World History (G.S.-1) Part-2

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WORLD HISTORY for G.S.-I Mains

Part-2 (Topics 5 and 6)
Index
5. Revolution and Counter revolution 2-71

6. The World after World War-II 72-83

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5. REVOLUTION AND COUNTER REVOLUTION
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
February and October 1917 and Aftermath
 The increasing skepticism about autocracy, the inept handling of the liberal aspirations by the
government, the delayed and faulty implementation of Stolypin’s reforms, the problems and
dilemmas of industrialization and overburdened agriculture made the Russian revolution
inevitable.
 The Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) revealed the corruption and incompetence of the regime of
Nicholas II. By 1905, discontent had permeated all classes - the peasants, workers, army,
intelligentsia, national and religious minorities, segments of bourgeoisie and aristocracy.
 Politically, all through the 19th century, one of the most remarkable features of the autocracy
was its loss of zeal, its virtual inability to react and its blind adherence to the status quo. The
government was not in a position to mobilize enough resources to give fresh impetus to the
existing system.
 The period of relentless repression along with governmental coercion had shaped the Populists
in the guise of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which sought to unite the old traditions with
the modern appeal to a mass audience. Liberal professors and elected members of the Zemstvo
board began to plan for a peaceful revolution.
 Similarly, developments among half of the non-Russian population posed an increasingly serious
challenge to the authorities. Both Alexander and Nicholas believed firmly in the virtues of
autocracy and both looked for scapegoats to explain the difficulties that beset them.
o Alexander III’s policy of “autocracy, orthodoxy and nationalism” further aggravated the
situation. Alexander’s regime was far more repressive than that of Nicholas.
o His first move was an attempt to reassert the power of the landed nobility and bureaucracy
in the countryside. In 1890, the constitution of the Zemstvo was revised to guarantee
paramount power to the noble class and correspondingly diminish the peasant class.
o Emergency powers, military tribunals, a tighter hold over the judges, undermining of
university autonomy, tightening of press censorship characterized the reign of Alexander III.
o The same motives inspired an attack on the independence of the judiciary and the
inviolability of the courts. Russia was not a country with one nationality as the Great Russian
people made up only 43 per cent of the population. The Czars pursued a relentless policy of
Russification.
o In the Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland and White Russia, the teaching of vernacular was restricted
or forbidden in schools and the use of Russian language was enforced.
o In the Baltic provinces, like Estonia and Courland, the government exercised similar
discrimination against the German people.
o The Russian non-conformist sects, such as the Doukhobors, the Molokans and the Shtundists,
had to suffer religious oppression, deportation and imprisonment.
o The Tsars and Tsarinas had unsuccessfully sought to assimilate the newly acquired Jewish
subjects. The Jews were forcibly resettled in the ghettos of the interior.

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 The Mir system exercised all powers over the individual member. Until 1903, a peasant still had
to obtain a passport to leave his or her village and work outside it.
o The commune was artificially preserved from the free play of economic forces by prohibiting
the sale or mortgage of its land except with special administrative permission and then such
sale could be made only to the peasant buyers.
o With the constant increase in rural population, the peasant’s allotment proved more and
more inadequate. In 1906, Stolypin abolished this system. The ultimate idea was to
introduce almost complete free trade in the buying and selling of land.
o The more able peasants would then emerge as small landed proprietors with a strong stake
in the existing order, unlike those who were destined to dwindle as the landless proletariats.
 The reforms got an excellent start in 1907 with some 50,000 householders leaving the
commune; the number soared the next year to half a million and to nearly 5,80,000 by 1909.
Stolypin had tried to increase the yield of land and thus tried to consolidate the strong (rich)
peasants, traditionally called Kulaks, as against the poor ones.
o But the small peasant produced only for himself and not for the market. Grain for the
market was crucial to Russia’s balance of trade. Further, the dissolution of the commune
without consolidation meant little more than the right to sell.
o Florinsky is of the opinion that if the consolidation had been followed through well
organized machinery after the dissolution of communes, then the revolution would have
been averted.
o It directly led to mass migration to urban localities which inflated the already oversupplied
labour market and brought the wages further down.
 The contrast between agriculture and industry was startling, though causally connected. The
former stagnated, the latter flourished. Under the inspiration of Sergei Witte, all branches of
Russian industrial production showed a remarkable upsurge in the 1890s.
o It was Witte who insisted that the rural population must pay for the rapid industrialization of
Russia. The last decade of the 19th century saw an industrial boom in Russia.
o Industrial output rose by 7.5 per cent per annum, and the emphasis shifted to iron and steel,
coal and petroleum extraction industries. Most of it was through direct foreign investment.
o Prodamet owned 80 per cent of the total iron output, whereas Produgol owned 75 per cent
of the coal output. The foreign debt became unmanageable due to the military postures and
ambitions of the regime.
 The sub-human conditions persisted in the industrial sector, which led to great dissatisfaction
among the workers. The dissatisfaction was manifest in the mass strikes of 1890’s, leading to the
promulgation of a series of laws aimed at the improvement of the conditions, from 1897
onwards, such as:
o eleven and half hour workday,
o limited over-time and
o provision of other benefits like accident insurance, was a recognition of the power of the
workers.
 In 1906, trade unions were recognized. Christopher Hill says that the weakness of native capital,
the willingness of the regime to woo foreign capital, their methods of cost minimization, and the
influx of western ideas into the working class created the revolutionary situation.

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 Further, the methods of revenue extraction were extremely primitive. Indirect taxation on the
peasantry was high, but did not reach the treasury due to corruption or inefficiency. The
industrial proletariat was as badly off as the peasantry.
 The cost of living was rising and even in real terms, the annual wages were falling and were
much less than the annual profit per worker. The benefits stipulated in the laws like health and
safety regulations were openly violated.
 At the same time, the regime launched an extensive programme of educational reforms. The
enrolment in higher education had risen nine-fold between1885-1914. Education had led to
social mobility. It exposed the students to Western influence and led to their politicization.
 Socially, the regime was rather foolish in trying to suppress the urge of the various classes to
have a sense of participation in governance. By 1914, the bureaucracy, the officials and the
military came to be staffed by non-nobles who were educated and susceptible to reformist,
reactionary and revolutionary ideas.
 Alexander III died on November 2nd, 1894. And like almost every Tsar of Muscovy and almost
every emperor of Russia, he left behind not only domestic and foreign problems of considerable
magnitude, but also an heir unprepared to assume the burdens of power.
 Of Nicholas II (1894- 1917), it can be said that he was utterly unprepared. He was totally
oblivious to the great social and political events of the day and had no administrative experience
in the affairs of the state. The first few years of his reign were uneventful.
 But by the end of 1890’s however, several new political and social forces were at work inside
and outside Russia that sought to alter drastically its direction and its development. In the end,
they finally succeeded.
 One of these forces was Marxism. The rapid industrialization of Russia with its usual by- product
of problems, made many converts to Marxism among the university students and radical
intellectuals.
o Marxism in Russia was led by Plekhnov, and the first Marxist group inside Russia was formed
in 1898 - The Russian Social Democratic Workers Party.
o Its main aim was to overthrow the Russian autocracy and establish a democratic republic
guided by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Later, the Russian Marxists got divided into
Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.
o Bolsheviks, a numerical minority among Russian workers, stood for authoritarian centralism
and non-cooperation with all liberal elements.
o They were headed by Lenin. Mensheviks on the other hand, had a major following among
workers and favoured an open party and society and were willing to cooperate with every
group.
 The Socialist Revolutionary Party also made its appearance in the early years of Nicholas IIs
reign. It was an outgrowth of the Populist movement of the 1860’s and 1870’s
o This party was strongly committed to the defence of peasant interests and advocated the
overthrow of the existing order and the establishment of a classless socialist society.
o The party’s programme of 1905 was prepared by Chernov, a devout believer in democracy.
Like the Mensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionary Party was also willing to cooperate with all
liberal forces to make a Russia a decent place to live.

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 A third force working towards the change at the end of the 19th century was a conglomerate of
liberal nobles, teachers, doctors, who were grouped mostly around the Zemstvos. University
students also surged to the fore as a potential force.
 It would be an error to see the Russian workers as an inert mass meekly awaiting enlightenment
by the socialist intellectuals; however their inclination to follow Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Socialist
Revolutionary injunctions, police-sponsored trade unions or even the proto-fascist block was a
function of their own experience.
o The workers were very often ahead of the intellectuals when it came to putting the general
ideas into practical effect. It is quite impossible to conceive the mobilization of the Russian
working people in the early 20th century with the intelligentsia.
o Their role was not restricted to theorizing, educating and agitating. Their mastery of the
techniques ensured that the workers went into battle in an informed and coordinated
manner, using tactics that created maximum difficulties for the authorities.
 The Socialist Revolutionary Party began to emerge in the late 1890’s and resorted to terrorism
once more to advertise its existence by the early 1900’s.
o The first major peasant disturbance occurred in 1902 in the areas where the party had been
active, but most of the peasants did not recognize the party as their own until the revolution
of 1905-06.
o Peasant malaise was not caused by the shortage of land but factors such as overpopulation
in agricultural areas, the lack of employment opportunities, the poor quality of seeds and
frequent famines, fiscal burdens and the communal pattern of land ownership.
o It was due to the Government’s relative indifference to the stagnation of agriculture at a
time when it was concentrating on the industrial development.
o These problems further aggravated between 1891-1901 by adverse climatic conditions that
caused disastrous crop failures in many areas.
o Widespread disturbances resulted in the most violent occurring in Ukraine where the
peasants attacked estates of food and livestock and torched many buildings.
o The Peasant rebellion attracted the attention of both, the revolutionaries and Government
officials and was the prime cause of the political explosion in 1905.
 Another force that came to trouble the regime of Nicholas II was industrial labour. Labour
discontent was essentially economic. Rapid industrialization in the last decade of the 19th
century swelled the Russian labour force to more than 2 million.
o Most of it was concentrated in textiles, mining, railroad, coal mining and metal processing
industries. Working conditions in these industries were harsh, paying a mere pittance for
long hours and being exhaustive.
o The exploitation of women and children, extensive system of fines, workers’ labour barracks,
this was the same harsh regime as in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution in England.
o Men earned one rouble a day and women half of that amount. Due to greater docility and
lower cost of female workers, employers often preferred them to men.
o Until mid-1897 when a law established an eleven hour workday, the normal workday was of
fourteen to fifteen hours. Trade unions and strikes were considered forms of sedition.
o Though they varied from place to place, conditions of work were unsafe and unsanitary
while housing for workers was miserable, overcrowded, filthy, noisy, smelly and expensive.

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o These deplorable conditions were conspicuous in every industrial town of thousands of

uprooted, unskilled and semi- skilled unemployed people who formed the urban poor, who
lived like a herd of animals, who were desperate and willing to follow any and every
revolutionary or nationalist demagogue.
 The last force to arise and challenge the Russian regime at the turn of the century was the
militant nationalism of non-Russian minorities of the empire. All these uncoordinated but
discontented forces merged in 1905 to produce a revolution, one that was preceded by the
assassination of high Government officials.
 Authorities and their supporters were stunned by this terrorism and because the Russian
revolutionary movement included many Jews, they directed their fury against them. The bloody
revolutionary exploits and the counter-revolutionary terror triggered the activity of liberals in
Zemstov.
o They were encouraged by the liberals living abroad who urged their fellow countrymen to
overthrow autocracy and establish a constitutional government. As a result, the liberals
organized a Union of Liberation with branches in other countries in 1904.
o The outbreak of the unpopular war with Japan in 1904 aided the liberal cause. Most of the
local Zemstvos and countless liberal groups throughout the country approved the demands
of the union which was critical of Government policies.
o But the Government authorities branded them treasonous and their promulgators as
enemies of the country.
 In the midst of the demands, the news of Russian defeat at Fort Arthur came up. This Japanese
victory at the end of 1904 generated a series of demonstrations and strikes organized by the
police and led by priests.
 On January 22, 1905, the troops fired upon and killed hundreds in this peaceful, orderly
demonstration and this episode is called Bloody Sunday. The news of Bloody Sunday shocked
Russians and world. It increased the demand for constitutional reforms and produced a wave of
strikes in Industry and peasant riots in the countryside of Baltic region, Ukraine, Caucasus, etc.
 In October, the entire country was paralyzed by a general strike instituted by the railroad
workers and soon joined by almost everybody. In one week, the strike brought the economic life
of the country to a halt.
o The demands included the calling of a constituent assembly, repeal of ‘state of emergency’
legislation, amnesty for political prisoners, civil liberties, an 8 hour workday, disarming of
police and army and arming the workers.
o To facilitate these demands, the striking workers of St. Petersburg organized the Soviet of
Workers Deputies. Most of the delegates belonged to the Mensheviks.
 Faced with a complete breakdown of the economy, popular defiance and widespread mutinies
among military units, Nicholas reluctantly approved a manifesto on October 30,1905, that was
drafted by Sergei Witte.
o The Manifesto granted personal inviolability and freedom of conscience, speech, assembly
and association. It also promised to broaden the franchise for the election of a new
legislative assembly.
o It also announced the establishment of an ‘unbreakable rule’ that no law shall become
effective without confirmation of the State Duma.

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o Reactionaries were shocked by the October Manifesto. The bulk of the population was
satisfied with its general terms and Government authorities were thus able to suppress the
demands beyond the concessions thatthey had already announced.
o They brought revolutionary disturbances to end early in 1906 and reluctantly directed Russia
towards a constitutional path. The peasantry, on the other hand, would go on fighting for
months after the workers had been put down.
 The Menshevik view of Russia’s future development had received a blow from which it never
fully recovered. The emperor was no longer an absolute monarch after 1905 and he started to
share some of his powers with the parliament.
 The most notable achievement of the constitutional period was the agrarian reform known as
Stolypin Land Reform. Reforms were carried out for the betterment of peasants and agricultural
economy, but these efforts were interrupted by Russia’s entry in World War I, to the despair of
the rural areas which then became fertile ground for the revolutionary ideas.
 Modernization efforts in rural areas during this period coincided with an accelerated industrial
growth financed by foreign as well as domestic resources. Russian industry, after a brief pause
during 1905, entered into an era of prosperity and gains that lasted only until the World War I.
After 1906, the country enjoyed a relative calm.
 Russia’s failure to gain a decisive victory on the battlefront (during World War I) also created
grave problems at the home front. Most adversely affected by the war was the country’s
economy. Since massive mobilization of manpower coupled with great human and territorial
losses created a shortage of manpower, raw materials, foodstuffs and other necessities of life.
o To solve the labour shortage, the Government recruited women, refugees, prisoners-of-war,
and Chinese and Persian labourers. Most of this new labour force was inexperienced and its
extensive employment brought a steep decline in the industrial and agricultural production.
o In slightly more than two years of war, the cost of living increased fourfold over the pre-war
level.
o Not only did the war cause death and misery for millions of Russians, it also exposed the
incompetence of the three principal figures of the Russian imperial leadership- Nicholas II,
Empress Alexandra and Rasputin.
o The net result of these changes was instability, frustration, alienation and loss of confidence
in the Government and in the throne itself.
 The history of the political structure of imperial Russia from 1801 to 1917 falls into two periods.
From 1801 to 1905, the absolute right and from 1906 to 1917, the constitutional right. The
emperor’s vast power after the 1905 revolution rested on several pillars - the State Council, the
Council of Ministers, Police, the Senate, the State Duma.
o Brought into existence by the revolutionary turmoil of 1905, the Duma was to represent the
“will of the people”. This could be said for the First Duma and the Second Duma.
o But for the Third and the Fourth Duma (1912-1917) it was not so. Members of these
legislatures were elected by a complicated, arbitrary, capricious and manipulated process
o This was done to ensure a dominance of docile, wealthy Russians and clerics, thereby
excluding peasants, workers, women and non- Russians.

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o The last and the most important pillar was the military organization which was headed by
the emperor himself. This exclusion of peasants and workers caused discontent among
them.
 Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto had outlined a clear progression of the revolutionary stages
leading to socialism. First, the bourgeoisie would overthrow the feudal order and political
autocracy and establish the bourgeoisie democracy and bourgeoisie capitalism with the help of
its constituents - the industrial proletariat.
 The latter would then organize itself under the conditions provided by the bourgeoisie
democracy and overthrow bourgeoisie capitalism, supplanting it with socialism.
 Politically, the opposition was getting more organized. The Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party split up into two, the formal schism coming in 1912, with the Bolsheviks advocating the
dictatorship of the proletariat immediately after the overthrow of the Tsarist regime and the
Mensheviks advocating an intermediate period of bourgeoisie democracy.
 The Social Revolutionaries advocated peasant mobilization and political terrorism. The
Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadet) advocated liberalism. These gathering forces asking for
change - reform or revolution - became clearer after 1905.
 The 1905 revolution extracted a constitution from Nicholas II and the October Manifesto
declared an ambitious plan for the Duma and the answerability of the state appointees to the
Duma. These however, were never implemented.
 Tsar had made the best possible contribution to the revolution. The great war was to
demonstrate the brittleness and senility of the Tsarist order and the remarkable resilience of the
Russian society.
 The world war had accidently strengthened the bourgeoisie, the Duma and the Zemgor (the
corporation of the Union of Zemstvos and Union oftowns).The Duma was caught in a deadlock;
the revolutionaries were intransigent about the war; the liberals were hankering for a
responsible government and the government was obstinate in refusing any real sharing of
power.
 In the midst of all this, the Progressive Bloc was formed. It demanded national unity, tolerance
towards the minorities. It was declared revolutionary and unconstitutional and yet it enjoyed the
support of the war committees, the Zemgor and the local bodies.
 All these bodies were asking for a responsible government within one year of the formation in
1916. They became so recalcitrant that the then Prime Minister had to resign. The war
completely disrupted the dwindling economy.
o In agriculture, the larger estates that produced for the exports were the worst- hit.
Conscription had translated into labour shortage for them.
o The industrial sector collapsed due to labour shortage and lack of supply of raw materials.
o In commerce, foreign trade had come to a standstill because Russia was so effectively
embargoed both on the Black Sea ports and Seas of Azov ports that it could not export even
the surplus it had.
o These factors combined to cripple the Tsarist regime and power was smoothly transferred
into the hands of the provisional government. It was constituted by the Zemstvo, the
Zemgor and the Duma. It was a reformist and bourgeoisie democratic formation.

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 Therefore, the ancient regime failed to cope up with the social, economic and political
implications of modernization. The socio- economic modernization carried out by a policy that
was as amorphous as intransigent, brought about the collapse and not a revolutionary
overthrow, under the strains of war.
Situation in 1917
 The extraordinary ease with which the Government of imperial Russia suddenly vanished
stunned everyone and because the rest of the country followed the example set in the capital,
military units everywhere joined the Revolutionaries.
 And also as the news of the abdication arrived, the old imperial administration disappeared and
was replaced by the self-appointed revolutionary committees and organizations. Two
revolutionary institutions appeared –
o the Provisional Government and
o the Central Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies.
 The Provisional Government formed itself out of members of the defunct Forth Duma in 1917.
This first Provisional Government’s authority rested on a shaky ground as it could issue orders
but could not enforce them.
o Also, it was handicapped by the monumental problems it had inherited - a losing war, critical
food situation, discontented populace. Peasants demanded land, workers pressed for
increased benefits.
o The confusion was compounded by the fact that most of these demands were incompatible
with the basic principle of the new Government - legality and moderation.
 On the other hand, unlike the provisional Government,the Central Executive Committee was
politically Left, non-bourgeoisie and class- conscious. The source of its strength was the
triumphant, armed street mob.
o The Provisional Government counted among its members many professional revolutionaries.
Executive Committee invited the people to rally around it, issued proclamations and orders
and appointed its officials to establish ‘people’ power in Russia.
o Yet for several crucial weeks, the Executive Committee had no desire to assume
responsibility inherent in the political power and this made the chaotic condition worse.
o On March 1917, the Executive Committee published the famous ‘Order No. 1’, directed to
all units of the armed forces.
o It called for the election of committees from among the lower ranks and placed them under
the jurisdiction of the Central Executive Committee and granted them complete control over
the weapons.
o Though it pleaded for strict observance of military discipline on duty, the order abolished
the saluting of officers off duty. It hastened the breakdown of discipline in the armed forces
and the Russian army as an organized unit fell into disarray.
o As the actions of the Committee were creating a crisis in the army, those of the Provisional
Government were creating a crisis in the foreign policy.
 While the first Cabinet of the Provisional Government was unable to resolve the military and
foreign policy crises, it nevertheless compiled a record of achievements. It reformed prisons,

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eliminated legal restrictions based on class, reorganized food distribution, instituted 8 hour
workday and granted labourers the right to strike.
 But these achievements under normal conditions would have been impressive but in the
revolutionary times they fell short because they ignored the basic wants of the masses:
o the peasants’ demand for land,
o the workers’ insistence on better working conditions and wages.
 In these critical areas, the Provisional Government, consisting of a coalition of conservatives and
liberal spokesmen, moved very cautiously. To the radicalized masses, therefore, the
Government’s spokesmen were too slow and conservative.
o It was this attitude of the masses that was so adroitly turned to account by more radical
revolutionary elements who had begun to return from domestic and foreign exiles.
o The return of veteran revolutionaries added a new dimension to the Russian revolution. The
most influential of these were Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social
Democratic Workers Party, and Leon Trotsky.
 Shortly after returning to Petrograd, Lenin advised people to withdraw their support from the
Provisional Government and advocated that all power be transferred to the Soviets. Russia, he
urged, should be converted into a Soviet republic with no police, army or bureaucracy.
 All lands should be nationalized and placed under the control of local Soviets. Slogans like ‘End
of War’, ‘Land to Peasants’ and ‘Take back the Loot’ began to seep into consciousness of the
war wearied and hungry masses.
 The summer of 1917 brought a series of crisis that came close to destroying the Provisional
Government. Despite the fact that the morale of the troops was low, that supplies were short,
that transportation had broken down, they ordered a new military offensive.
 The purpose was to demonstrate to the allies that Russia was still strong militarily despite its
grave domestic problems. Russian demoralization and defeat fed upon themselves and
confirmed the fact that the Russian army was no longer a unit.
o With the military reverses at the warfront, there developed a serious political crisis on the
home front over the issue of self-determination in general and self- determination for
Ukraine in particular.
o The Provisional Government’s vague consent to Ukrainian demands for granting the
autonomy precipitated a crisis within the Government.
 In the midst of this situation came news of military disaster, which in turn, produced the July
Uprising. The call to the uprising was issued on July 16 by the disgruntled soldiers of Petrograd
garrison and soon they were joined by sailors, unemployed workers and various malcontents.
o Some 500,000 banners carrying demonstrators demanded the Provisional Government’s
resign and that all powers be given to the Soviets.
o The Menshevik-dominating Central Executive Committee declined the call and branded the
uprising as premature and treasonable which caused Soviet officials and some Government
officials to be roughed up by the mob.
o With no one to give the excited mob any positive direction as Lenin was not prepared to
control or direct them, the force of the July Uprising subsided as quickly as it had risen.
 To establish its authority, the Provisional Government attacked Lenin and called him a German
spy. This charge resulted in an anti-Bolshevik explosion. Another challenge faced by the

P a g e | 12
Provisional Government was by the formation of a moderately leftist coalition Government

under Keronskii’s leadership.
 4 of 16 members here were Kadets and other Socialist Revolutionaries or Mensheviks. To control
the situation, the Government summoned a conference in Moscow. Its 2,500 delegates
represented peasants, trade unions, Soviets, army committees, liberals and others.
o Neither the monarchy nor the Bolsheviks attended the conference. But instead of achieving
unity, the conference pointed to the difference between proponents and opponents of the
Revolution.
o The most forceful challenge to the Revolution came from Kornilov, the newly appointed
commander- in-chief of the Russian armies.
o The upshot of crisis affair was the total collapse of military and of the Provisional
Government and the conquest of power by Bolsheviks.
 The Kornilov crisis was simply a political crisis. It was a struggle among a few ambitious self-
appointed spokesmen in the capital. It helped to undermine the Government’s already shaky
authority and thereby shortened its life. For the Kornilov affair was completely overshadowed by
the great social upheaval engulfing all Russia.
 Russia in 1917 was still predominantly agricultural. Four of every five of its citizens were
peasants. Though strong numerically, Russia’s peasants, a group with exception of those in the
army had no direct part in the overthrow of the old regime.
o They too were surprised by the swift collapse of the Provisional Government. Although
cautious and reserved at first, they soon became the most radical element in the country,
for more radical than their principal spokesmen, the Socialist Revolutionaries.
o For Russian peasants both in and out of the armed forces, the sudden end of the Romanov
regime revived their centuries old aspiration. That aspiration was neither the right to vote
nor a parliamentary form of government, nor territorial gains.
o It was land and separation of nearby estates of nobles. Poor, illiterates, backward, neither
reconciled to the land settlement of the 1860’s nor were fully satisfied by Stolypin’s efforts.
o The Russian peasants believed that only through the enlargement of their holdings would
they ever be able to improve their wretched existence. The Peasants longing for land
manifested itself in innumerable ways.
o In the armed forces for instance, where peasants formed the majority, more than 1 million
men demobilized themselves between March and October 1917 and went home to make
sure that they would get their share of land.
o Peasant soldiers lost all strength for the war and all attempts to restore discipline or to
revive the fighting spirit proved futile. But as a whole, peasantry at the home front practiced
some degree of restraint.
o This self-control ended when the peasants became convinced that the old imperial authority
had ceased to exist. The removal of landowners and division of their property became the
peasants’ cardinal objective.
o The ambivalence of the Provisional Government towards the peasant problem coupled with
its weakness to do anything about it, was responsible for the course of agrarian radicalism.
o Government insisted on the legal procedures and orderly methods in settling land problems
by the constituent assembly whose convocation was repeatedly postponed.

