April 2013 UTM Exam
Solutions
PART ONE : ONE ESSAY
In the Doctrine of
Fascism, Mussolini does not put forth a lot of positive doctrine. It
is not a white paper that outlines what his policy will be in the
next few decades. However, some of the imagery he uses is
specifically targeted at evoking the Roman Empire. He also talks of
how peace is a sign of indolent decadence, and the urge to imperial
war (Nietzsche's “will to power”) is proof of fascism's vitality.
Thus he does not directly state that he plans to conquer territory
for the glory of fascist Italy, but he heavily implies it.
What he offered was
a break with the past. The world was shaken after the Great War, the
previously dominant scientific positivism was obviously untenable.
People wanted a new ideology, because the doctrines of liberalism,
socialism, and democracy had failed them; they had brought them to a
low point. Fascism offered this simply through its deliberate
repudiation of the past, and was swiftly adopted in Italy, Hungary,
Austria, Germany, Poland, and most European countries with the
exceptions of Britain, France, and Czechoslovakia. Communism also was
appealing on this ground, its novelty propelled it to power in Russia
where it stayed until it stagnated.
To accomplish this
effect, the Doctrine sets
forth very little description of what fascism is. Mussolini spends
the bulk of his time talking about what fascism is not. He criticizes
democracy for reducing the state to the will of the majority, in
contrast fascism places the state as something higher than the
people, an ideal that is more important than even the will of a large
majority. There was also a sense throughout the war that
parliamentary squabbling weakened democratic regimes, as is evident
from Petain's report. This feeling would lead in France to the
adoption of a constitution with a high level of executive control
under de Gaulle. Further, he criticizes liberalism as inevitably
leading to decadence. Liberalism was based on the idea that happiness
can be achieved on earth, especially through science and capitalism.
World War I cast doubt on this view, as the widespread death and
destruction cast a shadow of sorrow over everything. Science and
material conditions continued to advance throughout the 20th
century in Europe, but this did not make problems of hatred and war
vanish, as is shown by the recent Yugoslav wars, or the slightly less
recent Algerian War.
Mussolini
also gained popularity because he was seen as a force that could
restore order. His bad of Black Shirt thugs fought communists in the
street and burned the buildings of opposing parties. The government
was weak and unable to control this, so the people felt insecure in
the power of the democratic regime, and Mussolini's emphasis on
authority seemed like the solution. He gained popularity by creating
chaos, feeding into the widespread unemployment, crime, and poverty
caused by the war, and then promising to restore order.
At
that time, Italy had only been a unified country for decades.
Mussolini's strength was seen by many as a force that could hold
Italy together, and this they thought was necessary to ensure its
continued relevance in international relations.
Mussolini
raised national sentiments with imperial promises and conquests.
Italian felt they had been treated unfairly by the agreements of the
Paris Peace Conference. Like Romania, Italy joined the Allies largely
for the promise of territorial gain at the expense of the
Austro-Hungarian empire. They thought the Austrian Tyrol and parts of
Dalmatia rightly belonged to Italy. Unlike Romania, they did not get
it. The allies felt Italy's contribution to the war effort was not
significant enough to warrant reward; they allowed national
self-determination in the Tyrol at Italy's expense while violating
this principle in awarding Romania Transylvania, Bessarabia, and
Bukovna. Mussolini promised to claim this area by force, and this was
a goal many Italians could get behind. Also, Italy had been
humiliated in the Battle of Aduwa, being the first European nation to
lose a war to a non-European nation: Abyssinia. Mussolini promised
and delivered conquest in Ethiopia, his slaughter of Haile Selassie's
subjects was unopposed by the League of Nations. The lack of
international intervention, as well as the success itself, boosted
Mussolini's prestige; Italian nationalists could point to this as
evidence that other countries were now beginning to take Italy
seriously, owing to Mussolini's fascism.
Mussolini's
decline came when it became doubtful that the Axis would win World
War II. The allies reclaimed North Africa in 1943, ousting Italian
troops. Russia and America entered the war in 1941, and the Germans
were sustaining heavy losses (95% of their wartime total) in the
Soviet Union, at battles like those of Leningrad and Stalingrad.
Italian troops had been forced out of Albania in 1943, when Mussolini
was removed from office. Essentially, Mussolini lost power because
Italy could not handle the war. The home front was collapsing, and
the Allies had taken Italy, which was right on Italy's doorstep.
After
the war, people were more favourable to moderate regimes, because
they had seen the extremes to which fascist regimes could lead in
Hitler's Germany. Knowledge of the Holocaust stigmatized fascism, as
did American cold war propaganda campaigns against totalitarianism in
general.
Fascism
was based on the vitality that it advertised, and Mussolini stated
that this vitality was the reason fascist governments were propelled
to war. Thus, once the war efforts to conquer the rest of Europe
failed, Mussolini's fascist government collapsed.
