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Power Point (PP): Suffrage Movement

Introduction

The quarter century before the outbreak of WWI came to be known as the Belle Epoque (1880-1914)
The period between 1880 and 1914 was an era of hopefulness.
By 1900, Europe led the way in inventions and new ideas.
Europe had healthy industrial and agricultural sectors which experienced continued economic growth despite mounting global competition.
Population benefited from sufficient food and from rapidly expanding industrial power. People began living longer and also demanding a better standard of living.

Education

The percentage of the population able to read and write rose rapidly in Europe as states enacted educational reforms during the last 2 decades of the 19^th century.
The British Parliament passed a law in 1880 requiring that all children attend school up to age 10, and after 1988 children had to attend until the age of 12.
In 1910 the British Parliament also waved school fees and truancy officers made their appearance in working class neighborhoods when children skipped school. This sometimes led to conflicts with parents who needed income from children’s labor.
In France, the Ferry Laws 1879-1881 made primary schools free, obligatory and secular for all children from age 3 to 13.
Similar laws were passed throughout Europe.
Mass education in European countries increased the number of people who could speak and read the dominant language – part of nation building – and increased feelings of belonging to the nation.
Secondary schools also increased rapidly.
The French government in the last decades of the 19^th century augmented educational opportunity for women by training thousands of female teachers, women were allowed to teach boys, but men were not allowed to teach girls.
Schooling for boys and girls alike stressed patriotic, secular and politically conservative themes.
Textbooks counseled “patient resignation” to one’s economic and social condition, with one popular French book in 1882 showing a picture of a woman desperately trying to persuade her husband not to go on strike.

Age of Progress (Belle Epoque) – Technology

Technological advances characterized the century’s last decades in Europe.
The underpinnings of this revolution was the triumph of mass productions and new technologies.
The sewing machine, invented by American Isaac Singer, began to be used in homes in the 1850s.
The mechanization of the production of ready-made clothing rapidly extended consumer markets, setting styles and reducing the price of clothing.
The garment industry – attracting Jewish immigrants to Paris and especially New York – remained largely tied to home work as women and some men worked sewing machines in their apartments and in cramped sweatshops, turning out ready-made cloaks and dresses.
Singer marketed his machine as a device that would liberate women from tedious work, but the sewing machine also bound many women to the hectic pace of piece work and to payments for the machine itself.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, which radically transformed communications. In 1883, Germans made 8 million telephone calls, but by 1900 they made 700 million. People quickly began to get telephones in their homes.
In 1879, Thomas Edison, an American, invented the incandescent lamp and soon after electricity began to have a significant impact in daily life.
It took a long time for ordinary people to get electricity, but electricity made possible the invention of the telegraph, undersea cable, and the telephone.
In 1881, the first electric power stations began operation in England. Street lamps and electric tramways also developed rapidly in European cities.
Electricity contributed to economic growth in industry. It provided an inexpensive source of power for small workshops.

Travel and Communications

By 1885, German engineers Karl Benz and Gotlieb Daimler invented the internal combustion engine powered by gasoline, which brought dramatic changes in travel.
That same year, Karl Benz, constructed a small automobile.
First automobiles were very expensive – the tires alone cost more than an average workers annual wage.
By the early 1900s, cars were becoming a more mass phenomenon.
Henry Ford who began his Detroit company in 1903 and quickly produced more than 15 million Model T Fords, which even his workers could afford.
Worried by American competition, the French car manufacturer Louis Renault also began assembly line production.
The automobile transformed travel.
Gradually governments ordered the paving of roads, and gas stations began to dot the landscape,
In 1900, the Michelin company in France published its first guide for travelers, listing garages, hotels and restaurants in every town of size.
Europeans traveled and went on vacation more often especially as the middle class grew.
In 1888, Kodak began producing a relatively light camera that tourists could take with them on vacation.
Mass transportation also improved – in 1863 the London tube (subway) opened and in 1900 the first Paris subway began operation.

Tourism

By the end of the 19^th century, holy days turned into holidays.
More and more people had leisure and leisure activities grew fueled by the improvements in transportation.
Most people didn’t go very far but middle class families and sometimes working class families could spend a few days on the beach in the summer. City people travel to the countryside.
Increased travel led to the development of resorts and resort towns – some of which offered health cures – and summer camps for kids.

Leisure

There was more to do than ever before for those with time and money.
The French capital set the tone for style in Europe and around the world.
Paris was the European capital of pleasure.
Dance halls, cafes and café concerts offered the performances of musicians, singers, poets, comedians, jugglers and much more
Hundreds of thousands of Parisians went to the theatre at least once a week.
Europeans learned new dances like the tango and the turkey trot, both imported from the Americas, which offended religious leaders and were banned from some establishments.
German Emperor William II forbade officers from dancing these steps while in uniform.
The Parisian hill of Montmartre served as a center of entertainment.
Amid the smoke and drink of the Chat Noir and the Lapin Agile, poets read their poems and mingled with artists trying to sell their work.
During the 1880’s and 1890’s, Montmartre provided a unique space for interaction for intellectuals and for avant-guard artists.
Rodolph Salis, proprietor of the Black Cat Café in Montmartre, founded a newspaper, published the works of young writers, and encouraged them to hang out in his café.
Other cafés followed the Black Cat and Montmartre, previously considered a dangerous and marginal place, became the center of a new culture in which the well to do came to rub shoulders with poets, artists, and anarchists.

Sports

Participatory and spectator sports emerged as a prominent feature of mass society during the last decades of the 19^th century, a phenomenon linked to modern transportation and to a general increase in leisure time.
The first car race was held in 1894 in France from Rouen to Paris and back.
Some cares were powered by electricity, others by gasoline or even steam; only 15 competed the race.
Cycling competitions also generated enormous public interest, providing the first heroes of spectator sports.
Competition between 2 cycling clubs led to the first Tour de France race in 1903 in which riders covered almost 1500 miles in 19 days.
Not only did people watch bicycle races, they also began riding bicycles themselves, both as a leisure activity and as a source of transportation.
The bicycle was simple but reflected technological innovation and mass production.
By the late 1880s, bicycles were lighter, more affordable and more easily repaired or replaced.
Both men and women rode but some men complained that the clothes women wore while riding bicycles were unfeminine
Commentators feared that women were beginning to look like men in their velvet breeches.
Female cycling seemed to fly in the face of the middle class domestic ideal of the “angel of the house” staying home.
Moralists worried that the jolts of the rough paths and roads might interfere with childbearing.
One doctor, quoted in a newspaper article that compared the effects of the bicycle to the sewing machine, stated that it fated women to “nymphomania and characterized hysteria.”
Other doctors thought it might be good for women and make them stronger.
The president of a feminist cycling congress in 1896 toasted the “egaligarian and leveling bicycle” that helped free women from the corset “a new Bastille to be demolished.”

Team sports

Team sports also quickly developed as a leisure activity during the second half of the 19^th century.
The 2 most popular team sports in Europe, football (soccer) and rugby both began in England.
Rugby, which developed at Cambridge and Oxford University in the 1860s, was an upper class sport, while football evolved into a lower class sport.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French noble who feared that the youth of his country were becoming soft from lack of physical activity, organized the first Olympic Games, held in Athens in 1896 in homage of their Greek predecessors.
Coubertin sought the moral and physical revival of men of his nation.
Development of sports also reflected the mood of aggressive nationalism.

The New Woman of the Belle Epoque (1880-1814)

The Belle Epoque did not create a single definition of the “new woman.” Instead, there were many images of women doing new things.
Dora Russell, an English activist and writer remembered that “like young men,” she and her friends demonstrated their physical endurance on long bicycle rides and hiking in the mountains.
Other women such as Cambridge don Jane Ellen Harrison and reformer Beatrice Potter Webb, as well as liberated heroines in novels smoked in defiance of old rules concerning feminine behavior.
Swedish feminist Ellen Key saw the” new woman” deriving happiness from an unmarried state, living with a woman friend and being an unmarried mother.
In most respects, the new types of woman seemed to reject Victorian concepts of home and domesticity or at least wanted these concepts modified.
The activities of the “new woman” stood out and produced an outpouring of comment about women’s behavior.
A good many “new women” had political opinions that were socialist or feminist or in other ways radically different from the ruling middle-class consensus.
Some leading male writers portrayed the phenomenon of the “new woman” in fictional works. In many cases, these works portrayed women leaving husbands to find happiness elsewhere or engaging in politics.
Although fiction made the “new woman” a prominent phenomenon it merely mirrored real women’s lives as innovators and activists.
Women increasingly worked outside the home, they pursued higher education with the opening of universities at the end of the 19^th century, and they participated in debates over marriage and reproduction.
Feminism also became a mass movement, which increasingly focused on suffrage.
Winning this right, suffrage proponents believed, would end women’s dependence on men.

Marriage Reform and Debate

In the last three decades of the 19^th century, Western European governments enacted substantial reforms that made the “new woman” possible.
These resulted from intense lobbying activity and from the first organized feminist efforts.
In the 1870’s and 1880’s, English women won the right to control their own property and wages.
The right of English husbands to incarcerate their wives at home or have them imprisoned ended during this period as well.
Estranged wives were also given the right to petition for financial support, for custody of their children in case of separation, and for other benefits.
The French government enacted a divorce law in 1884, and by 1910 allowed married women to have control over their property and wages.
In addition, French reform ended restrictions mandating that wives live wherever her husband decreed.
Germany had fairly liberal laws on divorce and remarriage.
German women’s situation was complicated by the continuation of local customs – German women had partial voting rights in some German states and localities; property law differed from one region to another, though generally husbands had control.
When a new code took effect in 1900 in Germany, many trappings of patriarchy disappeared.
Women gained a legal personality and no longer were subjected to the principles such as obedience and paternal power.
Property generally remained under the husband’s control, but wages could belong to the wife who earned them.
However, German women were shocked by the tightening of divorce laws in the new German code. The code also prohibited women from attending political meetings.
Despite only partial success, reforms in response to women’s activism did prove encouraging for feminist organizations.
It fostered further activism to overcome inequality.

Promise of Higher Education

Before WWI, the system of higher education gradually opened up to women in the face of a concerted onslaught by feminist activists and education reformers.
First in Switzerland then in France, medical schools and universities began admitting women in the 1860s, and women students flocked to them.
In the early 1870s, thanks to the efforts of women like Emily Davies, the first women’s colleges were established in Britain: Girton and Newnham at Cambridge followed by Somerville College and Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford.
Although women at Oxford and Cambridge did not receive degrees for more than half a century after this, the more fortunate women who did receive diplomas from other schools acquired the kind of institutional sanction that was becoming more important in an increasingly bureaucratic world.
Italian universities had never closed their classes to women and women received degrees in the 18^th and 19^th centuries – a few Italian women actually held university teaching posts.
In contrast, a woman scientist’s first lecture at the University of Athens was met with hysterical screams of “Back to the Kitchen” by her male students.
Students in Spain stoned the first women medical students in 1881.
The situation in Germany was less violent but more repressive.
Individual professors could instruct young women, but most refused to do so.
In addition, many German universities actually barred women from attending lectures. Many German women activists devoted most of their energy to education reform.

Medical Theories against Women

Even as women gained access to higher education, the academic and medial world developed theories designed to keep women out or at least discourage them from higher education.
In 1872, Dr. Theodor von Bischoff, a German doctor, published The Study and Practice of Medicine by Women.
Bischoff believed that women had smaller brains than men, and those brains had evolved less satisfactorily. Therefore, women were wholly unsuited to academic work, especially medical study.
In addition, he stated that women who studied would cause irreparable damage to their reproductive organs.
Bischoff was only one of a number of influential intellectual, medical men and scientists who developed this line of argument.
In 1889, in England, Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson elaborated on this analysis. They argued that men had active (katabolic) cells that produced energy. Women only had anabolic cells that did not produce energy. The only active cells women had were in their uterus so any energy used to study would destroy their ability to have babies.
Doctors, particularly those in obstetrics and gynecology sounded the alarm across Europe.
Like doctors, social commentators used the new language of social analysis to brand what women were doing in the realm of higher education as pernicious to the well-being of the public, the family, and the individual woman.
Not much separated these writers’ views from traditional common wisdom about women.
In his Principles of Sociology (1876), the prominent social scientist Herbert Spencer described the harm done by educating women to new kinds of thinking.
Despite the protests from doctors and social scientists, intelligent women gathered in universities and ended their domestic isolation.
In fact, at the turn of the century, European women generally took advantage of changing laws and customs to cluster together more frequently in all females surroundings, such as settlement houses, women’s clubs, women’s colleges, nursing orders, and boarding houses for factory and department store workers.
Living away from direct male and familial authority, they developed a community life that focused on women.
Across Europe, higher education attracted women precisely because it offered an escape from familial patterns into a community of scholars, allowed for community building and promised the further freedom of a career.

Women’s Politicization Continues

Across Europe as the 19^th century ended, more and more men were given the right to vote.
With the reform bill of 1884, more men could vote in England than ever before, and the French Third Republic reestablished universal male suffrage.
Men in Germany and Italy could also vote.
While excluded from voting, women found other ways to participate in national politics.
Women engaged in numerous social reform movements.
However, many women wanted the same kind of citizenship that men had.
By the turn of the century, a women’s movement of significant size had taken shape.
The suffrage movement developed from a base of varied public activities and a wide ranging array of issues.
Settlement house workers, proponents of social purity, temperance reformers, vegetarians, animal rights activists and other types of activists considered themselves part of the “woman movement” although not all women were feminists or wanted the right to vote.
The vitality of the suffrage movement sprang from women’s prior experience with reform.
In fact, for many activists the emphasis on suffrage would combine with efforts at reform.
Many women saw the vote as a new broom for doing some social housekeeping in order to improve the conditions of motherhood.

Organization of the Suffrage Movement

The organization of the suffrage movement involved the coordination and consolidation of the other women’s groups.
In the 1890’s in England, more than 50 suffrage associations joined to form the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.
In France, all women’s groups united into a moderate feminist council, the National Council of French Women – this was rivaled by a slightly more radical French Union for Women’s Suffrage.
National societies began holding regular conferences for women’s suffrage that brought hundreds of women together.
Women forged the final organizational link in the suffrage chain when they created the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance in 1904.