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o The peasants grew tired of waiting and as a result took the law into their own hands. By
early autumn, when the Government’s authority began to fade rapidly, peasant attacks on
estates reached high proportions. Both the Russian and non- Russian peasants played a
prominent role.
 The most revolutionary group in Russia in 1917 next to the peasantry was the industrial labour.
Unlike the peasants, the workers, especially those of Petrograd, took an active part in the
overthrow of the old regime and on numerous occasions demonstrated their readiness to
defend the revolutionary gains.
 This was not because the Russian and non- Russian workers were more revolutionary than the
vastly larger peasantry but rather that they were concentrated in industrial areas and were
better organized in trade unions, factory committees and the Soviets.
o Individually and collectively, these organizations did bring many benefits to the workers such
as 8 hour workday, higher wages, improved working conditions, etc.
o Furthermore, most of the benefits were wiped out by the galloping inflation, increased
labour costs and shortage of raw material forced many industries to close down.
o The resulting unemployment was the last thing that revolutionary Russia needed. Jobless
and hungry, many workers resorted to violence. The Government deplored the prevailing
anarchy but took no firm action to restore the individual stability.
o Many workers were as desperate as the peasants. It was a critical situation on which Lenin,
the great realist and opportunist, did not fail to capitalize.
 M. Ferro called the role played by peasants and workers as the Second Revolution. He said
‘from the very depths of Russia came a great cry of hope in which were mingled the voice of the
poor and downtrodden, expressing their suffering, hopes and dreams.’
 The February Revolution gave legitimacy to the Provisional government which was an alliance
between liberals and socialists who wanted political reforms and had set up a democratically-
elected executive and constituent assembly, whereas, the October Revolution brought end to
the Provisional government under Prince Georgy Lvov.
o Russia abandoned an autocratic monarchy in the February Revolution, and then in its place
emerged a Communist dictatorship in October that established the Soviet Russia in the early
1920s.
o The former was made up of earlier Duma members who had led the movement after
February and formed the Provisional Government which officially ran the country and the
latter was the Petrograd Soviet who overthrew the Provisional Government after the
October Revolution.
o The former Duma members represented the middle and upper classes while the Soviet
represented workers and soldiers.
Fascist Counter – Revolution

 The period from 1919 to 1945 saw the meteoric rise and fall of a new political force that came to
be known as fascism. It proved to be the most destructive political phenomenon of the
twentieth century. The term ‘fascism’ is derived from the Italian word ‘fascio’ meaning band,
league, or union.

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 In its political sense, it was first used for the street-fighting combat groups that emerged in Italy
after the First World War. It thus started out as an ideology of a radical fringe and became a
political attitude and a mass movement.
o Fascism did not exist before the First World War. Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany
became the most powerful and are seen as genuinely fascist movements.
o In Italy, Benito Mussolini assumed control in 1922 and proceeded to impose policies of the
radical right which created the basic form of fascism.
o In Germany, the word NAZI was an acronym for the National Socialist German Workers
Party, which was founded by some half a dozen persons, including Adolf Hitler, during 1919-
20.
o It developed into a fascist movement led by Hitler. Besides, during this inter-War period
between 28 countries in Europe, as many as 16 turned to dictatorships.
Difference between February Revolution, 1917 and October Revolution

 The February Revolution was spontaneous and not planned and was mainly triggered by the
military failure of the Czars during the First World War. It was directionless and leaderless. The
fall of Czar was not expected by any party.
 In fact, the February Revolution was more of a general uprising against the Czar. It actually had
nothing to do with the Bolsheviks. The parties tried to establish a bourgeoisie state based on
capitalism whereas in the October Revolution parties wanted to establish a proletarian-socialist
state.
 The Bolshevik party established the Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on
October 25th, 1917. The leaders in Russia aimed to apply the principles of communism to create
a workers’ state. This is described as ‘dictatorship of the left’.
 Such an effort was made in Hungary too. But, here it did not succeed. All the other dictatorships
sought to establish authoritarian states and did not aim at mass mobilisation. Fascism did not
remain solely a European phenomenon.
 In Japan, a militarist regime emerged in the 1930s but the use of the term ‘fascist’ in context of
Japan is disputed. Eventually, these three countries - Germany, Italy and Japan - joined the
ideological alliance during 1936-37: the Anti-Comintern Pact - and, in 1940, concluded a military
alliance and fought the Second World War together.
 Nazism in Germany under Hitler emerged as the most horrific, amoral, and virulent form of
fascism. Hitler developed the most grotesque, biologically determined view of the superiority of
the German ‘race’, which he called ‘Aryan’.
o Hitler is held responsible for unleashing the Second World War, which proved to be the most
terrible war ever fought, leading to the death of nearly 55 million people.
o He also used the resources of a modern state to annihilate specific groups of people in the
most brutal manner. In German occupied Europe alone, some ten million people, including
children, were deliberately murdered.
o The Japanese conquered parts of China and the whole of south-east Asia and perpetrated
horrific atrocities on the people they conquered. Such was the price mankind paid for the
rise of fascism.

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WHAT WAS FASCISM?

 There has been a prolonged and heated debate among the historians and political scientists on
the exact nature of fascism and its core trends. But the issue of what it stood for has not been
successfully resolved. There are several reasons for this.
 First is that theory was not the strong point of the fascist movement. It was a movement based
on instinct and will.
 Secondly, the movement lacked coherence. Therefore, experts have to deal with a number of
complex and contradictory theoretical issues as well as changing realities. Even within one
country it is difficult to discern a coherent ideology because, to attain power and then to sustain
it, the fascists readily abandoned any principle.
o Mussolini, the chief proponent of fascism, was himself an opportunist. Once in power, he
made many compromises with the establishment.
o Denis Mack Smith, who has written extensively on Italian history and Mussolini, says that
there was little consistence and much opportunism in Mussolini’s behaviour, and he
changed it according to the demand of the situation.
 Thirdly, fascist ideas and methods were adopted in many countries and in each country fascism
was influenced by national circumstances. All this makes it extremely difficult to define what
fascism was.
 Here it might be added that lack of a consistent or coherent ideology was not necessarily a
drawback. In fact, this enabled the fascists to diversify their appeal and to attract different
audiences to their ideas. Some of the features of fascism can be delineated as follows.
i. Firstly, the fascist governmental system was led by a dictator who was seen as infallible and
who enjoyed a complete power. The cult of the leader was an essential part of the fascist
programme and an elaborate superstructure was imposed on top of it.
ii. The leader was sustained by popular adulation. He led a cadre-based movement and there
was nothing democratic about these cadres. The cadres were hierarchically structured, from
whom unquestioned obedience to the leader and the nation was demanded. In Japan,
however, a single leader did not emerge.
iii. Secondly, the fascist movements had a ‘core myth’ of national rebirth and regeneration.
They believed in the necessity of destroying the then existing political form and, in different
ways, aimed at establishing a new order based on ‘new values’.
iv. They had nothing but contempt for communism and democracy. Towards capitalism, their
attitude remained ambivalent.
v. Thirdly, fascist states attempted to pose complete control over all aspects of life - political,
social, cultural, and economic.
vi. Fourthly, the fascist movements assigned to the nation an unquestionable primacy. They
emphasised that the nation had a predestined role in history and that it must promote the
well being of its people by providing adequate natural resources, even by grabbing
additional territory.
 Hence, they looked upon war as a means of strengthening the nation and of making it a world
power. They inculcated commitment to offer one’s life for the nation and, gradually, readiness
to offer one’s life, even without understanding the reasons, began to play an important role.

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 In Prussia, martial values were strong. In Japan, though the Samurai was deprived of power,
their fighting code ( Bushido) inspired Japanese soldiers to die for their emperor. In Italy, such
traditions were not significant.
 Yet the romanticism associated with the struggle for unification and the ‘national humiliation’
caused by the First World War had led to propagandist transfiguration. Further, the fascist states
propagated theories of racial superiority.
 They identified ‘goodness’ and ‘superiority’ within ‘us’ and the logical result was that ‘evil’ was
identified with ‘them’. This led to the scapegoating of all opponents. In the fascist states,
internal enemies and external enemies were amalgamated through propaganda into a common
object of hatred.
 This concept of racial supremacy got translated into a determined effort to exterminate the
Jewish people under Hitler. At first, Mussolini did not adopt racial theories. But, after the
conquest of Ethiopia in 1936, he wanted to prepare the Italian people for a role in the future
domination over ‘inferior’ people.
o From 1938, racism was openly practiced and taught in classrooms in Italy. But Mussolini did
not pursue the anti- Semitic policy vigorously.
o The Japanese had a deep sense of superiority that convinced them that their destiny was to
rule over other people and this made them treat their opponents with a bestial cruelty
during the period 1936- 45.
 Further, the fascists had a distinct male chauvinistic and militaristic ethos. Both Hitler and
Mussolini exalted the role of woman as a mother and home-maker and discouraged women
from taking up professions or competing with men.
o Even most intimate aspects of private life, for example, those relating to reproduction and
maternity, were subordinated to the requirements of the state. Mussolini used to say that
‘maternity is the patriotism of women’.
o The Nazi state, during the Second World War, did not employ women in factories. Instead,
foreigners from conquered countries were employed, as many as seven million by 1944.
o It should be pointed out here that the treatment of women in fascist regimes was not
particularly different from other countries because at this time patriarchal values dominated
everywhere and feminist consciousness amongst women was not widespread.
o It is notable that a substantial section of women supported Hitler because he seemed to
bolster the institution of family in troubled times.
 The most distinguishing feature of fascism, however, was the ruthless drive to attain and hold
state power. On the road to power, the leaders and their advisors were ready to abandon any
principle and grab any opportunity.
ORIGIN OF FASCISM
 The origin of ‘fascism’ can be traced back to some tendencies that were apparent before the
outbreak of the First World War, to the experiences of this War, the sense of humiliation arising
out of the post-War settlement, and the growing fear that the Bolshevik style Revolution would
spread.
 It was also a reaction to the failure of liberal institutions to solve the crushing problems of the
modern society and as an expression of hostility to the democratic values. In Germany, the

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Great Depression proved to be a catalyst. Besides, Mussolini and Hitler proved to be charismatic
leaders who were able to exploit the situation to their advantage.
 The origin of fascism is sometimes traced to some developments in the late nineteenth century.
In both Italy and Germany, which had emerged as united countries in 1870, the liberal traditions
remained weak. Though the paraphernalia of a parliamentary system was established, it had
worked imperfectly even before 1914.
 The conduct of the governments during the War further eroded the credibility of the
parliamentary democracy. In Germany, some people began to talk about the need for ‘healthy
people’ living close to land and argued that Germany lacked the space for providing a ‘healthy’
life to its people.
 The Small farmers and craftsmen, who were suffering because of the adoption of efficient
technologies during this period of rapid industrialization, were receptive to these ideas.
 The late nineteenth century also saw an intellectual revolt in certain sections of the society
against what has later been described as ‘Modernity’. Predominant liberal values, such as rights
of individuals, the power of reason and science to bring progress and positivism, etc., came
under attack.
o From their different perspectives and disciplines, intellectuals of the period, such as
Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, and many others began to express their
contempt for the liberal values and emphasise the irrational sources of human conduct.
o They argued that basic instincts rather than reason determined the human action. They also
held that the routine of a society based on technological advance had made people weak,
selfish, and complacent and that clever people manipulated politics to come to power.
o But all such ideas remained on the fringe. Fascism was a post-1919 phenomenon. It is only
with the advantage of hindsight that such influences and developments have been linked to
the origins of fascism.
 In Germany, Italy, as well as Japan, the perceived ‘wrong’ of 1919 created deep resentment.
Germans felt wounded by the ‘humiliation’ inflicted by the Versailles Treaty. The situation
became worse as a result of the decision of the victors to prolong the economic blockade on the
defeated powers until they signed the treaties.
 Italy was a victorious nation. Yet it got what the Italians saw as ‘mutilated peace’.
Demobilisation of soldiers added to the problem. In Italy alone, 20 lakh soldiers were
demobilised. In the public sphere, national honour, sacrifices in war, and the trench life were
glorified.
o But the truth is that the soldiers had to spend a very difficult time in the muddy trenches. On
their return, they failed to find employment or a new role in the civil life.
o They sought to continue comradeship by forming paramilitary groups. They denounced the
softness of the parliamentary regime.
o The weakness of the central authority,the failure to gain the perceived fruits of victory,
inflation, rising unemployment, and frustrated expectations created deep trauma.
 Confronted with political chaos and social turmoil, the middle classes also abandoned their faith
in the parliamentary democracy and were lured by the prospects of a strong government that
the fascists promised and established.

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Fear of the Spread of Communism

 To an extent, the rise of fascism was the result of the reaction of those who felt threatened by
communism and wanted a non-communist alternative. Lenin explicitly stated that the Soviet
revolution was the start of a world revolution. The Moscow-led Communist International was
created to hasten the achievement of this goal.
 Though this belief proved to be delusory, it created a fear of the spread of communism.
Intellectuals and workers were attracted towards communism because they felt that capitalism
had failed to provide a solution to the problems arising out of poverty and unemployment.
 At a time when there was a fear of the spread of the communist revolution, on the one hand,
and weakening of the traditional political structures because of disintegration of empires on the
other, fascism seemed to provide a third alternative.
o The middle class and upper class anxieties were reinforced by the failure of the government
to suppress opponents. They began to live under the threat of a communist takeover and
began to patronise groups that could control the communists.
o This led to the emergence of independent voluntary groups of former officers and
demobilised soldiers like the Free Corps in Germany and similar armed squads in Italy.
 In Italy, this fear increased when the Italian Socialist Party emerged as the single largest party in
the legislature in November 1919 elections. It seemed as if the contagion of revolution was
spreading when the socialists established control over one quarter of all local councils.
o In August 1920, there was a large scale strike during which 400,000 workers occupied
factories in towns across Italy. This strike ended peacefully with a compromise settlement.
o But the industrialists began to feel insecure. In rural areas, landlords and peasants felt
threatened by the mushrooming of farm workers’ leagues.
o At this stage, fearing a socialist revolution, the propertied classes began to patronise
‘private armies’ of paramilitary activists and began to provide financial and other support to
them. These groups indulged in counter violence and terror against trade unions and
socialist organisations.
o Though they lacked any coherent ideology, they became linked with the ultra nationalist,
political and cultural undercurrents and ultimately became a part of fascist squads.
o In Italy, their number increased from about 2,000 in the summer of 1920 to about 300,000
by October 1922, when Mussolini had assumed power.
 In Hamburg, Munich, Dresden, Berlin, and in many other towns in Germany there were huge
demonstrations of workers and soldiers led mostly by the communist leaders who occupied
many cities.
 On 9th November 1919, an anti- war communist revolutionary, Karl Liebknecht, proclaimed a
‘socialist republic’ and the ‘world revolution’ from the balcony of the imperial palace in Berlin.
o The government, of which the German Socialist Party (SPD) was a part, took help from the
Free Corps, which were voluntary units formed by demobilised army officers and soldiers, to
defeat them.
o Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were simply clubbed to death by the Free Corps members.
The communists remained active in Saxony until 1923. The government had to face
opposition from the Right wing as well.

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o In March 1920, the Free Corps units took control of Berlin. (This is known as ‘Kapp Putsch’
after the name of their leader). The army refused to fight the Free Corps soldiers and the
government was forced to flee to Stuttgart.
o But the Social Democrats organised a general strike of the workers, which proved sufficient
to defeat this attempt by the Free Corps to take over the control. Thereafter, the Free Corps
carried out a series of assassinations.
 This period also saw recurrent strikes, especially in Ruhr from 1919 to 1923. Political violence of
all shades remained prevalent up to 1923, when Germany had to face French invasion. In fact, in
both Italy and Germany, conservatives, the propertied class and those in power were alarmed by
the growing power of organised labour.
 These events set the stage for the success of Mussolini in Italy. Germany, however, saw a period
of economic recovery and political stability from 1924. But after the Great Depression engulfed
Germany, Hitler was able to seize power.
Failure of Parliamentary Democracy and Rise of Fascism

 An important factor in the rise of fascism during the inter-war period was that political parties
and sufficient number of people in most European countries did not display positive support for
the spirit of democracy and the parliamentary system.
o After the War, even victorious countries - Britain and France - faced deep discontent. Their
soldiers mutinied at many places when arrangements for their return to their homes could
not be made speedily.
o The British government had to face a rising wave of unrest amongst the workers. There were
police strikes in London and Liverpool and a strike at an engineering site in Glasgow. During
one such strike, the railway network shut down for nine days.
o Fears arose that the Bolsheviks could exploit the situation and use it as a vehicle for a world
revolution.
 In France, in the elections of 1919, the Conservative Party exploited this fear and its election
posters depicted a terrifying communist with a knife between his teeth. The right- wing parties
won a landslide victory in these elections.
 In Britain, in 1923, the Labour Party had formed the government. In 1924, the Conservatives
won the elections because of the ‘Red scare’.
 Even in the United States, after 1919, there was such fear of the spread of communism that
foreigners were deported, without assigning any reason, out of panic at communist subversion.
But, in these countries, as also in Czechoslovakia, societies remained steadfast in their
commitment to liberal and democratic norms and values.
 Fascist movements also emerged in north-west Europe - in Britain, France, Holland, and the
Scandinavian countries. In Britain, in 1932, Oswald Mosley founded the British Union of
Fascists. He was an admirer of Mussolini and a friend of Hitler.
o His supporters wore black shirts and, in his speeches, he denounced the Jews. Mussolini
provided funds for the party.
o It developed into a coherent, though Utopian, economic programme. It got a wide support
because this was a period of general discontent because of the Great Depression.

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o In the middle of 1934, this party claimed to have a membership of 40,000-50,000 people.
However, it got little support from the people at large. On the whole, the British people
avoided political extremes.
 In France, too, the experiences and frustrations of the World War led to the strengthening of the
forces of the far- right in the 1920s. In 1929, a party of fascists called the ‘Cross of Fire’ was
established. Many wealthy people joined it.
o A Patriotic Youth Movement had also emerged, which in 1930, claimed to have 10,000
members. One reason could be that during this period, immigration of people from the
neighbouring countries - Italians, Spanish, Poles, Belgians and Jews - increased.
o By the late 1930s, the proportion of immigrants in the French population reached 7.5 per
cent. This gave rise to increased xenophobia and racism. The year 1934 saw a political
scandal around a fraudulent bond-selling scheme, which was engineered by a person who
happened to be a Jew.
o On 4th February 1934, right-wing groups rioted against the government because they
suspected its complicity in the scandal. They crossed the river Seine and charged towards
the chamber of the lower house of the French Parliament.
o There were virtual street-fights in Paris. Hundreds of demonstrators were wounded before
they could be dispersed. But, to save the Republic, on 12th February, millions of Frenchmen
joined the march in support of the Republic.
o The government resigned and elections were announced. To fight the elections Radicals,
Socialists, and Communists had formed ‘the Popular Front’ and won the elections.
 Thus, in Britain and France, though the fascist movements had created anxiety, none of these
ever attained political power because the people demonstrated their determination to maintain
the parliamentary system.
 In Italy and Germany, on the other hand, in the face of political chaos and social turmoil after the
First World War, various classes abandoned their feeble democracies and were lured by the
prospect of a strong government that the fascists promised.
 The political parties did not place the well- being of the whole nation above their narrow party
interests. Anti-liberalism and anti-democratic ideas were held not only by communists and the
less educated people but by middle class youth, university students, and the ruling elites.
 In the case of Germany, as Fritz Fischer and, following him, other historians have argued, from
the middle of the nineteenth century, the landowners, army officers, bureaucrats, and the
Prussian nobility had shown reluctance to face the political consequences of industrial
modernity democracy and parliamentarianism.
o The industrial bourgeoisie also made common cause with them. This was the basic feature
of the political structure of the German Empire created by Bismarck in 1871.
o These ruling classes successfully manipulated the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie into
support for nationalist and backward-looking policies.
o They also weaned the workers away from an active policy of socialist democratisation. This
remained a dominant feature of the German state even after 1919.
 The Weimer constitution came into effect in August 1919. It was quite progressive and provided
for a president who was to be elected by a popular vote for the tenure of seven years. Ebert
became the first President.

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o The legislature was to consist of members elected by a system of proportional

representation. The right to vote was given to all men and women, with women being given
the right to vote for the first time.
o The cabinet was made responsible to the legislature. It created a federal structure and
considerable autonomy was given to the individual states.
o However, this constitution contained some crucial features that impeded the functioning of
the parliamentary system. The provision for proportional representation prevented any
party from getting a majority.
o All the governments formed under this constitution were coalition governments that
changed frequently. The average span of governments from 1920 to 1933 was only eight
months.
o Secondly, powers of the president included the infamous Article 48, which gave the
President a power to suspend civil rights and to rule by emergency decrees. Field Marshall
Hindenburg had who succeeded Ebert as president in 1925, used this article liberally.
o The most important factor that impeded the success of the parliamentary system was that
the political climate in Germany was characterised by social tensions, administrative chaos,
military defeat, and national humiliation.
 The first government was formed by a coalition of the Social Democratic Party, the Catholic
Centre Party, and the German Democratic Party. During 1919-23, the Republic saw a series of
attacks from the Right as well as from the Left.
o The government took help from the Free Corps to foil these threats. The government had to
face recurrent strikes, especially in the Ruhr region. This period saw unprecedented
inflation, which led to fear, panic, and a total loss of confidence in the Republic.
o The political parties, too, did not display any positive support for the democratic values and
the spirit of parliamentary democracy. They continued to view issues from the perspective
of interests of their own parties.
o The communists and socialists became such irreconcilable enemies that they did not unite
even against Hitler in the 1930s. In the successive elections of the 1920s, no single party got
a majority. The Social Democratic Party often emerged as the largest single party in the
legislature.
o But it did not form the government and preferred to stay in opposition. (In fact, any party
with socialist aspirations faces a genuine difficulty. It can enter a coalition government only
by compromising on policy and such a compromise discredits it in the eyes of its supporters.)
o The smaller parties, which entered the coalition governments, tended to be personality
centered. These parties were concerned more with the effects of their decisions on their
standing amongst their supporters and not about the stability of the government.
o These factors did not allow the parliamentary system to acquire strong roots. Thus, in
Germany, the politically conscious people and the political elite did not rise above party
interests to work for the democratic values.
o Even though, by 1925, Germany did experience political stability, acceptance in the family of
nations, and a marked improvement in its economy. Without support from the political elite
and other sections of society, democracy could not survive.

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 In 1928, the Social Democratic Party decided to form a coalition government and its leader,
Hermann Muller, became the Chancellor of Germany. While his government survived some
initial controversies, it could not survive the economic crisis that rocked the world following the
New York Wall Street crash.
 In Italy also, Mussolini came to power because the political elite was lured by the prospects of a
strong government. The rise of Mussolini to power in the 1920s and of Hitler during the 1930s
shows that parliamentary democracy and the rule of law might not continue automatically and
inevitably if they are not defended.
MUSSOLINI AND FASCISM

 Italy was the first country to turn to fascism. Mussolini became the Duce of Italy in 1922 and
continued in that position till 1943 thus becoming the longest serving Italian leader of the
century. He began his career as a socialist agitator and journalist.
 After the First World War had started, he campaigned for participation in the war. When Italy
entered the war in 1915, he served in the army until he was wounded in 1917. In March 1919,
he founded the Fascist-movement at a meeting in Milan that was attended by less than 200
people, mainly interventionists, war-veterans, ex-soldiers, and syndicalists.
o It adopted a left-wing radical programme, including an eight-hour working day, votes for
women, and a tax on capital.
o But, soon Mussolini and fascists abandoned this programme and began to express
themselves in favour of a strong government, regeneration of Italy, and security of property.
o These ideas appealed to the Italians who were tired of a weak government and non-
achievement in the foreign policy and were the scared of the spread of Bolshevism.
Mussolini gained the support of many landowners in the Po Valley, industrialists, and army
officers.
o Fascist squads, which came to be known as ‘black shirts’, carried on local struggles and
activities against socialists, Catholics, and liberals. Mussolini used his journalistic and
oratorical qualities skillfully.
o He was aided by the fact that D’Annunzio retreated from politics after 1920. Mussolini
appropriated many aspects of his style: black-shirted uniform, salute, and making
enthusiastic speeches to admiring crowds.
 Between 1918 and 1922, there were five governments in Italy. In November 1919 elections, the
Fascists obtained few votes and no seats. Two parties - the Catholic Popular Party and the
Socialist Party - got more than half the seats between them. But the differences between them
were deep rooted.
o The former had been formed with the tacit support of the Pope to fight socialism. The result
was that rather than cooperating to govern, each devoted its energies to prevent the other
from governing.
o These developments increased the contempt for parliamentary institutions and
disillusionment with the existing establishment.
o In the elections of May 1921, even though fascists were able to secure only 35 seats out of
more than 500 seats, Giolitti, who dominated the parliamentary life during this period,
invited Mussolini to join the National Bloc. In 1922, Mussolini was made the prime minister.