PART TWO: IDENTIFICATIONS
- Matteotti
Matteotti
was an Italian socialist politician who criticized Mussolini's
fascist regime in 1924. He accused them of committing electoral
fraud, and denounced their use of the Black Shirt thugs to intimidate
the populace and gain votes. As a result, Mussolini mentioned to some
of his subordinates that it would be opportune if Matteotti should
disappear. He did. This shows Mussolini's power, and emphasized the
trait of totalitarian regimes, both fascist and communist, that they
ban all dissenting views in order to completely dominate the inner
political life of their subjects.
- Locarno Pact
The
Locarno Pact was a treaty signed by Britain, France, Belgium, Italy,
and Germany in 1925. It was designed to prevent any future conflict,
and it reaffirmed Germany's postwar borders in the west. Germany also
promised not to break the stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles.
However, it left the question of Germany's eastern borders
unresolved, and consequently the goals of German revisionists were to
conquer the land east of Germany. There were renewed German claims to
the Danzig, the Polish corridor, and upper Silesia. This can be seen
by Hitler's talk of Lebensraum, followed by the annexation of
Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Austria. The Locarno pact also informed
Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, all the same leaders met at
Munich. He was convinced that all of Europe's nations were committed
to peace, because they were devastated by the first World War. This
was not the case, and for most of the 1930's Hitler was able to use
this expectation to prepare for war while talking peace. He violated
the points of the Treaty of Versailles by expanding the army,
occupying the Rhineland (March 1936), the Anschluss (March 1938),
unopposed. Chamberlain would talk of the Locarno spirit in his
defence of the Munich agreement.
- The Marshall Plan
The
Marshall plan was also informed by the experience of the interwar
period. After the first world war, governments became extremely
austere and protectionist. The Marshall Plan specifically sought to
implement a Keynesian policy by reducing trade barriers and providing
stimulus.
- An Iron Curtain had Descended
Churchill
said this in a speech shortly after the war (1946) while receiving an
honorary degree at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri,
accompanied by U.S. President Harry Truman. He referred to the fact
that the Soviet Union had not relinquished control of the eastern
European countries that they had liberated during the war (Hungary,
Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, GDR, Bulgaria) as Stalin had
promised at the Potsdam peace conference of July 1945. Stalin had
instead installed communist puppet governments in these states. The
iron curtain became an important piece of imagery in the cold war
period. It was symbolic of the isolation of communist countries from
western culture, as communist governments increasingly prevented
visits to or media and commerce from western countries, to ensure
their people would not know how much better life was in the west. The
eastern bloc experienced period shortages of basic goods and no
political freedoms, while the west entered into the post war era of
economic growth under liberal democracies. The Berlin Wall (1961)
meshed nicely with this imagery, as it provided a physical
manifestation of the curtain that prevented the flow of traffic.
- Stabbed in the back
Ludendorff
and Hindenburg, the German army in general, invented the
stab-in-the-back myth immediately after losing the war. This said
that Germany did not lose the war for military reasons, but because
they were betrayed by the home front. This was widely believed,
especially by Germans who had fought on the east, where the Germans
did win the war against Russia. Further, it provided a convenient
excuse for the military leaders, like Hindenburg, who later went on
to become important in Weimar politics. It allowed Germans to believe
that they lived in the greatest country, and lost not through their
own faults, but because of betrayal. The idea of the home front
originated in World War I, as it was the first war large scale enough
to require the constant efforts of the entire population.
Specifically, in the years of Hitler's ascension, the Jews were
blamed for Germany's loss. A study was commissioned that reported on
how involved the Jewish members of the population were with the war
effort, in an attempt to prove that they did not contribute. The
study found that Jews had contributed more than other sectors of the
population, but the results were suppressed. The perception of Jews
as traitors became more important to ideologues than the realities of
the situation. This led to the Nuremberg Laws (1935), Gleischaltung,
Kristallnacht (1938), and later the final solution and Holocaust. It
allowed Hitler's rise to power by giving him a means to scapegoat a
section of the population.
Also
the Freikorps were made of eastern soldiers who returned thinking
they had one, and then accepted this myth as the reason for Germany's
losing the war. They went on to vindictively fight against communism
in eastern Europe, as the communists were one of the groups blamed
for Germany's defeat. This would prevent communist governments from
taking root in east Europe in the interwar period, and contribute to
the rise of fascist governments instead, as the Freikorps were
extremely right wing.
