o Statistics
▪ Industrial production fell by 13.8%
▪ Coal output fell from 260 million tonnes to 206 million
▪ Steel output fell from 15 million tonnes to 11 million tonnes
▪ Construction fell by 33%
▪ The PRC deficit increased from 1 billion yuan to 2.25 billion yuan
o Lack of expertise in managing factories and in production of goods
• Social
o Chaos and climate of fear
o Persecution by the Red Guards and the PLA
o Extensive loss of lives, families and communities destroyed
o Artistic destruction, with loss of culture, talent and expertise (re-educated
artists, educators denounced, intellectuals and professors heavily censored)
o A generation missed out on education
▪ Census compiled in 1982 found that less than 1 percent of the working
population had a university degree, and only 35 percent had received
schooling up to the age of twelve
▪ This was due to the disruption caused by the Cultural Revolution, where
education itself as an ideal was degraded, and there was deliberate
creation of disorder, with pupils and students encouraged to ridicule
their teachers and reject traditional learning, undermining education
▪ Between 1966 to 1970, 130 million of China’s young people simply
stopped attending school or university
o Mao’s prison camps: the laogai
▪ Creation of vast network of labour camps in which those who opposed
him or were suspected of opposing him were imprisoned/re-education
▪ Prisoners were forced to do backbreaking work and were starved
▪ Over 15 million prisoners died
International Conflict and Resolution: Expansionism in the lead-up to WWII
Causes of International Conflict (General)

• Competition for resources (land/natural resources)

• Territorial disputes (arbitrary boundaries as a result of colonisation/ population/
resources/trade/symbolic significance/strategic importance)
• Ambitions of Leaders
• Security: Fear of threats
• Establishment of sphere of influence
• Difference in ideology
• Retaliation
• Alliances
• Nationalism
• Ineffectiveness of international bodies (e.g. League of Nations)

Permissive International Climate in the lead-up to WWII: Weak League of

Nations
• The League of Nations was formed after the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, with the
Covenant of the League of Nations included in the Treaty of Versailles
• Aimed to maintain international peace through collective security and dispute
resolution, but was beset with difficulties from the outset

Weakness of the League of Nations: Absence of major powers

• At any one-time, important countries were not members, hindering the effectiveness of
the operations and influence of the League
• Germany was not allowed to join the League until 1926, which had the unfortunate
effect of making the League look like a club for the victorious powers closely associated
with the Treaty of Versailles, and its membership was also short-lived, with one of
Hitler’s first significant foreign policy actions to take Germany out of the League in 1933
• The USSR was not invited to join the League, mainly for ideological reasons, until 1934
• Japan left in 1933 when it received criticism for invading Manchuria
• Italy left in 1937 following its invasion of Abyssinia and the imposition of sanctions
• Most importantly, the USA was never a member, depriving the League of a powerful,
influential and wealthy country, reducing the ability of the League to take action against
aggressive countries, and affecting the League’s general prestige
• Without such major powers, the League lacked authority and sanctions were not
effective
Weaknesses of the League of Nations: Self-interest of leading members
 • The League depended on Britain and France to provide firm support in times of crisis
• However, when conflicts occurred, neither the British nor the French government were
prepared to abandon their own self-interest to support the League
• Unwilling to put the League’s interest above their own national interest

Japanese Invasion of Manchuria (1931)