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 How was it that Mussolini, the leader of an insignificant group of 1919 and having no substantial
base in Parliament even in 1921, was able to become the prime minister in 1922?
o He succeeded because the political parties did not show commitment to work in a
parliamentary system, because the number of fascists outside the Parliament swelled.
o Mussolini gave to the fascist movement a vitality that was in sharp contrast with a dull and
tired government, and because both the king and the politicians cooperated to bring him
into the government.
o Though the political programme of Mussolini remained vague, the influence of fascist
squads continued to increase and he began to get support from the property owners in
general as also from businessmen.
o The church too became sympathetic when he began to make conciliatory speeches about
the Roman Catholic Church. In September 1922, he announced that he had dropped the
republican part of his programme. Thereafter, the King also began to view the fascists
favourably.
 In October 1922, fascist squads took over many towns in the northern and central Italy.
Mussolini decided to capitalise on their success and called for a ‘March on Rome’. Plans were
made to seize key buildings such as police stations, post offices, and communication centres on
the night of 27th October and then advance on to Rome.
 Thus, a state of virtual civil war came to exist over much of northern and central Italy. Mussolini,
uncertain of success, remained in Milan. The events that followed were embroidered and
glorified in the fascist historiography as ‘March on Rome’.
 In fact, the King and his advisors named Mussolini as the prime minister and Mussolini arrived in
Rome comfortably sleeping in the coach of a train. He became the head of a 14- member
cabinet, of which only three were fascists.
 The majority of Italians acquiesced because they wished to avoid the threat of a social revolution
and because they did not expect a fundamental change in the institutions. After assuming
power, Mussolini began to transform the Italian political system and created a fascist state.
 In December 1922, Mussolini created a Grand Council. In 1923, fascist ‘squads’ were turned into
a militia, which gave the new regime its armed force and made it independent of the army. In
April 1924, elections were held in which unprecedented malpractices and corruption were
resorted to and the fascists were able to get two-thirds of all votes.
o In June 1924, violence reached the Parliament when a socialist member of the legislature,
who had collected evidence against the fascists, was murdered in circumstances that made
it seem that the murderers were fascists. This temporarily galvanised the opposition.
o But rather than finding a solution, the opposition reacted by boycotting the Parliament. This
proved to be politically disastrous and helped Mussolini in establishing a dictatorship. In
1926, he imposed restrictions on the fascist party itself and suspended the freedom of press
and expression.
o During his public appearances, frenzied crowd saluted him as the leader with cries of ‘Duce!
Duce!’. It seemed that he had created a successful alternative to both, a capitalist
democracy and Soviet communism.

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o This, however, was a misconception. The Duce was able to make trains run on time and this
made him famous abroad. But even this description applied only to trains carrying tourists to
ski resorts.
 Mussolini’s method of resolving the social conflict was the establishment of a corporatist society
where conflict of interest between producers, workers, consumers, and government would be
resolved by negotiation, under the guidance of the state in bodies known as corporations.
o For this purpose, a huge bureaucratic structure was built under the Ministry of Corporations.
Twenty-two ‘Corporations’ were established for each sector of the economy where,
theoretically, differences between business owners and workers could be resolved in an
atmosphere of mutual understanding.
o While this system sounded good theoretically, in practice it did not work. The big
corporations came to be controlled by big business.
o Mussolini gave industrialists a free hand and patronised big businesses through state
investment and government contracts. Labour unions and socialist groups were destroyed
and only fascist unions were allowed.
o Workers were depriveven of their basic right to move from one job to another without
official permission. The school curriculum was revised to make it an instrument of fascist
propaganda.
o Fascist youth organisations were used to encourage young people to spy on the families and
report about anti-fascist sentiments.
 In 1938, Mussolini forced the Council of Deputies to vote itself out of existence, thus, scrapping
the last vestige of democracy. However, Mussolini had to preserve the monarchy and the
Church.
o In 1929, he made an agreement with the Pope that settled the question of the Pope’s
temporal power by restoring his sovereignty to the Vatican City and recognising Catholicism
as the sole religion of Italy.
o This brought the hostility between the Italian state and the Church, which had lasted for
about 60 years, to an end. Under Mussolini, the armed forces also continued to enjoy some
independence.
 Economically, Italy remained backward, though this was concealed by a massive propaganda. In
1938, Mussolini adopted anti-Semitism as the official policy. In 1942, when Hitler adopted ‘the
Final Solution’, Italian forces were also instructed to work for extermination of European Jewry.
 But, as Mussolini’s authority declined after 1942, the Italian officers sabotaged such policies and
did not put them into practice. In the foreign policy, Mussolini did not have any clear goal.
However, he wanted to bring glory to Italy by following an expansionist policy.
o He invaded Ethiopia and brought it under Italy’s control in 1936. Thus, the humiliation of
1896 was avenged. This increased Mussolini’s prestige tremendously.
o The Italians used barbarous methods to break the resistance of Ethiopians, which included
chemical warfare and mass executions.
o In 1936, Mussolini’s Italy left the League of Nations and joined Hitler and thus the Rome-
Berlin Axis was formed. In 1939, Mussolini invaded Albania and conquered it with a great
difficulty.

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 It became clear that Mussolini’s hunger was far greater than his resources. In May, he signed the
‘Pact of Steel’ with Hitler. In the World War, the Italian army failed to conquer Greece or to
suppress Serbian resistance.
 In fact, Italy proved to be the Achilles heel of the Axis. In 1943, when Italy’s surrender was
announced, Nazis took over power in North Italy. Ultimately, two days before Hitler committed
suicide, Mussolini was shot by some Italian partisans and was then hung, upside down, from a
garage roof in Milan.
HITLER AND NAZISM

 In the 1920s, fascism had acquired a base only in Italy. Fascism did not seem to have much
future. In Germany, in the elections of 1928, Hitler’s party got only 12 seats. But, then came the
World Depression. It undermined the stability of all newly established regimes.
 The problems arising out of the ways of handling this unprecedented crisis led to the resignation
of Hermann Muller and set in train the chain of events that led to the establishment of a brutal
totalitarian regime under Hitler.
 Given the consequences of the establishment of the Nazi regime, more than 60 years after Hitler
had committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin, the question why Germans followed him so blindly
continues to be heatedly debated.
o Hitler was born in a small Austrian town. He was not formally educated. As a young adult, he
could not accustom himself to regular work. In 1913, he moved to Munich, the capital of
Bavaria in Germany.
o He looked upon himself as a pan-German and not as an Austrian subject. During the First
World War, he joined the German army. He could not move beyond the rank of a corporal
though he earned medals for his bravery.
o He was shattered by Germany’s defeat in the war. At the end of the war, at the age of 29
years, he returned to Munich. At this time he was like millions of Germans to whom the
future looked grim.
o He was shocked by the ‘humiliation’ of Germany at Versailles and began to make speeches
to small audiences in streets. In 1919, he joined a small party called the German Workers’
Party.
o Here he made his mark as a skilled orator who could move the masses by the vehemence of
his language. He dared to say what his audiences knew all along but were afraid to express.
o In 1921, he took over this party and named it as the National Socialist German Workers
Party (or NSDAP by the initials of the name in German).
o Later, this came to be known as Nazi, this being the first part of the German way of
pronouncing the word ‘national’. He established a paramilitary arm of the party also, which
became known as the ‘Storm Troopers’,to police the meetings of the Nazi party.
o The Nazi party expanded rapidly. Its members wore special badges and uniforms and they
marched like a robot through the streets of Munich. During the 1920s, the Nazi party was an
obscure, not very successful party and remained on the political fringe.
o This changed as a result of Hitler’s relentless drive for power, lack of commitment amongst
Germans for parliamentary democracy, and circumstances arising out of the World
Depression.

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 In November 1923, Hitler attempted what is known as the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ to come to power
when he led a march of his followers from the Beer Hall at Munich. The police broke up this
march and arrested Hitler.
 He was tried for treason. He used his trial for propagating his views. He was sent to prison where
he wrote his autobiography with the title ‘My Struggle’ (Mein Kampf). This book is badly
written, repetitious, has pretentious style, and lacks original ideas.
o His contemporaries as well as historians intended to dismiss it as an expression of dogmas
that echoed the conversation of any cafe in Germany. But this is to underestimate his book.
o It is partly a misleading biography, partly a repetition of the volkish (simple folk) ideas that
were commonplace in Germany during the preceding decades, partly a political programme,
and partly a handbook for political action.
o He was explicit about the need to take revenge for the humiliation of 1919. He harped on to
the virtues of Germany, which he left undefined, and the natural superiority of the German
people whom he called Aryan.
o He talked of including all German-speaking people living in Austria, Sudeten area of
Czechoslovakia, and Danzig in the proposed Third Reich.
o He also argued that Germany lacked space for a ‘healthy’ expansion of German people and
hence he elucidated the concept of lebensraum, i.e. ‘the living spaces’ to which Germans
were entitled.
o This meant acquisition of territories outside the areas where Germans lived. Thus, Hitler
spelled out his foreign policy goals explicitly. He also expressed a fear and paranoid hatred
for the Jews.
o He made it clear that it would be his task to solve ‘the Jewish question’ by radical and brutal
means. After his release from prison in 1925, Hitler began to describe himself as a ‘writer’.
He devoted himself to nurturing his party.
 During 1925-1929, Hitler was fairly well-known. But, for the Nazi party, these were unproductive
years. After four years of propaganda, the Nazi party got less than three per cent votes and 12
seats in the elections of 1928.
o One reason could be that these were the years when Germany was enjoying amazing
economic revival and political rehabilitation. By the early 1930, the Depression had hit
Germany.
o Unemployment increased. The middle class feared a loss of purchasing power and a socialist
revolution. The depression also stirred up a universal loathing for the Treaty of Versailles.
o All this provided an opportunity to Hitler and he inflamed these feelings by his speeches and
propaganda. It has been well said that without the Depression, Hitler might have faded out
of history; the Depression turned him into a figure of Napoleonic proportions.
o He denounced Versailles, unearned incomes, and unfair taxes. Above all, he denounced the
Jews. In Anti-Semitism, he got the lowest common denominator on which all classes and all
parties could unite.
o There were 600,000 Jews in Germany, i.e. one per cent of the population. Hitler could afford
to antagonise the Jew’s.

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o His careful construction of the party machine during the previous five years began to pay off.
He also gained by the fact that the political parties were unable to cope with this economic
crisis.
 Muller, the Chancellor, resigned. After his resignation, President Hindenburg, who was revered
as a war hero, made frequent use of Article 48 of the Weimar constitution to rule through a
succession of chancellors [Heinrich Bruning (1930—32), Franz von Papen (1932), and Schleicher
[December 1932 and January 1933)] who were all his favourites.
 In September 1930, with a view to win popular legitimacy, Bruning called for a general election.
For Bruning, elections proved to be a total failure. It was Hitler who played on the anxiety of the
German-voters centering on the economic situation.
o The Nazis won 107 seats and emerged as the second largest party after the Social
Democratic Party.
o Although disproportionately supported by some social groups rather than others, Nazism did
represent a broad mass movement while other parties represented narrow interest groups.
o It had an all embracing, though vague, ideology - anti-capitalist, anti- communist, racialist,
and volkish. Hitler also made very efficient use of the mass media.
 The political history of Germany during 1932-33 is full of intrigue and miscalculations. When the
economic crisis had reached its lowest point in 1932, the term of office of Hindenburg expired.
Hitler chose to stand against him and lost.
 He got 13 million votes as against the 19 million that the president got. This happened despite
the fact that the new chancellor, Bruning, banned the Storm Troopers while the Social
Democratic Party, the Centre Party, and the Liberals urged the voters to support Hindenburg.
 President Hindenburg was deeply perturbed that he was not elected unopposed. In 1932,
elections for the legislature were held twice - in July and November. Hitler openly said that the
aim of the Nazi party was the destruction of the Weimer Republic.
 In the July elections, the Nazis emerged as the largest single party, winning 37 per cent of the
vote and 230 seats. This made the Nazi party the largest parliamentary group to sit in the
legislature since 1920, and also a party for which a higher proportion of electors had voted.
 After these elections, Hindenburg was cajoled into accepting that the parliamentary crisis could
be resolved only by offering chancellorship to Hitler. It seems that by this time, Germany’s ruling
classes began to feel that the only way to escape from a deep economic crisis was to hand over
the political power to a totalitarian movement.
 On 30th January 1933, Hitler became the chancellor in a coalition cabinet. Historians still disagree
as to why Hindenburg took this step. Perhaps his advisors totally misjudged and underestimated
Hitler. Hitler was determined to escape all restraining influences.
o Hitler had insisted on new elections as a condition of accepting office. Hitler desired a two-
third majority, which was necessary to pass the Enabling Law, which could enable Hitler to
pass any law he wanted, without any regard to the parliamentary approval.
o At this stage there was a fire in the building of the Legislative Assembly. Hitler blamed the
Communists for this act though there was no proof. He also used this as a pretext for
imposing a state of emergency.

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o Despite declaring a state of emergency, use of unparalleled violence, intimidation in the

electoral campaign by the Nazis, and vigorous use of press and radio, the Nazi party could
secure only 44 per cent of votes and 288 seats.
o Yet the Enabling Act was forcibly passed. Only the Centre Party supported Hitler and only the
Social Democrats proved courageous enough to vote against the motion.
o Thereafter, Hitler dismantled what was left of the democratic set-up and inaugurated one of
the worst regimes known to history.
o August 1934, Hindenburg died and an impressive funeral ceremony was held. Thereafter,
Hitler organised a plebiscite, as a result of which the offices of the president and chancellor
were merged.
 Like his hero Mussolini, Hitler took the title of Fuhrer or leader - ‘Adolf Hitler, Leader of the
Reich and People’. The army was made to swear a personal oath of loyalty to him as the head of
the state. This subordinated its officer corps to Hitler’s will. Germany under Hitler did not have a
constitution.
 It was governed under the emergency decrees of 1934. He called his empire ‘The Third German
Empire (Reich)’ - the first being the Holy Roman Empire and the second that of 1871-1918. This
Third Empire rose and fell with Hitler.
o During 1933-34, Hitler destroyed most of the institutions of a free society. In March 1933,
the independent powers of the federal states were abolished.
o From April, the civil service, including the judiciary, was purged of the political opponents of
Nazism, Jews, and persons of Jewish descent.
o In May, trade unions were suppressed and replaced by the German labour front controlled
by the Nazis. In January 1934, the upper house of Parliament was abolished.
o In June 1934, Hitler eliminated the Storm Troopers, on whom he had depended during his
years of struggle, because its leaders were becoming ambitious.
o They, and other political opponents, were murdered brutally on the night of 30th June 1934,
and it came to be known as the ‘Night of Long-Knives’. With this, the Storm Troopers ceased
to be a political force.
o The Nazis continued to arrest and beat up all opponents. Concentration camps were created
in different parts of Germany to capture the opponents there. The press and broadcasting
were placed under strict control.
o In the universities, famous books by anti-Nazi and Jewish authors were burnt. Universities
did not put up resistance, nor did theologians. Many Jews, such as Albert Einstein, began to
leave the country, as did a few Christian Germans such as the Nobel Prize winning author
Thomas Mann.
o All political parties either disbanded themselves or were outlawed. The Centre Party of
Roman Catholics agreed to dissolve itself in exchange for an agreement between the Vatican
and Hitler under which the Roman Catholic Church disbanded its political, social, and
professional organisations in return for permission to run schools and to publish pastoral
letters.
 Many bishops guarded these privileges carefully. The stand of Protestant churches remained
ambiguous. The Protestants shared nationalist sentiments of the Nazis. They failed to condemn
the treatment of the Jews or the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ programme.

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o At the same time, one should appreciate that both the Protestant and Roman Catholic
Churches stood firmly against the Nazi attempts to make them approve racial theories as
defined in the Nuremburg Laws of 1935.
o During 1933 and 1934, Hitler implemented what was called the process of ‘coordination’ or
‘falling in line’. It was a complex procedure designed to impose Nazi values on everyday
German life and to compel obedience.
o Every area of German life was Nazified. Nazis promoted the image of a monolithic, efficient
and harmonious state under a charismatic Fuhrer.
o He was represented as one above the conflicts and factions. But the Nazi state was not an
efficient monolith. Hitler often set up competing agencies without any clear division of
power that were accountable to him alone.
 At the same time, he was not a weak dictator. He proved himself to be a skilled tactician and
manipulator and always ensured that he got his way. But, he was simply less interested in the
details of policy implementation. Ambitious Nazi leaders carved out empires of influence for
themselves.
 Hitler made attempts not only to coerce the Germans into conformity but also to obtain their
support through propaganda. In March 1933, a ministry was created with the curious title
‘Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda’ under Joseph Paul Goebbles.
o Its function was to create the feeling that the nation enthusiastically supported Hitler. It
used the press, radio, and the educational system for political indoctrination as well as for
light entertainment.
o It floated many schemes to inculcate a sense of harmonious, regenerated community.
Socialorganisations, such as the Hitler Youth League, League of German Girls, and women
organisations were created to infuse Germans with a new spirit.
o A range of programmes, such as leisure activities and holiday trips with names such as
‘beauty of labour’ and ‘strength through joy’, were designed to inculcate a sense of
community at the factory level.
o Hitler understood the utility of rituals and symbols in mobilising the masses as spectacles of
power where, with the thunderous applause, adoring Germans hailed him as a saviour
figure.
o It is important to remember that the propaganda could have been effective because he was
building upon already existing values and mentality.
 Hitler was clear that, for the survival of his regime, he had to succeed on the economic front. He
chose his advisors carefully. The economy was tightly controlled by the government. Steps were
taken to reduce unemployment.
o In 1936, a Four-Year Plan was adopted for the economic growth and for creating self-
sufficiency by increasing the production of vital raw materials such as synthetic rubber, fuel
oil and iron- ore.
o Expenditure on armaments and public works, especially roads, also increased rapidly. Thus,
Hitler unwittingly adopted the Keynesian solution of increasing government expenditure.
o In 1933, six million German were out of employment. Gradually recovery took place, and by
1938, the full employment level was reached.

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o In fact, by 1939 there was a shortage of labour. Though wages especially of workers did not
rise in real terms, they saw security of employment as a great benefit.
 The most peculiar aspect of the Nazi regime was the persecution of the Jewish people with a
brutality that is unparalleled perhaps in human annals. Hitler considered the Jewish people to be
un-German and propounded pseudoscientific theories for this purpose.
o The idea was not entirely new and the Jewish people had been victims of this earlier also. In
the medieval times, in many European countries, Jews were barred from owning land and,
therefore, they engaged themselves in trade and money lending.
o They were made to live in areas especially marked for them called as ‘ghettos’. In Germany,
the ideas of valkish nationalism, Social- Darwinism, anti-Semitism and quest for living space
for Germans were discussed in the nineteenth century.
o But Hitler’s ideas went beyond anything envisaged before his rise to power. He elucidated
his bizarre racial ideas and doctrines in his ‘My Struggle’ quite explicitly.
o After coming to power, he began to implement his dreams of creating a racially ‘pure’ state
and of acquiring territory for additional resources. The Nazi racist vision rested on the
hierarchy of racial ‘value’.
o The finest in the race hierarchy were what he called ‘Aryan’ to which, according to Hitler, all
‘pure’ Germans belonged. The Nazis held that the ‘Aryan’ people should be nurtured by the
state and the others, seen as ‘useless eaters’ should be denied resources.
o Even German liberals came to believe that the Jewish people were different and that they
were a race. Once in power, Hitler began to adopt discriminatory policies against Germany’s
Jewish citizens. The anti- Semitic policy evolved over time.
o At the beginning of the Nazi era, it seems that there was no blueprint for killing the Jewish
people. In 1933, a boycott of Jewish shops and business establishments was introduced. The
Jews were barred from employment as lawyers, doctors or journalists.
o However, for discrimination against the Jewish people to be effective, it was essential to
have a clear definition of who was a Jew or was not a Jew.
o This was done by passing of what came known to be as the Nuremberg Laws in September
1935 at a rally of the Nazi Party at Nuremberg, which were later approved by the German
legislature unanimously in a special session.
o These laws classified people as German if all four of their grandparents were of German
blood. It was made clear that a person with even one Jewish grandparent must be classified
as a Jew.
o These laws also, by their general nature, formalised the measures taken against the Jewish
people up to 1935. The laws deprived the Jews of their German citizenship and forbade
them to marry the non Jews.
o In 1938, the German Jews were allowed to leave Germany but without their possessions.
Until this time, the Jewish people saw these measures as an expression of the centuries old
wave of persecution.
o But on the notorious night of 8-9th November 1939, Jewish homes and shops were looted
and many Jewish people were killed. This, together with some speeches of Hitler, seemed to
be a premonition of the fear that Jews would be excluded from Germany’s ‘glorious’ future.

P a g e | 31
o From September 1941, all the Jewish people living within the Nazi Empire, including
Germany, were required to wear a yellow badge.
 The external aspirations of Hitler can be described as imperialist and colonialist. He aimed at
acquiring the territories where Germans lived and he wanted to acquire what he called ‘living
space’ (lebensraum) for Germans over vast areas where there was no historic German presence.
 In addition, the Nazi policies were guided by a brutal instinct, arising out of a sense racial
superiority, to kill people. Once in power, he never lost sight of his goals though he proceeded
very cautiously.
 To ease fears abroad, he continued to make speeches that Germany desired peace and, at the
same time, he made an all out attempt to strengthen Germany militarily.
 When he came to power, a disarmament conference was taking place at Geneva under the
auspices of the League of Nations. In this conference, Hitler argued that either Germany should
be allowed to rearm to the level of other powers or other powers should disarm to Germany’s
level.
o To the British, the case seemed reasonable. In October 1933, in a deliberately aimed blow at
the League of Nations, Hitler withdrew from the disarmament conference as well as from
the League of Nations.
o In 1935, the League of Nations organised a plebiscite to decide on the future of the Saar
region. 90 per cent of voters opted for restoration of the area to Germany and it was
incorporated into Germany.
o In 1936, Hitler sent his army to occupy Rhineland, which had been made a demilitarised
zone under the Treaty of Versailles. This was welcomed enthusiastically by Germans because
it removed one of the grievances created in 1919.
o The League took no action and was, thereafter, not able to influence the subsequent course
of events. Meanwhile, in March 1935, the German government held a conference to
announce what everybody already knew, that Germany was rearming.
 Conscription was re-introduced and a massive programme of expansion was undertaken. In
1937, at a meeting of the heads of the armed forces, the record of which has survived, Hitler
made it clear that the aim of German policy was ‘conquest in the east’ which might provoke a
war with France and Britain.
o Thereafter, Hitler began to replace ‘moderate’ heads from leading positions by enthusiastic
and supportive Nazi leaders. Hitler himself became minister for war.
o In March 1938, Hitler sent German troops over the border to secure ‘unification’ with
Austria. There was no resistance in Austria.
o German nationalists in both countries had felt that a great wrong had been done in 1866
when Bismarck took the decision to create the German state without Austria and that even a
greater wrong was done when the Allies refused to allow Austria to join the German
Republic in 1919.
o Thereafter, a plebiscite was organised so effectively in Germany and Austria as to give Hitler
a vote of over 99 per cent.
o Hitler annexed a part of Czechoslovakia - Sudetenland - with the approval of Britain, France,
and Italy given at the Munich meeting in September 1938. In 1939, he annexed the rest of
Czechoslovakia.

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o On 1 September, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.

 At this stage, Britain and France decided to restrain Hitler and the Second World War began.
Hitler had not expected this. For him, the war came three to four years too early because his
preparations were still incomplete. Germany was held responsible for unleashing the Second
World War.
 During this war, the Germans not only created an empire stretching from the Atlantic coast of
France to the Ural Mountains in Russia, and from the North Cape in Norway to the
Mediterranean Sea, but also used the resources of the modernised European state to murder
millions.
 The anti-Jew policies of the Nazis produced horrendous results. The term ‘Holocaust’ was used
to denote the period of death camps between 1942 and 1944 when the Jewish people were
rounded up and systematically murdered.
o After Poland was conquered, in its north-west part, ethnically pure Germans were made to
settle there and the ‘undesirables’ were shifted to south-east Poland and later this region
was used for exterminating the Jewish people.
o There was a measure of agreement about the point at which the inhuman decision to kill all
Jews, euphemistically called ‘the final, solution’, was taken.
o From June 1941 the Germans won overwhelming victory over the Soviet Red Army, which
increased the number of Jewish people in the eastern ghettos. In September 1941, the
decision to turn their deportation into their murder was taken.
o More efficient methods of killing were sought because the task had to be carried out in
secret, to prevent this action from coming into the public knowledge and to lessen the
psychological effect on people who were assigned the task.
o In 1942, extermination camps, ‘death factories’ as they were called, were established. The
Jewish people were brought to these camps, mostly in goods trains, and mass killings were
organised with a scientific precision.
o One method used was to char them in gas chambers. A large extermination camp was built
at Auschwitz. The Nazis continued to transport Jews there for murder even when it became
obvious that Hitler was losing the war.
 Some historians have argued that there was no written order from Hitler for the implementation
of the ‘Holocaust’. But, a study of British radio intercepts of messages to Berlin has shown that
the decision to implement ‘the final solution’ was taken by Hitler himself and was communicated
to Himmler, the chief of the secret police.
 The barbarous policies of Nazi racism produced the results which have no close parallels in
history.
o The estimates are that six to seven million Jews were killed in the holocaust.
o Some two million Soviet prisoners taken during ‘Operation Barbarossa’, died mostly
because of starvation.
o Some 100,000 gypsies, disabled, and mentally sick persons were killed in the ‘euthanasia’
programme.
Why was Hitler Supported?

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 It cannot be overlooked that Hitler did not adopt violent means to come to power. He acquired
power subtly, through legal tactics, through elections in which a very high proportion of electors
voted for Hitler in 1932 and he was constitutionally appointed as the Chancellor.
o Research shows that white collar workers, small shopkeepers, pensioners, self-employed
workers, skilled artisans, civil servants, teachers, and university students voted for him. After
1933, many others began to join the Nazi party out of opportunistic motives.
o Industrial and business circles supported him because they hoped to gain from the
establishment of a strong government and the destruction of an unstable parliamentary
system.
o Before 1930, their financial support to the Nazi party was negligible and, perhaps, not very
important even later. But, it seems, they had a role in persuading Hindenburg to appoint
Hitler.
 There were also some who remained aloof from the Nazi party even at the cost of their careers.
But their number remained very small. Ian Kershaw, who has made a special study of the
reasons why Germans supported Hitler, argues that people saw in Hitler an embodiment of their
own aspirations.
o His image was of one who would restore the law and order, of a person who placed national
interests above sectional interests, an uncompromising enemy of the enemies of people, a
miracle worker, and a person who could restore the self-esteem of Germans by taking
revenge for Versailles.
o The point is not how different his image was from reality. This popular perception of Hitler
legitimised his actions in the eyes of his people, and also gave him plebiscitary acclamation.
o Moreover, the years between1933-39 were amongst the most dynamic in the German
history. Germany passed from economic depression, unemployment, political instability, and
a sense of national humiliation to peace, glory, and relative prosperity.
o Hitler was seen as an architect of this miracle. Nearly all sections of people were satisfied
except the Jews. It is significant that he got an overwhelming support though he had not
concealed that he did not believe in democratic values or human rights.
o The Olympic Games, which are dedicated to freedom and democracy, were held in Berlin in
1936 and seemed to testify the international approval for Hitler.
o There was such a support for Hitler within Germany that, even after 1942 when Germany
suffered defeat after defeat, there is little evidence of any internal revolt against the Nazi
state.
 In July 1944, an unsuccessful attempt was made to kill Hitler. This was the only act of resistance.
Hitler found so much support amongst the German masses that they fought along him to the
bitter end. Germany surrendered only after Hitler committed suicide.
 One can perhaps understand why the Germans supported Hitler and why they fought for him till
the bitter end. But, why did they support Hitler to the extent that they killed fellow human
beings, and in this barbarous manner?
o All Germans were not killers, but those who did the killings were ordinary Germans. Hitler
did not kill the Jews himself. It was the bureaucracy and commanders of murder squads as
well as the ordinary Germans who became accomplices in this most heinous crime.