- Night of the Long Knives
After
Hitler assumed the title of power, he had to consolidate his power
before he was able to go to war and carry out the Holocaust. Similar
to Mussolini's Black Shirts, Hitler had made use of a band of
paramilitary thugs, the Brown Shirts or Stormtroopers (SA), to fight
communists in the street. They created disorder so that Hitler could
be elected on the promise of restoring order. They were led by Ernst
Rohm, and they represented a legitimate threat to Hitler's authority,
as Rohm commanded a good deal of authority himself. On the Night
(1934), Hitler had his new force, the SS under Himmler, execute Rohm,
as well as other key political opponents, like those loyal to
Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen. Papen was one of the politicians
behind Hitler's rise, thinking he could control him. Consequently,
Hitler had the undivided allegiance of all the major players in
German politics: the Wehrmacht, politicians, and industry (because
his expansionist fiscal policies were good for business). The army
was becoming offended by the disorder created by Nazi street
fighting. Now that Hitler had used the street fighting to achieve
power, he had no need for it and wanted to distance himself from
ruffians in order to attract the support of the more conservative
members of the army. He used this power to execute his own policies,
sometimes against what the public wanted, including the takeover of
Czechoslovakia in March 1939, and the subsequent attack on Poland (1
September 1939), which led to the second World War. Like in
Mussolini's case, incumbent politicians had appointed Hitler to a
position of power, thinking they could use him to restore order and
then dispose of him, but had been outwitted by his ability to
consolidate power once in office.
- Five Year Plan 1928
This
refers to Stalin's economic policy after becoming head of the
communist party following Lenin's death in 1924. It took Stalin until
this time to consolidate power in the party by defeating challengers
like Trotsky. Stalin's focus was on massive forced industrialization.
Industrialization had happened naturally in the capitalist west, the
UK, the Netherlands, and Germany being the archetypal examples.
Russia, however, had remained largely industrially underdeveloped
until the October Revolution, and this was one of the reasons for its
defeat by Germany in the war. Stalin thought that the most important
step to take to make Russia's largely agricultural economy
competitive on the world stage was to force farmers to move to
industrial towns and start working in new factories.
This
policy also nicely fit in with official communist ideology. Marxism
focuses on the class of the industrial proletariat, factory workers,
and this class can only exist in an industrialized country. As in
China later, Soviet communism was based on the demand of a large and
only recently emancipated peasant class for land reform. Thus, Stalin
thought he could bring about the next stage in the evolution of a
communist society by forcibly creating a proletariat class. With
them, he could enjoy immense support that would legitimate his recent
ascension to power. Notably, this plan involved no efforts to foster
global socialist revolution, as did Lenin's Comintern and his use of
the Red Army to attempt to conquer eastern Europe in 1920. Stalin's
focus was entirely on building “communism in one country”,
planning to deal later with the problem of winning over the rest of
the world by example, and by a modern military supplied by a booming
industrial sector.
Because
of his intention to shift Russia from an agricultural to an
industrial society, Stalin had to forcibly remove peasants from their
farms. Many peasants were unhappy at being forced to change
professions from the one they had held all their lives. He seized the
land of all of these peasants and forced them to work on massive
collectivized farms, where they could be supervised to makes sure
they were not hoarding any produce to sell for private gain. Those
that resisted were sent to the Gulag or liquidated, the term that was
used for the genocide of the manufactured “kulak” class of
wealthy peasants. In fact, Stalin's victimization of this class was
for private gain rather than ideological consistency, confiscated
goods and wealth paid Party member salaries and built state-owned
factories.
The
Plan greatly increased Soviet industrial capacity, and modernized the
Soviet economy, giving them the economic backbone that garnered
international respect and allowed them to win World War II. However,
agriculture suffered. The collectivized farms were far less
productive than individual agriculture, likely because peasants
lacked incentive to increase productivity. Peasant incentive had been
the driving force behind improvement in agricultural techniques for
all world history, and it was foolish for Stalin to abandon it.
What's more, the resistance itself was a problem. People would often
burn their property and livestock rather than yield it to the
communists. Many workers who were formerly producing food were
instead breaking rocks in the Gulag. Thus, massive food shortages
resulted and millions died or were imprisoned. Economic
dissatisfaction contributed to the collapse of communism.
Part THREE: Multiple Choice
- Field Marshal Hindenburg said Germany was stabbed in the back (he was a royalist, it was against his will that he advised the Kaiser to abdicate)
- Gustave Stresemann called the Locarno conference
- Kellogg-Briand pact agreed to pacifist resolution of international disagreements
- The Lateran Accords were seen as a sell-out by the Church for tax benefits
- Benito Mussolini moved his army to the Brenner pass in 1934 to keep Hitler out of Austria
- Volkische Beobachter was the voice of the NSDAP
- Ferdinand Porsche designed the Volkswagen beetle.
- Sophie Scholl said a crime has been perpetrated against human beings.
- Rudolf Hess said Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler
- Neville Chamberlain said we have a clear conscience
- Josef Stalin said the development of capitalism takes place through war and catastrophe
- President Truman said totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want
- Walter Ulbricht ruled East Germany with the Party and 20 Russian divisions
- Winston Churchill said we must proclaim the principles of freedom and human rights
- Simone de Beauvoir said there can be no real mass movement without women
- Brezhnev said the USSR had to act decisively against Czech nationalism
- Robert Schumann integrated French and West German coal and steel production
- Charles de Gaulle vetoed British entry into the EEC
- Nikita Krushchev said we are resolutely opposed to the arms race
- Mikhail Gorbachev supported the sovereignty of the Soviet republics within the federal nation.
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