• Japan’s Economic and Domestic Position

o Since 1900, Japan’s economy and population had been growing rapidly
o Powerful army and navy, with military leaders often dictating government policy
o Growing empire which included the Korean peninsula
o The Depression hit Japan badly, with China and the USA putting up tariffs against
Japanese goods and the collapse of the American market putting Japan in crisis
o Army leaders felt that the solution was to build up a Japanese empire by force
• Manchuria was seen as a “lifeline” for Japan, offering the answer to Japan’s problems: it
could provide a source of food and raw materials, a market for Japanese exports, as well
as land for the surplus Japanese population
• Mukden Incident (18 September 1931)
o Explosion on the Japanese-owned Southern Manchuria Railway, staged by the
soldiers of the Japanese Kwantung Army, which used it as an excuse to occupy
Manchuria
o Civilian government in Tokyo struggled to regain control and their policy of “non-
expansion of hostilities” and orders to fall back were ignored by the Kwantung
Army
o Manchuria subsequently renamed Manchukuo in March 1932
• China appealed to the League of Nations
• Response of the League of Nations: Weak and Ineffective
o Failed to call for sanctions
▪ None of the European powers wanted to reduce their trade with the Far
East
▪ European states also unwilling to impose military sanctions and risk their
navies and armies in a war
▪ Both Britain and France possessed colonies in the Far East, including
Hong Kong and Singapore, and feared sanctions might provoke a
Japanese attack
o Without the USA, Japan’s main trading partner, economic sanctions would be
meaningless
o The Lytton Commission
▪ The League formed the Lytton Commission to investigate but its report
was only submitted one full year after the invasion
 ▪ Lytton Commission recommended that Japan withdraw its forces, and
the General Assembly condemned Japan as the aggressor nation
• Japan withdrew from the League in March 1933, suffering no consequences as a result
• League was powerless if a strong nation decided to pursue an aggressive policy and
invade its neighbours, emboldening Japan/Germany to pursue an expansionist foreign
policy

World Disarmament Conference (1932-34)

• After 1918, disarmament was considered to be a central issue in promoting world peace
(Wilson’s Fourteen Points and a prominent feature of the Treaty of Versailles)
• Under the Treaty of Versailles, only the defeated powers were required to disarm, and
the Germans had long been angry about the fact that they had to disarm after the First
World War while other nations had not done the same
• In the wake of the Manchurian crisis, the members of the League realized the urgency of
the problem and in February 1932 the Disarmament Conference finally got under way
• The big question was whether everyone else should disarm to the level that Germany
had been forced to, or whether the Germans should be allowed to rearm to a level
closer to that of other powers
• In October 1933, after Hitler became Chancellor, he withdrew from the Disarmament
Conference, and soon after took Germany out of the League altogether
• By this stage, all the powers knew that Hitler was secretly rearming Germany already,
and began to rebuild their own armaments
• Against that backdrop the Disarmament Conference struggled for another year but in an
atmosphere of increasing futility, but finally ended in 1934
• The fears and anxieties of individual states and their reluctance to trust another was a
key reason why the Disarmament Conference failed
• The major countries were looking after themselves and ignoring the league

Abyssinian Crisis (1935)

• Like Japan, Italy wanted to expand its empire by invading another country
• In 1896, Italian troops had tried to invade Abyssinia but were humiliatingly defeated,
and ever since the Italians had been set upon revenge
• Mussolini, Italy’s leader, desired glory and conquest
• Following a border incident at Wal-Wal in December 1934, Mussolini began a build-up
of Italian forces, and subsequently launched a full-scale invasion of Abyssinia
• The Italian invasion was a clear example of unprovoked aggression and the League
promptly condemned the action and imposed economic sanctions, but it had little
impact on the progress of the war
o Essential war materials such as oil and coal had been excluded from the list of
prohibited items
 o The Suez Canal, the main artery for the supply of the Italian army, was kept open
for fear of possible Italian naval attacks of the British colonial possessions of
Gibraltar and Malta
• In December 1935, the British and French governments concocted a secret deal, the
Hoare-Laval Pact, where Italy would receive approximately two-thirds of Abyssinia in
return for stopping the war, however, news of it was leaked to the press and led to a
storm of public protest
• This reflected the half-heartedness in the British and French support for collective
security, the League of Nations and imposition of sanctions upon Italy, as they were
simultaneously pursuing the contradictory objective of retaining Italy as an ally and
were fearful of offending Italy to the extent that it would become an ally of Germany
• League incapable of effective action as it was proving impossible to put internationalism
ahead of national interests
• The League’s preoccupation with the Abyssinian crisis also distracted them from
responding strongly to Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland in March 1936, an act in
violation of the Treaty of Versailles
• Italy subsequently left the League in 1937
German Expansionism in the lead-up to WWII
Hitler’s Aggressive Foreign Policy
Hitler’s Expansionist Foreign Policy Objectives