Toward the Vote in England

In England, women had failed to obtain the national franchise in the electoral reforms of the late 1860s, but they had gained the right to vote locally (1869) and to serve in local offices as poor law guardians and on school boards.
Despite these gains the quest for suffrage seemed to falter in the 1870s and 1880s.
British suffragists had to watch the franchise extended to men in the 1880s.
Late in the 1890s, British women founded the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies with Millicent Garrett Fawcett at its head.

Suffragettes and the WSPU

In 1903, the Women’s Social and Political Union, a much more radical group, formed.
Founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Cristabel and Sylvia the WSPU took a militant stand for the right to vote.
Emmeline Pankhurst had gotten her first taste of feminist politics at the side of her husband, Richard an activist in the cause of women’s rights.
Forced to support herself after his death in the 1890’s, Emmeline opened a small store and began running for local offices for which women were eligible, such as the Manchester School Board.
Her political activity accelerated with the founding of the WSPU in 1903. The Pankhursts’ believed that other groups were too timid. Emmeline argued that men understood only violence so violence is what she and her organization would give them.
The WSPU engaged in attacks on property and spectacular kinds of civil disobedience.
The group first attracted attention in 1905 when Christabel and her working class friend Annie Kenny broke up a political rally by heckling the speakers concerning women’s suffrage.
The two were physically mistreated, thrown from the lecture hall, and arrested.
Released from prison with great fanfare, they and other WSPU leaders realized the importance of drama, publicity, and a certain kind of martyrdom.
From then on the members held spectacular mass parades, chained themselves to the gates of Parliament whenever a suffrage issue was to be voted on, and staged hunger strikes whenever they were arrested.
Their activities became increasingly violent and later included acts of terrorism such as planting bombs, slashing works of art, and smashing plate glass windows in urban businesses.
The WSPU was often racked by internal dissension and defections from the Pankhursts increasingly dictatorial control, but it marked a new stage in the suffrage movement.
The WSPU was a manifestation of the challenge to the entire gender order of society.
Other groups maintained decorum acceptable for women so were not as much of a threat.
Protesting women were physically attacked by men who punched them and dragged them by the hair.

PP: Suffrage Movement slides 1-16

Anti-Feminism

“The normal woman has many characteristics which she shares with the savage and the child (irascibility, vengeance, jealousy, vanity) as well as other characteristics … which prevent her from approximating the conduct of men – that equilibrium between rights and duties, egotism and altruism” wrote a French criminal anthropologist at the end of the 19^th century.

By the early 20^th century, anti-feminism became more violent, sometimes carrying out attacks on women suffragettes.
Corset makers organized against feminism as did male school teachers partly because of economic motives.
Many women also protested feminism and rejected suffrage as appropriate for women.

Women in most European countries would not gain suffrage until after the First World War.

Lecture: Origins of WWI

In the Spring of 1914, US president Woodrow Wilson expressed concern over the growing international crisis in Europe and sent his aid, Colonel Edward House, to Europe. The colonel toured several capitals, Berlin, Paris, and London and on May 29, 1914 he reported:

“The situation is extraordinary. It is militarism run stark mad. Unless some one… can bring about a different understanding, there is one day to be an awful cataclysm”

This prediction was far more accurate than the author could have imagined – 9 weeks later, Europe was at war

Age of Progress

As noted in the previous lectures, the period between 188O and 1914 was an age of progress and hope.
There had been spectacular advances in industry and technology ranging from the bicycle and the typewriter to the telephone and the internal combustion engine.
Innovations in fertilizer transformed agriculture leading to higher yields in crops and more food for European populations.
The expansion of the middle class with white-collar jobs even for women in the service sectors also transformed how many people lived.
Even the working class was making more money and the passage of labor legislations provided them with greater protection at work as well as insurance and mutual aid funds.
People believed that the age of science, progress, and reason would continue to create better, more civilized societies.
However, underneath all the progress, serious problems were developing in Europe. These problems would eventually contribute to the First World War.

Causes of the Great War

- Complex System of Alliances
- Nationalism
- Imperialism
- Militarism
- Social Darwinism

Nationalism

The late 19^th century saw a rise in a strong and often violent form of nationalism.
Nationalism is an effort to define who is a member of a nation based on a set of common characteristics such as language, culture, values ethnicity, and sometimes race.
By the late 19^th and early 20^th century nationalists throughout Europe had become convinced that their national or ethnic group was superior to everyone else or their civilization was superior to civilization and culture of their neighbors or those they came into contact with.
Nationalists also argued that all people who belonged to the same national group should be part of the same nation and inferior people should be dominated.
The French were convinced that the Germans were little better than barbarians, the Germans thought the French were weak, and the British were sure that they would be better off to have as little contact with the continent as possible.
More importantly, in terms of the coming war, small ethnic groups within established nations began to demand independence.
For example, Serbs and other people of Slavic origins who lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire began demanding that the areas in which they live be separated from Austria-Hungary and be allowed to join Serbia.
The absorption in 1878 of Bosnia Herzegovina into the empire of Austria-Hungary added a large Serb as well as Muslim population at a time when Serb nationalism was growing.
The addition of hundreds of thousands more Serbs increased demands from the Serbs, Croats, and some Slovenes that they be allowed to form an integral part of the monarchy.
Many Serbs wished to be attached to Serbia thus forming a “Greater Serbia.”
Nationalists throughout Europe also sought territorial expansion through colonialism.
Nationalism helped reinforce tensions in Europe in the early twentieth century by reinforcing people’s belief that their national group was superior to everyone else and had a right to expand and dominate others.

Imperialism

Imperial rivalries that developed between European nations, especially after the 1870s, also helped increase tensions in Europe and widen the diplomatic gap between competing nations.
Between the 1880’s and 1914, European powers expanded their direct control over much of the world.
France, Germany, Britain, and to a lesser extent, Russia and Italy all began racing to gain as many colonies as possible – all believed that colonies were key to national prosperity and influence both in Europe and around the world.
This race for colonies, especially in Africa and Asia created conflicts among European nations who made competing claims to the same territories and who also wanted to prevent their rivals from gaining colonies that would increase their power and influence.
The British and the French fought over Egypt, especially over control to the Suez Canal, which the British needed to get to India which was by far it’s largest and most important colony.
The French and the Germans fought over influence in North Africa and the Congo.
In 1898, the British and the French almost went to war over Sudan.
Between 19O5 and 1911, France and Germany almost went to war over Morocco.
Conflicts over colonies in Africa and Asia increased tensions among nations in Europe.

Social Darwinism

Nationalism driven in part by the development in the late 19^th century of Social Darwinism – the idea of survival of the fittest applied to human society and also to struggles between nations and racial and ethnic groups.
Social Darwinists believed that nations had to struggle like species to survive.
Social Darwinist theory posited that if a nation were not growing at the same or higher rate in terms of population, economy and military expansion that nation was doomed.
This fueled competition for colonies and pushed Europe toward war.
Nations could prove their superiority through battlefield conflicts.

Additional Tension between France and Germany

Between 1870-71, France and Germany fought a war, called the Franco-Prussian War. France lost and Germany took a small part of French territory, Alsace-Lorraine. This caused serious bitterness between France and Germany. France was determined to take back Alsace-Lorraine eventually.

Militarism

The idea that nations had to keep up with their neighbors also led to an arms race fueled by a growing sense of militarism in European society.
Many Europeans believed that war was inevitable.
Tensions had been rising over colonies and military development for some time and people expected war.
Catholic women in France began trying to prepare the French population for war at least as early as 1906 by encouraging patriotism, religious devotion and opposing Communism and socialism.
Some leaders and intellectuals in Europe, although not all, believed that war would be good for Europe. It would purify nations and bring out good traits in men such as courage and strength.
People also expected the coming war to be short.

Military Plans

Since many believed that war was inevitable and maybe positive, European nations began preparing for a possible war early in the twentieth century.
By 1905, the German Alfred von Schlieffen had created a war strategy for Germany in the event of a 2 front war with France and Russia, which Germany feared.
The Schlieffen Plan, as it came to be known, would contribute to the coming world conflict.
The Germans expected Russian mobilization to be very slow so Germany planned an enormous attack on France by invading Belgium.
The Germans believed France would fall in a few weeks then the German army could be shifted east to fight the Russians.
For this to work, Belgian neutrality, which was guaranteed by the British, would have to be violated. This would bring the British into the war.

Alliance system

Another important factor that contributed to the outbreak of WWI was the creation of a very complex system of semi-secret alliances among European nations between 1900 and 1914.
In 1897, Germany and Austria-Hungary had formed a very strong alliance largely to counter the power of Russia in the event of a war. The Italians joined this alliance in 1882 creating the Triple Alliance.
The Italian commitment was never very strong because the Italians and the Austrians hated each other. Italy would switch sides once the war began.
In 1904, the British, the French formed an informal alliance largely against Germany.
In 1907, Russia joined forming the Triple Entente.
To complicate matters, Russia had an alliance with Serbia in an effort to protect it from Austria-Hungary – Serbs, Russians, and Austro-Hungarians were staunch enemies
Britain also had a longstanding alliance with Belgium.
The system of alliances meant that even a small conflict could draw in all of the major powers because of the responsibilities they had to their allies.

Changing political situation for Germany

In 1888, the German Kaiser, Wilhelm I, died of cancer and was succeeded by his much less intelligent son Wilhelm II who was described as “not quite sane” by many.
Wilhelm II was energetic, and he wanted to be a shining leader in Germany, but he wasn’t willing to put the hard work needed into developing solid plans for the German nation.
His father’s chancellor commented that “The Kaiser is like a balloon. If you do not hold fast to the string, you never know where he will be off to.”
Wilhelm I had tried to maintain a balance of power in Europe that would prevent war and especially a 2 front war with France and Russia, but neither Wilhelm II nor his advisors had the skill or the tack to accomplish the same goal with efficiency.
Under Wilhelm II, Germany developed a rather aggressive plan for naval expansion that made the British very angry, and Germany also entered the race for colonies and challenged the French in North Africa.

Final Crisis

By 1914, European powers were poised for conflict.
The final crisis involved the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand who was the heir to the Austrian throne.
June 28, 1914, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were on an inspection tour of the army in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. This was Austrian territory.
Serb nationalists took the tour as an opportunity to carry out an attack against Austria by assassinating the Archduke.
A Serbian organization called the Black Hand plotted the attack. Its member were neither well-trained nor well-organized. Most of them were high school drop outs in their late teens or early twenties. They had taken a crash course in how to throw bombs and use handguns.
One of the members, Gavrilo Princip had been expelled from school in Sarajevo 2 years earlier for participation in the anti-Austrian demonstration.
Before the Archduke arrived in Sarajevo, the assassins emboldened themselves in taverns and waited for the arrival of the archduke’s motorcade.
As the Archduke arrived in Sarajevo, a first bomb exploded under his car. Two military officers were wounded but the Archduke was unharmed.
The motorcade continued to the town hall where a municipal authority stumbled through his speech, and the archduke expressed his indignation at the attempt on his life.
Franz Ferdinand’s security team decided to change the route of the motorcade to avoid the tangle of narrow streets of central Sarajevo. When the motorcade departed, the drivers of the car had not been informed of the change in route.
The cars got stuck on a narrow street and Princip took his chance. He happened to be only a few feet from the archduke’s car.
Princip opened fired killing Franz Ferdinand and his wife.

Ultimatum

Although the Serbian government had been aware of the Black Hand Nationalists organizations, it had not been directly involved in the assassination.
Nonetheless, Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia, and many in the Habsburg Empire saw this as an opportunity to crush Serbia, its longtime enemy.
Before making any official decisions, Austria asked Germany for support. Wilhelm II, Germany’s Kaiser, gave the Austrians what is known as the Blank Check – unqualified support for whatever Austria decided.
One month later, July 23, 1914 Austria gave Serbia an ultimatum – an impossible list of demands that Serbia had to agree to in order to avoid war. Serbia had 48 hours to respond.
Serbia was in no win situation. Its army was not in a position to fight Austria-Hungary, but it could not accept Austria’s demands.
The ultimatum sent shock waves through European capitals.
By July 25, after getting support from France, Russian Tsar put the Russian army on full alert.
On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.
The Alliance system dragged the rest of Europe into the war.
As soon as the Germans learned of mobilization of Russian Army, Germany declared war on Russia on Aug. 1.
The Schlieffen Plan obligated Germany to defeat France first, so on August 3, Germany declared War on France.
On August 4, the German army marched into Belgium and Britain declared war on Germany.

Conclusion

- A series of events led to war.
- Nationalism and militarism combined with Social Darwinism made fighting seem like a necessity for national survival and national greatness.
- Conflicts over colonies created serious tensions between the major powers.
- Confused European politics and the Alliance system failed to create a political structure in which problems between nations could be worked out peacefully and the alliances and a fear of isolation meant that nations could be brought into wars that held no real interest for them.
- Belief in a short war and a lack of understanding about the real consequences of a European conflict.
- Irresponsibility of European politics as a whole – German blank check, Austrian determination to crush Serbia.

Lecture: World War I

Power Point (PP): WWI Maps

Power Point (PP): WWI Air and Naval War

Power Point (PP): WWI Women and Propaganda

WWI

As WWI began, enthusiasm in Europe was high. No one believed the war would last for 4 years and most thought the war would be over by Christmas.
Too some, war came as a relief since they had expected it for a while and now could get it over with.

Battle of the Marne

On August 4, Germany had invaded Belgium on its way to Paris. The Schlieffen plan depended on speed. Germany had to defeat France quickly so that it could shift forces east to meet the Russians.
Problems began for the Germans immediately. Belgium had no chance of winning against the much larger German army, but the Belgians fought hard just the same and managed to slow the Germans down.
The French army rushed every available solider into action some arriving at the front in requisitioned Parisian taxis.
When the German’s crossed the Marne River on Sept 5, the French counterattacked with everything they had.
The Schlieffen plan ended Sept. 5 after the German armies retreated at the Marne River.
The Battle of the Marne saved France in 1914 and kept France in the war.