P a g e | 34
o The commanders of these murder squads were among the most highly educated of all the
leaders of the Third Reich. Over one- third of them had doctorate degrees.
o Prominent bureaucrats of the era had listened to Mozart and Beethoven, read Goethe and
visited museums of visual arts.
o Amongst the scholars, there were anthropologists and psychologists who wrote learned
treatises attesting to Jewish inferiority and thus provided justification for Nazi racial laws
and policies.
 How could highly civilised and advanced people murder millions? Why did they become Hitler’s
willing executioners? The question has defied all customary explanations.
o After the death of Hitler, foreign investigators were surprised to find that the Germans were
unrepentant for the atrocities they had committed. It is true that the German government
devised elaborate cover stories to conceal the truth.
o Thousands of Germans, after the War, said that they did not know what was going on. This
was perhaps an outcome of the natural instinct of any one in a totalitarian society who
would want to avoid trouble.
o Until the 1960s, German historians also tended to describe the Third Reich as a unique
phenomenon, revolutionary and Utopian, and without real roots in the German history.
o Faced with the necessity of explaining barbarism, they tended to put the blame entirely on
Hitler’s shoulders. Again, in the late 1980s, some conservative German historians tried to
sanitise and neutralise the Nazi period by emphasising two aspects.
o They tended to downplay genocide by emphasising aspects such as the ‘normality’ of
everyday life. Secondly, they tended to lessen the crimes by alleging that others, such as
Stalin’s Russia or the Turks who ‘massacred’ Armenians during the First World War, were
even more barbarian.
 Even 50 years after Hitler’s death, people admitted in interviews conducted by the staff of the
BBC that, at that time, they adored Hitler and supported him with full enthusiasm. BBC aptly
entitled its programme: ‘The Fatal Attraction’.
o One should also not lose sight of the fact that, since 1945, parliamentary democracy has
been functioning in West Germany, and from 1990, in the unified Germany.
o Now there is an attempt in Germany to treat the Third Reich as a normal part of the German
past and to historicise its history.
o ‘Nazi’ has become a condemned word. There is common, though painful, acknowledgement
amongst most Germans that ordinary Germans also shared responsibility for what happened
during this uniquely evil phase.
o Germany has now outlawed the display of Nazi symbols, including the ‘Swastika’, and even
the denial of Holocaust.
JAPAN AND FASCISM

 In Japan, the 1930s saw a shift of power from the quasi-democratic government to military.
This shift produced enormous changes in Japan’s political climate and policies. It also set Japan
on the course ofexpansion, which had a tremendous impact on east and south- east Asia and
produced disastrous results for Japan.

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 Can Japan, during this period, be described as fascist? There is no consensus amongst historians
about the validity of using the term ‘fascism’ for the Japanese experience. To describe the
developments in Japan during this period, the term used is ‘militarism’.
o Militarism referred to the ideology in the Empire of Japan that the military should dominate
the political and economic life of the nation, that it should be the chief formulator of its
political and economic policies, and that the strength of the military would equal to the
strength of the nation.
o It was implied that a militarily strong nation would pursue an expansionist policy abroad.
The roots of militarism in Japan can be traced to the beginning of the Meiji era (Enlightened
Rule) in 1868. The Japanese government had felt itself threatened ever since the Americans
knocked there in 1853.
o After considerable deliberation, in 1868, the Japanese government declared its aim to make
the country militarily strong and economically prosperous and, at the same time, to
maintain the Japanese culture.
o The military had a strong influence on the Japanese society. Almost all the leaders in Meiji
Japan were ex-samurai or descendents of samurai (military caste in Japan), who shared a
common set of values and outlook.
 Shintoism, the native religion of Japan, provided for emperor-worship and this tended to give a
religious justification for the establishment of the state-control. In 1868, it was also reiterated
that:
o Japan was the centre of the world,
o soil of Japan and all its institutions were superior to those of others, and
o Japan had the divine mission to make all humanity share the benefit of being ruled by the
Tenno (the Emperor).
 Implicit in this was a sense of racial superiority. Such concepts blended with the fascist thought
and were to colour the Japanese thinking in the 1930s and throughout the Second World War.
 Economically, Japan saw a speedy transition from feudalism to capitalism. To catch up with the
West, state monopolies and huge financial and industrial houses (zaibatsu) emerged. This
prevented the liberal attitudes and tendencies from gaining roots.
 In 1889, Japan adopted a constitution mainly based on the German model. In this, all
administrative, legislative, and military powers were to issue from the imperial prerogative. The
executive was not made responsible to the legislature.
 In the mid-1890s, provision was made that the army and navy ministers would be appointed
from the active list of generals and admirals. This gave a decisive voice to the armed forces in
determining the policies. Japan also decided to build an empire.
o During 1894- 95, Japan defeated China and won Taiwan and other concessions. During 1904-
05, Japan defeated Russia. In 1910, Japan had annexed Korea and extended its interests in
Manchuria.
o During the First World War, Japan did not conceal its aggressive intent. At the Paris Peace
Conference, Japan was the only Asian power to sit with the victors. It was able to establish
its influence over the parts of north-east China.

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o But, when the effort of Japan to insert a clause relating to racial equality in the Versailles
Peace Treaty was thwarted, the Japanese realised that the great powers were not ready to
accept Japan as an equal.
 After the First World War, though Italy and Germany had a little direct impact on Japan, yet
many similarities can be discerned in the developments in these three countries.
o Like Italy and Germany, the Japanese felt deeply hurt by the treatment that they had
received in the Peace Settlement of 1919.
o They also resented that, at the Naval Limitation Conference held at Washington in 1922,
Japan was assigned a secondary position in the Pacific region.
o After the War, Japan also saw spontaneous riots in many regions over the rocketing price of
rice. The immediate threat from the Left was not perceived to be as serious as in Italy and
Germany, yet the government was alarmed.
 But, soon the Japanese were able to experience prosperity. One reason for this was that Japan’s
pre-war rivals - Russia and Germany - had collapsed and this increased the demand for Japanese
goods. The period from 1924 to 1932 was the most democratic period in Japan since the
constitution was adopted in 1889.
o The prime minister was the leader of one of the two major parties. In 1925, Hirohito (1901-
89) became the emperor. He was familiar with Western ways. He called the new era
‘Shown’, that is, ‘a time of enlightenment and peace’.
o In the same year, the military budget was reduced by 25 per cent and the universal male
franchise was introduced for those aged 25 and above.
o The first elections under the universal manhood suffrage were held in 1928 in which the
electorate increased from three million to 14 million. Externally, the government opted for
diplomatic solutions to international problems.
 At the same time, dissent against the policies of the successive governments was coming to the
surface. Many associations sprang up which saw the military as a potential force in politics and
aimed at reviving Japan’s traditional values.
 In 1923, Kita Ikki, a political theorist, published a handbook entitled Reconstruction of Japan, in
which, combining socialism with radical nationalism, he presented rather vague discourses on
the structure of the state.
o He became the chief spokesperson for ultranationalist revolutionaries in Japan in the 1920s
and 1930s. Probably, he was not influenced by the European models.
o He suggested a strict limitation to private property. He also proposed a coup de tat to
replace the then existing political structure with a military dictatorship.
o He also suggested that, after strengthening itself internally, Japan should embark on a
crusade to free all of Asia from the Western dominance.
o Though this book was banned immediately by the government, it became a handbook for
action for young army officers and revolutionary nationalists.
 This was also a time when discontent was growing amongst the retailers, small businessmen and
peasant proprietors because of the expansion of the Zaibatsus and the opening of huge
departmental stores in big cities.

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 The World Depression had hit the already impoverished peasantry hard and hastened
dissatisfaction in the countryside. It also proved to be a catalyst for reassessment of Japan’s
position vis-a-vis the West and China.
 The World Depression seemed to represent a failure of global capitalism. Therefore, it seemed
necessary to secure additional resources for national growth. In other words, it was deemed
necessary to expand.
 In China, Chiang Kai-shek became the leader of Guomindang (National People’s Party) in 1925
and, a year later, he launched the Northern Expedition. He had to face bitter opposition from
the Chinese Communist Party.
 But for the time being, the communists were defeated. By 1928, Guomindang was so successful
that the foreign powers recognised the Nationalist regime and began to give up their special
privileges which they had acquired under the Unequal Treaties signed in the nineteenth century.
 By this time, the Japanese were coveting the material resources of Manchuria, which were
almost entirely Chinese. In the late 1920s, the Japanese had established their control over the
region in the facade of a Chinese ruler.
 During the Northern Expedition, the Chinese resorted to the boycott of Japanese goods and
anti-Japan violence. In these circumstances, the Guandong (earlier Kwantung) Army, which was
the largest and most prestigious command of the Imperial Japanese Army, began to press for
the immediate annexation of Manchuria.
o In September 1931, the Guandong army, in response to a staged terrorist incident, attacked
Manchuria and conquered it. It was not annexed but a puppet government under the last
Manchurian Emperor was installed while real power was usurped by Japan.
o The League of Nations, after a prolonged inquiry, merely censured Japan. Meanwhile, the
Japanese army and navy launched a sustained attack on Shanghai, including aerial bombing
of the city, and occupied parts of Inner Mongolia.
 The press, the public opinion, and the nationalists in Japan celebrated these bold moves. They
saw the military as a positive force in politics and the political parties as weak. The annexation of
Manchuria had a positive impact on Japan’s economy also.
 The rise of militarism in Japan is dated from this ‘Manchurian Incident”. These events
strengthened the desire for territorial expansion. The same rationale was used by Japan for the
policy of expansion as was used in the West.
 It was argued that Japan lacked essential resources for industrial growth, food for its people, and
space for its burgeoning population to live. This made them envisage a ‘co-prosperity sphere’ in
East Asia under the Japanese tutelage.
 The fear of inability to absorb the growing population was increasingly expressed and, by 1930,
it was thought that Japan would have to acquire new places to create space for them - a
Japanese version of Lebensraum.
 The sense of racial superiority got translated into the belief that their historic mission was to
civilise the lesser races of Asia, to remove Western influences from Asia, and to lead the region.
The ‘Manchurian Incident’ inaugurated the most turbulent decade in the Japanese history.
o Prime ministers changed quickly. In fact, during 1931-41, there were twelve prime ministers
because none could find a formula that could satiate the ambitions of the nationalists and
the military.

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o Every liberal prime minister that Hirohito appointed was murdered. The year 1936 saw what
is described as the February 26 Incident, when young Japanese military officers attempted a
coup during which they occupied government buildings in central Tokyo and murdered
several ministers and generals.
o This rebellion was suppressed with a heavy hand. The four civilians who were executed
included Kita Ikki. Thereafter, Emperor Hirohito formed a militarist cabinet. In November
1936, Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany.
 In 1937, Japan withdrew from the disarmament system of the League of Nations. On 7 th July
1937,there was a brief skirmish at Marco Polo Bridge in Beijing between Japan’s Guandong
Army and the Chinese army, which has become known as the ‘Marco Polo Incident’.
o This developed into a full-scale war between Japan and China by mid- August. The Japanese
military was expecting a victory in three months. Japan’s aggression had a decisive impact on
China.
o The two opponents, Chiang Kai Sliek and Mao Zedong, the leader of the Communist Party of
China, had been fighting each other. They formed a united front to fight back Japan’s
aggression.
o They adopted guerilla tactics and also sought help from the foreign powers. Though there
was never a declaration of war from either side, both sides became involved in a long war of
attrition.
o The Japanese soldiers behaved brutally, especially in Nanjing. After 15 months of war, the
Japanese were able to occupy only three major cities - Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing, and
the adjoining seaboard of China.
 Thereafter, Japan took many steps that quickened its pace towards totalitarianism. In 1938, the
national mobilisation bill was passed. In July-August of 1940, all political parties were dissolved
and the Imperial Rule Assistance Association was formed.
 The Japanese army saw, in the World War, an opportunity to expand in south-east Asia where
France controlled Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Annam, Tonkin, and some other areas, and Holland
had a huge empire covering Sumatra, Java, part of Borneo, and other islands.
o The chief obstacle in advancing in this direction was the USA, which controlled the
Philippines and had military establishments in other islands of the Pacific.
o For the first two years of the war, the United States followed a policy of isolation. By June
1940, Hitler had defeated Holland and Belgium and occupied Paris.
o This rendered France and Holland out of action in south-east Asia. In September 1940, Japan
concluded the Tripartite Treaty with the victorious side, i.e. Germany and Italy.
o This was likely to further discourage the United States from intervention. Japan hoped to
defeat the Chinese and, by creating the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity sphere, hoped to
establish hegemony in East Asia.
o In June 1941, Japan conquered Indochina. The United States was not ready to let the
southeast Asian region pass under an ambitious power like Japan. The US got all its supply of
rubber and many other items from this region.
o In August 1941, the United States imposed a total ban on all oil exports to Japan. The
Japanese military regarded it as a virtual declaration of war because Japan produced less
than eight per cent of its requirement of oil.

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o Import of oil from the Dutch East Indies (Sumatra, Java, and Borneo) could make Japan self-
sufficient. But, because of the United States naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, Japan
could not expand.
o On 7 December 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. America was taken by surprise.
The Japanese air force destroyed five American battleships and over a dozen other ships,
and destroyed or damaged some 350 aircrafts.
o The death toll stood at 2403. Within hours, the Japanese attacked the British Far East
Command in Singapore and the US Pacific Command in the Philippines as well. It was a
calculated move for war against the United States.
o Britain, Holland and America declared war on Japan the following day. Japan thus became
involved in war against the ABCD,( America, Britain, China, and Dutch) coalition. It was a
very high risk strategy.
 Why did Japan think that there was any chance of success in such a gamble, especially because
Japan had not been very successful against China?
o Akira Iriye, an international history expert with specialisation on the Pacific region, says that
it can be explained only in terms of wishful thinking combined with a fanatical belief in the
superiority of the Japanese spirit over the West’s material resources.
o Japan fought the war alongside its allies - Italy and Germany - till the bitter end. During the
first half of 1942, the Japanese achieved a string of military victories on par with Hitler’s
successes in Western Europe and vanquished the American, British, and Dutch powers in the
Pacific.
o They conquered Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaya, Vietnam, and other places. In April, they
bombed Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in the Indian Ocean. The victorious Japanese soldiers looked
upon the conquered people not as human beings, but as spoils of the war.
o They tortured, slaughtered, worked to death, or burnt prisoners of war and even patients in
the hospitals. They let people die of hunger and disease and raped women.
o By the end of 1942, Japan’s tide of conquest was stemmed. But the Japanese fought till the
bitter end and efforts to free the countries from Japan’s control continued for a further
grueling three years.
 For Japan, as well as for Germany, the war ended in a humiliating surrender and with this, the
fascist governments ceased to exist. The Nazi party was dissolved after Hitler’s death in April
1945. In Japan, the emperor was restored.
 Hideki Tojo, the prime minister between 1941 and 1944, accepted full blame for the conduct of
the war, even though he had left office a full one year before the end of the war. He and six
others were hanged in December 1946, after the verdict of the War Crimes Tribunal.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The fascists thus showed a readiness to undermine all forms of legality and rationally of the ordered
government. In other words, they did not view the state as an institution that aimed to protect the
liberty of individuals but as an entity that individuals must serve.
FIRST WORLD WAR

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 The inter-imperialist rivalries mainly- the growing chauvinism and antagonism and conflicts
within Europe, the formation of opposing alliance systems and the growing militarization and
feverish preparations for war – these were some of the features that characterised the history of
Europe since the last decade of the nineteenth century.
 There were a number of crises which were at least temporarily resolved. The tensions in Europe,
however, had created a situation in which a war had begun to be considered inevitable. Every
State was ready with its war plans and assesses.
 It had also become increasingly clear that once war broke out, it would not be possible to
localize it and that it would become a general was and every country would get drawn into it.
The Immediate Occasion

 The assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife in
Sarajevo on 28th June 1914, provided the immediate occasion for the outbreak of the war.
Sarajevo, where the assassination took place, was the capital of Bosnia which had been annexed
by Austria- Hungary a few years earlier.
o The organizer of the assassination was a secret society, called the “Black Hand” or “Union of
Death”, of the extremist Serbian nationalists whose aim was to unite all Serbians into a
single Serbian State.
o Historians generally agree that the Serbian government, or at least the Serbian Prime
Minister, was aware of the conspiracy to assassinate the Archduke but did nothing to stop it.
 Convinced of Serbia’s complicity in the assassination, Austria (short for Austria- Hungary) served
an ultimatum on 23rd July making eleven demands on Serbia.
o Austria did not expect these demands to be accepted and hence fixed a time limit of forty-
eight hours for an unconditional compliance.
o Serbia accepted most of the demands, but not all. Total acceptance of all the demands
would have meant total loss of sovereignty by Serbia.
 Serbia’s reply on 25th July did not conciliate Austria, and Serbia, knowing that it would not, had
already ordered mobilization of its troops. Austria rejected Serbia’s reply and immediately
ordered the mobilization of its army for an attack on Serbia.
 It was determined to put an end to this “permanent danger to my House and my territories”, as
the Austrian emperor called it in a letter to the German emperor. On 28th July, Austria declared
war on Serbia. On 29th July, the Austrian army bombarded Belgrade, Serbia’s capital.
o The outbreak of war between Serbia and Austria was soon followed by two other wars, and
these three wars, militarily linked together, led to the general war or the First World War.
o In order to pressurize Austria to abandon the war against Serbia, Russia ordered
mobilization against Austria. It could not permit Austrian expansion in the Balkans, where it
had its own ambitions which would suffer if Serbia was defeated.
o As Germany would come to the aid of Austria if Russia entered the war against Austria,
Russia also prepared for the war with Germany.
 Germany was convinced that in the event of a war between it and Russia, France would join
Russia against Germany. This would mean that Germany would have to fight on two fronts, with
France in the west and with Russia in the east.

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o To be successful in the war, Germany had made plans to first defeat France in a quick war by
mobilizing most of its troops for this purpose and then turn to Russia against whom a quick
victory was not possible.
o Thus the second war was between Austria and Germany on the one side and Russia and
France on the other. The British position was still unclear as the British government was
divided on the issue of indulging in the war.
o It responded to the French request for help by promising to defend France’s northern coast
against the German navy. However, German invasion of neutral Belgium finally ended
Britain’s indecisiveness, and Germany and Britain were at war.
o Thus, the rival alliances, formed in the preceding years, had come into play. Only Italy, a
member of the Triple Alliance, remained neutral on the ground that Germany was not
fighting a defensive war.
The Scope of the War

 On 1st August 1914, Germany declared war on Russia and on 3rd August, on France. In the
morning of 4th August, German troops entered Belgium and at the midnight of the same day,
Britain declared war on Germany.
 In the meantime, the Serb -Austrian war which had led to the conflagration involving Germany,
Russia, France and Britain, appeared to have become secondary. Till 6th August, Austria was not
at war with Russia and till 12th August, it was not at war with Britain and France.
 Soon others joined in as a result of efforts by both sides to win allies by promising them
territorial gains. In August, Japan declared war on Germany. It had entered into an alliance with
Britain but its main aim was to seize German territories in China and in the Pacific.
 Portugal, often referred to by Britain as its oldest ally, also entered the war. In May 1915, Italy
declared war on Austria. Britain and France had promised it Austrian and Turkish territories.
Later, Romania and Greece also joined Britain, France and Russia, and these countries along with
their allies came to be known as the Allied Powers.
 Germany and Austria were joined by Bulgaria in October, having been promised territories in
Serbia and Greece. Bulgaria was also given some Turkish territories. Turkey declared war on
Russia in November and joined the war on the side of Germany and Austria.
 These countries— Germany and Austria and their allies —came to be known as the Central
Powers. Various other countries in other parts of the world also joined the war. USA entered the
war in April 1917 on the side of the Allied Powers.
 In all, the number of belligerent countries rose to twenty-seven. It comprised the countries
from all continents. Thus, the scope of the conflict was widened. About 5 million men (soldiers)
were mobilized for the war. Of them, over 42 million were mobilized by the Allied Powers and
over 22 million by the Central Powers.
The Course of the War

 The battles of what has rightly come to be called as the First World War were fought in different
parts of the world. In terms of the intensity of fighting and killings, the battles in Europe
overshadowed the battles in other parts of the world.

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o On the Western Front in Europe, the war began when the German armies, sweeping across
Belgium, entered the southern France and by early September had reached in the close
vicinity of Paris.
o The French army, in the meantime, had moved to the France-German frontier to march into
Alsace-Lorraine. The German army hoped to encircle the French army and achieve a quick
victory.
o The French offensive into Alsace-Lorraine was repulsed but the retreating French forces
along with the British forces met the German forces in a battle known as the Battle of the
Marne (after the river Marne near which the battle was fought) .
o Thus, German forces had to retreat and they entrenched themselves along the river Aisne.
There were desperate fights, but by the end of November, the war entered a period of along
stalemate on the western front when neither side could dislodge the other for about four
years.
 Behind a long unbroken chain of apposing trenches, there aided the barbed wire extending over
hundreds of kilometers from France’s southern border with Switzerland to the northern
seacoast of France. The opposing armies dug themselves to be protected from the machine gun
and rifle fire behind the trenches, neither side could break through the other’s line of trenches.
 Each side conducted raids on the other for hours with little success, only steadily adding to the
number of the dead on both sides. Germany, in 1915, started the use of poison gas to achieve a
breakthrough and Britain in 1916, introduced the use of tanks, devised for the same purpose.
 Neither made much of a difference. The losses suffered by each side were made up for by
bringing in more troops.
 On the Eastern Front, Russia achieved some initial success against Germany and Austria but this
was short lived. In 1915, the Russian armies suffered heavy defeats and the forces of the Central
Powers entered many territories of the Russian empire.
o In 1916, Russia had launched another offensive but it was repulsed. After the October
Revolution, Russia withdrew from the war on 2nd March 1918.
o It signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and ceded many of its territories as the
price of peace.
o Out of a total of 12 million men mobilized by Russia, 1.7 million were killed, about 5 million
wounded and about 25 million were either missing or were taken as prisoners. Serbia and
Romania had capitulated.
Spread of the War outside Europe

 Outside Europe, some major battles were fought in North Africa and West Asia. Germany and
Turkey united to threaten the Allied possessions and influence North Africa and West Asia.
Britain and France fought these attempts and tried to seize the Arab territories of the Ottoman
Empire.
 They also established contacts with the Arab nationalists and others and fomented anti Turkish
Arab risings. While pretending to espouse the cause of Arab countries i.e. freedom from the
Turkish rule, Britain and France entered into a secret agreement, known as the Sykes Picot
agreement.

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 In 1916, this agreement provided for the division of Arab countries between Britain and France.
In 1917, the British government also pledged itself “to the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people.”
 This pledge by Britain about another country, which was not considered fit to be consulted, was
to have serious consequences for peace and stability in West Asia. During the years of the war,
German colonial possessions in Asia and Africa were seized by the Allied Powers.
 Japan made colonial gains in China by acquiring control over the German sphere of influence and
forcing China to make further concession to it. South-West Africa was occupied by South African
troops, Togoland by British and French troops and Cameroons by the British.
The Stalemate in Europe

 In the meantime, what has come to be known as the “war of attrition” was on. In Europe, it
meant each side trying to wear out the other side by mobilizing more and more men and using
enormous amount of artillery and other weapons.
o Two catastrophic battles were fought as a part of this “war of attrition”. In February 1916,
Germany launched a massive attack on the French fortress of Verdun. The French in turn
poured thousands of their soldiers into the battle.
o This battle, which did nothing to end the stalemate, resulted in about thousands of soldiers
killed or wounded, more or less equally divided between the two sides.
o The other was the battle of Somme (named after the river Somme) along which the battle
was fought. Here the Allied troops involved were mainly British who launched the attack on
the very first day of the battle, the British dead or wounded were about 60,000.
The Policy of Blockade

 The war had become a total war. It was no longer confined to battles between armies. It
required total mobilization of all the resources of the main belligerent countries. An increasing
amount of ammunition and other war materials were required to be produced.
 This meant changing the production pattern. Every economic activity had to be subordinated to
the needs of the war. It also required that no goods food, raw materials, war materials, anything
and everything— should be allowed to enter the enemy’s country from anywhere.
 By doing this, that is, by imposing an economic blockade, each side thought that the other
would be starved into submission.
 Britain imposed a naval blockade on Germany and though the naval fleets of the two countries
fought only one major battle, and that too indecisive, the British succeeded in their blockade of
Germany.
 To prevent food and other supplies from reaching Britain, Germany started using submarines (U-
boat, in German Unterseeboot) which it had developed to sink any ship, including those of the
neutral countries, heading for Britain.
 This, among other things, led to, the United States entering the war on the side of the Allied
Powers. The use of the aircraft in warfare also started and though cities were bombed and the
German and Allied aircrafts had fierce fights, air warfare played little role in deciding the
outcome of the war.