• Overthrow of Treaty of Versailles

o Disarmament clauses broken be introducing conscription and building up the
army, navy and air force
o Germany’s western frontier would be secured by remilitarizing and refortifying
the Rhineland
o Lost territory would be regained
o Treaty was detested by the German public, and Hitler could also ensure his
short-term popularity by dismantling the Treaty clause by clause
• Acquire living space for the German people (Lebensraum)
o Hitler thought that it was the entitlement of all Germans to have “living space”
o Expansion eastwards at the expense of Poland and Soviet Russia
• Unite all German-speaking people
o Frontiers of Germany to be extended to cover those areas where the population
was predominantly German (including Austria, parts of Czechoslovakia and
Poland)
• Build up a central European empire

Hitler’s Early Foreign Policy (1933-35)

• Germany refused to pay any more reparations, walked out of the World Disarmament
Conference and left the League of Nations (1933)
o Hitler’s first strikes against the Treaty of Versailles
o Germany also began to rearm in secret
• Ten-Year Non-Aggression Pact with Poland (Jan 1934)
o Although Germany resented Poland on account of the ‘Polish Corridor’
separating Germany from East Prussia, Hitler went ahead with this agreement to
secure his eastern border, removing the prospect of war with Poland if Hitler
decided to make a move against Austria or Czechoslovakia
• Saar plebiscite (Jan 1935)
o Took place in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles and results showed that
over 90 percent were in favour of a return to Germany
o Germany had now regained its first piece of lost territory by legal and peaceful
means
• Reintroduction of Conscription (March 1935)
 o In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler announced his intention of building
up the army to 36 divisions (550,000 men) together with the creation of a
military air force
o The Allies responded with the Stresa Front (a united stand made by Britain,
France and Italy against Hitler’s violation of the disarmament clause of the
Treaty of Versailles, issuing a strongly worded protest), but this soon proved
meaningless with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement that undermined it
• Anglo-Naval German Agreement (June 1935)
o Allowed Germany to have a fleet that was 35 per cent the size of Britain’s, with
submarines at 45 per cent, essentially legalizing German naval rearmament
o This pact was made without obtaining the prior agreement of France or Italy
o Another passive victory for Hitler, as Britain had in effect condoned or at least
accept German naval rearmament
o Also revealed that Hitler’s aggression was successfully intimidating the other
European powers
Hitler’s Foreign Policy (1936-39)

• Remilitarization of the Rhineland (March 1936)