PP: WWI Maps slide 1

Destruction – Trench Warfare

From the start, the war, the war took a destructive turn that few had predicted.
By the end of 1914, a million men were dead and soldiers had begun to dig trenches to protect themselves from machine guns and artillery.
Spades for digging and rows of tangled barbed wire became more important than the rifle and bayonet.
By the end of the war, there were 6250 miles of trenches just in France. Soldiers spent their time living in mud ditches, waiting to be sent to their deaths in useless battles that achieved no significant gains.
Trenches were miserable places – cold, mud, few supplies, dead bodies, rats, lice, not good for morale.
Trenches offered some protection from rifle fire but not from direct artillery hits.
The trenches were separated by no man’s land – barbed wire, machine guns mines, mud
1916 tank introduced as a remedy to the machine gun but not effectively used
New weapons – planes, chlorine and mustard gas –
Bombardment of the trenches but moments of boredom followed by nightmarish fighting – fear
Hundreds of thousands suffered from shell shock

New weapons

New weapons completely altered warfare in ways that few people predicted.
When Europeans went to war in August 1914, they were imagining older wars with slower, less deadly weapons.
Machine guns change everything. Row after row of men could be gunned down very quickly making casualty rates extremely high.
In addition, mustard gas burned out the lungs, airplanes dropped bombs and submarines sank ships.

PP: Air and Naval War slides 1-15

Battles

Many different battles occurred throughout the war, but the tactics and results were largely the same.
One side would mass troops in its trenches then order those soldiers across No Man’s Land to take the trench on the other side. The opposing side would gun those men down with machine guns. The results were huge casualties and little land won or lost.
On the Eastern Front, between the Russians and Germans, things were even worse.
Russian soldiers were often sent into battle without appropriate weapons or supplies. Their leaders were drawn from the Russian aristocracy and had been appointed because of class status not because of battlefield skill.
The Russians lost badly against the Germans and Russian morale on the warfront and the home front plummeted quickly.

Soldiers

Although many soldiers had been excited at the beginning of the war, heavy losses and life in the trenches quickly eroded morale in all armies.
Soldiers also increasingly felt like the civilian population did not understand or appreciate their plight.
Newspapers were carefully censored and generally presented the war as a heroic series of battles
Early in the war, to encourage men to enlist in the British volunteer army, some women in Britain organized a White Feather campaign in which they gave white feathers to men who they believed should be fighting. The white feathers indicated that these men were cowards.
The campaign resulted in misunderstandings and white feathers were sometimes given to soldiers on leave or men who had been injured.
The campaign caused serious resentment between soldiers and the women handing out the feathers.
The war created a lost generation – a group of young men who lost their youth and had no real hope for the future.
Many of those who survived the war returned with serious physical and psychological injuries that their societies did not know how to cope with.

Home front

Each combatant nation needed full support of the home front.
Nations had to mobilize people to produce war supplies and accept shortages.
The line between home front and war front erodes during WWI and civilians increasingly became targets of the war itself. Paris and London were both bombed by the Germans and submarines sank civilian ships.
Civilians experienced huge economic hardships with rationing, shortages. These were especially bad in Germany and Russia.

Women

Women increasingly took new positions in society and work.
Women took new jobs in factories, operated heavy machines, drove trucks, and took care of farms by themselves.
Women also worked close to the Front as ambulance drivers and nurses. Many women experienced life very close to the front lines.
For some women this experience was liberating. Women were able to move out of domestic work and earn much more money.
Women also felt patriotic and like they were aiding the war cause. They gained a sense of independence and personal development.
Women’s work was often dangerous, and many women died in factory accidents with explosions or had their health permanently damaged through working with TNT and other harmful chemicals.

PP: WWI Women and Propaganda slides 1-15

Lecture: Russian Revolution

Russian Revolution

In the midst of WWI, a massive revolution occurred in Russia that would eventually make Russia the first Communist state in the world.

Unrest, Reform, and Revolution

By the opening of the 20^th Century, Russia was a state with massive problems. It needed reform in all areas – political, social and economic.
Russia lagged behind Western Europe in industrialization, education, democratic traditions and just about everything else.
Russia stretched 9 thousand miles from Central Europe to the Pacific Ocean and had huge natural resources, but it was badly led and badly managed.
Peasants lived like they had for centuries – steeped in superstition mixed with Orthodox – dependent on unproductive agricultural practices.

War and Revolution

World War I became a catalyst for demands for reform within Russia.
Russian soldiers and civilians suffered from bad leadership and shortages of everything.
The Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, was not an evil person, but he wasn’t a reformer either. Instead, he was a melancholy and superstitious person who was ill-suited for leading Russia during the crisis produced by the war.
In January 1895, the day of his first speech as tsar, an elderly noble had dropped a traditional gift of bread and salt. Nicholas saw this as a bad omen.
The Tsar was also influenced greatly by his wife Alexandra – a German princess – who Russians hated. Many believed that Alexandra was working for the Germans but no German agent could have served Germany as well as Alexandra did by accident.
Nicholas and Alexandra increasingly put their trust in Grigori Rasputin, a debauched “holy man” who claimed to have ability to heal their son Alexie who was a hemophiliac.
People in the government increasingly worried about Rasputin’s influence over the royal family.
In December 1916, noble conspirators carried out a plot to assassinate Rasputin. They invited him to a party where they put what they thought was enough poison into to kill a cow in his vodka. When Rasputin seemed almost unfazed, they shot him repeatedly and smashed his skull in a protracted struggle. Finally, then they weighed down his body and threw him into the Neva River.
What this story shows us is that even people close to Nicholas mistrusted his leadership abilities.

February Revolution 1917

The Russian Revolution happens in two parts. The first part begins in February 1917.
Serious food shortages during 1916-1917 contributed to revolutionary tensions in Russian society.
The winter of 1916-1917 was exceptionally cold and people were hungry and tired of the war. Russians wanted an end to the war at any price.
The Russian Revolution began in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) the capital and grew out of hunger and weariness with the war.
- On February 23, International Women’s Day, parades turned into angry demonstrations by women protesting harsh living conditions and the war.
- Women workers were soon joined by men, and by February. 25, a general strike closed down Petrograd.
- The following day, a military commander turned a bread into a full-fledged insurrection. On Feb. 26 an officer commanding troops in Petrograd ordered his troops to fire on unarmed protestors. Soldiers killed their officers instead and joined the protesters.
- The protesters demanded Bread and Peace. It was not a communist revolution at this point.
- By March 2, 1917 Nicholas II had been forced to abdicate.
- Revolution spread rapidly through the rest of Russia.

Provisional Government

After Nicholas abdicated, a Provisional Government was created to govern Russia until elections could be held and a constitution written.
Initially, the Provisional Government made some good decisions. It granted civil liberties to people, including the right to strike, amnesty for political prisoners, and democratization of local government. It also created a constituent assemble to establish a constitution.
However, the Provisional Government made one fatal mistake. It decided to keep Russia in the war.
There was huge opposition to Russia’s continued participation in the war this cause rift between Provisional Government and workers.

Lenin’s Return

Vladimir Lenin was a leading Russian Communist.
Lenin – born Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov – came from a well-educated family of professionals.
His older brother, Alexander, joined the revolutionary group “People’s Will” in the 1880’s and was executed in 1887 after being arrested for participation in a plot to kill the Tsar Alexander III.
Lenin read widely history and philosophy including the works of Marx and Engels.
He received a degree in law from the University of St. Petersburg but became a revolutionary committed to the overthrow of the Russian autocracy and world capitalism.
By 1917, when the Russian Revolution began, Lenin had been kicked out of Russia for political radicalism and was living in exile in Switzerland.
Lenin returned to Russia in April 1917 and rallied the Bolshevik (Communist) party around his leadership.
Lenin had a simple message for the Russian people. He promised Bread, Land and Peace which was exactly what Russians wanted.
Aided by the Provisional Governments unpopularity, the Bolshevik Party gained a majority of support among members of the factory committees, workers militias, Red Guards (factory workers militias) sailors and soldiers in the Petrograd garrison.

October Revolution – Oct. 25, 1917

The second part of the Russian Revolution begins in October 1917, and this will be a Communist revolution.
To many Russians, the Provisional Government seemed incapable of fixing problems in Russian society.
By October, Lenin felt like he was strong enough to overthrow the Provisional Government.
The Provisional Government collapsed in the face of the Bolshevik insurrection, and Bolsheviks took power in Petrograd.

Progress of the Revolution

In Petrograd, the revolution had been well prepared and proceeded with little bloodshed.
Military groups loyal to the Bolsheviks took control of key points in the city.
The Bolsheviks entered the Winter Palace, where the Provisional Government was meeting and arrested the ministers.

Revolution spread slowly throughout the empire. Lenin was not opposed to using violence to support the revolution and get rid of dissidents.

Lenin’s Reforms

Lenin made good on his promises to people.
He gave land to peasant farmers, he provided Russia with a declaration of rights, and by March 8, 1918, he had signed a peace treaty with Germany ending Russia’s involvement in WWI.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk required Russia to turn over ¼ of its territory to Germany, but all that mattered to Russians was ending the fighting.
This did not bring peace to Russia. Between 1918 and 1921, Russia fell into a brutal civil war between supporters and opponents of Communism. The communist would win by 1921 and Lenin would consolidate his power.

Lecture: The End of WWI and the Peace Settlement

Power Point (PP) – WWI Maps

Power Point (PP) – Interwar Fashion

The Russian departure from WWI was a great help to Germany but a serious problem for Britain and France. It meant that Germany could shift troops from the Eastern Front back west to fight the British and the French. However, the same year Russia left the war, the United Stated joined, offering needed support to France and Britain.

Final Stages – US enters April 6, 1917

When WWI began, most Americans had little interest in the conflict and did not see a role for the United States.
President Woodrow Wilson campaigned in 1916 on a pledge to keep the US out of the conflict.
As war raged in Europe, public sympathies in the United States gradually turned against the Central Powers – Germany and Austria.
Americans read of the war through British newspapers, and heard atrocity stories that were directed against Germany.

German Submarine Policy

German submarine policy also helped turn American opinion against Germany.
In 1915, Germany proclaimed the waters around the British Isles to be a war zone in which enemy ships would be sunk.
Neutral vessels entering the zone did so at their own risk.
On 7 May 1915, the British passenger liner, the Lusitania, was sunk by a German submarine – 1198 people died including 124 Americans.
The US protested in the strongest terms, and Americans were outraged.
Through the remainder of 1915, German submarines limited their attacks to freighters, but on 1 February 1917, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare on all neutral and belligerent shipping.
Three days later an American naval vessel was sunk, and Wilson asked congress to sever diplomatic relations with Germany.
Six more ships were sunk the next month.

Zimmerman Telegram

On 16 January 1917, Arthur Zimmermann, the new German foreign minister, sent a telegram to the German minister in Mexico City.
If the US entered the war, Germany would offer Mexico an alliance in which the two countries would fight together.
Germany would provide financial aid and would help Mexico regain the territory it had lost to the US after the war of 1846-48. This was most of the American Southwest.
The document was transmitted in the German diplomatic code by three different routes.
Naval intelligence in London intercepted the message on all three routes.
The British possessed the relevant codebook which they had captured in 1915 in the baggage of a German agent in Persia.
The British gave the telegram to the US.
Wilson published it for the all of the US to see, and the American press began to call for war.
On 6 April 1917, the US declared war on Germany.

Entry of the US

Both sides knew that the entry of the US with fresh forces and vast industrial capacity would be critical to the war.
However, in 1917, the United States wasn’t prepared for war with anyone.
The American military was small and badly supplied, there weren’t enough officers, and there were no war plans
Factories also had to be shifted to wartime production. It would take about a year before the United States was ready to send troops.
The British and French offered to train American troops to get those soldiers to the battlefield more quickly, but the US army refused to have Americans fighting in foreign armies.

PP: WWI Maps slide 2

German response

Germany knew that the introduction of American troops could potentially spell disaster for the German military. Germany had to do something spectacular quickly before significant numbers of American troops arrived in Europe.
Early in 1918 Germany decided to throw everything it had against the Allies on the western front before American troops arrived in force.
Germany massed all of the troops it could on the Western Front, conscripting older and younger men.
On March 21, after heavy bombardment of the British and French lines, 1.6 million German soldiers attacked in 5 places along the Western Front.
Initial, the Germans did pretty well. Germany gained 40 miles in 5 days. No one had seen that kind of acquisition of territory since 1914.
It once again looked like Paris might fall to the Germans.
However, the Germans did not have the reserves to maintain their gains. Germany simply ran out of men and supplies at about the same time that US troops entered the war.
As the German military lost ground, morale plunged on the German home front. Civilians were starving and fuel to heat homes was running out. By the Fall of 1918, riots and protests were occurring among the civilian population in Germany.

Victory

By Aug. 1918 the Allies (Britain, France and the United States) were pretty sure of victory.
Then, on November 9, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and fled to Holland amid riots and protests in Germany.
On November 11, the 11^th day, the 11^th month, at the 11^th hour, Germany signed an armistice ending World War I.
9 million men were dead.

Aftermath

By the end of 1918, Europeans were weighed down by the destruction of the war.
5 million people were dead and 21 million wounded.
Northern France and Belgium had been destroyed in the fighting – roads, coal mines, telegraph poles, homes, everything was gone.
European nations faced a serious gender imbalance. With so many men dead or wounded, many women were unable to find husbands or have children to replenish the population. Many children had been orphaned and all nations were in debt.
1918 also saw a flu epidemic sweep across the world killing 25 million people.

Treaty of Versailles

In this volatile atmosphere 27 nations came together at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to create an official treaty to end the war.
Although 27 nations were involved, there were 3 big players – David Lloyd George (Britain), George Clemenceau (France), and Woodrow Wilson (United States).
These four men had very different personalities and very different goals for the peace conference.
Georges Clemenceau (France) wanted revenge – France had been invaded twice since 1870 and Clemenceau wanted to make sure that Germany never rose again. He faced considerable pressure from the French population to use the treaty to crush Germany.
Woodrow Wilson (United States) in contrast to Clemenceau, was an idealist. – Wilson wanted a treaty that would lead to European reconciliation. He did not want Germany treated too harshly. Woodrow Wilson’s main concern was the creation of a League of Nations to arbitrate international disputes. He thought a League could bring nations together to discuss their problems before they went to war
David Lloyd George (Britain) fit somewhere in the middle. He could not come across as being soft on Germany. The British public was angry and wanted to make Germany pay for the war. However, Lloyd George was also very concerned about the rise of communism in Russia and wanted Germany to become a barrier against Communist. He didn’t want to treat Germany too harshly fearing that it might turn toward Communism.
When someone asked Lloyd George how the treaty negotiations went, he responded, “I think I did as well as might be expected seated as I was between Jesus Christ and Napoleon Bonaparte.”