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End of the War

 Russia had withdrawn from the war after the October Revolution and was forced to accept a
humiliating treaty by Germany. However, the war between the Central Powers and the Allied
Powers was to be decided elsewhere and not on the Eastern Front.
o The loss of Russia by the Allies was more than made up for by the entry of USA into the war.
USA had been supplying goods, including munitions and food, to the Allies since the
outbreak of the war and, as a result, the US economy had prospered.
o Now the armies and the vast economic resources of USA were to be directly used to defeat
the Central Powers.
 In the meantime, discontent had been rising in the civilian population and among the soldiers of
all the major belligerent countries. There were demonstrations and mutinies. The Russian
emperor had already fallen.
o The discontent was much more widespread in the countries of the Central Powers. There
was a wave of strike in Germany and Austria- Hungary and a succession of mutinies in their
armies and navies.
o In Austria-Hungary, there were desertions on a large scale among the soldiers of the
“subject nationalities” and many of them were fighting on the side of the Allies.
 By about the middle of July 1918, the tide of the war was beginning to turn against Germany.
Germany had launched a series of offensives on the western front, inflicting heavy casualties on
the Allies.
 But by July, the German offensive was contained and the Allies launched counter- offensives. In
the meantime, the Allied forces had started their military intervention in Russia. In the east,
thousands of Japanese troops poured into Siberia.
 While the Allied intervention in Russia was to outlast the end of the First World War, the
collapse of the Central Powers had begun.
o On 29th September 1918, Bulgaria surrendered. By the end of October, the Ottoman Empire
had ceased to exist. On 12th November, the Habsburg emperor abdicated.
o Most people of the Austro-Hungarian empire the Czechs, the Poles, the Yugoslavs and the
Hungarians — had already declared their independence.
o Now only Germany remained and the final Allied offensives against it were launched in
September.
 On 3rd November, a revolution broke out in Germany, on 9th November, the German emperor
abdicated and fled to Holland, and on 10th November, Germany was proclaimed a republic. On
11th November 1918, the new government of Germany signed the armistice and at 11 o’clock in
the morning of 11th November, the First World War came to an end.
 The destruction caused by the war in terms of human lives was terrible. Out of about 65 million
soldiers mobilized, about nine million were killed and about 22 million wounded.
o To understand the true nature of this catastrophe and its impact on the European societies,
it should be remembered that most of the dead and the survivors, “scarred physically and
mentally”, were the “flower of Europe”, young people between the age of 18 and 35.
o Erich Maria Remarque who was forced join the German army, published a novel, which in
the English translation is entitled ‘All Quiet Western Front’.

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o The dedication page of the novel carries the statement, “This book is to be neither an
accusation nor a confession and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to
those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even
though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war“
THE COST OF WAR

 In the history of Europe, the First World War marks a turning point. Modern technology enabled
the belligerents to kill with great efficiency. The state mobilised all human, material, ideological,
and even spiritual resources to win the War. Modern nationalism infused the soldiers and
civilians with the determination to inflict total defeat on the enemy.
 The result was that the war turned virtually into a mutual slaughter that lasted over four years.
Heavy and light artillery, machine- guns, and flame throwers ripped bodies open and poisoned
them with gas. Aerial bombardment and chemical warfare were resorted to, though both had
been banned under the 1907 Hague Convention.
 Though only a small number of casualties were caused by gas, it had great psychological impact.
For the first time, a generation in Europe came to grips with death in massive numbers. It proved
to be the bloodiest war in history.
o In four years, Europe had lost 8 million men. More than twice the number were wounded,
some of them crippled for life. The British war-dead amounted to 1.5 per cent of their
population, while in France the share was 3.5 per cent.
o While in Britain, France, and Germany, war was conducted with comparative efficiency, the
Eastern European countries suffered much more because of the lack of adequate weapons,
supplies, and medical services.
o Even after the start of the war, one third of the Russian army at the front had no arms at all.
In the province of Anatolia (Turkey), the population declined by 17.7 per cent.
o The death toll in some battles was astounding. In the battle of Caporetto, on the frontier of
Italy and Austria, 40,000 men were lost and 28,000 were wounded in two weeks.
o Death came as a great leveller. It made no distinction on the basis of wealth, education,
colour or creed. There were also deaths on a horrendous scale in the events related to war.
 In the Turkish Empire, the already existing tensions led to the ‘ethnic cleansing’ that reached a
climax with the Turkish massacre of the Armenians in 1915-16 during which over a million
individuals were killed.
 After the war, as soldiers returned to their own countries, an influenza epidemic spread which
killed at least 20 million people in Europe alone, i.e., more than twice the number of soldiers
who were killed on the battlefields.
 Millions of men fought in this war and experienced conditions for which nothing in life had
prepared them. Far from being an adventure in a foreign land, they experienced boredom, mud,
bad food, fear, and horror of death surrounding them. The First World War became infamous for
its trench warfare.
 The spade became as important as a rifle. The experience of the trenches left a deep mark on
those who survived. Rain and rats, water and mud became as lethal as the enemy. A sense of
comradeship and solidarity grew amongst the soldiers who spent years in dirty trenches eating,
drinking, and defecating together.

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 They came to rely on each other for the most basic instinct - survival. These frontline soldiers
developed their own vocabulary, code of ethics, and norms of behaviour which had hardly
anything in common with the pre-war ethics, upbringing, and education.
o Many of the combatants developed a vitriolic dislike of the home front in general and of
profiteers in particular. For the ex-soldiers, the meaning of war, as it was understood in
1914, evaporated and in its place, came nothing.
o The failure of many of them to find jobs after the war added to the disillusionment. These
war veterans made ideal recruits for the extremist political movements that emerged in
Italy, Germany, and many other European countries.
o Tortured by memories of the war, some men never referred to their experiences of the war,
while others joined various peace movements and even used their memories to write an
indictment of the war.
o Erich Maria Remarque described the horrors of life and death in the trenches of the
Western Front in his ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ and Ernst Hemingway highlighted the
need to avoid war in his ‘A Farewell to Arms’. Both the novels were first published in 1929
and both became very famous.
Impact on Society and Culture

 The First World War had a revolutionary impact on the societies and cultures of all European
countries. One of the distinctive features of the war was its totality. All sections of the society
were affected by this conflict, even in those countries that were not in the war zones.
 The governments came to control every aspect of the social activity on a quite unprecedented
scale. Civilians and industry were mobilised for war purposes. Food shortages became critical in
1915 and by 1916, the situation became extremely bad. Coal, shoes, soap, oil, textile, eggs, and
meat were hardly available.
 Hoarding and black marketing became common. These conditions tended to destroy the fabric
of an orderly society and undermined its very legitimacy. The long waiting lines and food riots
became common.
 Overall civilian mortality skyrocketed. Millions of husbands and fathers were at the front and so
absent from home. Lakhs of women worked in industrial plants. This affected family life because
parents were not at home to look after their children.
 Many young people worked in armament plants at the cost of upbringing and education. The
war thus destroyed the traditional ‘home’. During the war, women made significant contribution
by working in factories, hospitals, offices, and other places.
 The number of women working in factories in Germany increased four times during this war. In
Britain, majority of the women worked in ammunitions factories alone. But it would be incorrect
to suggest that for European women the war was a liberating moment.
o Women had to bear a triple burden - their own housework, paid work outside homes, and
daily negotiation over food, fuel, and other items because of the rising costs and non-
availability of goods.
o In addition, many had to face anxiety over the survival of their loved ones in uniform.
Participation in the war, the effort outside the home did give women a new sense of equality
with men.

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o While it has been traditionally believed that women’s active role in the war decisively
changed the opinion of men in their favour, this is not really true.
o Their wartime jobs were seen as purely temporary. After the war, as men returned, it was
expected that women would vacate their jobs for men and would devote themselves to their
conventional roles as wives and mothers.
o It has also been argued that women got the right to vote in recognition of their contribution
to the war. But such arguments are far from convincing. In some countries, such as Sweden
and Denmark, women got the right to vote even though these countries did not join the war.
o In Germany, Austria, Poland, and some other countries women got the right to vote during
1918-19. But in Britain, where women made very significant contribution to the war, men
above 21 and women above 30 were given the right to vote in 1918.
o It is another matter that it was the women between the age of 21 and 30 who mostly took
up jobs during the war. Women who lost their husbands often survived on meager
government pensions. In Germany alone, there were two million war- widows.
 The war did not produce just political consequences, but it also had a deep impact on the ways
of thinking, visual arts, music, literature, and philosophy. The contemporaries were stunned by
the sheer scale of devastation and carnage that the war produced.
o It shook the long-held assumptions about the power of reason, inevitability of progress, the
moral dignity of human beings, our capacity to know ourselves, and the ability of people and
nations to live in harmony.
o At the beginning of the twentieth century, it seemed that culture had reached new heights
of civilisation, technological advances had made lives comfortable, and that peace and
prosperity would be permanent.
o The experience of this war made thinkers in all domains question not only the heritage of
Enlightenment but also the very foundations of the Western civilisation. It demonstrated
that progress had a great potential for chaos and evil.
o New techniques were used and polished to kill fellow human beings and to cause
destruction. It seemed to show how terrible a crisis Modernity had been. Everything - all
ideals, even reality itself - was called into question.
o It seemed that hypocrisies would have to be exposed and the very basis of civilisation had to
be rethought. The self-assured confidence in the future, which was generally the
characteristic of the period around 1900, gave way to doubt and despair.
o Truth seemed to demand a new way of seeing and understanding the world. In this changed
world, writing, visual arts, and thinking could not go on as before. The sights and sounds of
new art, literature, music, and philosophy showed two contrary trends during the post-First
World War period.
o Some saw in war, only destruction and disaster and a pessimistic nostalgia emerged for
vanished certainties. Some began to entertain the wildly optimistic idea that a new
revolutionary era was beginning in which everything would be possible, in which art and
literature would revitalise the society which had grown cold with rationalism and
technological progress.
 The beginning of the Modernist movement is seen from the pre - First World War decade.
Expressionists were already depicting an atmosphere of unease, fear, guilt, in which the

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experiences of the contemporary bourgeois life were transfused with a sense of dread. The First
World War led to the maturation of the Modernist movement.
o The growing recognition of the non rational, of the feeling that human actions were
determined by hidden impulses, led the people in general to doubt that reason plays the
dominant role in human behaviour.
o The ongoing progress seemed to be fragile and perishable. It also heralded a loss of faith in
liberal democratic values. Disillusioned and disoriented people in Europe turned to fascist
ideologies that openly rejected reason and scorned the inviolability of the human person.
o The disenchantment arising out of the sense of humiliation, especially in Germany and Italy,
added to it. Dictators like Mussolini and Hitler utilised these feelings and succeeded in
manipulating the minds of the masses to an unprecedented degree.
o Many of these currents can be traced to the end of the nineteenth century. But, by
questioning the established norms and rationality of the human mind, this war brought
them together into a tidal wave of fascism.
Impact on Colonies
 The First World War affected the whole world. European powers had vital interests worldwide
and they had used their global resources to defeat the enemy. Colonies were used as a reservoir
of manpower and material resources.
o The French raised army units in their colonies in different parts of Africa. The British used
the Indian army as an imperial fire-brigade. A unit complete corps was dispatched from India
to fight the German army on the French border. Other units were sent to Egypt and German
East Africa.
o The war in Mesopotamia was fought by the Indian army from start to finish. In all, India sent
million soldiers and non-combatants. This was larger than the total contribution of all White
Dominions combined.
o The use of soldiers from the colonies on equal terms was bound to increase their self-
esteem and expectations. European powers also acquired essential war materials from the
colonies and for this purpose, tended to treat colonies as extensions of their home front.
 In the process, the people in the colonies were subjected to the same strains that people in
Europe had to face, albeit on a smaller scale. In fact, in the colonies the Europeans used coercive
methods which they dared not use at home.
o They exploited the labour and procured materials forcibly from Egypt, China, and Vietnam,
which strengthened the anti-British feeling there. The wartime demand also boosted the
local industry by creating a massive demand for goods.
o This tended to transform the artisans and casual labourers into working class and made it
sizeable in absolute terms. They had their own grievances against foreign mill owners,
managers, and police.
o A small class of indigenous capitalists also began to emerge who wanted a state that could
defend their interests against foreign competition. These sections supported the post- war
struggle for liberation.

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o During the war, soldiers from the colonies saw their masters surrender before another
European country. They also saw the propaganda of rival powers highlighting weaknesses of
the other. This subverted the image of superiority of the White race.
 Further, there was much talk of the principle of self-determination and of the desire to make
the world safe for democracy. But, at the Peace Conference, the victorious powers made it
apparent that such ideas applied only to Europeans.
 They made all the efforts to enlarge their empires and did this in the name of establishing
‘mandates’ but could not disguise this fact. They refused to accept equality between races, even
in principle, when the Japanese highlighted this issue.
 It is significant that while France, Italy, and the South American countries were ready to accept
it, Britain was not because its White colony - Australia — was not ready to do so. The war
galvanised liberation movements in India, China, Vietnam, Egypt, Algeria, and many other
countries.
 In India, even before the war, the interest of people in politics and in the nature of relation
between the rulers and the ruled was increasing.
o By the time the war ended, a new generation of nationalists had emerged who were looking
for new means of expressing themselves through effective political action.
o At this time, the British adopted a two-pronged policy of widening the basis of support for
their regime by associating Indians with the work of administration and of silencing the
opponents through a policy of repression.
o Hence, in 1919, on one hand, the Government of India Act was passed for ‘progressive
realisation of responsible government in India’ and on the other, the government tried to
push through two repressive laws - the Rowlatt Bills - in the legislature with indecent haste.
o The latter attempt ultimately led to the massacre at Jallianwallan Bagh in Amritsar where
General Dyer ordered his men to open fire on an unarmed crowd without giving it any
chance to disperse with the troops firing till they had no more ammunition.
o In the process 379 people were killed and over 1,000 were wounded. It shocked the whole
country. What added fuel to fire was that the British Press and the House of Lords publicly
honoured General Dyer.
o On this issue, Mahatma Gandhi gave a call for non-cooperation with the Raj in 1920. Under
his leadership, the Congress transformed itself from an elite, moderate body into a mass
national party representing all regions and interest groups, capable of mobilising millions in
its revolutionary non-violent campaigns.
 When in China on 4th May 1919, news reached that the victors, at Versailles had handed over
former German territories to Japan, the Chinese felt cheated. On the same day thousands of
students marched through Beijing and were joined by professionals, journalists, teachers, and
mill-owners.
o This movement, which became known as the “May 4th Movement’ soon spread to
Shanghai, the main commercial and working-class centre of the country where 60,000
workers, working in textile, transport, and tobacco industry, went on strike and organised
marches.

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o The most popular slogan of the time was ‘save the country’. It spread to urban areas
throughout the country. Contemporaries in China looked upon this movement as a turning
point between the modern and contemporary history of their country.
o It marked the start of a movement of growing political awareness that led to the formation
of the Communist Party in 1921.
o In fact, the events are linked to the start of a whole series of processes that proved decisive
for the whole course of the Chinese history up to, and even beyond, 1949.
 In Egypt, a full-scale revolt started against the British control. In Algeria and Vietnam, the anti-
French opposition became more widespread. The government in Algeria tried to win the support
of people by giving French citizenship to some Algerians. But this did not work and the anti-
French movement continued to widen.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
 The First World War remains pivotal for the understanding of the twentieth century. It has
remained unclear as to why this War was fought. However, the contemporaries did not think
that it was a futile conflict. Even in the darkest days, neither the governments nor the people
lost confidence in its necessity.
 The anti-war feeling was a post-war phenomenon. Yet Europe had seen the most destructive
war in history. Four years of total involvement in the war had aroused such passions that any
reason, any aim, any gain, any commemoration lost its significance.
 The soldiers did not return to their homes. After the war, the peacemakers drew their lines
carefully. But, in the conditions of 1919, the treaty could be based only on a series of
compromises that left a residue of deep dissatisfaction.
 Strategic considerations that dominated decisions taken by the great powers conflicted with the
ideas of self determination. Too many states were left dissatisfied and looked to the future for
revision. Germany was the most aggrieved, the loss of resources -material, territorial, and
human – hurt was irreparable.
 Something that was felt deeply was the requirement to accept responsibility for unleashing the
war. This was also the time when the soldiers of many allied countries remained involved in the
war in support of those Russians who were opposing the revolutionary government in Russia.
 The League of Nations was created to ensure the maintenance of peace. It was called upon to
ensure the protection of minorities in determining the boundaries of new states. But the latter
regarded it as a great power imposition on their newly won national sovereignty.
 Though the American President had played a leading role in the formation of the League, the US
decided to withdraw from the entanglements of international affairs. The victorious powers
settled the fate of the colonies to their own satisfaction, not to those of people in the colonies.
 But, from all this, it would not be logical to conclude that 1919 led straight to 1939. What
followed after 1919 was also very important in this context.
 Dwindling cooperation between the Allies, the nature of the peace treaties, strictness over
reparation issues and weak position of the League, and its failure to enforce the security clauses
of the Treaty of Versailles were amongst the factors that led to another round of hostilities.
 The slaughter done in the First World War not only revealed the immense capacity for
destruction of a technologically advanced civilisation, obsessed with dominance, it also seemed

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to reveal that the common man was a joke, democracy a farce, and that material progress and
rationalism could not provide a solution to the crucial social and political questions.
From Treaty of Versailles to Paris Peace Conference

 The First World War ended with destruction and devastation. It lasted for more than 1565 days;
led to the collapse of Central and Eastern European Empires; witnessed the emergence of
socialism and communism in the world and challenged the hegemonistic position of the
imperialist states.
 The map was to be redrawn and aggrieved parties were to be satisfied. The victorious nations
decided to get the maximum out of the negotiations to compensate for their losses and prestige.
The negotiations were bound to be one-sided and were to be unilaterally imposed on the losing
parties.
 Germany did not take part in the negotiations and therefore, was held solely responsible for the
debacle and crisis but each and every party was responsible for this scramble for concessions
and colonies.
Treaty of Versailles
 The Central Powers collapsed and the Peace Conference was organised in Paris. Paris was
designated as the meeting place to recognise the heroic part played by France in the war. This
peace conference was attended by the delegates of thirty two allied and associated powers.
 The three most important politicians there were David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and
Woodrow Wilson. Linked to the “Big Three” was Italy led by Vittorio Orlando.
 President Wilson considered his presence at the Peace Conference as essential to the
completion of his struggle for the new world order, which he postulated in his 14 points:
i. The secret alliance and the diplomacy to be done away.
ii. Independence of sea routes.
iii. Abandonment of economic rivalries amongst the nations.
iv. To intensify disarmament.
v. To initiate benevolent rules against colonies.
vi. To exterminate the presence of foreign troops from Russia.
vii. To re-establish the independence of Belgium.
viii. To reorganize the border lands of Italy on the basis of nationality.
ix. Alsace and Lorraine were to be returned back to France.
x. Autonomy for the people of Austria and Hungary.
xi. Romania, Serbia and Montenegro were to be reorganised.
xii. Independence for the people of Turkey, especially between the area of Black Sea and
Mediterranean Sea.
xiii. Independence for Poland.
xiv. Establishment of League of Nations (LON)
 The eventual outcome of the treaty was geared to satisfy everyone on the side of the allies. For
France, it appeared as if Germany had been dismantled and disintegrated; for Britain, Lloyd
George was deeply convinced and happy that enough of Germany’s power had been left to act
as a buffer to communist expansion from Russia;

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 Wilson was indifferent with the outcome and was simply happy that the proceedings had
finished so that he could return home. Only four out of fourteen points were accepted i.e.:
i. Independence of Belgium.
ii. Alsace and Lorraine were reunited with France.
iii. League of Nations was founded.
iv. Independence for Austria and Hungary.
 In the summer of 1919, after six months of negotiations, the Treaty of Versailles was signed.
World War I officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28th, 1919.
Peace of Paris
 This conference was attended by:
o The President of America, Woodrow Wilson, who was accompanied by the Secretary Robert
Lansing and Mr. White.
o David Lloyd George, the liberal Prime Minister of Britain.
o George Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, popularly known as ‘Tiger’ and ‘The
Father of Victory’, was very clear what he wanted from the conference i.e. to reduce
Germany to such a position that it could never again be a menace to France and to make it
pay for all the damages. He did not believe both in President Wilson’s 14 points as well as in
the League of Nations.
o Prime Minister Orlando and Foreign Minister Giorgio Sidney Sonnino (1847-1922) of Italy
represented Italy in the conference to insist the faithful execution of the Treaty of London
and demand even more than was promised by the treaty.
o Marquis Saionji and Baron Makino represented Japan in the Conference, their main focus
was Far East. They had only one demand i.e. the transfer of all the former German rights and
possessions in the Far East, north of equator to Japan.
The Peace had 440 articles, the important among them were:
1. Alsace and Lorraine to be returned to France. It is to be noted that Alsace and Lorraine, German
Elsass-Lothringen, is the area comprising the present French departments of Haut-Rhin, Bas-
Rhin, and Moselle.
i. Alsace and Lorraine was the name given to the 13,123 square km of territory that was ceded
by France to Germany in 1871 after the Franco-German War.
ii. This territory was retro ceded to France in 1919 after World War I, was ceded again to
Germany in 1940 during World War II, and was again retro ceded to France in 1945.
2. Schleswig was returned back to Denmark. Schleswig-Holstein extends from the lower course of
the Elbe River and the State of Hamburg northward to Denmark and thus occupies the southern
third of the Jutland Peninsula.
3. Most of the parts of Western Prussia were ceded to Poland. Lands in eastern Germany - the rich
farmlands of Posen and the Polish Corridor, a territory 260 miles long and ranging up 80 miles in
width, between Germany and East Prussia - were also given to Poland.
4. The coal belt of Saar was ceded to France for 15 years and the administration of Saar was to be
controlled by the League of Nations. Then there was to be a plebiscite. It was ceded as a

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compensation for the destruction of the French coal mines. The fortifications and harbours of
the islands of Dune and Heligoland were to be destroyed.
5. The Danzig port was also placed under the League of Nations.
6. Memel port in Baltic Sea of Germany was also placed under the League of Nations, so that it can
be later transferred to Lithuania.
7. All the colonies of Germany were distributed among Britain, France, Austria, Japan, South Africa,
Belgium and New Zealand. The distribution is as follows.
i. Japan got Chew Xiao and Shantung.
ii. New Zealand got Saona Island.
iii. England got the regions of Western Africa. The area of Cameroon and Togo-land was
distributed between France and England.
iv. South Africa got south-western parts of Africa.
8. Germany was to relinquish special privileges in China, Egypt, Morocco, Thailand and Liberia.
Provisions regarding disarmament in Germany:

 Now Germany had to only maintain stipulated troops, arms and ammunitions, such as only
1,00,000 army troops including a maximum of 4,000 officers, no further conscriptions, 15,000
naval troops, 6 cruisers, 12 destroyers, 12 torpedo boats, no submarines, no armed aircraft, etc.
o All war vessels in excess to the stated quota were either to be dismantled and converted
into merchant ships or turned over to the Allies.
 They could not fortify eastern coast of River Rhine without permission. The Rhineland was
demilitarised - the German army was not allowed to go there.
 They had to pay 132 billion Marks or $31.4 billion or £ 6.6 billion.
 Germany also had to give machines, raw materials for the reconstruction of damage; it had to
surrender 1,600 tonnes of different commodities for this purpose. The manufacture, import and
export of armaments was limited and such materials could be stored only “at points to be
notified to the Governments” of the Allies.
 Guilt clause: The article 231, known as the War Guilt Clause states “The Allied and Associated
Governments affirm and Germany accepts responsibility of Germany and its allies for causing all
the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have
been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany
and its allies.”
o Article 231 identified Germany as the aggressor nation, which was liable for reparation
payments to the Allied countries for their losses in the war. This demand placed a
tremendous economic burden on a state that had itself suffered massive devastation in the
war.
 In a nutshell, the Treaty of Versailles reduced the European area of Germany by one eighth and
its population by 6,50,000, all colonies were stripped away and naval power was virtually wiped
out, the army was stipulated and the treaty took all possible measures to prevent Germany from
becoming a future threat to the world peace.
 It can aptly be said that the Peace of Paris Treaty was neither severe enough to hold down the
Germans forever, nor generous enough to help those defeated elements to adjust to the new
situation. It was neither able to condone nor was able to control but just ended as a metaphor.

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 The Balkanization of Central Europe made it relatively easy later on for Nazi Germany and the
erstwhile Soviet Union to absorb some of their weak and smaller neighbours, paving the way for
another round of world war.
Peace of Saint Germain with Austria (September 10, 1919)

 The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, was signed on September 10th 1919, by the victorious
Allies of World War I on the one hand and by the Republic of German-Austria on the other.
 Like the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary and the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, it contained
the Covenant of the League of Nations and as a result was not ratified by the United States but
was followed by the US-Austrian Peace Treaty of 1921.
 Austria’s army was limited to 30,000 volunteers. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved.
Austria accepted the independence of following countries:
i. Hungary;
ii. Poland;
iii. Czechoslovakia; and
iv. the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) and ceding eastern Galicia,
Trento, southern Tirol, Trieste, and Istria.
 Plebiscites eventually determined the disposition of southern Carinthia (which went to Austria)
and the town of Sopron (which went to Hungary).
i. The Bohemian and Moravian Crown lands formed the core of the newly created State of
Czechoslovakia. The Austrian Silesia province was split between Czech Silesia and Polish
Cieszyn Silesia. These areas had a large German-speaking population, especially in German
Bohemia and Sudetenland.
ii. The former Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria was taken by the Polish Republic.
iii. Bukovina in the east was claimed by Romania.
iv. Italy got the German-speaking South Tyrol, Trentino, Carinthian Canal Valley, Austrian
Littoral (Gorizia and Gradisca, Free City of Trieste and the March of Istria) and several
Dalmatian islands, as per the 1915 London Pact.
v. Yugoslavia got most of Dalmatia, Duchy of Camiola, Lower Styria, Carinthian Meza Valley and
Jezersko.
vi. Austria got the German-dominated Burgenland.
 Treaty of Neuilly on 27th November 1919 with Bulgaria: Once again like St. Germain-en-Laye, it
was modelled on the lines of Versailles.
i. Greece got parts of Western Thrace.
ii. Bulgarian army was restricted to 20,000 regulars and other armed officials numbering
13,000 were allowed. This was done with the intention to make Bulgaria as the weakest of
the Balkan powers.
iii. War indemnity imposed was 2.25 billion gold Francs or £ 90 million.
iv. Land in Western Bulgaria was given to the future Yugoslavia - at the time of Neuilly what was
to become Yugoslavia was called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
v. Bulgaria also had to recognise the legal existence of the new state and the cession of land
was seen as recognition that Bulgaria had forcibly occupied parts of Serbia between 1915
and 1918 and this was a part of Bulgaria’s punishment.