o The Rhineland had been declared as a demilitarized zone by the Treaty of
Versailles to help secure the border between Germany and France
o From a German point of view, a demilitarized Rhineland was a constant reminder
of Germany’s humiliation and disadvantage as in theory, it enabled western
armies to invade at will
o The Germans sent 10,000 troops and 23,000 armed police into the Rhineland in
March 1936
o As Hitler correctly predicted, neither the French nor the British had any desire
for war over this issue, thinking that it was foolhardy to risk European peace over
whether or not German troops should be allowed to occupy part of their own
country
▪ Furthermore, the French were in the middle of a financial crisis and
facing elections in six weeks’ time
▪ The British were generally against resistance
• Hitler’s involvement in Spanish Civil War (1936)
o While the League criticized Italian action, Italy and Germany grew closer
together, both sending support to General Franco’s forces in Spain during the
Spanish Civil War
o Hitler wished to test out Germany’s new and improved armed forces in what
could be considered a dress rehearsal for a full-scale European war
• Rome-Berlin Axis and Anti-Comintern Pact (1936)
 o A treaty of friendship between Germany and Italy was concluded in October
1936, and in November Mussolini suggested the idea of a Rome-Berlin Axis
around which the other European countries would revolve
o Hitler broadened his alliance base when Germany signed the Anti-Comintern
Pact with Japan in November 1936, which Italy later joined in 1937
• The Anschluss (March 1938)
o One of Hitler’s foreign policy aims was to include all German-speaking peoples in
the Reich so as to form a Greater Germany
o The largest concentration of German speakers outside Germany was in Austria
o Union between Germany and Austria was forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles
but much of that treaty now lay in tatters
o In an attempt to preserve Austrian independence, Austrian Chancellor
Schuschnigg decided to hold a plebiscite on the 13th of March 1938
o Hitler decided to act before this could happen, and Hitler mobilized his army and
marched into Austria on 12 March 1938 proclaiming the Anschluss to have taken
place
o A plebiscite subsequently held on the 10th of April was overwhelmingly in favour
of Anschluss
o The Anschluss was Hitler’s most daring action to date, and for the first time the
Germany army had been deployed across German frontiers
o Britain and France did nothing apart from issuing protests to Germany
o Hitler had increased German territory, population and resources, adding to
Germany’s military capacity, strengthened by the Austrian armed forces and the
country’s rich deposits of gold and iron ore
• The Sudeten Crisis (1938)
o Hitler was methodically revising the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, so his next
action was to regain the Sudetenland, which was part of Czechoslovakia
o In May 1938, Hitler declared that he would fight for the Sudetenland if he had to
o Throughout the summer of 1938, tensions increased in the Sudetenland as the
Sudeten Germans, on instructions from Hitler, increased their violence against
the Czech government
o It was at this point that Britain decided to act, and two summit meetings took
place between British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Hitler
o This was followed by The Munich Conference on the 29th of September 1938
where Britain, France, Germany and Italy met and agreed to give Germany the
Sudetenland, known as the Munich Agreement (Neither the Czech President nor
the Soviet leader Stalin were invited to the conference)
o The Munich Agreement was subsequently declared by Chamberlain as ‘peace for
our time’
o Hitler had once again met his objectives by threatening force
• The takeover of Czechoslovakia (1939)
o Czechoslovakia remained a country rich in agriculture and industry, resources
that Hitler very much wanted to obtain for the benefit of Germany
o On 15 March 1939, Germany marched in and occupied the rest of
Czechoslovakia, shattering the Munich Agreement
o Up until and including the Munich Agreement, every territorial change sought by
Germany could be justified on the grounds of self-determination, allowing land
mainly populated by Germans to transfer to the Third Reich
o However, in the events of March 1939, Hitler was taking new territory simply in
order to increase the power of Germany, straying beyond the principles of
Greater Germany and making a bid to dominate Europe by force
o Britain and France thus largely abandoned their policy of trying to appease
Hitler, in favour of a policy of deterrence
• Pact of Steel (May 1939)
o Italy became a formal ally of Germany
• The Nazi-Soviet Pact (August 1939)
o One of the most astonishing and surprising events resulting from Hitler’s foreign
policy was the announcement in late August 1939 of the Nazi-Soviet Pact,
otherwise known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a 10-year non-aggression pact
which also contained secret clauses pertaining to the future partition of Poland
o At first sight the agreement appeared an extremely unlikely event, with two
states representing ideological opposites, fascism and communism, making a
deal with one another
o However, it in fact suited the short-term ambitions of both Germany and Soviet
Russia
▪ Germany: Hitler wanted to secure Soviet neutrality in a war with Poland,
thus preventing a war on two fronts, and the agreement also provided
Germany with economic aid which would negate the impact of any
Anglo-French blockade. Furthermore, it prevented the Soviets from
forming an alliance with Britain and France
▪ Soviet Union: The Pact would keep the USSR out of a war in the West,
which was important as it faced a threat in the East from Japan, and the
army was weakened after Stalin’s purges. The Pact also gave time for
Stalin to prepare for war, and there was always the hope that Germany
and the West would weaken each other in the war and the USSR would
be left as the strongest nation. Stalin also got half of Poland and the
opportunity to take over Finland and the Baltic States
• The invasion of Poland (1 September 1939)
o Once Hitler secured his deal with Stalin on 23 August 1939, he could carry out his
attack on Poland
 o On 31 March 1939, a British-French guarantee was given to Poland that
promised that Poland would receive British and French support and assistance if
attacked, and subsequently signed a full military alliance on 25 August
o On the 1st of September 1939, German troops invaded Poland and German
planes bombed Warsaw
▪ Hitler was also gambling on the fact that Britain and France would opt for
a peace settlement rather than a war, partly because of the Nazi-Soviet
Pact that he had signed, and also because they had done little more than
protest over issues such as German rearmament, the remilitarization of
the Rhineland and the Anschluss. When Hitler had demanded the
Sudetenland, Britain and France found a way for it to be transferred to
Germany (Appeasement Policy). None of this looked like the behavior of
countries that would eventually make a firm stand.
o This time, Britain and France had to keep their word, and declared war on
Germany