Wilson’s 14 Points

Wilson came to Europe with a blueprint for permanent peace called the Fourteen Points.
The 14 points were based on his understanding of how the war started and how future wars could be avoided.
1. He call for open alliances, freedom of seas and trade, impartial settlement of colonial rivalries, non-intervention in Russia
2. Self-determination of people to end nationalities problems. Each ethnic group should get their own country as much as possible.

Creation of a League of Nations

Treaty of Versailles

Negotiations over the Treaty of Versailles ended in June 1919.
- Almost everyone agreed that Germany was responsible for the War and should assume the financial burden for rebuilding Europe
- In the final treaty, Germany lost some territory – Alsace and Lorraine went back to France – Germany also lost a little bit of territory to Belgium, Denmark, Czechoslovakia and Poland. It could have been a lot worse.
- League of Nations, which had just been created, took control of Germany’s colonies.
- Germany had to return to Russian land taken in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk – some of this land made into new states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
- Germany’s army reduced to 100,000 men, Germany was not allowed to have tanks or an air force.
- The German Rhineland was demilitarized to act as a buffer zone between France and Germany.
- Germany had to pay huge amounts of money in reparations, and Germany had to admit full responsibility for starting the war and therefore responsible for all damages caused by the war. This was Article 231, known as the War Guilt Clause, in the Treaty.

The Germans were extremely bitter about this treaty which they saw as harsh and unfair. They had little choice but to sign it.
Wilson also failed to convince the American Congress to sign the treaty or join the League of Nations. The United States developed its own treaty later on the League of Nations would become a very weak organization.
In the aftermath of the war, 9 new states were created in Europe. The map of Europe was completely redrawn.

PP: WWI Maps slides 3-4

New Prosperity

The years immediately following WWI were difficult ones for Europeans as they rebuilt and dug themselves out of debt.
- However, by the mid-1920’s, the economy had improved, and Europe was enjoying new prosperity.

Suffrage gains

Women’s roles changed considerably during the war and some of the gains women made would remain after the conflict.
Women increasingly gained political privileges, including direct participation in representative government through the right to vote.
During the war neutral countries such as Denmark (1915), Iceland (1915) gave women the right to vote.
In England, Parliamentary leaders realized during the war that a new voting law was needed.
As the new voting law was being drawn up, the question of giving the vote to women came to the fore again.
By this time, little remained of the vociferous objections to women’s participation in public life. Women were already active in noticeable and crucial ways.
In 1918, the British Parliament awarded the franchise to women who were over 30 and either had established residence or were married to a man who did.
The compromise left millions of women still disenfranchised, but it was a step in the right direction.
It seemed clear that men still feared women voters
Women also won the vote in new nations carved from the defeated Habsburg empire: Czechoslovakia (1918), Austria (1920), Poland (1921) Hungary (1925)
German women also received the right to vote.

The Modern Woman

For women with money and education, modernity meant a life less determined by rigid social expectations.
Middle and upper class women in northern Europe and the US flaunted their modernity with new shocking fashions and new relationships.

Flappers

The most visible expression of modernity was the 1920s figure of the modern woman, known as the flapper in the US, the bachelor girl in Britain and la garconne in France.
The 1920s woman was independent, socially and sexually liberated, professional.
Most associated with that image was short or ‘bobbed’ hair, which profoundly shocked a culture that read hair length as a primary sign of gender.
One well to do woman told her hairdresser: long hair is the symbol of our past servitude; its loss will put an end to our humiliation.
Stories abounded of women who defied their fathers and cut their hair. Fathers sometimes responded by suing or killing their daughters or the hairdressers, although these were extreme and rare occurrences.

Coco Chanel and the Flapper Style

Coco Chanel’s models in 1918 had already worn short hair.
Her famous 1924 collection of clothes entrenched straighter lines, lower waists and higher hems uncovering the leg below the knee.
Commercial production of rayon meant that more women could wear provocative flesh-colored stockings.
The new look also blurred traditional gender expectations. Chanel and other designers looked to men’s clothing for inspiration, using pajamas, trousers, ties and men’s cut jackets to fashion new designs for women.
The new fashions promoted boyish bodies that women achieved through dieting.
Dieting became fashionable and women turn to chemicals rather than corsets to shape the body.
In 1924, a Parisian law student referred to the new women as “beings without breasts, without hips, without underwear” because they wore no corsets.
The new fashion created enormous tensions within the French family and society.
Feminism was blamed for preventing repopulation.
Doctors feared that women would be reduced to eunuchs or sticks who could not successfully nourish a baby.

PP: Interwar Fashion slides 1-10

Lecture: The Rise of Fascism

Stalin was only one of several evil dictators to arise in the interwar years. The 1920s and 30s also saw the development and spread of Fascism throughout Europe. With it came the emergence of right-wing dictators in a number of European states.

Rise of Fascism

Fascism was an ideology (a way of thinking) that developed in the 1920s. Nazism is a form of Fascism. Fascism developed in several different forms so there is no single ideology. However, there are certain elements that were common to all European Fascist movements.

Elements of Fascism

Extreme nationalism – intense emotional nationalism with a deep sense of national destiny. Fascists believe in the power in the purity of blood and race
Authoritarian – Fascism is opposed to democracy. The individual does not matter and ordinary people are sheep who had to be led. What matters is what you can do for the state.
Glorification of violence – violence for the sake of violence – Fascists believe violence is what moves society forward, what created greatness, and what makes people heroic.
Society organized as a hierarchy – everyone should know their place and stay in it.
Promotes empire – is expansionistic. Fascists want more land to show their power and expand their superior race.
Racist – Fascists believe the nation has to be purified and racial undesirables eliminated – especially anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish)
Patriarchal – men promoted over women.

Situation in Italy

Fascism developed first in Italy. Benito Mussolini is considered the creator of Fascism. He brought together a number of older ideas into a new ideology.
It is not surprising that Fascism develops in Italy first.
Italy finished WWI on the winning side but many Italians felt like they had lost.
650,000 Italians had been killed and a million wounded.
Italian industry slumped immediately after the war causing massive economic problems.
Within a few months, 10% of industrial workers were unemployed.
Prices rose rapidly and wages failed to keep up.
Promised pensions for wounded veterans and families of those killed were long delayed.
Strikes and disorders became frequent.
Italian businessmen worried about the possibility of a Communist takeover
Many young men were released from the armies with no skills other than fighting and no jobs to go to.
Italians also felt like they had gotten a bad deal with the Treaty of Versailles. Their national pride was hurt.
The Italian government was also chaos and seemed incapable of dealing with the problems Italians were facing.

Rise of Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini emerged from this environment. Fascism thrives in chaos and that’s definitely what Italy had to offer.
Mussolini was born in 1883. He did not do well in school, was violent, hard to get along with, and stabbed a girlfriend at one point. He was quick to fight, but also intelligent.
Unsurprisingly, he had no close friends.
Mussolini trained as an elementary school teacher, and but his heart was never really in teaching.
Mussolini was drafted to fight in WWI in 1915 and sent to the front. He was wounded in 1917 although not severely.
In March 1919, he founded the National Fascist Party. And the following year, he created his own paramilitary group called the Black Shirts or Squadristi.
He gained support from industrialists by having his uniformed squads of fascists thugs intervened on behalf of wealthy land owners and businessmen by attacking unions, Socialists and Communists.

Mussolini in Politics

Mussolini thrived in the violence and instability of the 1920s.

In 1921 Mussolini and some of his supporters were elected to Parliament.
This gave him an ideal soapbox for his flamboyant speeches and he was able to turn fascism into a powerful political movement with prominent allies, money, newspapers and hundreds of thousands of members.
He used violence to get rid of enemies or challengers.
Mussolini took title of Duce, and presented himself as a defender of law and order blaming socialists and Communists for the violence.
Fascists enjoyed the support of many state and police officials, and fascist violence went unpunished.
He even gained some support from the Catholic Church.

March on Rome October 27, 1922

By 1922, Mussolini believed he was strong enough to challenge the Italian government. He began pressuring the diminutive, indecisive Italian king Victor Emmanuel III, to make him Prime Minister. Victor Emmanuel III was a shy man who loved to hunt, wear military uniforms, and collect coins. He was no match for Mussolini’s strong personality.
To strengthen his hand and make the Fascist party look stronger than it was Mussolini organized a March on Rome 27 October 1922. The March on Rome drew thousands of fascist supporters marched to Rome. The March suggested that Mussolini could take power through force.
On Oct. 29, Mussolini became prime minister. He then convinced parliament to grant him full powers to rule by decree for a year. Essentially, parliament voted itself out of existence.
Many politicians hoped he would restore order and assumed that Mussolini could not survive long in respectable political life. Others feared Mussolini’s violence.
Mussolini’s management of fascist newspapers and ability to plant favorable articles in other papers helped win support. He was also aided by intimidation tactics of fascist militia.
By 1923. the Fascist party was the majority in the Parliament
Created a dictatorship over the next few years.

Italy under Mussolini

By the 1930s, Italian journalists were required to capitalize He, His, and Him when referring to Mussolini as they did when mentioning God or Jesus Christ.
Mussolini insisted that officials and assistants sprint to his desk.
He ordered pictures of himself running with his troops, fencing, playing tennis, driving fast cars
He obnoxiously boasted of his sexual energy and prowess.
In fact, Mussolini was lazy and unable to concentrate. He was an actor above all else.
He insisted that he was always right and refused to accept disagreement from his advisors and ministers.
He made peace with the Catholic Church in 1929 with the Lateran Pacts. This gave significant independence to the Church as long as the Church didn’t challenge Mussolini. It also returned religious instruction to schools, banned freemasonry, swearing in public, and the sale of contraceptives all of which were popular with Church officials.
Mussolini promised to make Italy a strong nation again and bring back the glory of the old Roman Empire. This, of course, never happened.
Not everyone accepted fascist state – peasants in the south especially resistant to the state and the Mafia provided an alternative allegiance parallel underworld government. Mussolini never broke the power of the Mafia.

Fascist movements Europe

Fascist movements quickly developed in other European nations.
Austria had a strong fascist element.
Britain and France had relatively weak movements.

Spain

Spain was a special case.
Between 1936 and 1939 a brutal, bloody civil war occurred in Spain.
At the end of the civil war, Francisco Franco came to power.
Franco was a right wing dictator but he did not promote all the elements of fascism.
Nonetheless, when WWII broke out, he would be closer to Hitler and Mussolini than to the Allies.

Lecture: The Nazi State

Power Point (PP): Nazis

Hitler and the Emergence of the Nazi Party

The economic, social, political, and cultural difficulties that characterized the Weimar Government, Germany’s government after WWI, made possible the rise of extremist parties such as the Nazis.
The Nazi party was more effective than others at appealing to the discontent and in capturing popular support.
Much of the Nazi success was due to the charismatic leadership of Adolf Hitler who was convinced of his own greatness.

Early life of Hitler

Hitler was born April 20, 1889 in a small Austrian village. His family was peasant stock although his father was a petty bureaucrat and the first to break into the lower middle class.
No real evidence to support the notion that his family contained Jewish heritage.
After dropping out of High school as a teenager he spent 2 years in Linz drawing, painting, and writing poetry.
Hitler was a dreamer who preferred creating fantasies to doing real work. He had a bad temper and hated regular work preferring to live what he considered an artist’s life.

Years in Vienna

In September 1907, Hitler moved to Vienna where he applied to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.
His painting samples were declared unsatisfactory, and he was refused admission.
Hitler returned briefly to Linz for his mother’s death in December 1907, an emotional experience since she was the only person who he believed understood him.
In Feb 1908, he returned to Vienna and remained there until 1913. Later, he claimed that this was a time of poverty, but he actually lived pretty well off an inheritance from family members.
Many of Hitler’s political and anti-Semitic ideas were formed while he was in Vienna.
He was influenced by pan-German nationalists who wanted to unity all Germans in one national state. He also spent time with violent anti-Semites.
Hitler’s years in Vienna served as the foundation for his later experiences – developed ideology and got ideas about effective propaganda and mass politics

Munich and WWI

In May 1913 Hitler moved to Munich, Germany to escape Austrian military obligations.
Munich brought no real change to Hitler’s life. He continued to sell paintings but had no real future.
The outbreak of the war proved to be his salvation. He later wrote: “To me these hours seemed like a release from the painful feeling of my youth… overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.”
Hitler volunteered for the German army and was accepted Aug 3, 1914.
At the age of 25, Hitler had found his purpose in life. He felt like the war gave him a greater purpose and he threw himself into the war.
He distinguished himself by his courageous acts and received the Iron Cross, First Class, seldom awarded to enlisted men.
Hitler didn’t fit in very well with his fellow soldiers, but the military with its clear cut system of order and values and its sense of male camaraderie made a great impression on him.
He liked the excitement and discipline of war.
News of Germany’s defeat, which he heard while being treated at a military hospital for temporary blindness from a gas attack, was crushing.
He grieved for Germany, but his newfound existence was also in jeopardy.
To Hitler, the war could not have been lost by the army – defeat had been caused by the weakness of the home front, and a Jewish-Marxist “stab in the back.”
As a result of a vision he claimed to have had while blinded, he decided early in November 1918 that he would go into politics to redress these dreadful wrongs.

Hitler and the German Worker’s Party

In 1919, Hitler joined a right wing political organization known as the German Worker’s Party. It was one of many small right wing parties.
On February 24, 1920, the German Worker’s Party held its first authentic mass meeting in a Munich beer cellar.
Hitler was thrilled at the attendance of almost 2000 people, and he used the opportunity to announce a 25 point party program composed by himself and one other person.
The program made clear that the new movement opposed capitalism, democracy, and especially Jews who were to be excluded from German citizenship.
Hitler’s influence on the party’s program was evident quickly, and the party soon changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) or Nazi for short.
In April 1920, Hitler took the decisive step of leaving the army and dedicating himself completely to politics.
In the spring and summer of 1920, Hitler was basically a Munich politician who spoke night after night in rowdy been halls to win people over the National Socialist ideas.
He was willing to use any method including brawls and riots to get attention.
Hitler’s position as propaganda director within the party enabled him to exert considerable influence within the new party.
By July of 1921, Hitler had become the head of the party, and he quickly established dictatorial leadership of the party. He was indispensable to the party and people recognized this.
Hitler understood the importance of symbols that could unify the party. He chose the swastika as the official party emblem.
The swastika was an ancient occult symbol invoking the power of the sun.
He instructed the heads of local groups that members were to always wear party badges carrying the swastika.
In 1920, Hitler introduced the Heil salute.
He also held mass meetings, which were very important. Mass meetings spread propaganda and made people feel like they are part of something great.
In his speeches, Hitler railed against the Treaty of Versailles, Marxism, international capitalism and Jews.