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Treaty of Trianon on 4th June 1920 with Hungary

 It was the concluding treaty of the World War I and signed by the representatives of Hungary on
one side and the Allied Powers on the other. It was signed on June 4th 1920, at the Trianon
Palace at Versailles, France.
i. Hungary was stripped off at least two-thirds of its former territory and two-thirds of its
inhabitants. Czechoslovakia was given Slovakia, sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, the region of
Pressburg (Bratislava), and other minor sites.
ii. Austria received Western Hungary (most of Burgenland).
iii. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) took Croatia- Slavonia and part of
the Banat.
iv. Romania received most of Banat and all of Transylvania. Italy received Fiume. Except for
plebiscites in two small regions, all the transfers were done without any plebiscites.
v. The armed forces of Hungary were to be restricted to 35,000 men, lightly armed and
employed only to maintain internal order and to secure the frontiers.
 Like all the previous treaties, the seeds of much resentment, ethnic conflict, and interwar
tension were very much inflamed by the imposition of clauses.
 Hungary vehemently protested against the clauses and called them as a blatant violation of their
historical character, as well as the displacement of so many ethnic Magyars, especially without
plebiscites, in violation of the principle of self-determination.
The League of Nations

 The League of Nations was brought into being in January 1920 and Paris Peace Conference came
formally to an end. In the Peace Conference held at Paris, there was a general demand for an
international organisation for the further prevention of war.
 Finally, after a prolonged debate on this issue, it was decided that the league should be formed.
On January 10th 1920, the League of Nations was bought into being. It originally consisted of 42
countries, 26 of which were non-European. At its largest, 57 countries were members of the
League.
 The League was created because a number of people in France, South Africa, the UK and the US
believed that a world organization of nations could keep the peace and prevent a repetition of
the horrors of the 1914-18 war in Europe.
 An effective world body now seemed possible because communication was so much better and
there was increasing experience of working together in international organizations. Coordination
and cooperation for economic and social progress were becoming important.
 In order to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security,
the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war by calling for open, just and honourable
relations between the nations.
 The firm establishment of the understanding of international law as the actual rule of conduct
among the Governments, and the maintenance of justice and scrupulous respect for all treaties
and obligations were needed. The League had two basic aims.

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o Firstly, it sought to preserve the peace through collective action. Disputes would be referred
to the League’s Council for arbitration and conciliation. If necessary, economic and then
military sanctions could be used.
o Secondly, the League aimed to promote international cooperation in economic and social
affairs. Any member State might withdraw from the League, provided it gave two years
notice of its intention to do so and provided it had fulfilled all its international obligations
under the Covenant at the time of its withdrawal.
 The organs of the League were to be an assembly, a council and a secretariat. In the assembly
every member state, each with one vote regardless of its size and strength, had to send three
representatives each.
o So, every member state no matter how small or large was equal when it came to voting. The
council, at the outset, was to consist of five permanent and four non-permanent members,
each entitled to one vote.
o The permanent members were to be the representatives of Five Great Powers, i.e. The
United States, The Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan. The non-permanent members
were to be the representatives of the lesser states selected by the assembly time to time.
o The council was to meet as occasion might require, and at least once a year. Germany was a
member only from 1926- 33, the Soviet Union from 1934-1939.
 The secretariat was to be established at Geneva, Switzerland. This body was to consist of a staff
of officials, assisted by secretaries, clerks, typists, and experts of various kinds.
o The chief duties were to keep the records of the League, conduct the correspondence,
register and publish all treaties made by the member states, conduct investigation
concerning international disputes, and promote international cooperation in various sort of
humanitarian enterprises.
o Its expenses were to be borne by the members of League in accordance with an agreed
apportionment.
 Although the League of Nations had no armed force at its disposal, the LON enjoyed
considerable success in controlling the aggressive situations. The League immensely contributed
towards spreading the idea of international cooperation.
o It helped in disseminating information about existence of global conditions and problems,
and therefore, managed to counteract isolationist attitudes.
o In 1920, it decided in favour of Finland, in a dispute between Finland and Sweden over the
Aaland Islands. In 1925, when Greece invaded Bulgaria, LON persuaded Greece to withdraw.
o Turkey’s claim over Mosul was rejected by the League, so it remained a part of Iraq. The LON
successfully settled disputes in South America between Peru and Colombia and between
Bolivia and Paraguay.
 But the League only managed those disputes which did not involve any big power and when the
big powers got involved in the game of power and aggression, it miserably failed. For example,
when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, League gave very little response and only was able to
form the Lytton Commission.
 The power of the League had completely collapsed in the Ethiopian War in 1935-36 when
Britain and France attempted to do a deal with Mussolini, known as Hoare-Laval Pact, and
applied the sanctions half- heartedly.

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 The League reached its lowest ebb when Hitler had seized Czechoslovakia, Mussolini had
invaded Albania and both took part in the Spanish Civil War. Undoubtedly, considering its
objectives and intentions, it was bound to fail against the policy of appeasement.
Analysis
 It created a feeling of extreme humiliation, had hurt nationalist feelings and provided an
opportunity for extreme Fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, and Militarism in Japan. The treaty
was totally devised to solve only the problem of big powers by undermining the role of
nationality, ethnicity and humanity.
 It was seriously guided towards a need to balance the Central Powers and Russia.
a. In order to check Austria, powerful Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Romania were created.
b. In order to control Russia, a powerful Poland was likely to be created.
c. Germany was burdened with disarmament and it also had to relinquish its colonies and
special privileges.
d. Above all the policy of self- determination was not uniformly adopted and the ethnic
problem was consciously designed to create internal problems so that they cannot think of
mobilising themselves once again e.g. Transylvania was given to Romania in which
Romanians were in minority.
e. The position of Poland in relation to Russia was not made clear.
f. Ukrainians were not given a separate state.
g. Kosovo was given to Yugoslavia despite its 90 per cent Albanian population.
h. Treaty of Versailles was not only ethnically, militarily, politically disrupted for the Central
Powers but also tried to cripple them economically.
i. Not only huge amount of war indemnity was imposed but also important places like Saar
and others were taken away. The disarmament clause was only applied on Germany and
other Central Powers and not at on all Allies.
 The greater failure of these treaties was that they failed to boost the confidence of one nation
over other. The feeling of mutual distrust and the formation of secret alliances continued
unabated.
 These secret alliances later on took the shape of policy of appeasement as no nation was
confident enough of taking bold and authoritative decisions due to apprehensions on the degree
and nature of support of its allies.
o As the Second World War unfolded, it became clear that the League had failed in its chief
aim of keeping the peace. The League had no military power of its own.
o It depended on its members’ contributions and its members were not willing to use any
sanctions, economic or military. Moral authority was insufficient.
o Several Big Powers failed to support the League: the United States crucially never joined,
Germany was a member only for seven years from 1926 and the USSR for only five years
from 1934, Japan and Italy both withdrew in the 30s.
o The League then depended mainly on Britain and France, who were hesitant to act
forcefully. It was indeed difficult for governments long accustomed to operating
independently to work through this new organization.

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 Lausanne Conference was held between June 1932 and July 1932. The conference was held to
liquidate the payment of reparations by Germany to the former Allied and Associated Powers of
World War I.
o Attended by the representatives of the creditor powers mainly the Great Britain, France,
Belgium, and Italy and of Germany, the conference resulted in an agreement on July 9 th
1932, that the conditions of world economic crisis made the continued reparation payments
impossible.
o Germany however, was to deliver to the Bank for International Settlements, established in
1930, 5 percent redeemable bonds to the value of three billion Reichmarks.
o The creditor governments cancelled war debts as between themselves but made a
“gentleman’s agreement” that the Lausanne Protocol would not be ratified until they had
reached a satisfactory agreement with respect to their own war debts to the United States.
o Nonetheless, the agreement was never ratified, the Lausanne Protocol in effect put an end
to attempts to exact reparations from Germany.
 Therefore, we see that the Treaty of Versailles not only failed to solve the existing problems but
further aggravated the situation and the Second World War became the natural corollary of the
Treaty of Versailles.
 The world had to witness the emergence of great politico- economic experiments like
Bolshevism, Nazism, and Fascism. The peace process further complicated the issues of
nationality and self- determination and the peace treaties did not establish a new code of
international conduct and modus operandi.
 In other words, the emotions were left deeply unregulated which found articulation in the form
of war hysteria. The new peace treaties failed to evolve a balance of power and were deeply
biased towards the victorious nations.
 The inherent limitations and contradictions of the Treaty of Versailles had already sealed the
limited life and functioning of the League of Nations. The history is the greatest testimonial of
the fact that policy of revenge is bound to yield nothing except confusion and complications.
End of Eastern Question: Treaty of Lausanne 1923

 The signing of Lausanne Treaty in Switzerland, held on 24th July 1923, led to the end of the
Eastern Question (EQ). The world witnessed the disappearance of the Habsburg Empire, the
destruction of German influence after WWI and the weakening of Russia.
 The relatively small amount of attention paid to the Near-East by the new regime there,
considerably reduced the rivalries in the region. The Balkan frontiers drawn after WWI, to a
great extent, were practical and despite some unsatisfied territorial claims, things remained
calm.
 Some of the Balkan states like Bulgaria, was dissatisfied over Western Thrace and parts of
Macedonia. Greece was dissatisfied over Southern Albania and Yugoslavia over Fiume. But this
dissatisfaction no longer threatened to involve the great powers and destroy the peace of
Europe as they had sometimes done in the past.
 The treaty was held between Turkey and the victorious Allies in the First World War. The treaty
revised the old Treaty of Sevres of 1920. Treaty of Sevres was imposed on Turkey by the Allies
after the WWI.

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o Turkey had to relinquish all non-Turkish territories: Hijaz was recognised as independent.
Syria became a French mandate, whilst Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq became British
mandates.
o Eastern Thrace and an area around Izmir (Smyrna) in Anatolia went to Greece, the
Dodecanese Islands and Rhodes to Italy. The straits were put under the administration of the
League of Nations.
o It can be said that the provisions of Sevres were harsher than the Treaty of Versailles as it
was designed to deprive Turkey of some of its richest provinces.
o Though, the treaty was accepted by the Ottoman Sultan but the nationalist leader Kemal
Ataturk outrightly rejected the provisions of the treaty. Therefore, the Treaty of Laussane
was a liberal revision of the Treaty of Sevres.
 The Treaty of Laussane was signed by representatives of Turkey (successor to the Ottoman
Empire) on one side and by Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania, and the Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) on the other.
o Turkey made no claim to its former Arab provinces and recognized the British possession of
Cyprus and Italian possession of the Dodecanese.
o Some of the provisions of Sevres were maintained like those related to the Arab lands of the
Ottoman Empire and to Italian control of the Dodecanese Islands.
o But Turkey recovered from Greece Eastern Thrace and territory around Izmir (Smyrna) in
Anatolia. It led to the re-establishment of Turkish sovereignty in nearly all the territories
including the present Turkish Republic.
o The Allies had dropped their demand for the autonomy of Turkish Kurdistan and Turkish
cession of territory to Armenia, abandoned claims to the spheres of influence in Turkey, and
imposed no controls over Turkey’s finances or armed forces.
o At the same time, the Turkish straits between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea were
declared open to all for shipping and were demilitarised and taken out of the administrative
control of the League of Nations.
o Turkey was also exempted from paying any reparations. One can say that Turkey alone of
the defeated powers in the First World War managed to ward-off the dictated terms of the
victorious powers and through this settlement forced those powers to accept what was
acceptable to the Turkish government.
EUROPE BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS

 Woodrow Wilson had brought the United States into World War I pledging to “make the world
safe for democracy,” and his Fourteen Points called for national self-determination and
democratic politics in Central Europe.
 In a large measure, these goals were achieved with the Paris Peace Agreements, which resulted
in the formation of the new states of Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, carved from the
Habsburg Empire and from the Old Russian Empire the states of Poland, Finland, Latvia,
Lithuania, and Estonia.
o All of them adopted written constitutions with legislatures elected through the universal
suffrage. In the city of Weimar, the German national assembly also adopted a constitution
establishing a democratic republic, the Weimar Republic.

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o In the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, a nationalist revolution led by Mustapha Kemal (later
named Kemal Ataturk) abolished the Sultanate and the Caliphate and established the secular
democratic republic of Turkey, the first Muslim country to separate religion from the
government.
o The 1920s saw democratic advances even in established democracies, for example with the
extension of voting rights to women in both Britain and the United States.
 Germany was reconstituted as a democratic republic, but it was also forced to accept the terms
of the Versailles Treaty, despite vigorous and sustained protests from every band of the political
spectrum inside the country.
o The treaty not only assigned Germany with the responsibility for World War I and imposed
reparation payments on the new government but also reduced the size of the country by
restoring an independent Austria, returning Alsace-Lorraine to France.
o Placing the Saar territory and the Rhineland under the French or Allied possession, ceding
most of West Prussia to Poland, and establishing the port city of Danzig as a free city under
the auspices of the League of Nations.
o In addition, the treaty placed German colonies (e.g., in Africa) under the League of Nations
control as mandates and limited the German army and armaments.
o For Germans, the humiliation of all these provisions was compounded by the reparations
payments, which eventually were set at the equivalent of $33 billion.
o The country simply could not make these payments (and in the long run paid only a fraction
of them), so the government began printing more money, which contributed to the
unprecedented hyperinflation and rendered the German currency (the mark) almost
worthless.
o By 1923, the exchange rate was four trillion marks to the dollar. German families had to cart
wheelbarrows full of cash to the store just to purchase a loaf of bread.
WORLD WAR II
 The Paris Peace Settlements of 1919-1920 brought to a close the bitter divisions and seemingly
endless conflict of World War I. The European participants in the war were devastated and
exhausted and yearned for peace, stability, and normality, and many of the European
governments (and the United States) retreated into isolationism, neutrality, or pacifism.
 The Paris Agreements, including the crucial Versailles Treaty affecting Germany, had established
national and democratic states in Germany, as well as the new states of Eastern Europe, and had
created the League of Nations to protect the peace and ward off future wars. A sense of calm
and relief spread through much of the Continent.
 There were, however, storm clouds on the horizon even in those first postwar years, with
economic distress and inflation, irredentist discontent with the Versailles Treaty (especially in
Germany), and the unsettling presence of a new communist state in Russia.
 By the 1930s, things had fallen apart as a worldwide economic depression weakened
governments everywhere, and many of the newly established European democracies were
subverted from within or without.
 In Germany, Adolf Hitler (1889- 1945) capitalized on economic distress and discontent, seized
absolute power, and began constructing his Third Reich. His aggressive military moves to reclaim

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German territory and then to conquer all of Europe led to World War II, which was even more
devastating than the previous war, and to the Holocaust.
 The United States finally intervened to help end the war, as it had in World War I, and the potent
alliance of the United States and the Soviet Union finally crushed Nazi Germany.
 But, with the end of the war, this wartime friendship deteriorated into rivalry, distrust, and a
period of political and military tension known as the Cold War.
THE RISE OF MILITARISM AND FASCISM

 Hitler emerged from this environment, but he was not the first or the only right wing dictator to
rise to power in interwar Europe. He was preceded, most importantly, by Benito Mussolini
(1883-1945), who had seized the power in Italy in 1922 and established the first fascist
dictatorship in Europe, in a country that had maintained a parliamentary government since its
unification in 1861.
 Mussolini, born as a son of a blacksmith in 1883, had in his youth dabbled in both, revolutionary
activity and radical journalism. He served in World War I, and after the war, organized a fighting
band, made up mostly of ex-soldiers whom he called “fascists.”
 Fascism emerged as a political ideology that was anti-communist and anti-socialist, militantly
nationalist, and in favor of economic security and law and order, if necessary through dictatorial
rule. In the years after the war, Italy, like Germany, suffered from wartime debts, economic
depression, and unemployment.
 In 1921 and 1922, when widespread strikes and demonstrations had practically paralyzed the
country, Mussolini and his fascists were dubbed as “Blackshirts”, threatened a takeover of the
government and promised to restore order and stability.
 Under the threat of Mussolini’s ultimatum, the king appointed him as the Prime Minister. The
Parliament then granted him a year of emergency powers to restore order in the country. Within
a few years, Mussolini had emasculated the Parliament, put the press under censorship, and
abolished all political parties except his fascists. He took the title “The Duce” (the leader).
 Adolf Hitler’s early life paralleled that of Mussolini’s in some ways, and after Mussolini’s seizure
of power, Hitler consciously modeled Mussolini’s tactics and success. Hitler was born in Austria,
son of a customs official, but lost both of his parents during his teenage years.
o He spent his early years in Vienna and Munich, as a frustrated artist, unemployed and poor.
He welcomed the onset of World War I and served with distinction, becoming a corporal and
receiving the Iron Cross for bravery.
o After the war, he founded the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which became
known as the Nazi Party.
o In 1923, the year after Mussolini’s March on Rome, Hitler and his Nazis made a similar
attempt to seize control of the government in Bavaria, in Southern Germany, in what came
to be known as the Munich Beer Hall Putsch.
o The coup attempt was put down by the army, fourteen Nazis were killed, and Hitler was
sentenced to jail. During his year in jail, Hitler wrote his rambling memoirs, Mein Kampf (My
Struggle), which were published in 1925 and became a best seller.

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o The book was a strange conglomeration of autobiography, racism, nationalism, theories of

history, and anti- Semitism. In this book, fifteen years before the gassing of the Jews at
Auschwitz, Hitler unveils his ideas of racial hierarchy and supremacy.
o Borrowing some of the language of social Darwinism and eugenics, he inveighs against the
“crossing of breeds” in humans, which is “contrary to the will of Nature for a higher
breeding of all life.”
o The trial of Hitler for the Putsch and the publication of Mein Kampf made him a political
figure of national prominence.
o But the years after his release from jail were the ones of relative prosperity and stability in
Germany (following the Dawes Plan), and Hitler and his Nazis lost appeal and supporters.
o When the economic depression hit Germany in 1930, however, Hitler had new fodder for his
charges against Versailles, Jews, communists, foreigners, and the Weimar Republic.
o As the economy collapsed and unemployment rate rose to 30 percent, Germans began
looking for radical solutions from both the Left and the Right, and support grew for both, the
communists and the Nazis.
o In legislative elections, votes for the Nazis jumped from 3 percent in 1928 to 18 percent in
1930 to 37 percent in 1932. By that time, the Nazis were by far the largest party in the
legislature, the Reichstag, although they did not have a majority of seats.
o No other political party wanted to collaborate with Hitler in forming a coalition government,
and the traditional conservative parties, led by President Hindenburg, all thought that they
could control Hitler by allowing him into the government and hemming him in with their
own people in the cabinet.
 So, in January 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as the Chancellor (Prime Minister) of
the German Republic. Hitler’s appointment sparked a wave of brutal Nazi attacks on socialists,
communists, Jews, and others who opposed Nazism.
o Hitler began to consolidate power in much the same way that Mussolini had done in Italy a
decade earlier.
o When the Reichstag building caught fire a week before elections and it destroyed the
building totally, Hitler blamed it on the communists, frightening legislators and citizens alike
with a Red Scare and claiming a national emergency.
o The legislature voted to give him dictatorial powers. In July, Hitler declared that the Nazis
were the only legal party.
o He initiated a public works program (and rearmament), which soon absorbed almost all of
the unemployed in Germany.
o When President Hindenburg died the next year, Hitler merged the offices of the President
and Chancellor under his control. He proclaimed the establishment of the Third Reich.
o Like Mussolini, he took the title of Fiihrer (leader). The groundwork was laid for a third
totalitarian state, along with those of Stalin and Mussolini.
HITLER’S AGGRESSION
 Hitler had gained both notoriety and popular support by condemning the Versailles Treaty and
calling for the restoration of German honor, pride, and power and the recovery of lost German

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territories. Within a few months of becoming the Chancellor, he began to fulfill these promises
in a steadily escalating series of aggressive moves.
 In October 1933, he pulled Germany out of the League of Nations and denounced the
disarmament negotiations that were then under way. By 1935, he had begun rearming
Germany, contrary to the provisions of Versailles, and introduced compulsory military service.
 The League censured Germany but took no other action. In 1936, Hitler moved German troops
into the Rhineland (on Germany’s western border), an area that was permanently demilitarized
by the Versailles Treaty. The same year, Hitler signed mutual defense and assistance treaties
with both Mussolini’s Italy (the Rome-Berlin axis) and with the military government in Japan.
 During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, when the government forces were pitted against
Francisco Franco’s rebel fascists, Hitler and Mussolini cooperated in assisting Franco, providing a
testing ground for their troops and weapons.
 By 1938, Hitler was prepared to press his demands to bring all Germans into the German Reich.
In March of that year, he marched German troops into Austria, announced the Anschluss
(merger) of Austria with Germany, and drove to Vienna in triumph.
o Even after this, neither the League nor the Western powers responded, due to a growing
sentiment that there was some justification to Germany’s nationalist claims.
o The annexation of Austria had added about six million Germans to the Reich, and now Hitler
began making noises about the supposed intolerable conditions of the three million
Germans living in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.
o As rumors spread that Germany was about to invade Czechoslovakia, the governments of
France, England, and the Soviet Union issued warnings to Hitler.
 In September 1938, Hitler invited the Prime Ministers of England and France, Neville
Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier respectively, plus Mussolini, to a conference in Munich to
discuss the situation.
o In the resulting agreement, the four powers renounced war on each other, ceded the
Sudetenland to Hitler, and guaranteed the territorial integrity of the rest of Czechoslovakia.
o Prime Minister Chamberlain returned to London asserting that he had achieved “peace with
honor.” Six months later, Hitler invaded and annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia.
o Since that time, the names Chamberlain and Munich have been associated with the
appeasement of aggression. But, in 1938, none of the major powers were prepared to
confront Hitler militarily.
 The old balance of power system of alliances had collapsed in the World War I, and in any case,
the traditional counterweight to Germany, a flanking alliance of England or France with Russia,
was impossible because of Western distrust of the communists of the Soviet Union.
 The replacement for the balance of power, the League of Nations, had already proved
ineffectual in countering the military aggression of Japan, Italy, and Germany. Alarmed at the
unchecked militarism of Nazi Germany, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, signed the Non-
Aggression Pact with Hitler in August 1939.
o This agreement was public, but in a secret protocol, the Germans and Soviets agreed to
divide Poland between them in the event of war and sanctioned for the Soviet’s influence in
the Baltic States.

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o One week after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact, the Germans invaded Poland with a
massive army of over one million troops. Britain and France immediately declared war on
Germany. For the second time in a generation, Europe was at war.
THE WAR
 By this time, Hitler’s goals had gone beyond the recovery of “German” territory to the
acquisition of lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe for his expanding “master race”—thus
his keen interest for acquiring Poland.
 The German attack on Poland, in September 1939, employed the new military tactic of
Blitzkrieg i.e. lightning warfare using massive amounts of manpower, airpower, and armor so as
to achieve rapid annihilation of the enemy.
 Poland fell within a month, and Hitler set about the occupation of the country. Meanwhile, the
Soviet Union, invoking the secret protocol, invaded and occupied the Eastern Poland, the area
that they had lost in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920.
 In the spring of 1940, Nazi troops invaded Norway and Denmark, then launched another
blitzkrieg on Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg and France, forcing a French surrender within
six weeks. With a stunning speed and ease, Hitler had taken over most of Europe.
 In the summer of 1940, England was the only country that remained at war with Germany.
Winston Churchill had replaced Neville Chamberlain as the Prime Minister, promising nothing
but “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” in an implacable war against “a monstrous tyranny, never
surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime.”
 Hitler launched an air campaign against Britain, with bombing raids on London and other cities,
as a prelude to a full-scale invasion. But the British Royal Air Force was able to prevent German
supremacy in the air, and with Churchill’s inspiration, civilian morale was held up in spite of the
death, destruction, and privation.
 Unable to subdue Britain, Hitler shifted his attention to his more important objective, the Soviet
Union, which from the beginning wanted to invade and occupy, in spite of the Non- Aggression
Pact of 1939.
 The military assault on the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, was launched on June 22nd
1941, with three million men along a two- thousand-mile front. Within a few months, German
troops had encircled Leningrad and got within twenty-five miles of Moscow.
 For the next three years, until the Allied invasion of the mainland of Italy (September 1943) and
France (June 1944), the struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union was the only real fight
going on in the European theater.
 The overwhelming majority of all casualties of the war were from Soviet, and the Soviet Union
sustained some eight million military losses and at least eighteen million civilian deaths.
AXIS POWERS IN WORLD WAR II ALLIED POWERS IN WORLD WAR-II

Germany Britain
Austria United States
Hungary France
Italy Soviet Union
Japan Belgium

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Romania Denamrk
Bulgaria Turkey
Albania Greece
Finland Czechoslovakia
Thailand Netherlands, Norway, Poland, etc.
The Beginning of the War

 On 23rd August 1939, the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact was signed. The stage was now
set for the invasion of Poland. As stated earlier, Hitler was convinced that, as before, the
Western Powers would acquiesce in the aggression.
o He had told his commanders, “Our opponents are little worms. I saw them in Munich”. On 1st
September 1939, Hitler’s army invaded Poland. On 3rd September 1939, Britain and France
declared war on Germany.
o Poland, completely unaided by Britain and France in spite of the declaration of war, was
defeated in about three weeks time. Britain and France neither directly came to the aid of
Poland nor launched any military operation against Germany in the West.
 The Second World War had begun but it was confined to a small part of Europe in the east. For
about seven months after the declaration of war, there was no active war between Britain and
France, and Germany, except for a few minor naval clashes.
 This period in the history of the Second World War is known as the ‘Phoney War’. Soviets
Occupy Eastern Poland and Baltic States. The Part of Poland comprising of the territories which
had earlier been part of the Russian Empire’s Ukraine and Byelorussia, these territories were
merged with the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Republics of the Soviet Union.
o The occupation of these territories was justified by the Soviet Union on the ground that they
were seized from it by Poland after the First World War and that the advance of Germany in
Poland threatened its security.
o Most historians are of the view that the occupation of the eastern parts of Poland by the
Soviet Union was part of the German-Soviet plan to do partition Poland between them. In
November 1939, war broke out between the Soviet Union and Finland.
o It ended in March 1940 with the signing of the Soviet-Finnish Peace Treaty. According to this
treaty, the Soviet Union gained a naval base and some territories in the north of Finland, and
two countries decided not to join any other country hostile to either of them.
o During this period, the Soviet Union had established its military bases in the Baltic States of
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which were part of the Russian Empire and had become
independent after the First World War. By August 1940, the Soviet Republics were set up in
these countries and they had become part of the Soviet Union.
Conquest of Denmark and Norway

 In early April 1940, the British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, had declared that “Hitler had
missed the bus” because he had failed to launch an attack on the West when the West was not
prepared for it. He was to be proved wrong a few days later and to lose his Prime Ministership
after a month.