Weaknesses of other States (Appeasement Policy)

Appeasement Policy

• Appeasement was the policy followed primarily by Britain in the 1930s in attempting to
settle international disputes by satisfying grievances through compromise and
negotiation
o Reasons for pursuing such a policy included pacifist public opinion, lack of
military strength, with appeasement giving more time for Britain to rearm, and
the fear of communism, where western politicians feared communism more
than Nazism, and hoped that Hitler’s Germany would provide a strong bulwark
against the spread of communism across Europe
• However, by pursuing such a policy, Britain and France encouraged Hitler’s aggression,
boosting his confidence, encouraging him to make further demands and increasing his
power
• With each territorial acquisition, Hitler’s Germany was also better defended, and had
more soldiers, workers, raw materials, weapons and industries
• While Britain and France may have gained time to improve their defenses, Germany also
used this time to strengthen its army, navy and air force
• Furthermore, by consistently and continuously giving in to Hitler’s demands, the
Western democracies also further alienated the USSR and led Stalin to believe the policy
was designed to allow for German expansion and to promote a conflict between the
Nazis and the Soviet Communists, leading the USSR to sign the Nazi-Soviet Pact with
Hitler, thus unleashing WW2
• The appeasement policy provided Hitler with the perception that he was able to expand
without facing retaliation, facilitating his aggression
Examples of Appeasement

• June 1935: Anglo-German Naval Agreement

• March 1936: Largely passive reaction of British and French following the German
reoccupation of the Rhineland
• March 1938: Largely passive reaction of British and French following the Anschluss
• September 1938: Munich Agreement regarding the Sudetenland

Domestic Pressures: German Nationalism

• Nationalist sentiments encouraged Germany to pursue an expansionist foreign policy to
restore and advance national pride
• Many Germans wanted to repudiate the humiliating Treaty of Versailles, which was
detested widely among Germans, and thus wanted to regain territory lost as a result of
the Treaty
• They felt that the Treaty of Versailles was unworthy of a great power, and thus wished
to regain their status as a world power
• They also wished for all German people to be united into German territory, hence the
invasion of places with German majorities
• Hitler’s attacks on the Treaty of Versailles and those who had signed it during the
elections also meant that many Germans believed he and the Nazis would restore
Germany’s international prestige through crushing the Treaty, which also compelled
Hitler to pursue such aggressive foreign policy objectives
• An expansionist foreign policy thus seen as a way to restore national pride as the
territorial gain resulted in increased prestige.
Japanese Expansionism in the lead-up to WWII
Japanese Expansionism
Beginnings of Expansion

• The 1868 Meiji Restoration marked the beginning of modernization in Japan, of which a
key reform was of its military, with a new, modernized army developed with the
introduction of conscription in 1872 and the adoption of German military principles and
methods
• A small, densely populated nation, Japan lacked resources and had no natural room to
expand
• The Japanese knew that Western nations had amassed some of their wealth and power
because of their colonies, which provided sources of raw materials, inexpensive labour,
and markets for manufactured products
• To compete, Japan also wanted to expand, and began their program of territorial
expansion close to home- in 1874, Japan claimed control of the Ryukyu Islands, which
belonged to the Chinese Empire, and two years later, Japan’s navy forced the Koreans to
open their ports to Japanese trade
• First Sino-Japanese War (1894)
o In the 1880s, Chinese-Japanese rivalry over Korea intensified, and in 1894, the
two nations went to war, and Japan defeated China, thus positioning itself as a
world power with an empire
o The Treaty of Shimonoseki gave the Pescadores Islands, Formosa and Liaodong
Peninsula to Japan, recognized Korean independence and obliged China to pay a
large indemnity and to open additional ports and negotiate a commercial treaty
• Tripartite Intervention (1895)
o Germany, Russia and France, concerned with Japan’s growing power and its
impact on Asia as a whole, forced Japan to give up the Liaodong Peninsula in
what was known as the Tripartite Intervention
o Much to Japan’s fury, Russia then took the Liaodong Peninsula for itself, while
Germany secured control over Shandong Province
o The military success of the Sino-Japanese War, the gaining of land and also the
frustration at having to give up some land to a Western power encouraged the
growth of nationalism and also militarism in Japan
o It reinforced the idea that a strong military was necessary for Japan to be
successful as a world power and to defend itself against other Western powers
and against the Russians