Role of the SA

Hitler also created a paramilitary unit for the party.
The SA (Storm Troops) had been established as a Gymnastic and Sports division within the Nazi movement. In 1921, it became the armed part of the movement used to defend party meetings and to break up the meetings of other parties. It added element of force and terror to the growing Nazi movement.
Hitler believed that terror had its own magnetic power and could be used to intimidate and attract followers.
The Nazi party attracted a lot of people in the lower middle class along with some workers.

Beer Hall Putsch

By 1923, the Nazi Party had become the leading party among the extreme right.
Party membership swelled to 55,000 and the SA grew to 15,000.
Following Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922, Hitler began planning the overthrow of the Weimar government.
In the fall of 1923, Hitler decided to act.
On November 8, a rally was held in one of Munich’s been cellars to honor the head of the Bavarian government.
Hitler’s SA surrounded the building, broke in and took over the meeting proclaiming that a national revolution had broken out.
The army refused to support Hitler, and troops were sent in to crush Hitler’s revolt.
The Beer Hall Putsch collapsed and Hitler was arrested and tried for treason in early 1924.
At his trial, Hitler portrayed himself as a patriot opposing the Weimar Republic, which was the real criminal. He gave a great speech and received a light sentence from the right-wing judges in charge of the trial.
Hitler got 5 years in jail with understanding that there would be an early probation.
The Beer Hall Putsch and the year in jail was an important turning point for Hitler.
He realized that he had to change tactics. Overthrowing the government by force would not work. Instead, he needed to create a mass political party and work within the constitution.
He was treated like a distinguished guest in jail and had a pleasant daily routine that allowed him to reflect and write Mein Kampf, laying out the goals and ideas of the Nazi movement.
He argued that Germany needed Lebensraum – more living space to spread its superior Aryan race. This living space would come from Eastern Europe.
He also laid out his hatred of Jews.
When Hitler got out of jail he had to rebuild the party.
Hitler turned the party into an effective political organization that could and did gain mass appeal.
In addition to the SA and SS, the NSDAP established a series of auxiliary organizations in the late 1920’s, youth and student organizations, organizations for professionals, the National Socialist Women’s League. Hitler made it an all-inclusive party.
In 1928, Hitler began concentrating on rural and small towns since he had little success with urban workers.
By 1929, the Nazi Party was considered a respectable national party.

Crash and Depression

In many ways, it was the Great Depression that catapulted Hitler into power.
Economic difficulties plagued Europe after WWI.
Many people were thrown out of work by the swift reduction of military needs, and some countries never returned to full employment.
Agricultural prices declined as mechanization increased farm output. Bumper crops around the world added to crash in prices.
In Western Europe, financial turmoil over reparations added to problems.
There was some stabilization of the European economy after 1924 but that did not last. The complete collapse of the US stock market in October 1929 was a global event
Its impact was felt in the highest reaches of government and in the modest homes of ordinary people.
Exuberant Americans, confident as their economy rose to new heights of prosperity had invested enthusiastically in the stock market during the “Roaring Twenties.”
Despite a few naysayers, some 9 million Americans had played the market on credit, with borrowed money.
Their faith that the market would continue to rise and thus allow them to repay their debts had been unshakable.
In 1928, the US Federal Reserve tightened the availability of credit in hopes of curbing the unhealthy mania of investing borrowed money into the stock market.
In response, brokers demanded that their clients immediately pay back the borrowed money and investors rushed to sell stocks to cover their loans causing the market to plummet.
Between October and November 1929, the value of businesses listed on the NY Stock Exchange dropped from 87 billion to 30 billion.
As a leading international creditor, the US had increasingly financed the development of enterprises globally since 1914.
Suddenly strapped for credit, US financiers cut back on investments and called in short term debts which undermined industry and finance around the world.
Troubles intensified as American households cut spending – commerce slowed nationally and internationally.
This left the US with 14 million unemployed and 5000 banks ruined.
The savings of millions were wiped out.
In Germany the official number of unemployed was 6.12 million, 1/3 of the workforce in 1932 but the real number was probably at least 7.5 million
France had a more self-sufficient economy with a larger ratio of peasant proprietors so not quite as bad.
Britain had 3 million unemployed by 1932.

Great Depression

Even before the New York stock market crash 24 October 1929, business activity in Germany had experienced a slowdown resulting in 1.3 million unemployed by the fall of that year.
The stock market crash had an even greater effect on the German economy because it led to the recall of short term American loans that had helped fuel Germany’s economic prosperity.
Business failures multiplied and unemployment rose dramatically to 6 million by winter of 1932 – 1 in 3 workers was out of work.
The middle class tended to find security in the message of the NSDAP.
Nazi propaganda provided simple but understandable reasons for the collapse.
The Nazis blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations payments, the Weimar system itself and political parties. Nazis also blamed Communists who wanted a revolution to destroy traditional German values, and Jews who were really behind all problems.
Crisis had dire consequences for Weimar democracy.
Democracy was new to Germany and many preferred more authoritarian forms of rule
The Reichstag (German parliament) elections of September 1930 were a huge victory for the Nazi party. The Nazis gained 107 seats in the Reichstag which made them the second largest party. They continued to gain support in the next few years with incredible propaganda and electioneering techniques.

In January 1933, Hitler managed to make a deal with another high ranking member of the Reichstag to convince the German President to allow Hitler to become Chancellor (Prime Minister)
Hitler was sworn in Jan. 30, 1933, he had come to power legally within the system.

Consolidation of Power

Hitler quickly worked to create the foundations for a Nazi dictatorship.
Using the fear of communism, Hitler issued an emergency decree curtailing freedom of the press and outlawing public meetings that posed a threat to the vital interests of the state.
On Feb. 27, one week before the parliamentary elections, the Nazis received another advantage.
The Reichstag building went up in flames and a young Dutch Communist was arrested at the scene.
The Nazis immediately claimed that this was the beginning of a Communist revolution
Some Historians think the Nazis set the fire themselves.
On March 23, after putting considerable pressure on the Reichstag, Hitler got an act passed that eliminated the power of parliament.
Hitler quickly consolidated power.

Night of the Long Knives – Summer 1934

By the summer of 1934, there was almost no possible source of opposition to Hitler – the German military was relatively pro-Nazi.
However, Hitler began to face opposition within his own SA, which did not feel like Hitler had gone far enough in radical social and economic change
The head of the SA, Ernst Rohm, began demanding that the SA become the core of a new German army, but Hitler didn’t want to alienate the army.
Hitler struck against the SA in the early hours of June 30, 1934.
He took personal command of the arrest of Ernst Rohm and other SA leaders.
The arrested SA leaders were taken to a prison in Munich and shot by the SS – Hitler also used that night to settle some old scores. Altogether over 100 men were shot.
This is known as the Night of the Long Knives.
Hitler told the German public that it had been a necessary act in defense of the state to save Germany from a revolt by the SA. This was, of course, untrue.

Economic program

Once in Power, Hitler understood that he had to solve Germany’s economic problems and he needed to make a lot of people happy.
After seeking advice from leading industrialists, Hitler had instituted an economic program known as the Reinhardt Plan by the summer of 1933.
One billion Reichsmarks were allocated for public works projects such as the building of roads, canals, public buildings. The plan also provided grants for private construction firms to renovate old buildings and create new housing.
Tax breaks were given to encourage industrial expansion.
The Reinhardt plan was accompanied by considerable Nazi propaganda.
Hitler realized that ending the depression would have psychological as well as economic dimensions.
Germans needed to believe that the Nazis were really trying to solve the economic problems even if problems remained.
Reinhardt programs were responsible for helping the economy to recover more quickly, but it was not the only aspect of Hitler’s overall economic plan.
Early February 1933, Hitler had spoken with military commanders and his cabinet about his desire to begin rearming in order to bolster Germany’s political position and its economy.
In 1934, there was a dramatic increase in spending for rearmament which helped improve the economy as well.
Germany’s economic recovery and armaments boom after 1936 drastically reduce unemployment and by 1938 there was virtually full employment in Germany. The recovery was spectacular.

The SS Police State

To win the Germans over to the sense of community the Nazis expended considerable effort in propaganda and indoctrination.
For many Germans, this, along with economic recovery, was sufficient to make them willing participants in the new Nazi state.
But Hitler and the Nazis did not rely on verbal persuasion alone.
From the beginning of the movement, they counted on force and violence to achieve their goals.
The SS with its black uniforms and death’s head insignia and all its various police organizations did what the Nazi regime wanted and came to be the dominant symbol of the Nazi use of force and terror.
It struck fear into the hearts of those who either opposed the regime or would not be allowed to live in the new pure German state.

Beginnings of the SS

The SS was established in 1925 as a small personal guard unit whose function it was to protect Hitler and other party leaders.
It was called the Schutzstaffeln (guard squadrons) or SS.
From the beginning, the SS was given the special task of intelligence gathering.
The SS rose in power after Hitler crushed the SA. It was headed by Heinrich Himmler one of the most notorious Nazi criminals.
Heinrich Himmler, like Hitler created the movement to reflect his own ideological foundations.
Himmler was a true believer in the racial ideology that Hitler had placed at the center of the National Socialist movement.
Himmler believed that the racial struggle between Aryans and Jews was the key to world history.
Himmler’s ideological foundations dramatically influenced his vision of the SS.
He looked upon the SS as the elite group of National Socialism that drew from Germany’s best “racial stock.” Families of every SS candidate were investigated for hereditary disease, mental illness, or other racial impurities.
To get married, SS men were required to obtain a marriage certificate from the SS Race Office. Prospective wives had to be guaranteed racially pure and hereditarily healthy.
Himmler established a Lebensborn (Spring of Life) home for wed and unwed mothers of children of SS men and other racially valuable Germans.
The homes were well furnished and lavishly supplied.
Himmler was also a cold, calculating, rational, efficient bureaucrat whose ruthlessness made him an ideal head of the SS.

Toward a Police State

Himmler quickly took control of the police and the Gestapo.
Internal enemies were divided into 3 groups – Jews, the most dangerous; ideological enemies, including Communists and Socialists but also several Christian groups, freemason; moral enemies, criminals, pornographers, homosexuals and other asocials
The ideological and moral enemies the SS thought might be redeemed in concentration camps and made respectable again although Jews would have to be eliminated.
It was not accidental that the SS was eventually given responsibility for the murder of Europe’s Jews.
The SS and the Gestapo had their own agents, but they also relied on block wardens whose job it was to keep close watch on tenants in their block.
Block wardens visited every household at least once a week and made regular reports to the police offices.
The Gestapo felt bound by no legal restrictions.
Even accused individuals found innocent by a regular court could be arrested by the Gestapo after their release by the court.

Nazi Culture and Society

The Nazi approach to culture was anti-intellectual.
In an interview with a foreign correspondent, Hitler commented on intellectuals “Unfortunately, one needs them. Otherwise, one might – I don’t know – wipe them out or something.”
Other Nazis were equally blunt in degrading intellectuals – “We think with our blood” was a common Nazi saying.
Early on, the regime began purging Jewish, Communist and Socialist artists and other intellectuals.
Many chose to immigrate although some intellectual chose to support the Nazis.
There was no more visible sign of Nazi anti-intellectualism than the infamous book burnings, especially since these activities were organized by student groups.
Book burnings were intended as symbolic acts against the “un-German spirit.”

Manipulation of Youth

In their desire to establish a total state, the Nazis understood the importance of winning over the youth to their ideology.
The Hitler Youth was created in 1926 but by the end of 1932, the Hitler Youth membership was still under 100,000, rather small.
After the Nazi seizure of power, the Hitler Youth consolidated its position among the youth of Germany.
By the end of 1933, membership had increased to 3 ½ million.
The Hitler Youth did fun things like camping, hiking, group meetings. Kids generally liked it.
By 1936, all youth groups except the Hitler Youth were outlawed, and in 1939, it was made compulsory for children 10 to 18. Children had to take an oath to serve Germany and Hitler.
Children were also required to collect charity and perform land service which required them to help with harvest in the countryside.
Underlying all of these activities was the Nazi reliance on competition and achievement.
Almost all activities were made competitive, although much of the competition was collective. The Hitler Youth motto was: “We are born to die for Germany”
Above all, the Hitler Youth fostered military values such as duty, obedience, honor, courage, and ruthlessness.
The uniforms and constant drilling were supplemented by honoring the war dead, the exaltation of German military heroes, and the constant stress on the need to become fighters, manly and heroic.
Children were given military training early on. Between ages 10-14, boys were given small arms drill and practice with dummy hand grenades and small bore rifles.
From 14-18, they shouldered army packs and rifles while practicing army maneuvers.
Hitler Youth organizations created some serious problems for parents and teachers.
Wearing Hitler Youth uniforms and participating in activities away from home and school intensified the natural rebelliousness against these authorities that is part of the teen years.
Parents were alarmed at what they considered brutalization of their children and the amount of time spent away from home.
Insubordination became common in school since the Hitler youth taught contempt for school authority and school learning.
Teachers were appalled by students’ lack of commitment and lack of learning, but they feared political authorities. Teachers worried about being denounced by the Hitler Youth.

Girls Hitler Youth

The Hitler Youth had a female counterpart known as the League of German Girls or BDM. It was formed in 1927 but not formally integrated into the Hitler Youth until 1932.
Girls were also indoctrinated with ideas of service, regimentation, obedience and discipline. The emphasis was on being good wives and mothers.
Girls also participated in sports, camping and hiking.
They were taught skills need for the home such as nursing and hygiene to make them healthy mothers.
Between 17-21 women entered a new party organization called Faith and Beauty, which emphasized female social graces, dancing and fashion.