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 Sweden was a major supplier of iron ore to Germany, and the occupation of Norway was
important for Germany to protect the supplies from Sweden.
 In the meantime, a fascist movement had arisen in Norway and its leader, Vidkun Quisling, was
in touch with Germany to facilitate its conquest of Norway. On 9th April 1940, Germany launched
an invasion of Denmark and Norway.
o Denmark surrendered without any fight, and Norway was defeated, with the active support
of Norwegian fascists, by early June.
o The word ‘quisling’ has, after the Norwegian fascist, come to stand for a person who
collaborates with a foreign power to occupy his country and is installed by the foreign
occupying power as their puppet
o The British and French forces that were sent to the aid of Norway had left Norway even
earlier. With the conquest of Denmark and Norway, Germany acquired important air and
naval bases in the Northern Europe.
 The capitulation of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France - On 10th May 1940, Germany invaded
the Netherlands (Holland), Belgium, Luxemburg and France. The Netherlands, surrendered
within five days, Luxemburg within a few hours, and the Belgian King ordered the surrender of
his troops on 28th May, seventeen days after the invasion.
 The ‘Phoney War’ had come to an end on 26th May, evacuation of about 350,000 British, French
and Belgian troops (the Belgian troops being those who had refused to surrender) who had
retreated to Dunkirk and by 4th June they were transported to Britain.
 They left behind at Dunkirk all their heavy equipment. In the meantime, there were political
changes in Britain and France. On 10th May, Chamberlain had resigned, and was replaced by
Winston Churchill as the Prime Minister of a coalition government, with the Labour Party’s
Clement Attlee as the Deputy Prime Minister.
 In March 1940, the French Prime Minister Daladier was ousted. He was replaced by Paul
Reynaud. Most of the French cabinet at this time comprised of ‘defeatists’, that is, those who
wanted to surrender to Germany.
 On 9th June, the French government left Paris, which on 14th June, was occupied by German
troops. Now the Head of the French government was Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, who
appealed to Germany for peace. So far, Italy had kept itself aloof.
 Now that the defeat of France as well as of Britain seemed imminent, it entered the war on 10 th
June on the side of Germany. On 22nd June, Petain’s government signed an agreement according
to which Alsace-Lorraine was annexed by Germany, Northern France was occupied by the
German troops and Petain’s government was allowed to retain control of about half of France.
 Charles de Gaulle, who had been a colonel of the French army at the time of the German
invasion of France, had escaped to Britain. Under the leadership of General de Gaulle, the Free
France movement was started and a French army was organized in Britain to fight against Nazi
Germany.
 That part of France which was ruled over by Petain’s government is known as Vichy France of
Britain. After having conquered about the whole of Western Europe, Germany now planned the
invasion of Britain.
 This plan was given the code name of ‘Sea-Lion’. The invasion of Britain was possible only if
Germany could gain control over the English Channel which the German armies would have to

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cross to reach Britain. This required the British air force and navy to be made ineffective for
preventing the crossing of the Channel.
 German bombers and fighters started the bombing of British ports, airfields and aircraft
factories. There were dogfights between the aircrafts of the two countries over the Channel and
over the ports and cities of Britain.
 The German air force suffered heavier losses than the British air force because of the stiff
resistance by the British air force. Germany started raiding Britain’s big cities, particularly
London, at night in the hope of destroying the morale of the people. Britain, in return,
conducted air raids on Germany.
 The aerial battle between Britain and Germany is known as the Battle of Britain. Through his
resounding speeches, the British Prime Minister kept the morale of the British people high.
Some of these speeches are among the most famous examples of oratory in the world.
o The British were also able to save their airfields from any serious damage and they increased
the production in their aircraft industries so that the losses in the Battle of Britain were
more than made up for.
o As a result of the British resistance, operation ‘Sea-Lion’ was indefinitely put off and, by
November 1940, the German air raids on London had more or less ceased.
Other Theatres of War

 In the meantime, the war had spread to some other parts of Europe and Africa. On 27th
September 1940, Germany, Italy and Japan signed a Tripartite Pact. According to this Pact, a
country pledged to give full support to its allies in the event of an attack.
 Japan, in turn, recognized German and Italian supremacy over Europe. In October 1940, Italy
invaded Greece but it faced stiff resistance and appealed to Germany for help.
 Germany and Italy recognized Japan’s claims to create what was called the Greater East Asia for
Prosperity Sphere, meaning Japanese conquest of not only China and Manchuria but of all East
and South- East Asia. Japan, in turn, recognized German and Italian supremacy over Europe.
 In October 1940, Italy invaded Greece but it faced stiff resistance and appealed to Germany for
help. Between November 1940 and March 1941, Germany got Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and
Bulgaria to join the Tripartite Pact and sent its troops to these countries.
 These countries thus became the allies of Germany, Italy and Japan. By this time, Hitler had
decided to launch an invasion on the Soviet Union. The sending of German troops to these
countries was the plan of preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
 In April, the German troops were sent to Yugoslavia and to Greece, which had repelled the
Italian invasion, and these countries were subjugated. By June 1941, Germany and Italy had
conquered all of Europe, except Britain and the Soviet Union.
 In the meantime, Italy had invaded British Somaliland and Sudan and had started advancing
towards Egypt. However, by December 1940, the British succeeded in not only recovering all
their colonies in Africa which Italy had taken, but also in driving the Italian troops out of Africa
except Libya.
 In February 1941, German troops were sent to Libya, and Germany and Italy launched another
drive against the British in Africa.

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German Invasion of the Soviet Union

 Hitler had always held the view that the ‘real’ war to be waged by him would be against the
Soviet Union. The conquest of the Soviet Union with its vast resources would, he believed, make
Germany ‘invulnerable’ and give him the power to “wage wars against the whole continent’’.
 The objective of the conquest of the Soviet Union was also very different from the objective of
Germany’s other military campaigns. This was to be a total war of extermination, and not only of
communism.
 Hitler dreamed of settling 100 million people of ‘pure Aryan blood’ — Germans — in the
territories to the west of the Urals and as so many Germans did not exist, the privilege was to be
extended to others — the North Europeans the Dutch and the English — who were considered
“racially approximate to the Germans’’.
o During the war, he described the new ‘civilization’ that he planned to build up in this area,
‘The area must lose the character of the Asian steppe it must be Europeanized. The ‘Reich
peasant’ (die German peasant) is to live in outstandingly beautiful settlements.
o The German agencies and authorities are to have wonderful buildings, and palaces. Around
each city, a ring of lovely villages will be placed to within 30 or 40 kilometers.
o The extermination of the Jews and the enslavement of the Slavs was an integral part of this
Plan. The planning of the invasion of the Soviet Union had started in early 1940. It was given
the code- name of ‘Operation Barbarossa.”
o Hitler had a low opinion of the Red Army, as the Soviet Union’s army was called, and called it
“no more than a joke”. According to the plan, the Soviet Union was to be defeated within
nine weeks or, at the most, in seventeen weeks.
o As it turned out, the invasion led to the destruction of the Nazi regime and of Hider himself.
 When the invasion took place, the Soviet Union was taken aback, totally unaware and suffered
terrible devastation. This is explained by some Soviet writers as due to the ‘lack of time’, that
the Soviet Union had to complete its preparedness to meet the aggression.
 Most writers, however, are of the view that Stalin had put too much trust in the Non- Aggression
Pact and had come to believe that Germany would remain involved in a war exclusively with the
Western imperialist countries for long and that there was no immediate danger to the Soviet
Union.
 It is important to note in this context that since the outbreak of the war, Stalin had imposed a
ban on the publication of anti-Nazi and anti-German views in the Soviet Union.
 Until the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Second World War was presented exclusively
as an inter-imperialist war — not a war launched by the aggressive fascist powers. The Non-
Aggression Pact and the Soviet invasion of Poland and occupation of Baltic States was a major
setback to the popularity of the Soviet Union and the communist parties, the world over.
 The German invasion began on 22nd June 1941, without a formal declaration of war. The German
tanks, supported by air attacks, rapidly advanced into the Soviet Union along a front which
stretched over more than 3000 km towards Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev.
 The Soviet forces steadily retreated, and the German forces occupied Kiev, Smolensk and
Odessa. Germany had hoped to end the war with the Soviet Union before the onset of winters.
In early October, Moscow was besieged. By then, however, it was too late. Soon, the Russian
winter started. By the middle of November, the assault on Moscow was halted.

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 By the end of November, the temperature had fallen to -40°C rendering much of the German
heavy equipment useless. The German soldiers were not sufficiently clothed to withstand the
winters.
 In December, the Soviet counter- attack started, and by January, the German forces were driven
back from Moscow. ‘Operation Barbarossa’ had failed but the total rout was to come later. In
the meantime, many other significant developments had taken place in the world.
US Entry into the War

 When the Second World War broke out, the US announced its neutrality. Since the beginning of
the aggression by the fascist powers, the US had followed a policy similar to that of Britain and
France. During the Munich talks on Sudetenland, the US President had supported Chamberlain’s
policy of appeasement.
 The US had protested against the Japanese aggression in China but had done no more. Most
Americans were sympathetic to Britain in the war but were opposed to direct US entry into the
war. Britain was allowed to buy arms on what is known as the cash- and-carry basis from the US.
 Gradually, the US support to Britain grew. By the early 1941, the British were in no position to
pay for the arms and other goods for which they were heavily dependent on the US. In March
1941, the US Congress passed a law under which the US President was given the right to lend or
lease armaments to any country whose defense was “vital to the defense of the United States”.
 This was known as the ‘lend-lease’ system, and Britain began to receive massive supplies from
the US. Subsequently, US also undertook the protection of its shipments to Britain against the
German attacks.
 Simultaneously, the US industries began producing enormous quantities of armaments, aircraft
and ships. In November 1941, the US ‘lend-lease’ system was extended to the Soviet Union.
The Atlantic Charter
 Another important development was a declaration which the British Prime Minister, Churchill,
and the US President, Roosevelt, (he was elected as President for the third time in 1940) issued
after a meeting when the troops advanced deep into the Caucasus.
 In March 1942, Hitler had asserted that the Red Army would be annihilated in the summer of
that year. In July, the German troops launched an offensive on Stalingrad (now Volgograd) and
by mid-September they reached the outskirts of that city.
 Then, began what has been called “the greatest single trial of strength” of the Second World
War. By the middle of November, the German armies were in and around Stalingrad. Bitter
fighting was going on in the streets of Stalingrad for every inch of the territory.
o In late November, the German armies in and around Stalingrad were encircled by the Soviet
troops, and they could find no way to escape. No supplies could reach them.
o General Paulus, who commanded the encircled Gentian army, reported on 24th January
1943 that among the surviving German troops there were 20,000 wounded who were
unattended and another 20,000 who were suffering from frostbites, had no weapons and
were starving.
o On 31st January, he surrendered. The battle of Stalingrad had lasted five months and had
reduced that city to rubble. The German defeat in this battle has been described as “the
greatest defeat in history that a German army has undergone”.

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o Germany and the countries allied to it lost over 300,000 troops in this battle. About 90,000
of them survived the battle and they were taken prisoner.
 In July 1941, the Soviet government had appealed to Britain to open a ‘Second Front’ by
invading France so that the German strength concentrated against it could be diverted, but it
was not agreed to. In May and June 1942, the Soviet Union again appealed to the US and Britain
for opening a ‘Second Front’.
 The US President was willing but finally both Britain and the US decided to send troops to North
Africa instead. The reason advanced for not opening the Second Front in Europe given by Britain
and The US in 1942, was that it would be equal to the task of launching a frontal mack against
the German forces in Europe.
 This led the Soviet Union to believe that Britain and the US “wanted to bleed the Soviet Union
white” so that they could preserve their forces and emerge supreme in the later stages of the
war. After the German debacle at Stalingrad, however, there was greater coordination among
the three powers.
 The German and allied troops launched another massive military operation against the Soviet
army in the middle of 1943 but they suffered a crushing defeat in August, lashing about 500,000
troops. This is known as the Battle of Kursk. A
 fter that they were steadily swept badly and, by January 1944, they began to retreat from all
sectors of the Eastern Front. While the fascist powers had reached the height of their power in
1942, they faced defeats in almost every theatre of war in 1943.
 After the Italian debacle in North Africa, the German troops under General Rommel were sent
there to help their Italian allies. They had achieved remarkable successes and in August 1942 had
launched an offensive against the British forces in Egypt.
 A battle was fought between the German and British armies, the latter under General
Montgomery, at El Alamein and the German armies were forced to retreat in November.
 Soon after the battle of El Alamein, the British and the US troops landed on the Atlantic coast of
Morocco and in Algeria. Both these countries were French colonies and were under the control
of Vichy France, which was allied to Germany. However, after some time, the French army in
these countries joined the Allies.
 Germany occupied Vichy France, and sent reinforcements to Tunisia, which was also a French
colony. Rommel’s troops were driven back to Tunisia by March 1943. In May 1943, the British
and American forces launched an offensive in Tunisia and the German and Italian forces
surrendered.
 This marked the end of Italian and Gentian presence in North Africa. Earlier, in 1941, a pro-
German revolt in Iraq was crushed by the British, and the British and Free French forces had
occupied Syria and Lebanon, which had been under the control of Vichy France.
 In the Pacific, there were many naval battles between the US and Japan during 1942, and though
the Japanese offensive had been halted, the Allied victories were not notable. In 1943, however,
the Allies recovered many Pacific islands from the Japanese.
 In China, the Japanese offensive continued and the Allies failed to land their troops there. They
had succeeded in flowing supplies to Chiang Kai- Shek, but his army was not able to launch any
attack against the Japanese.

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The Allied Victories in Europe

 Early in 1943, Britain and the US decided to postpone the offensive in Western Europe to 1944.
In July, when the Battle of Kursk was on, they invaded Sicily. By this time, there was a
widespread discontent in Italy. There were frequent strikes.
 The disaffection had also spread to the armed forces, which had suffered defeats everywhere,
and they surrendered in large numbers to the Allied forces. On 25th July 1943, Mussolini was
dismissed and a new government came to power.
 Italy now wanted to withdraw from the war. On 3rd September, the Allied troops invaded
Southern Italy, and Italy surrendered unconditionally. On 10th September, the German troops
occupied Northern Italy, including Rome. They rescued Mussolini from detention and lie,
guarded by the Germans, set up his government in Northern Italy under the German protection.
 In Southern Italy, a new government was formed and it declared war on Germany. Though the
Allied troops did not advance to the north for many months, the resistance in Northern Italy
grew in strength and they fought against the German occupation and against Mussolini with
great tenacity.
 In 1944, the fascist troops were thrown out of the Soviet territory and the Soviet Union defeated
Finland which had become Germany’s ally. Most parts of the countries of Eastern Europe —
Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were liberated.
 In some of these countries, fascist governments had come to power and they had joined the war
on the side of Germany. Others, such as Poland, were under direct Gentian occupation. The
fascist troops were also driven out of Greece, Yugoslavia and Albania.
 In June 1944, the Allied troops opened the Second Front in Western Europe. On 6th June 1944,
known as the ‘D Day’, the first Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, on the north
coast of France.
 By the end of July, the number of the Allied troops which landed in France, had gone up to
16,00,000. They were commanded by General Dwight D. Eisenhower of the US Army, who later
became the President of USA.
 By September 1944, France, Luxemburg and Belgium were liberated by the Allied armies. The
last major Gentian counter- offensive was launched in December 1944 in the Ardennes region of
Belgium. (The battle which followed is known as the Battle of the Bulge.
 It ended in mid-January 1945 when the Soviet troops led by Marshal Zhukov launched a massive
attack all along the eastern front, and Hitler was forced to shift most of his troops front the
Ardennes to the east.)
Surrender of Germany
 The war in Italy continued for many months after Germany had occupied Northern Italy and
rescued Mussolini, who had set up his government in German-occupied Italy. However, by June
1944, the Allied troops had liberated many Italian cities, including Rome.
 In the meantime, the anti-fascist Italian forces had intensified their activities. On 23rd April 1945,
there was an uprising in those areas of Italy which were still under fascist occupation. On 28th
April 1945, Mussolini, who was captured and executed, and the Germans in Italy surrendered.
This marked the end of fascism in Italy.

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 By early January 1945, the collapse of Germany was in sight. The Soviet offensive, which was
launched in January 1945, swept away the last German resistance in the east. Warsaw was
liberated on 17th January, Budapest on 13th February, Vienna on 13th April.
 The Soviet armies moved into Germany and by 25th April, Berlin was encircled by them. In the
meantime, in March, the Allied troops had started their offensive in the west and by mid-April
occupied large parts of West Germany.
 On 30th April 1945, Hitler committed suicide. The same day the Soviet armies hoisted the Red
Flag on the Reichstag building. Sporadic fighting continued for another two days in Berlin.
 On 7th May 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the representatives of the US, Britain,
France and the Soviet Union at the headquarters of General Eisenhower in Rheims. In May 1945
Germany made another unconditional surrender at the Soviet headquarters in Berim. On 11th
May Czechoslovakia was liberated, and the war in Europe was over.
Surrender of Japan
 The war in Asia and the Pacific continued even after Germany’s surrender. The Allies had scored
victories in this region in 1944 but Japan was still strongly entrenched with a huge army in China,
Manchuria, Korea and other places.
 On 6th August 1945, a US aircraft dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima and on 9th August on
Nagasaki. These bombs killed over 320,000 people in these two cities. Japan capitulated on 15th
August. On 8th August, the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan.
 By the end of August, the Japanese armies in Manchuria had surrendered to the Soviet army, in
South-East Asia to the British army, and in China to the armies of Chiang Kai-Shek and the
Chinese communists. On 2nd September 1945, Japan surrendered, and the Second World War
was over.
Fascist Barbarities
 The fascist aggressions and occupations were accompanied by the most inhuman barbarities
against the occupied people. The war ended with the victory of the anti- fascist alliance,
comprising the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain, and their allies.
 Thus, alliance was the fundamental basis, an essential condition, for the defeat of the fascist
powers. Besides, in each country which was invaded and occupied by the fascist powers, and
within the fascist countries, resistance movements of the people grew and they played an
important, in some cases crucial, role in the defeat of the fascist powers.
 A large part of the civilian population of occupied Europe was either exterminated or used as
slave labour. The Jews were particularly singled out. In 1941 alone, one million people of the
Soviet Union were murdered. About half of them were Jews.
 Some of these were purely death camps. In July 1941, an order was issued on the ‘final solution’
of the Jewish problem. This meant “the planned biological destruction of the Jewish race in the
Eastern territories”.
 The full facts about these camps came to light only when the Allied troops liberated the
territories in which they were located and subsequently when the Nuremberg Trials took place
for war crimes. In the beginning, the victims were shot.

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 But this was found to be expensive and messy and, therefore, horrible means of exterminating
human beings were invented. A pest control firm, a subsidiary of the German Company I.G.
Faiben, produced a gas which, from 1942 onwards, was used for the purpose.
 The victims were marched into cellars which they were told were places for bath. The cellars
were actually gas chambers with a gas- proof metal door. The crystals of the gas were pushed
inside and after twenty- five minutes the gas-laden air was removed through exhaust pumps and
the metal door were opened.
 After removing the gold teeth and hair, the piled-up dead bodies were removed to the furnaces
where they were reduced to ash, which was scattered in the nearby streams.
 Instead of murdering people straightaway, the Nazis generally let the German industrialists first
make full use of their labour. The inmates of the camps began to be leased out to some
industrial concerns such as the Krupps, I.G. Faiben, Siemens, etc.
 Some of these industrial concerns set up their industrial units near the camps. As the trains
carrying the victims arrived, women, children, the old and the sick were taken straight to the
death camps and the healthy to work sites where many of them were worked to death.
 Those found sick were transferred to the death camps every morning. Some industrial firms
manufactured goods from human skins. Besides extermination in the gas chamber, the inmates
of the camps were also used for conducting biological experiments by the Nazi doctors.
 Various kinds of disease were induced in the victims and vaccines tried. Some were slowly frozen
to death and biological changes taking place in their bodies studied. These experiments are too
horrible to describe. The total number of the civilian population killed by the Nazis is estimated
to be over ten million.
 This mass murder of the Jews has come to be known as the ‘holocaust’. Besides the millions of
Europeans who were brought to the camps to perform slave labour and to be exterminated,
another 75,00,000 people from various parts of Europe were brought to Germany to work as
slave labourers in German factories. They included about two million prisoners of war.
 About 15,00,000 civilians were killed in air raids during the Second World War. Air raids on the
civilian population were started by Germany; the Allied countries reverted to raids on the civilian
population on a massive scale.
 The British dropped over incendiaries on the German city of Dresden on 13- 14th February 1945,
killing about 135,000 people. The two atom bombs used by the US, as stated earlier, killed about
320.000 Japanese men women and children.
 The use of atom bombs by the US is considered by many people an abominable act , not only
because of the number of people that the two bombs killed but also because of the very use of
the new weapons of mass destruction.
 The scholars point out that after the collapse of Germany, Japan was in no position to conduct a
protracted war. Around this time, the Soviet Union was also about to enter the war against
Japan. The atomic weapons wore developed in the US during the war by pooling the scientific
skills and resources of many countries.
 Many scientists, of the US and other countries, had worked on the project to develop atomic
weapons because of the fear in the scientific community that Nazi Germany might develop these
weapons first and use them to terrorize the world into submission.

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 However, at the end of the war in Europe, it had become clear that no other country had made
much progress in developing them. Some scholars hold the view that the US, the only country
then possessing these weapons, used them to demonstrate its military supremacy in the post-
war world.
 The Soviet Union, which suffered the heaviest casualties, both civilian and military, is held guilty
of murdering 10,000 Polish soldiers and burying them in mass graves in the Katyn forest in
1940.
*****
6. THE WORLD AFTER WORLD WAR-II- THE COLD WAR

 The Soviet Union had made an impressive contribution to the defeat of Hitler and his allies.
Though it suffered enormous loss of human and material resources, in 1945, its armies
controlled territory stretching from the Soviet border into the centre of Germany and down to
the Balkans.
 Though its power base was not comparable to that of the United States, the growing conviction
that it represented an ideology of social justice (as also true of all round progress) accorded it a
very special place. After the Second World War, these two superpowers emerged as leaders of
two power blocs.
o One Bloc, led by the United States of America, was referred to as the American Bloc or
Western bloc or, very self-complimentarily, as the Democratic Bloc. The communists
dubbed it the Capitalist Bloc. By 1989, the United States had military alliances with 50
countries, and 1.5 million American troops were posted in 117 countries.

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o The other bloc was led by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and became known as the
Eastern Bloc or Soviet Bloc or Socialist Bloc. Its rivals called it the Communist Bloc or
Totalitarian Bloc. The Soviet Union had the advantage of vast size.
o Besides, it was able to install Communist regimes in seven East European countries: East
Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania.
 In 1949, when Communists emerged successful in the Civil War in China, Communism seemed to
have a sway on the whole inland mass from the Pacific Ocean to the middle of Germany as it
passed under communist rule. The Soviet Union established its influence over Cuba, North
Korea, and North Vietnam also.
 The intense rivalry and confrontation that developed between these two blocs and enveloped
the whole world from 1945 to 1991 is known as the Cold War. The phrase ‘the Cold War’ came
into general use after a highly influential American journalist, Walter Lippmann, used it as the
title of his book in 1947. It forms an indispensable part of the vocabulary of international
relations.
 What was the Cold War about? It was a power struggle that developed between these two
superpowers because, to each, the other seemed to possess hegemonic ambitions and was,
therefore, perceived as a threat.
 Their relations were also marked by an ideological distrust because each looked upon itself as
representative of an ideology - democratic and socialist. The conflict took place at several levels:
o ideological and economic competition,
o arms race,
o proxy wars, and
o ‘limited’ military conflicts in client states.
 Each believed that history was on its side. Each side used confrontational rhetoric to denounce
the other and to increase its own influence and that of its camp followers. In the process, each
side developed weapons capable of destroying all civilised human life.
o For four and a half decades, the world lived under the shadow of a global nuclear war. In
strict sense of the word, it was not a war because there was no direct fighting between the
main adversaries. In this sense it was ‘cold’.
o But the word ‘cold’ itself conveys a chilling sense that something went terribly wrong. The
Cold War was also not a preparatory phase of a ‘hot war’. Yet it was a period of intense fear
and hostility. Though any war did not occur for decades, it looked like a daily possibility.
 Eric Hobsbawm, in his thought-provoking and masterly portrayal of the twentieth century,
comments that it was ‘a new technique of warfare’. He goes to the extent of saying that it ‘can
reasonably be regarded as a Third World War, though a very peculiar one’.
o It is interesting that there was no obvious reason for antagonism between these two
superpowers. They had no common boundary. They did not have any territorial claims on
each other.
o There was apparently no clash of national interests. They had worked closely together
during the Second World War to defeat the Axis powers.
o The statesmen heading these states seemed keen to work for peace and met many times
during the War. In 1945, Roosevelt attended the Yalta Conference despite illness.