Japan after 1900

• Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902)

 o First time a military alliance had been signed between a Western and non-
Western nation
• Russo-Japanese War (1904-05)
o When Japan and Russia clashed over their interests in Korea and Manchuria,
Japan went to war, with a surprise attack against Russia in 1904
o Japan was successful in its land battles, and decisively won the war at sea,
destroying the Russian fleet
o Encouraged Japanese nationalism and the Russians were forced to accept the
Treaty of Portsmouth
o Many Japanese were disappointed with the terms of this treaty as they had been
led to expect much more
o However, Japan gained control of Korea and much of South Manchuria, including
Port Arthur, also gaining railway rights in Manchuria along with the southern half
of Sakhalin Island
o The war earned Japan not only the respect of the West but also the admiration
of other Asian countries, while affirming Japan’s own belief in its destiny as
leader of Asia
• World War 1 (1914)
o Japan saw the potential benefit of joining the war on the entente side, and
demanded German colonial possessions in China
o When the Germans ignored their demands, Japan declared war on them, seizing
Germany’s military bases on the Shandong Peninsula in the north of China in
1914, and its navy occupied Germany’s South Pacific possessions
• Twenty-One Demands (1915)
o With the Allies distracted, Japan then issued China with the “Twenty-One
Demands”, the most important of which required China to agree to the Japanese
remaining in Shandong and to grant Japan extra commercial privileges in
Manchuria, and China was also not to lease any more coastal territory to other
powers
o These demands caused a sharp reaction from Britain and the USA
• Paris Peace Conference (1919)
o Japan secured the former German Pacific islands as a mandate and Germany’s
former economic privileges on the Shandong peninsula of China, which firmly
established Japan as an important economic power on the Asian mainland and
as the main naval power in the Western Pacific
o However, Japan was reminded that it was not fully a member of the “Western
Club” by its failure to get racial equality clauses included in the Charter of the
League of Nations
• Washington Naval Conference (1921)
 o The Five-Power Naval Treaty restricted competition in battleships and aircraft
carriers by setting a ratio of 5:5:3 for Britain, the USA and Japan respectively
Aggressive Japanese Expansionism and International Response

• Manchuria Crisis (1931)