Education

In addition to the special organization for youth, education in the schools was intended to capture mind of children.
Hitler made no secret of his contempt for the intellectual instruction offered by schools – boys should become soldiers and girls mothers.
By 1936, 32% of teachers belonged to the Nazi party and 97% by the end of 1937.
Teachers had to provide ideological instruction including special courses in German prehistory, race study, and folk art.
Physical training and field sports were also emphasized.
The Nazi regime exercised further control over the schools be determining the content of the curriculum – new textbooks
Quality of education suffered greatly under the Nazis – children learned to measure skulls and to classify racial types
Biology classes underscored the necessity of cultivating racial health by the correct choice of Aryan spouses and the bearing of large families.
One text contained this problem: “The construction of a lunatic asylum costs 6 million RM. How many houses at 15,000 RM each could have been built for that amount?”

The following word problem appeared in “Germany’s Rise and Fall-Arithmetic Instruction in Higher Grades of Elementary School”: The Jews are aliens in Germany. In 1933 there were 66,060,000 inhabitants of the German Reich, of whom 499,682 were Jews. What is the percentage of aliens?

Universities were also Nazified

Family and Population Policy

The Nazis emphasized that marriage and motherhood should constitute women’s highest ideals and the institution of marriage’s primary purpose was to produce children
Children were to be produced not for the happiness of parents but for the maintenance of the race.

Eugenics

The racial and eugenic criteria inherent in Nazi population policies were a direct consequence of Nazi ideology.
In July 1933, the Nazis passed a law for the prevention of hereditarily diseased offspring.
This legislation made possible the sterilization of persons suffering from incurable hereditary problems such as schizophrenia, manic depression, blindness.
Chronic alcoholism was also viewed as grounds for sterilization.
Sterilization could be done at an individual’s request or on the recommendation of a health officer.
By 1937, 200,000 people had been sterilized.
The regime portrayed mentally ill and physically deformed as a threat to racial purity and an unwanted expense.
In 1939, Hitler instituted a euthanasia program.
The first phase of the program initiated in the spring, focused on the killing of mentally deficient and physically deformed children.
Probably 5 thousand “racially valueless” children died as a result.
A second phase of the euthanasia program began in the fall of 1939 with Hitler officially authorizing the “mercy killing” of the incurably sick.
This operation known in code as T-4 program was considerably more complex than killing children.
Organizations were established for choosing and transporting the victims to 6 “euthanasia” installations where they were gassed in rooms camouflaged as shower chambers.
The bodies were then cremated.
It is estimated that 100,000 people were killed in this fashion.
A large part of the personnel for this operation came from the SS.
As a result of growing public protest, Hitler suspended the T-4 program in 1941 – personnel were shifted to the concentration camps.

PP: Nazis slides 1-14

Lecture: The Soviet Experiment

Power Point (PP): Soviet Propaganda

In the Soviet Union, officially created in 1922, the 1920s and 1930s were a time of intense experimentation. The Soviets tried to create a completely new society where everyone would be equal. However, lack of resources and the brutal rule of Joseph Stalin turned the Soviet experiment into a nightmare.

Emphasize work

The new Soviet government wanted to end class distinctions between people. Under the Soviet system, everyone was supposed to do productive work rather than living off the labor of others.
The Soviets held up Stakhanovites – people who work exceptionally hard and became ideal workers.
Rather than eliminating class, the Soviets simply created a new class of Soviet party leaders at the top of society while the rest of the population remained poor.

Women and Family

The Soviets also tried to radically transform the family and gender relations. They wanted to create a New Soviet Man and Women – men would be equal in the home and women would be equal in the workplace

Soviet leaders believed that women’s maternal function had created conditions for women’s oppression and only the communal organization of domestic chores would liberate women from their burdens in the home
Housework would be turned into social work that people would be paid to do.
Sexuality was viewed as a natural impulse like hunger or thirst and should be treated as normal not moral or immoral. Socialism would permit free union of love as well as divorce.
From a legislative point of view, the Soviets made a real effort to liberate women.
The government passed the most progressive laws in Europe concerning women’s issues, but actual effects on the position and power of women were minimal.
In December 1917, the state mandated equal pay for equal work and granted paid maternity leaves for women workers.
Marriage was secularized and common law marriages legally recognized.
Complete equality in marriage decreed by law.
Alimony was granted to either party if he or she was needy.
The concept of illegitimate children was eliminated.
In 1920, abortion was legalized – 53 years before Row v. Wade and costs of abortion were borne by the state.
Propaganda showed women with tools and men holding babies suggesting that equality should extend into families

However, in reality things were not so happy. Women were still less likely to be admitted to the communist party than men or have leadership positions.

Women were supposed to be given equal opportunities in politics, job opportunities and leadership, but this never occurred either. It was hard to change traditional mindsets about men and women’s abilities. Laws alone could not do that, especially when they weren’t enforced.
It was hard to change the minds of men steeped in patriarchal attitudes – men continue to see women as inferior, especially in rural areas.
Divorce often hurt women – men could leave families more easily and harder for women to find paid employment.
The overall gains for women were marginal at best.

Religion

The Soviet state was atheist and tried to end the influence of religion in society.
The Soviets saw religion as backward and as an oppressor of the people.
Many communists were anticlerical zealots and while fierce battles of civil war raged, some turned anger against priests and monks.
Church lands were seized, monasteries ransacked and clergy murdered.
Early in the 1920s, the state needed money so it confiscated gold, silver and other precious objects from the church. Lenin ordered firing squads against religious rebels.
Museums of atheism were opened and Red weddings and christenings were organized to replace religious ceremonies.
The League of the Militant Godless smashed church bells and icons and sometimes attacked priests. Sometimes they also dug up the bodies of local “saints” to demonstrate that their bodies deteriorated like everyone else.
The anti-religious policies were very unpopular with people. Religion was not just faith but imbedded in culture of the people, especially in rural areas. People did not want to give up holidays that were meaningful and fun culturally.
Soviet holidays were not fun.
Even more resistance occurred in Islamic areas where secularization happened at the same time as the state tried to improve the position of women.
The Soviets tried to get women to give up the veil, end child marriages, create more equal position for women.
The state faced huge opposition from Muslim men and some women killed by their families in honor killings for trying to take advantage of the States opportunities.

Rise of Stalin

Early in the1920s, the influence of Joseph Stalin rose in the Party – Stalin was an alias taken from the Russian word for Steel.
As a young man, Stalin’s mother wanted him to become an Orthodox priest, so he began his studies in Orthodox seminary. He quickly rebelled against the conservatism of the Orthodox Church, secretly read Marxist tracts, and joined a radical study circle which got him expelled.
By 1902 he had been arrested for political radicalism and exiled to Siberia.
At the time of the February Revolution, Stalin was a prisoner in a desolate part of Siberia, 600 miles from the closest RR station.
Nonetheless, he managed to return to Petrograd in March and after the October Revolution helped Lenin Draft the Declaration of the Rights.
He served with Lenin during the Civil War, although Lenin never trusted Stalin and never meant for him to come to power in the Soviet Union.
In 1922, Lenin suffered a stroke, which set off a power struggle in the party
Stalin well placed as potential successor. In April 1922, the Soviet Central Committee named Stalin General Secretary of the party, which allowed him to appoint allies.
In January 1924, Lenin died, and Stalin stepped up his efforts to consolidate his power.
Stalin placed his own men on the Central Committee and made Party appointments throughout the Soviet State.
He took every opportunity to leave the impression that Lenin had handpicked him to be the next Party leader even though this was not true.
Stalin had photos doctored so he appeared to have been constantly at Lenin’s side.
He played up and embellished his relationship with Lenin and by 1927, Stalin had consolidated his power.
A very long and violent dictatorship followed.

Industrialization

Stalin’s first goal for the Soviet Union was industrialization. He believed that the Soviet Union was 100 years behind Western Europe in terms of industry and this made the Soviet Union weak.
He developed a plan for massive industrialization paid for by extracting resources from the peasantry.
In 1928-29, Stalin began forced requisitioning of grain in the countryside. Essentially, he sent his thugs to the countryside to take everything peasants had. He then sold the grain on the open market to raise money for industry.
In 1930, Stalin began collectivizing farms. He forced peasants to turn their property over to the state and go to work on big state run farms. This made collecting grain easier. It also led to massive opposition in the countryside.
Stalin knew his policies would be unpopular and harsh and he was prepared to eliminate between 1.5 and 2 million people.
His plans led to bloodbath in the countryside.
Peasants hated collectivization. Hundreds of thousands of peasants who refused to turn over harvests were killed.
Peasants slaughtered animals and burned grain rather than give it to the state.
This resulted in huge shortages of farm animals, which led to a further decrease in grain production.
The resulting famine killed millions. 5 million people died in the Ukraine alone.
Collective farms were supposed to be modern and efficient and have the latest technology and machines.
In reality farms faced shortages of everything. There was never enough equipment and lack of cooperation from peasants’ decreased efficiency.

Purges

Stalin was a paranoid leader who was constantly concerned about challenges to his power. Initially, he sent opponents into exile. However, by 1934 Stalin no longer content to expel those who did not share his views.
In November 1934 Stalin probably ordered the murder of a trusted associate in Leningrad because he believed the younger man might emerge as a rival.
Four days later Stalin promulgated a state decree that expedited the punishment of those deemed terrorists.
This led to a period of terror and mass murder in the Soviet Union known as the Purges.
Top Communist Party leaders were at the highest risk, especially those who had been close associates with Lenin.
With a few exceptions, the entire leadership of the Russian Revolution was exterminated.

Show Trials 1936

To legitimize the killing of his rivals, Stalin organized show trials, public, high profile trials held before audiences. The first one occurred in 1936.
Victims of the purges were accused of all kinds of things, such as plotting to assassinate Stalin, trying to assassinate Lenin, being spies for foreign countries, sabotage.
Those on trial were tortured until they signed confessions acknowledging their imaginary crimes.
The spectacle of previously powerful people standing in open court confessing to the most outrageous and highly improbable crimes sent shock waves through the Soviet population. No one knew what to believe but questioning anything could get you killed.

More general terror

The show trials of high ranking party officials were only a small part of the terror.
The arrests spread, ultimately involving millions of people.
The top leadership of the nation was exterminated, but workers and peasants also became victims in the millions as the state looked for saboteurs and spies.
No one was safe – even those working in the secret police force and torturing other people were likely to eventually get caught up in the purges.
The head of the police set quotas for the numbers in each district to be arrested, exiled and shot.
The number of accusations and arrests overwhelmed the police, and they quickly and crudely processed people through the investigations, forcing confessions by torture.
The number of labor camps and slave laborers increased dramatically in the 1930s.
Though these camps were not designed like the Nazi death camps of WWII, the treatment was so bad that the number of deaths was very high.
Stalin must have sighed hundreds of lists condemning thousands of victims
Children could be executed at age 12 and were encouraged to denounce their parents for crimes against the state.
Estimates of the number of people executed over this period range from 400,000 to 1 million and many more arrested.
Prison camps held millions including elderly women who said things like “if people prayed they would work better.”
Purge was an economic blow to the SU eliminating many engineers and other people with needed technical expertise.

Purge of the Army

Most devastating for the security of the USSR was the purge of the army that began in May of 1937.
The purge fell heaviest on civil war veterans; as many as 37,000 officers were purged, about ½ of the officer corps; only 10,000 would be reinstated by 1940
Stalin killed more soviet generals than would be killed in WWII.
15 out of 16 army commanders, 60 of the 67 corps commanders and 136 of the 199 divisional commanders were executed
At the end of the Great Purges, the Soviet Union was seriously weakened economically, intellectually, and militarily.

PP: Soviet Propaganda slides 1-14

Lecture: Origins of World War II

Power Point (PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII

Aggression

In 1935, Hitler’s foreign policy entered a new more aggressive phase.
He defied the Versailles Treaty in March 1935 by announcing that Germany’s army would be increased to half a million men, that military service would become compulsory, and that the German air force had already been rebuilt despite the prohibition of the peace agreement.
British, French, and Italian representatives met in Italy in April 1935 to discuss and denounce Germany’s violation of the Treaty – as did the League of Nations – but nothing else happened.

Reaction from Britain and France

Britain and France were far from united in attitude toward Hitler.
In both countries, many saw Hitler as a bulwark against the spread of communism.
In France, many conservatives, including army officers, looked with special concern at development of a large Communist Party in their own country.
Although the French government viewed any increase in German power as a threat to national security, they were reluctant to take action without British cooperation and they had little chance of obtaining this.
The dominant British Conservative party sympathized with the German desire to revise the Treaty of Versailles.
A strong current of pacifism was also present in both countries because of WWI. No one wanted another war.
Pressing economic problems created by the Great Depression also distracted the British and the French from the growing Nazi threat.
Both governments were reluctant to embark on a rearmament program that would be enormously expensive and would place a tremendous strain on the financial stability of their governments.
Western powers knew that they could not depend on the US to contribute to European security.
British and French leaders also misinterpreted Hitler’s intentions.
They tended to believe that he merely desired to end the restrictions that the peace settlement placed on Germany.
Not until 1939 did they begin to understand that his ambitions went beyond this, and he wanted to dominate Europe. By then, it was too late.

Remilitarization and Rearmament

Hitler began to rearm in 1934.
This would have been a good moment for France and Britain to take action against him. The British and the French could have sent troops into Germany or imposed an economic blockade while Germany was still weak.
Instead, they merely protested to the League of Nations, which condemned Germany for violating the Treaty but took no other action.
On March 7, 1936, German troops moved into the Rhineland, which had been declared by the Treaty of Versailles to be a demilitarized zone. It was supposed to act as a buffer zone between France and Germany.
Hitler had promised his anxious generals that he would order German forces to pull back if the French army intervened. The German military genuinely thought France would oppose this move and in 1936, Germany was not strong enough to go to war against France.
However, the French military advised the French government against military action.
French thought the Germans were much stronger than they really were although France in 1936 still had a superior military.
Britain opposed military intervention.
The matter was once again referred to the League of Nations and Germany condemned but nothing else happened.
Whether or not Britain and France might have stopped Germany at this point has long been debated.
France pushed the British government to react sharply against Hitler’s brazen move, but would not act alone.
In Germany, Hitler’s prestige soared.
He had delivered as promised, facing down the powers that had imposed the Treaty of Versailles.
Hitler now speeded up the pace of German rearmament, particularly the air force
British also start to build up their army although not at the same rate.
Germany had the advantage of rearming with the most up to date war materials while the arsenals of the other powers included old weapons and equipment.