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o After 1945 also, the two sides made conscious efforts to avoid war between them.
Throughout this period the two sides made a conscious effort not to behave like enemies.
 Where was the Cold War centered? In Europe, the confrontations seemed to be the closest. By
1947, there was talk of the ‘Iron Curtain’ dividing the Continent. In Europe, the line dividing the
Soviet Union and its satellite states and the rest of Europe seemed to create a permanent and
inexorable division.
 This Iron Curtain served as a constant reminder of deep antagonism. The fiercest struggles took
place outside Europe - in Korea, Vietnam, and in the African countries, where the two powers
took sides in the struggles for liberation.
 The Cuban Missile Crisis in South America brought the two powers to the brink of war. Both
sides sought the allies whom they could not always control. Both built nuclear weapons but did
not know (and still do not know) what to do with them.
 But the Cold War era is not the saga of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union
alone. It also involves a study of the price different regions of the world had to pay in human and
material terms as also of the psychological trauma it imposed on two generations.
 It also involves a study of the depth of commitment of other countries to the cause and also of
the efforts made to resolve various issues. In the context of attempts to control the destinies of
countries involved in liberation struggles, it highlights the mockery of their ideological
commitment.
DEBATES ON THE COLD WAR

 For decades, writings on the Cold War have been rich, prolific, and one-sided. The debate has
been carried on by scholars in the United States and other countries in the West, because only
Western archives and sources were available. Hence, the American perspective dominated the
discussion.
 Access to Soviet documents was denied and, because of state control, Soviet scholars tended to
stick to the official version. Therefore, only half the story was told. Soviet writers did not doubt
that capitalism and imperialism, both were responsible for the Cold War.
 Evidence of the Soviet perceptions and actions has become available only in the 1990s after the
collapse of the Soviet Union. All aspects of the debate centered basically on one question: who
was responsible?
 The debate on this issue became what Eric Hobsbawm describes as ‘an ideological tennis-
match’ between those who held USSR exclusively responsible and those who held USA
responsible. The latter were mainly American dissidents.
 Historians and political scientists in the West, who wrote up to the mid-1960s, placed the onus
for antagonism on the Soviet Union and its ideology of ‘world revolution’. They became known
as ‘traditionalists’ or ‘orthodox’.
o They argued that, after 1945 the US policy was largely passive and that the United States
demobilised its armed forces on a massive scale.
o But, when the Soviet Union installed communist regimes in the East European countries in
violation of the Yalta Agreement, the United States was forced to provide aid under the
Marshall Plan.

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o A different view began to emerge in the 1970s because of the Vietnam fiasco. From this
time, the American scholars did not hold the Soviet Union solely responsible for the Cold
War and began to point to a range of policies that had alienated the Soviet Union since
1945.
o Some even argued that it was America’s intransigence and aggressive intent that aroused
Soviet fears. These scholars were described as revisionists. In a way, the question of origins
and responsibility for the Cold War became a matter of America’s internal politics.
o After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the blame game is no longer played. Historians
contextualise the actions of both countries and stress mutual accountability.
 In the post-colonial discourse, the Cold War system is seen as a system in which the policy-
makers at Washington and Moscow mobilised their own populations to support harsh and brutal
measures directed against the victims of their aggressive intent.
 In the name of defending ‘free people’ from the Soviet threat, the United States invaded Korea,
Cuba and Indochina, and made moves to overthrow governments in the Latin American
countries and Iran.
 Similarly, the Soviet Union sent tanks in East Berlin, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan
for defending its own version of socialism and preventing the United States from interfering. The
rhetoric employed on both sides was similar.
When did the Cold War begin?

 Some historians date the origins of the Cold War back to the Russian Revolution of 1917 when
the Bolshevik regime was established in Russia. In fact, the clash between the ideologies that the
Soviet Union and the United States represented can be traced to 1917-18 when Lenin and
Woodrow Wilson outlined mutually hostile ideological visions.
 The Bolsheviks identified class struggle as the ultimate engine of history and claimed to harness
their resources to establish socialism not only in Russia but in the whole world. The United
States entered the First World War to defeat Germany.
 But in January 1918, in his Fourteen Points, President Wilson outlined an ideological framework
by proclaiming as war- aims the following: self-determination, collective security, and open
markets. In its own way, this was an ambitious agenda. The clash between these two ideologies
was to influence global developments decisively.
 Moreover, in 1919 the United States, along with Britain and France, had sent troops to help
those Russians who were working to destroy the Bolshevik regime. But after 1919, both the
United States and the Soviet Union withdrew from international affairs.
 During the Second World War both the powers worked closely together to defeat the Axis
Powers. So, one can conclude that the Cold War was a post-Second World War phenomenon.In
discussing the origin of the Cold War, historians focus on various developments between 1945
and 1947.
 During early 1945, Stalin suspected that the United States and Britain were deliberately delaying
the invasion of France so as to bring Russia to the point of exhaustion on the Eastern Front. The
US decision to drop the atom bombs was a well- calculated decision.
 At Potsdam, Truman chose to keep Stalin in the dark about it. It has been suggested that the
atom bombs were aimed as much at making Japan surrender, as at intimidating the Soviet Union

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with the destructive power at America’s disposal. Some historians describe the dropping of the
two bombs as the first shots of the Cold War.
 Differences between them widened during 1945— 47 when the post-war territorial settlement
was worked out. Some experts date the Cold War from the adoption of a hard ideological line by
Stalin in February 1946 and others from the Truman Doctrine of 1947.
 In a speech in February 1946, the report of which was circulated widely, Stalin said that
communism and capitalism could never live peacefully together and that wars were inevitable
until communism ultimately triumphed. This was the time when Stalin was working to establish
communist governments in the East European countries.
 In March 1946, in a speech at Fulton in Missouri (USA), where President Truman was present,
making an appeal for the renewal of Anglo-American Alliance, Churchill, by this time in the
Opposition in Britain, had talked of ‘the iron curtain’ that had fallen across Europe dividing the
east and west.
 By 1947, the Soviet Union was well entrenched in the East European countries and the United
States policy of containment of communism was in place. The confrontation between the two
camps continued for over four decades.
 Ultimately, the Cold War came to an end when the most unexpected thing happened. The Soviet
Union disintegrated in 1991 and the whole international scenario changed. But, for 45 years, the
two superpowers became regimes of global intervention and tried to guide, decide, and control
the destinies of all nations.
CAUSES
 Some scholars have tended to see the Cold War as a traditional great power conflict, a result of
‘power politics as usual’. They argue that the powers have always distrusted each other and
what each does for its own security appears threatening to its neighbours.
 The defeat of Germany and Japan had created a vacuum in Europe as well as in Asia. Both the
United States and the Soviet Union had the capacity to fill this vacuum. Since it could not be
done by mutual agreements, conflicts between them became inevitable.
o American scholars have been arguing that after the Second World War, the United States
had begun to disarm and disengage from Europe, and was ‘obliged’ to take up a much more
active role in 1947 because the West European countries insisted upon security
commitments to contain Russia’s expansion.
o After the success of the Communists in China in 1949, the United States was ‘obliged’ to
entangle itself in East Asia. But the Cold War was different from the struggles arising just out
of power politics.
o The causes of the Cold War lie in an amalgam of two elements - opposing ideologies and
arrogance of power. The two are so closely intertwined that it is difficult to decide which is
more important.
o What made the power politics of the period distinct was the ideological antagonism. The
Soviet Union and the United States had conflicting views on how to organise societies,
economies, and political systems.

P a g e | 79
o This extended the boundaries of conflict beyond the calculations of power politics. The
Americans believed that theirs was a uniquely superior society that represented principles
such as liberty, democracy, free enterprise, peace, and cooperation between nations.
o In their own opinion, they had a special mission to spread these values, not in the interests
of their own people, but in the interest of the entire world.
o They proclaimed these principles in Wilson’s Fourteen Points during the First World War, in
the Atlantic Charter of August 1941 that was issued before they joined the war, and in the
Declaration on Liberated Europe issued at Yalta in February 1945.
 The United States also believed that communism was a monolithic political entity controlled
from Moscow in which there was no place for dissent and that the Soviet Union was trying to
impose socialism on weaker countries who would have rejected it otherwise.
o This became an enduring American fixation. The Soviet Union held that communism
represented ‘people’s democracy’, an ideology of the deprived and downtrodden, and was
superior to the ‘bourgeois’ version of democracy.
o It held that Western democracies were agencies of capitalism, which meant, by definition,
aggressive. The Ideology of communism would not have generated so much fear in the West
if it had remained confined to the Soviet Union.
o Not only was Soviet control established over the East European countries, the influence of
the communist ideology and sympathy for the Soviet Union was spreading persistently.
o In the intellectual circles of the West, there was a growing conviction that communism
offered a plan for harmonious organisation of society and that the Soviet alternative offered
a model that should be emulated.
o The membership of the communist parties began to grow in the Western countries. In 1945,
the Labour Party had come to power in Britain, and even in France and Italy the Left parties
won substantial number of seats.
o Amongst the workers too, at the time of devastation and deprivation caused by war, the
slogan ‘workers of the world unite’ had a wide appeal.
 In the colonial world, people looked upon the Soviet Union as the champion of social justice and
as a beacon of hope in the struggle against imperialism. Both the Soviet Union and USA claimed
that their system of beliefs was of universal application.
 The Americans believed that the whole world would become a better place if it eventually
adopted capitalism and American style democracy while Moscow expected the same from
socialism and people’s democracy. Thus, each power claimed to be the champion of a superior
system and wished to extend it to as much area as possible.
 Both the United States and the Soviet Union were impelled by an urge to dominate world
politics. The United States had emerged from the Second World War not only victorious but also
virtually unscathed. Its mainland was not invaded.
o Economically and militarily, it was in excellent shape. The United States economy
experienced a wartime boom that enabled it to come out of the Great Depression.
o After the Second World War, the United States was brimming with confidence. Its people
felt that their country stood tall and that this was the proof of the superiority of their way of
life.

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o In the policies that Washington adopted, there was an unquestionable assumption that it
was its destiny to lead the world. The US purported to create a peaceful and benign
hegemony that would be underpinned by its economic and, if necessary, its military power.
 This came under increasing challenge by a rival system represented by the USSR. Even the Soviet
Union, after the Second World War, was conscious not so much of the material destruction and
of the price paid for victory, but of its status as a victor which had played a decisive role in
vanquishing the enemy.
 In 1946, Molotov, the finance minister of the Soviet Union, stated: ‘The Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics is now one of the mightiest countries of the world. One cannot decide now any
problem of international relations without the USSR.’
 The Soviet Union did not confine itself to establishing communist rule in the East European
countries but also became involved in East Asia, Cuba, and Africa though, in the process, it
overstretched its resources.
 Behind the ideological divide was the unquestionable assumption by each power that its destiny
was to lead and rule the world. These policies were based on clear perceptions of political and
economic interests.
 America tried to establish control over the world capitalist system so as to integrate the
economies of the developing regions of the periphery in such a way as to serve America’s needs
for raw material and investment opportunities and to provide outposts for strategic purpose.
 Similarly, there was a wide gap between the ideals proclaimed at Moscow and the reality of
communist rule in the satellite states. In the process, the world became engulfed in a
confrontation that lasted for about 45 years.
 What made the Soviet Union a formidable adversary was its success in keeping abreast in the
development of nuclear weapons. The United States had expected that the USSR would take
over a decade to create an atom bomb.
o The Soviet Union successfully tested the atomic bomb in 1949. With time the nuclear race
reached unimaginable heights.
o The status of the two superpowers became linked with the possession and threatened use
of nuclear weapons - in other words, with its capacity to destroy. The United States devoted
itself to enhancing the performance of its weapons.
o The Soviet Union also harnessed its scientific and technological prowess and the resources
of its economy to keep up with the United States. In the process, the number of nuclear
weapons continued to multiply.
o By the end of 1955, both sides had fully functional thermonuclear bombs as well as long-
range bombers from which to drop these bombs.
o Both were working out ways of developing missiles capable of delivering such weapons at
each others’ territories almost instantaneously. They turned out thousands of nuclear
weapons that aimed provocatively at each other.
o Arms and armaments are instruments of power. But during the Cold War period, their
power of destruction created the logic of mutually assured destruction.
o By the end of the 1950s, the arsenals at the disposal of the two superpowers were enough
to destroy the world many times over. This militarised political relations.

P a g e | 81
o These acquisitions by themselves created and reinforced mistrust and fear and seemed to
change the dimension of war. The world lived in the constant fear that the collision of two
powers could extinguish civilisation itself.
o The question whether the two powers intended to use nuclear bombs was irrelevant.
Moreover, the two superpowers did not rule out the possibility of using the nuclear
weapons.
RISE OF THE EASTERN BLOC AND THE WESTERN BLOC

 During the Second World War, Stalin had made it clear that he intended to establish a Soviet
sphere of influence in the Eastern Europe. This would ensure security of the USSR and extend
the area of communist control.
 During 1945-47, the Soviet Union installed communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria,
Romania, and Albania by rigging elections, eliminating political opponents, or expelling non-
communist ministers from the governments. Soviet troops were stationed in these countries.
 Appointments in police and secret services in these countries were controlled by the Russian
army. All political parties, except the communist party, were dissolved. Communist leaders of
these countries were made dependent on the Soviet Union, which extended power, privileges,
and financial advantages to these leaders.
 Czechoslovakia had a peculiar position. It was a country with strong parliamentary traditions
and its president was ready to be friendly to the Soviet Union. In February 1948, Czechoslovakia
was forcibly brought under the Soviet control by a coup.
o But Soviet troops were not stationed there. However, it was surrounded by countries under
the control of the Soviet Union.
o The economies of these countries were subordinated to the Soviet economy by creating a
series of joint ventures and by the imposition of Soviet style five-year plans to promote
heavy industry.
o Agriculture was partially collectivised. Their internal security services and armies were linked
to USSR’s central command. The Soviet Union also controlled the secret police there.
 In addition, Stalin fully exploited the Russian zone of Germany and drained it of its resources.
Soviet troops were kept in Austria and Finland also.
o Finland managed to avoid the fate of the East European countries primarily because it lacked
strategic significance. It accepted Soviet control in foreign affairs.
o Developments in Austria took on an entirely different course.
 It was only in Yugoslavia that Stalin was not able to impose his will. There, Marshall Tito and his
army liberated their country from Nazi control and did not depend on the Russian army. In 1945,
Tito won elections by the dint of his immense popularity.
o After 1945, though Yugoslavia remained communist, Tito and other nationalist leaders of
Yugoslavia successfully resisted Russia’s attempts to establish its influence.
o This nationalist deviation from the international communist community became known as
Titoism. The survival of Yugoslavia produced the first clear crack in the Iron Curtain and
demolished the myth of monolithic communism.

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o These developments alarmed Stalin who intensified the attempts to eliminate his opponents
in other East European countries. Between 1948 and 1952, many leaders in these countries
who did not tow the Soviet line were executed or merely purged.
 In September 1947, Stalin set up the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) to draw
together the communist parties of various countries. Delegates from the communist parties of
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, France and Italy attended it.
o It was made clear that all East European countries would be expected to trade with the
Cominform members. All contacts with non-communist members were discouraged.
o When Yugoslavia objected in 1948, it was expelled from the Cominform. In 1949, economic
aid was given to the East European countries under the Molotov Plan.
o To coordinate their activities, another organisation, known as the Council for Mutual
Economic Assistance, was set up.
 Washington had no immediate interest in Eastern Europe. Yet the policymakers there viewed
these developments with alarm. The question they asked was: Where would the Soviet roller
stop?
o The United States assumed the role of the leader of the West. Russia had continued to
occupy North Iran (now Azerbaijan) and was putting pressure on Turkey for the lease of a
base in the region near the Straits of Bosporus and Dardanelles.
o Russia had coveted this region for a long time. But Russia was made to withdraw because of
pressure from Washington. The United States placed its naval ships permanently in the
Eastern Mediterranean.
o This period also saw a civil war in Greece between the government and the communists.
The former was supported by Britain and the latter by Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria. In
view of the acute economic crisis that gripped Britain, Britain decided to withdraw.
 The United States government decided to move in. In 1946, American President Truman put
forward what came to be known as the ‘Domino Theory’. He advocated that action should be
taken to prevent communists from assuming power in Turkey and Greece, otherwise they would
‘knock over’ the neighbouring countries like a line of dominoes.
o To win support in the legislature and the country at large, he deliberately overstated the
communist bogey, though there was no evidence that Stalin was supporting the communists
in Greece.
o In March 1947, Truman put forward a demand of 400 million dollars for economic and
military aid to Greece before a joint session of Congress.
o In what is seen as the most stirring Cold War speech, he stated that the question was not of
helping the Greeks but, as head of the Free World, the United States was committed to
opposing the spread of communism and revolution throughout the world. This became
known as the Truman Doctrine.
 Greece immediately received a massive aid and the Greek communists were defeated. By the
middle of 1947, US foreign policy analysts were using the term ‘containment’ to describe how
the United States should use its military, political, and economic power to thwart the Soviet
expansion.

P a g e | 83
 The Truman doctrine and the associated policy of containment were designed to arouse
awareness of Soviet ambitions and to give assurances of support to those threatened by the
Soviet subversion and expansion.
 Simultaneously, in June 1947, the United States announced the Marshall Plan, ostensibly for
helping in the economic recovery of Europe. Under this, all the West European countries
received massive financial aid.
o The aim behind pumping money into these countries was not only to help in the economic
recovery of Europe and to enable the American economy to recover, but also to create an
antidote to the popularity of a leftist ideology.
o The United States did not want Moscow to gain influence in countries beyond the Iron
Curtain. In the 1948 elections, Washington poured funds into Italy to prevent the election of
communist and socialist candidates.
 The first major confrontation of the Cold War took place over Berlin in 1948-49. Berlin, though
divided into occupation zones, was still being administered jointly by the four occupying powers.
It was an isolated conclave in the midst of Russian zone.
 In June 1948, the United States, Britain, and France introduced a common currency, the new
Deutschmark, in their zones, which had the effect of cutting them off from the Russian zone.
Russia reacted by imposing a blockade on the movement of goods and food by road and rail to
West Berlin.
o Postal services were also halted. Though the introduction of a new currency triggered the
crisis, Stalin’s motives in imposing the blockade remain unclear. The United States decided
not to give up to this pressure.
o It started sending supplies by air along the air corridors. This airlift developed into a regular
means of supply, and British and French aircrafts also joined in.
o These airplanes, which had strained every nerve to bomb Berlin during the war, worked
round the clock to keep this city going. In a period of 11 months, some 275,000 planeloads
of supplies of fuel and food reached Berlin.
o It was a time of acute tension. The two sides seemed to be on the verge of war. But none
crossed it. The Americans did not use the land route and the Russians did not shoot down a
single aircraft. After the blockade ended, Berlin was firmly divided into two parts.
 The efforts to create a new German state in the western zone were intensified. In May 1949, the
Federal Republic of Germany was formed by uniting three Western Zones of the US, Britain and
France. But it was not a sovereign state because the Allied High Command exercised wide
control over economic and foreign policy and it was to remain demilitarised.
o A few months later, the Soviet zone of Germany was made a state - the German Democratic
Republic, which remained firmly under the control of Moscow.
o The two states did not recognise one another’s existence. They were physically divided by an
‘Iron Curtain’ of barbed wire, minefields, and machine-guns.
o This division continued for 40 years. After this crisis, American long range bombers were
deployed in Britain, officially described as ‘atomic capable’ though none were actually
armed with nuclear bombers.

P a g e | 84
 In April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed. Its members were the
USA, Canada, Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, Portugal, Denmark, Eire, Italy, and
Norway. Later, more countries joined it.
o The key principle of this organisation was that an attack on one member would be treated as
an attack on all. It accorded with the principle of collective self-defence enshrined in Article
51 of the United Nations Charter.
o In practice, its purpose was to send a message to the Soviet Union that the United States
was determined to oppose any further expansion of Soviet influence in Europe.
o Together with the Marshall Plan and the Molotov Plan, it solidified the political and
economic division of Europe by underlying the similarities in the domestic systems and
values of member countries.
o In 1955, West Germany was made a member of NATO. It might be pointed out here that
NATO was not dismantled even after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
 In 1955, the Baghdad Pact was signed between Iraq and Turkey and, in the same year, Britain,
Pakistan, and Iran also joined it. The purpose of the Pact was to keep the Soviet influence out of
the Middle East. The US also joined it in 1958.
 But in 1959, Iraq withdrew which led the pact to be renamed as CENTO (Central Treaty
Organization). NATO and CENTO together formed a continuous line from Norway to Pakistan to
‘contain’ the power of the Soviet Union.
 In May 1955, the Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact with seven communist countries of
Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania). These
countries agreed to set up a unified military command with headquarters in Moscow.
 Europe, thus, became divided into two “geopolitical zones’ - NATO and the Warsaw Pact –
openly directed against each other, with a few neutral countries in the middle, these being
Austria, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland.
 The two sides also formed two separate economic systems. In 1957, six West European
countries set up the European Economic Community (EEC). Russia insisted on the unreserved
subordination of the politics, economics, and ideological activities of the countries of the
Warsaw Pact to the needs of the bloc as a whole.
THE GLOBAL COLD WAR

 In 1949, the long civil war in China between the Nationalists and the Communists, which was
resumed after the surrender of Japan in 1945, came to an end with the victory of Communists.
On 1st October 1949, the People’s Republic of China was established.
 The American backed leader of the Nationalists, Chiang Kai- Shek, was defeated. Mao Zedong,
who had been the founding member of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 and who had led
the Long March of the Communists in 1934-35 became the undisputed dictator of China.
 This was the result of the choices that the Chinese themselves made. They chose to transfer
their allegiance to the Communists. Stalin himself admitted later that he had not realised that
China was on the verge of a Marxist revolution.
 The Chinese revolution was as much a triumph for radical nationalism as it was for communism.
But rather than recognising the strength of the Chinese nationalism, the American government
classified the Beijing regime as being Moscow’s stooge.

P a g e | 85
 This was the root cause of the troubled relationship between the People’s Republic of China and
the US. Once in power, Mao’s government sought to establish friendly relations with the Soviet
Union.
o Mao Zedong travelled to Moscow and, in February 1950, signed a Treaty of Friendship,
Alliance, and Mutual Assistance.
o It provided for mutual military assistance against aggression by Japan or any other state that
might collaborate with Japan in doing so. The reference was obviously to the US.
o The Soviet Union also agreed to provide a big loan on easy terms. Subsequent treaties
covered collaboration on many other issues such as air services, oil, metals, etc. This new
alignment seemed formidable.
o The two communist giants had joined hands and a solid communist bloc seemed to have
emerged.
 To the Americans it seemed that the balance of power had shifted overnight and that ‘the red
tide’ would sweep across Asia. It saw, in this agreement, a threat to the security of Japan, which
had become a key US interest in the Far East and a source of markets and raw materials.
 It also seemed that Korea and Vietnam would also become communist. Washington chose not to
recognise the People’s Republic of China. It continued to accept Chiang Kai-Shek’s government
at Taiwan (Formosa) as the legitimate government of China and pledged to defend it against
communist aggression.
o It also held that an ‘irresponsible’ regime like Red China was not worthy of diplomatic
recognition or membership of the United Nations.
o The US continued to maintain that Taiwan, a country of 17 million Chinese, was China and
that the People’s Republic of China, the world’s most populous country did not exist.
o This has rightly been described as ‘one of the most absurd charades’ of the post-Second
World War US foreign policy. At the Geneva Conference in 1954, J.F. Dulles, the American
foreign minister, had refused to shake hands with Zhou Enlai.
 With America’s backing, Taiwan continued to hold China’s permanent seat in the Security
Council of the United Nations. The Chinese government claimed that Taiwan was part of China
and claimed its rightful place in the United Nations.
 China and the United States did not maintain diplomatic relations. The US also exerted pressure
on its allies to support its anti-China policy. The strengthening of the Communist Bloc also made
the policymakers at Washington revaluate their foreign policy priorities.
 In April 1950, a top-secret military document, the National Security Council Paper number 68 or
NSC- 68, was prepared by the American government. It was based on the assumption that the
Soviet Union and its clients posed a severe military threat to the United States and to the rest of
‘the free world’.
 It called for a massive military build which meant that Americans would have to pay more taxes.
The United States also extended economic and military aid to Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, and
French Indo-China.
 The Chinese government retaliated by increasing assistance to the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam. With these developments, the nature of the Cold War confrontation changed. So far it
had focused on Europe, but with these developments, it arrived in earnest in Asia.

P a g e | 86
 A period of proxy wars began. Washington feared that Vietnam would become the next
European domino. In 1950, the focus shifted suddenly to Korea. The war in Korea galvanised the
Americans and enabled the government to obtain sanction for increased expenditure on
defence.
 The United States thus became embroiled in the conflicts of East Asia, which left Korea divided
and involved Vietnam in a further 25-year struggle, because Vietnam was determined to be free
and united.
*****

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WORLD HISTORY for G.S.-I Mains

5. Revolution and Counter revolution 2-71

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5. REVOLUTION AND COUNTER REVOLUTION

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o These deplorable conditions were conspicuous in every industrial town of thousands of

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Provisional Government was by the formation of a moderately leftist coalition Government

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Fascist Counter – Revolution

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Difference between February Revolution, 1917 and October Revolution

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WHAT WAS FASCISM?

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Fear of the Spread of Communism

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Failure of Parliamentary Democracy and Rise of Fascism

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o The legislature was to consist of members elected by a system of proportional

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MUSSOLINI AND FASCISM

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HITLER AND NAZISM