o Manchuria seen as a “lifeline” for Japan
▪ Resources (coal, iron, timber)
▪ Market for Japanese manufacturers
▪ Living space for an over-populated Japan
▪ Security (Buffer against USSR)
o Manchuria was also the industrial centre of China
▪ 90% of China’s oil
▪ 70% of iron
▪ 55% of gold
▪ 33% of trade
o Mukden Incident (18 September 1931)
▪ Explosion on the Japanese-owned Explosion on the Japanese-owned
Southern Manchuria Railway, staged by the soldiers of the Japanese
Kwantung Army, which used it as an excuse to occupy Manchuria
▪ Civilian government in Tokyo struggled to regain control and their policy
of “non-expansion of hostilities” and orders to fall back were ignored by
the Kwantung Army
▪ Japanese government was further undermined by widespread public
support for the Kwantung Army’s actions
▪ Manchuria subsequently renamed Manchukuo in March 1932
o Response of the League of Nations (Refer above to “Weak League of Nations”)
▪ Unwilling to impose economic or military sanctions
▪ League of Nations formed the Lytton Commission to investigate but its
report was only submitted one full year after the invasion
▪ Lytton Commission recommended that Japan pull its forces back to the
South Manchurian Railway
▪ League of Nations General Assembly condemned Japan as an aggressor
nation
▪ Japan subsequently withdrew from the League in March 1933, suffering
no consequences as a result
▪ Foreign criticism and condemnation, including that by the League of
Nations, galvanized Japanese nationalist sentiments
o Response of the USA
▪ No trade restrictions placed on Japan or Manchuria
o Response of China
▪ Tanggu Truce- Recognized Japan’s control over Manchuria
• Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45)
o Marco Polo Bridge Incident (July 1937)
▪ There was a clash between Japanese and Chinese forces at the Marco
Polo Bridge in Beijing
▪ Attempts to resolve the issue failed, and nationalism was running too
high on both sides, and the fighting spread
o By mid-1939, Japan had conquered most of eastern China but a final victory was
still elusive
o Japanese attack was brutal (Rape of Nanking, Bombing of Chongqing)
o As the fighting dragged on, Japanese supply lines were overstretched and
Japanese forces became more vulnerable to Chinese guerilla attacks
o Although the Japanese scored major victories, the war reached a stalemate
o Response of the League of Nations
▪ No sanctions imposed
▪ Most western governments hoped that anti-Communist Japan would
pressure the USSR in Asia
▪ Most League of Nations members saw China as a large, chaotic and
corrupt nation with only nominal control over its territory, and thus were
unwilling to go to war to maintain such a country
o Response of the USA
▪ US government wanted to demonstrate its displeasure with Japanese
aggression but not to the point where Japan would prevent US exports
from reaching Asian markets
▪ Prohibited shipment of weapons or war supplies to China or Japan
▪ Sanctions imposed on export of US oil and metals only from 1940
• Attack on Pearl Harbour (1941)- the route to Pearl Harbour
o September 1940: Japan occupied northern regions of French Indochina in hopes
of cutting supply lines to China
o US prohibited the sale of scrap iron and steel to Japan
o July 1941: Japan occupied the rest of French Indochina
o US froze all Japanese assets, and banned the sale of oil to Japan
o Oil embargo had great impact as the US was the largest supplier of oil to Japan
and fuel was necessary for ships, aircrafts and tanks
o 26 November 1941: US demanded that Japan remove all its troops from
Indochina and China, including Manchuria, and end its participation in the
Tripartite Alliance (with Germany and Italy)
o 7 December 1941: Japan attacked Pearl Harbour
o 8 December 1941: US declared war on Japan
 Weaknesses of other States: Instability in China
Political Instability in China

• China was going through a period of internal turmoil and foreign encroachment
(scramble for concessions)
• Government divided/ineffective, allowing other countries to take advantage of this
instability
• Chaos of Warlord Era
• The Kuomintang and CCP clashed in a Civil War which from 1927, directed the energies
and focus of Chiang Kai-shek towards defeating the Communists rather than the
Japanese- and conceded to Japanese aggression
• Instability encouraged Japan to see China as an easy target and gave Japan a pretext to
invade China to restore order and protect its interests

Domestic Pressures: Japanese Nationalism and Militarism

Nationalism and Militarism

• Militarism
o Belief in the need for a strong military and preparedness to use it to advance a
nation’s interests
o Predominance of armed forces in administration of government
• The Meiji Constitution
o Emperor of Japan was head of state and a divine individual
o Government ministers responsible to Emperor alone and not the Diet
(parliament)
o Military allowed much independence, reported directly to the Emperor, and held
two cabinet positions in all governments
o All laws and cabinet decisions had to be agreed upon by all Ministers, which
meant that military ministers could essentially veto policies or threaten their
resignation to dissolve the government
o This also meant that the Army and Navy were able to affect politics and ensure
their growth and maintenance
• Education
o Compulsory education and national curriculum which emphasized loyalty to the
state, family and community
o Cultivated respect for the divine Emperor and Japanese history and culture
o Imperial Rescript on Education (1890): Duty to protect the Emperor and state in
the event of an emergency
o Learning of military drills
• Belief in Japanese uniqueness and destiny
 o Japan was not conquered by European powers/USA, and the only non-European
state to defeat a European state in modern war
o Belief in special mission to lead the rest of Asia in removing all non-Asian
dominance from the region
Perception of Western Antagonism