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slide 1

Allies 1936

By 1936, Hitler decided that it would be a good idea to have some allies. The most reasonable ally in Europe was Mussolini in Italy, a fellow fascist.
In October 1936, Mussolini signed a pact with Hitler forming the Rome-Berlin Axis.
Hitler made it clear that his interests lay to the east and that Mussolini could have the Mediterranean and a free hand in Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece.
Mussolini began to borrow openly from Hitler’s Nazis – ordered soldiers to goose-step claiming that it was the military stride of ancient Rome.
Racial theories had hitherto not played more than a minor part in Mussolini’s rise to power or his daily bombast. Mussolini had a Jewish mistress and mocked Hitler’s “delirium of race.”
However, in 1938, Mussolini began a campaign against Italian Jews who numbered no more than 50,000. This irritated many Italians in a country where Jews seemed well-assimilated.
Germany found another authoritarian partner in Japan.
Over the last half of the 19^th century, Japan had made itself an industrial and military power in Asia
The Japanese government sought to create an empire in Southeast Asia.
Hitler admired Japan even though the Japanese were non-Aryans.
In 1936, Japan signed a formal treaty with Germany called the “anti-Comintern Pact.
This was an alliance primarily against the Soviet Union, an enemy of both Japan and Germany.

Austria, Czechoslovakia and Appeasement

As early as 1934, Hitler had look forward to eventual union (Anschluss) with Austria.
The Austrian government initially tried to oppose this unification, wishing to remain independent.
However, on March 12, 1938, German troops moved into Austria, which was promptly incorporated into Germany.
Technically, this was Hitler’s first act of aggression in Europe, his first acquisition of territory. However, the Austrian situation different from Hitler’s other conquests. There was significant support for Hitler in Austria.
Most of the Austrian population greeted German troops as liberators amidst a sea of Nazi flags.

European Response

The Treaty of Versailles had explicitly prohibited this Anschluss or unity between Germany and Austria, but this was once again ignored.
It was widely believed in the West that most Austrians favored unity with Germany and this perception was no doubt correct. Europeans were unwilling to go to war to fight against something most Austrians supported.

Czechoslovakia 1938

The Czech situation was very different from that of Austria.
During the summer of 1938, Hitler orchestrated a campaign against the Czechs.
He wanted the Sudetenland, the border region around Czechoslovakia. This was the most industrialized region of Czechoslovakia and was heavily fortified. It also had a large German population.
Hitler claimed that Germans in the Sudetenland were being mistreated by the Czechs and so that territory should be turned over to him.
Without the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia was indefensible.
This situation set off a crisis in Europe.

Munich Conference – September 1938

In September 1938, Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister called for a conference to solve the Sudetenland issue. The conference was held in Munich Germany.
The three major players at the conference were Britain, France and Germany.
Hitler refused to allow the Soviet Union to attend and the Czech government was not allowed to influence any of the negotiations. Mussolini attended as well.
At the conference, Britain and France agreed to give Hitler the Sudetenland in order to avoid war.
After the conference, Chamberlain stepped off the plane in London announcing to cheering crowds that he had brought his country “peace in our time” and “peace with honor.”
Chamberlain had really only postponed war for 11 months, enough time for the Germans to build up further.
In France, popular opinion did not want war and the military expressed apprehension about taking on the refurbished and expanded German armed forces
French government felt abandoned by Britain.
The Appeasement of Hitler at Munich provided the German army with more time to prepare for the conquest of what was left of Czechoslovakia
Not everyone supported the Munich decision, and one of its chief opponents was Winston Churchill, a member of the British Parliament.
In a Speech to the House of Commons, Oct 5, 1938 Churchill stated:

I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat and that France has suffered even more than we have…The utmost of my right honorable Friend the Prime Minister…has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia and in the matters which were in dispute has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching his victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course…And I will say this, that I believe the Czechs, left to themselves and told they were going to get no help from the Western Powers would have been able to make better terms than they have got…
We are in the presence of a disaster at the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that…
And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we rise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slide 1

Czech take over

March 16, 1939, Hitler smattered the Munich agreements when German troops marched across the border and occupied Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia.
Germany strengthened its forces with the addition of the Czech air force and army and no longer had to maintain strong defenses on its southern border.
Even for Chamberlain this marked the end of illusions.
Hitler’s brazen move shocked even Mussolini who complained “Each time Hitler occupies a country he sends me a message.”
After this, it was clear to everyone that Hitler wanted war.

Poland

By January 1939, Hitler began making demands for Polish territory was well.
The British government hurriedly signed a pact with Poland guaranteeing Polish independence and assistance in case of German aggression. The French had done the same thing.
Apr 26, Chamberlain told the House of Commons that conscription of men 20 and 21 years of age would begin.

Unholy Alliance

Stalin no longer had doubts about Hitler’s ultimate intensions toward the Soviet Union, but the Russian army needed more time to prepare for war. He had only recently purged the military of most of its officers.
Hitler wished to avoid war with the Soviet Union in the short run while he was fighting with Poland, and he wanted to avoid a 2 front war when he invaded France.
In one of the most astonishing diplomatic turnarounds in history, Hitler announced Aug 23, 1939 that Germany had signed a non-aggression pact with the SU, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
This was a temporary pact between enemies.

War Begins

On Sept 1, 1939, a million German troops invaded Poland with fighters and light bombers overhead in a carefully coordinated attack.
For the second time in 25 years, a conflict began in Europe that would soon become a world war.
Britain and France responded 2 days later by declaring war on Germany.

Lecture: WWII

Power Point (PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII

Power Point (PP) – German Invasion of France

Power Point (PP) – Battle of Britain

For the second time in 25 years, a conflict began in Europe that would soon become a world war.
Between 1939 and 1941, Hitler won a series of spectacular victories, but not necessarily because of overwhelming strength.
Hitler’s army was formidable, but given his goals, not enormously large.
Much of his equipment was not of the highest quality and not especially plentiful.
The problem was that Britain and France were committed to defensive war focused on fortifications because of their experience in WWI.
Germany was willing to continue with offensive war.
It would ultimately take offensive action to win.
The British and French didn’t understand how to effectively use armored vehicles, especially tanks.
The Germans were masters of tank warfare.
German strategist Heinz Guderian concluded that powerful concentrations of fast-striking, well-armored and heavily armed tanks, closely supported by aircraft and other motorized troops would determine the outcome of war.
He presented the blueprint for Blitzkrieg (lightening war).
The intent of Blitzkrieg was to gain victory as quickly and decisively as possible with few German casualties.
Powerful panzer forces would smash through opposing border defenses and encircle large concentrations of enemy troops.
The panzer divisions themselves were balanced formations of all arms – tanks, mechanized infantry in armored halftracks, and mobile artillery.
Motorized infantry traveling in trucks would follow behind the armor and consolidate the initial gains while the tanks dashed ahead deeper into the interior.
Next, the traditional mass of infantry, marching on foot would relieve the motorized infantry, allowing it to keep pace with the panzers.
Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe (German air force) would destroy the enemy air force, ideally catching many planes on the ground.
German aircraft would the attack enemy communications and troop formations.

German Invasion of Poland

9, 1939 a million German troops invaded Poland with fighters and light bombers overhead in a carefully coordinated attack. This was Germany’s first effort at Blitzkrieg.
The Poles antiquated army never had a chance. Poland had one of the best cavalries in the world, but it was no match for German tanks.
Hitler wanted Polish resistance crushed quickly in the hope that Britain and France would limit reaction to a declaration of war.
The Germans advanced very quickly, the Polish government fled for London Sept. 7, and the capital fell the 27
A few other units battled as late as October 6, but to no avail.
Following the German invasion of Poland from the west, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east with Hitler’s blessing because of a secret agreement of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
On Stalin’s orders about 15,000 Polish officers were executed in the forest of Katyn about 200 miles from Moscow.
In keeping with their defensive strategy, France and Britain made no effort to stage an offensive against Germany, while the Blitzkrieg was destroying Poland.
Hitler had intended even before the invasion to treat the Polish people with draconian harshness.
The SS now served as the instrument of his policy with the passive compliance of the army.
Some officers proclaimed their distaste for what was euphemistically referred to as “housecleaning.”
This involved the executions of Polish officers, aristocrats, clergy and intellectuals in a concerted effort to eliminate any vestige of a ruling class.
The SS also shot many Jews, a preliminary to much more thoroughgoing measures.
The Nazis intended to reduce the remaining Polish population to slaves.

Polish Intelligence Work

Although Poland had vanished from the map, the Poles provided the Allies with one great technological achievement.
During the 1920s, the Germans had developed a highly sophisticated enciphering machine called Enigma.
It was so complex that the Germans became absolutely convinced that their ciphers could not be broken.
In 1929, one of these machines, on route from Berlin to German delegation in Warsaw fell into the hands of Polish counterintelligence agents.
They created an exact replica of the Enigma before allowing it to proceed to its destination and then set out to break the German code.
They succeeded in doing so by 1932 and read much German signal traffic during the 1930s.
The Germans changed their code in late 1938, and the Poles had to undertake their task again.
After Poland’s defeat, many Polish cryptanalysts escaped to the West and took a few Enigma machines with them.
By April 1940, the British with the help of the Poles, broke some of the new German codes.
Achievements of the codebreakers proved most valuable to the allied cause.
Germans never recognized what had happened.

Phony War

As Hitler had hoped, Britain and France took no military action in Poland.
British and French military experts were shocked by speed of German victory and overestimated the strength of Hitler’s armies.
Immediate attacks from the West might have been more successful while the Germans were tied up in Poland.
The British Royal Air Force flew missions over Germany but dropped only leaflets calling for peace.
Both British and French governments thought an attack on Germany would fail.
Hitler announced to his generals on Sept. 12 that he planned to attack France soon.
However, Hitler decided to postpone the invasion of Western Europe until the spring of 1940 when the weather would be better.
The winter months that followed the invasion of Poland became known as the Phony War since the three major powers were at war but no fighting took place between then.
There was fighting in Northern Europe despite the Phony War.
Stalin attacked Finland and although Finland fought hard, it was no match for the Soviets.
Finland harbored no illusions about winning the war but it hoped to be saved by British and French help. They got none of this.
Germany attacked Norway and Denmark and defeated both quickly.

Maginot Line

While the Germans staked their future on the Blitzkrieg, the French carried their defensive doctrine to its ultimate manifestation.
The French Maginot line was the greatest system of fixed fortifications ever built.
Consisted of massive concrete and steel forts housing guns of tremendous range and power.
Casements and pillboxes contained smaller guns and shell and bombproof underground facilities.
The line was incredibly strong but had one glaring fault. It only extended from the Swiss frontier to a point just beyond the convergence of the borders of France, Luxembourg and Belgium.
The likely route for a German invasion was through Belgium.
Extension of the Maginot line would have been extremely expensive and would have run though heavily industrialized urban centers.
High water table in extreme western part of border area also posed problems for underground construction
France was concerned that the Belgians might consider the extension of the line an indication that the French would not aid their country against a German invasion.
Finally, the French visualized the Maginot line as only a partial defense.
In case of a German attack by way of Belgium, they intended to send troops to aid the Belgians.
They hoped these forces, anchored on the Maginot line to the south, would be sufficient to stop a German offensive before it reached French soil. It wasn’t.

Britain’s Defensive strategy

Britain also opted for a limited liability strategy even more than France.
Britain’s first line of defenses was the Royal Navy, still by far the largest in Europe.
The Royal Air Force received second priority but only slowly increased in the 1930s.
The Army came in a poor third.
Britain sent an expeditionary force to France in the fall of 1939, but it numbered only 250,000 men and contained just one armored division.

Churchill Elected PM

Churchill who had sat in the House of Commons since 1900 became Prime Minister May 10, 1940 at the age of 65.

Attack on the West

That same day, May 10, 1940 in the early hours of the morning, Hitler unleashed his Blitzkrieg on Western Europe, striking the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg simultaneously.
One of great myths was that the Germans enjoyed vast superiority in armor.
The French and British forces were basically equal, they just didn’t use them as well.
The Dutch were no match for the German army, and the Dutch capitulated within 5 days.
The attack on Belgium encountered fiercer resistance because the Belgian army was larger and defenses stronger.
Germans still made rapid progress, and by 28 May, Belgium had also fallen.
French and British forces swept rapidly into Belgium to prearranged positions along the Muese and Dyle rivers.
As a result, they unwittingly placed themselves in a perfect position to be outflanked by the German army.
By May 13, the Germans had entered France in the north along the Muese River.

Dunkirk

By June 3, 338,226 British and French troops had been trapped by the Germans at Dunkirk.
Between May 26- June 4, every available English vessel, including fishing trawlers and pleasure craft evacuated these troops from Dunkirk.
Civilians from all walks of life manned the vessels.
One of the yachts sailed with its owner, the senior surviving officer of the Titanic disaster at its helm.
Small boats moved toward the beaches amid great confusion sometimes nearly being swamped by waves.
They got as close as possible to shore while long lines of soldiers exhausted from days of fighting and retreat waded out to meet them.
All of this unfolded as German bombs exploded and shells whistled overhead.
The Luftwaffe attempted to thwart the evacuation by bombing and inflicted considerable casualties.
When the operation ended on June 4, a total of 338,000 Allied soldiers had escaped, most of them British, but they had to leave behind or destroy all heavy equipment
They also left behind many members of the rear guard who were captured by the Germans.
Dunkirk was a defeat for the British, but it gave Britain a badly needed psychological lift. They had all worked together to save the Expeditionary Force from being destroyed by the Germans.

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slide 2

France

French soldiers were demoralized from the winter in bunkers along the Maginot Line and by the fatalistic outlook of their leadership.
French generals lacked confidence in the strength of the forces and some in the Third Republic itself.
French military leaders overestimated the strength of the Germans.
The French government left Paris and the German Army occupied the capital the 14^thJune 1940.
On June 16, Marshal Philippe Petain, hero of the Battle of Verdun in 1916, became prime minister.
On June 17, he asked for an armistice.
French military command just surrendered without much of a fight after about 35 days
Hitler imposed his armistice in the exact spot where Germany had submitted to the Allies in 1918, near Compiegne, to the northeast of Paris.
June 22, 1940 Hitler accepted the French surrender in the same railway car where Germany had signed a similar document in November 1918.
RR car was then sent to Berlin where it was destroyed in an allied bombing raid
Hitler danced for joy then went on a tour of Paris.