• Military successes, coupled with the subsequent sense of injustice/humiliation,

contributed to greater militarism
• Sino-Japanese War + Tripartite Intervention (1895)
o Russia, France and Germany forced Japan to give up some of its gains, with
Russia taking control of Liaodong Peninsula and Port Arthur, and Germany taking
part of the Shandong Peninsula
o Led to great public anger in Japan and helped to further arouse public support
for militaristic causes
• Russo-Japanese War (1904-05)
o Victory in the war aroused nationalist feelings, but gains were far less than what
the public in Japan were expecting
o Russia simply refused to pay the Japanese for the cost of the war, even though
this was a usual component of a treaty concluding a war, and the Japanese had
no way of enforcing payment from the Russians
o Seemed that the Great Powers were trying to hinder Japan’s growth wherever
possible
• Twenty-One Demands (1915)
o Japan issued China with ‘Twenty-One Demands’ in January 1915, which would
have given Japan the most influential political and economic position in China
o International reaction to the demands was hostile, with the USA being the most
critical and warning Japan that it would not tolerate any agreement that
threatened US interests in the area
o US-Japanese relations subsequently turned very sour
• Paris Peace Conference (1919)
o Japan failed to get racial equality clauses included in the Charter of the League of
Nations
o Even though Japan felt that it had not gained what it deserved from Versailles, it
was granted supervision over the former German Pacific Islands and Germany’s
former economic privileges on the Shandong Peninsula of China (but this was
returned to China in 1922)
• Washington Naval Conference (1921)
o The Five-Power Naval Treaty restricted competition in battleships and aircraft
carriers by setting a ratio of 5:5:3 for Britain, the USA and Japan respectively
 o This treaty required Japan’s Imperial Navy to abandon its plans for a massive
expansion and was deeply opposed by the Navy General Staff

Domestic Pressures: Political and Economic Instability

Economic Crises

• Rapid population growth (45 million in 1900 to 64 million in 1930) led to shortages in
land, housing, jobs and food
• Great Depression (1929)
o Japan was dependent on world trade and its exports fell drastically as countries
put up tariffs to protect their own industries e.g. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act raised
duties on Japanese goods by as much as 200%
o The worse hit industry was the silk industry, and by 1932, the price of silk had
fallen to less than one-fifth of what it had been in 1923, and farmers were hit
particularly badly since over half of them relied on silk production
o The result was desperate poverty as unemployment rose to 3 million
o Between 1929 and 1931, Gross National Product fell by 20% and exports fell by
40%
o Japan which relied on exports was practically cut off from the US, its greatest
trading partner, contributed to the impression that it could not depend on the
West
o In this dire economic situation, Manchuria became even more important to
Japan’s interests
▪ Manchuria’s wealth of resources (coal, iron and timber) were increasingly
enticing to a Japan suffering the deprivations of the depression
▪ If Japan took over Manchuria it would control these resources and also
gain a market for its manufactured goods
• Acquiring more territories would thus allow Japan to gain access to resources and land

Political Crises and Growing influence of the military

• In the Manchuria Crisis, the Kwantung Army was able to act independently without the
support of the civilian government, and the civilian government was unable to restrain
or control them
• Increasing instability as radical factions in the military attempted to overthrow the
governing system
• Series of coups and rising political violence against the government and economic elites
o League of Blood Incident (February 1932): Former finance minister and leader of
the Mitsui zaibatsu (big corporation)
o May 15th Incident (May 1932): In an attempted coup, army and navy officers shot
and killed Prime Minister Inukai
 ▪ The trial of the conspirators demonstrated widespread support for their
actions and a general disillusionment with the ruling political parties
▪ Enhanced the influence of the army and further undermined the
democratic government
o February 26 Incident (February 1936): 1,500 soldiers of a radical military faction
attempted a revolt to seize power, and marched into Tokyo and took over the
parliament buildings, the war office, police headquarters and the prime
minister’s residence, brutally murdering many officials
▪ The radical faction was discredited and the moderate faction of the
military were now the most important in developing army planning, and
could assert firmer control of the country
• Weak and divided government also meant that the military was free to pursue
aggressive policies