PP: German Invasion of France slides 1-8

Vichy France

The Germans occupied all of northern France but left southern France under the leadership of Petain.
Petain created an authoritarian regime and selected the small health resort of Vichy as the capital of unoccupied France.
The Vichy government would collaborate with the Nazis.

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slide 3

Battle of Britain

After the fall of France, Britain was left to fight on alone.
Addressing the House of Commons, Winston Churchill declared “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal…many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask what is our policy? I will say it is to wage war, by sea, land, and air… to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.”
Germany put forth a number of peace feelers, but the British ignored or rebuffed all of them.
Hitler finally made a personal appeal on July 19 in which he indicated that if Britain returned the German colonies it had received under Versailles and recognized Germany’s domination of the continent, he would spare the British Empire.
To Churchill, it appeared that Hitler visualized Britain as nothing more than a German satellite. He was not willing to consider peace on this basis
Hitler decided to force submission by attacking Britain.
Germany had no plan for an invasion of Britain.
They also lacked ships required to transport an invasion force of sufficient size and the German navy was totally inadequate to protect such a force against the British fleet.
German troops did not have training to carry out such a highly specialized undertaking
Hitler decided to authorize an invasion only if the Luftwaffe first eliminated British air power, thus allowing unhindered German air attacks on the Royal Navy.

Battle of Britain

The German code name for the invasion of Britain was Operation Sea Lion.

The Battle of Britain was fought over the Channel and above Southern England lasted 4 dramatic months from July 31 to October 31 1940.
Against the Luftwaffes 1200 bombers and 1000 fighters the Royal Air Force had only about 900 fighters not all of which could be up in the air at once.
The British used radar first developed in 1935 to detect oncoming German attacks.
Radar gave the RAF advance warning of the approach and direction of German planes
Recently built British Spitfires and Hurricanes reached greater speed that the German Messerschmitt fighters and could break through the fighter escorts to get to the German bombers.
Losses in pilots was significant, but since the battle was over Britain, many British pilots were able to bail out of their planes and survive.
A frustrated Hitler ordered key industrial areas in Britain to be bombed and the British responded by bombing Berlin.

Blitz of London Sept. 7

In September, the Germans drastically changed their tactics and began focusing their raids on London.
Attacks on London were supposed to lure more British fighters into the sky over the capital where they could be destroyed more easily.
Hitler also hope to weaken British morale by bombing the capital.
Churchill responded with raids against Berlin.
During the blitz of London which began on September 7, Londoners took to the subway stations and underground air raid shelters for protection.
By the end of September, Hitler was forced to abandon his planned invasion. He was unable to defeat the Royal Air Force or break British morale.
Churchill called the Battle of Britain his countries “finest hour.”
By the end of October, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely although the bombing of British cities continued throughout the war.
By the Fall of 1940, Hitler was ready to turn his attention to the invasion of Russia.

PP: Battle of Britain slides 1-5

A Global War and Total War

The War rapidly spread to most of the world. WWII was total war that absorbed national resources on an unprecedented scale.
Governments increasingly assumed control over economies – coordination production, raising taxes, and imposing rationing.
WWII Rationing Video produced in Britain. This is a good explanation of how the rationing system worked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9wNJ78S2GY&feature=related
British video encouraging people to plant gardens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=35NpLveVZDg&feature=emb_logo

America and the War

President Franklin Roosevelt had grown increasingly supportive of Britain in the struggle against Nazi Germany.
Roosevelt was reluctant to push matters too far, especially without assurance that the American public would be receptive to his policies.
When the European war broke out in September 1939, the American Neutrality Act of 1937 went into effect placing an immediate embargo on arms sales, much to the distress of Britain and France.
Roosevelt recognized the problem and appealed to congress to revise the Neutrality Act.
Congress responded in November by repealing the embargo provision and authorizing the sale of arms on a “cash and carry” basis.
This action allowed the Allies to buy arms and munitions and transport them in their own ships, but barred US ships from carrying war material to Allied ports to avoid German submarine attacks.
The fall of France and the German threat to Britain in the summer of 1940 caused many Americans to fear that Germany might attack the US especially if the Nazis defeated Britain and gain control of the British and French fleets.
This concern led to growing support for the extension of aid to Britain.
Hundreds of young American men even joined the RAF to fight the Germans in the skies.
Very few Americans favored a full US entry into the conflict yet.
In December 1940, Franklin Roosevelt announced that the US would be the “arsenal of democracy” despite its official position of neutrality.
Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, which authorized the president to lend destroyers, trucks and other equipment and food to Britain in exchange for access to naval bases in the Caribbean – payment was deferred until after the war.
US also authorized aid to the SU soon after the German invasion.

North Africa

Fighting also began in North Africa in 1940.
Italy had attacked Egypt (a British protectorate) in the fall of 1940, a campaign that turned into a disaster for the Italians even though the Italian army was much larger than the British force in Egypt.
Italy was not prepared for war. Its industrial base was small and it had to import most raw materials.
Italy initially received no material aid from Germany.
Italian tanks were death traps equipped with armor barely worthy of the name.
As the full scope of the Italian defeat in North Africa became evident, Hitler decided to intervene to save what was left of Libya.
With plans already underway for the invasion of the SU, he had few troops to spare.
Hitler sent General Erwin Rommel to fight the British in North Africa.
Rommel had won acclaim during WWI for his personal heroism as a young officer who specialized in tactics of infiltration behind enemy lines.
Hitler’s willingness to adopt new and unorthodox military ideas won Rommel’s admiration and Rommel’s relatively humble origins endeared him to Hitler.
Rommel was very good at armored tank movement.
He consistently outmaneuvered his opponents even when outnumbered.
He came to be greatly respected even by the British.
At one point, to give the impression of greater German strength, Rommel used dummy tanks mounted on Volkswagen frames.
He defeated the British in a series of surprise attacks forcing the British to fall back in confusion all the way to the Egyptian frontier.

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slide 4

Operation Barbarossa (June 22, 1941)

Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 was his greatest blunder.
Hitler’s only chance was to win was a quick war because the Soviet Union was almost certain to win a long war.
Hitler was convinced that defeating the Soviet Union would be fairly easy. He had never been impressed by Soviet military power.
He also believed the Soviet government was unpopular and would collapse with the first few military defeats.
He later proclaimed, “You have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”

German Errors

Hitler and his generals woefully underestimated the obstacles of a Russian campaign and the strength of the Soviet army.
They also overestimated Germany’s own power.
They should have seen the problems coming.
Russia has a huge population and lots of resources.
Infamous winter weather mandated that the Germans would have to win the campaign between May and October.
Inadequate Soviet roads and the fact that Soviet RR gauge was wider than that in Europe posed staggering logistical problems.
Germany had to convert the rail system to the narrower Western gauge before they could run German trains to supply troops.
Soviet armed forces had some serious weaknesses but it also had a lot of manpower and good quantity of equipment.
The chief Soviet weakness was in military leadership since Stalin had purged the officer corps.
One general had been a victim of the purges and had only recently been released after 4 years in prison.
He had several broken ribs, his toes smashed with a hammer, and 9 of his teeth kicked out for which he later received steel replacements.
During WWII, he gained renown as Russia’s finest tactical commander as well as the begrudging respect of the Germans who referred to him as “the Dagger.”

Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union, was named in honor of the medieval German emperor Frederick Barbarossa who drowned while on a crusade to the Holy Land in 1190.
Stalin should have known the attack was coming, but he had ignored Churchill’s warning in April 1941 of an imminent attack. He also rejected reports from the German Communist spy Richard Sorge who had infiltrated the German embassy in Tokyo and sent Moscow information on the exact date of attack. Finally, he had not taken seriously a Soviet report a few weeks earlier that 4 million German soldiers had been massed on the Soviet borders.

Most astonishing of all, he brushed aside as “disinformation” the treasonous revelations of the German ambassador to the Soviet Union who told his Soviet counterpart in May that Hitler had decided to launch a war against the USSR on June 22.
Stalin reasoned that the German military wanted to instigate a war with the Soviet Union, but that Hitler could be trusted to prevent it for a time.
On June 21, 1941, the head of the Soviet army called Stalin to tell him that several German deserters had crossed into Soviet territory and reported that a German attack was planned for that night.
Stalin ordered him to come with some other Generals to the Kremlin.
Stalin’s advisors argued that Russia had to mobilize the military immediately, but Stalin still hesitated, hoping to prevent war for a while longer.
Stalin’s meeting broke up at 3:00am.
Half an hour later at 3:30am on June 22, 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union beginning the most massive military confrontation between 2 states in history.
By that time Stalin had returned to his villa on the outskirts of Moscow. He was awoken by a telephone that informed him of the attack
Stalin was stunned.
Stalin had refused to believe that Germany would attack the USSR without first knocking England out of the war.
He later told a British newspaper “I knew the war would come, but I thought I might gain 6 months or so.”
Despite all the warnings, Stalin refused to issue a command for combat readiness until 2 ½ hours before the invasion had begun.
Only at 7:15 am nearly 4 hours after the invasion did the government order “open active offensive operations against the enemy.”
Ordering offensive action at a moment when entrenchment or retreat was called for only worsened the situation.
The Germans had pushed far into the SU smashing the land defenses and obliterating much of the air force while it was still on the ground.
Stalin was so shaken by the invasion that he went into depression and Molotov took care of meeting with the German ambassador and addressing the Soviet people.

Racial War

Hitler informed his generals that the conflict in the Soviet Union would not be fought according to the traditional rules of warfare.
This would be a war of racial cleansing.
Red Army soldiers were not to be treated as POW’s but as partisans and were to be shot.
Hitler expected to see 20 to 30 million Soviet citizens die of starvation to provide food for the Wehrmacht (German army)
Although German military leaders insisted that they had opposed such measures and placed the blame solely on Himmler’s SS, it is now clear that many were very much involved.
Hitler’s war in the East was to be a war of extermination, plunder and enslavement driven by Nazi ideology and intended to be extraordinarily brutal.

Siege of Leningrad

Germans first reached Leningrad in July 1941.
The city held on against a German siege that lasted 872 days, the longest in modern history.
The siege killed at least 650,000 Russian civilians.
During the ferocity of the siege, the city’s inhabitants displayed a gritty determination not to succumb to the enemy.
Over 200 thousand people volunteered for military duty in the first weeks.
The city authorities made special arrangements for the rapid evacuations of children and the treasures of the Hermitage Museum.
Leningrad held out until it was liberated in January 1944.

Battle of Moscow

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1944, he divided his forces into three sections. One section went north to Leningrad, one went south to Kiev and a third struck to the heart of Russia at Moscow.
Many military analysts believe that Hitler’s decision to divide his forces in the summer of 1941 was the most fateful error that he made.
Even though the campaign in Ukraine and the capture of Kiev proved to be a great military triumph, the southern campaign interrupted the drive toward Moscow for 78 days, sent tens of thousands of men 300 miles south and then back north again exhausting the men of the southern flank and straining supplies.
Muscovites were able to use those months to stiffen the defenses of the capital.
In September, Hitler decided to consolidate his troops in the center and concentrate on the capture of Moscow in what was called Operation Typhoon.
The Battle of Moscow began Sept. 30 and continued through the spring of 1942.
By October 16, the government as well as most of the people of Moscow began to flee
Stalin decided to stay at the Kremlin and 100,000 men and women dug trenches to defend the city.
Stalin spoke to the people on the eve of the anniversary of the October Revolution calling on them to remember the great commanders of the Russian past, invoking Russian nationalism to stir the defenders of the city.
Stalin’s presence in the city and his speech helped to strengthen resistance to the German offensive.
In fierce fighting the Germans were unable take the city.
Many military analysts believe that the Battle of Moscow as the military turning point of the war on the eastern front.
It stopped the further expansion of Nazi power.
The winter was one of the harshest in a century and some analysts have maintained that the ultimate German defeat and Soviet victory were actually won by the winter.
Soviets were better prepared and clothed for the subzero temperatures.
Germans had become bogged down – supply lines grew ever longer until they stretched 1000 miles to feed a German front that extended 1500 miles.

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slide 5

Lecture: Holocaust

Hitler’s racial ideology

It is impossible to pinpoint exactly when Hitler conceived of mass murder for Europe’s Jews, but it’s not difficult to see how his ideology led in that direction.
The Holocaust developed in phases as Hitler looked for new ways to eliminate and persecute Jews.
Persecution of Jews begins immediately after he comes to power. The mass murder of Europe’s Jews coincided with Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union.

Phase 1

The first phase of Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies was initiated April 1, 1933 with a boycott of Jewish businesses. Interestingly, Hitler had to call of the boycott after two days because of the hostile reaction of many Germans who did not want to see fellow businessmen attacked.
From this experience, Hitler learned that if he wanted to eliminate Jews, he needed to make Germans more anti-Semitic or make them not care about his anti-Jewish policies. He did both.
From April to October, laws were enacted to exclude “non-Aryans” from the civil service, legal professions, judgeships, medical profession, teaching, cultural and entertainment. This served to isolate the Jewish population from everyone else making it easier for non-Jewish Germans to ignore the plight of their Jewish neighbors.

Phase 2 – 1935

This initial anti-Jewish legislation was followed in 1935 by the Nuremberg Laws.
The Nuremberg Laws made the swastika the official symbol of Nazi Germany, deprived Jews – defined by having had at least one Jewish grandparent – of citizenship and declaring them to be subjects.
Jews were forced to wear a yellow Star of David prominently on their clothing when they left their homes.
Laws also forbade marriage or sex between non-Jewish Germans and Jews and signs in restaurants, movie houses, and parks proclaimed that Jews were not allowed.
The Nuremberg laws separated Jews politically, legally, and socially from the rest of the German population.
When Hitler came to power, some Jews emigrated immediately or made plans to do so.
With Jews unable to teach in Universities after 1933 or attend university after 1937, many distinguished Jewish scholars and artists left for Britain or the US including Albert Einstein, poet Stefan George, the writer Thomas Mann, and the painter Max Beckmann
For many Jews finding a place to go was a problem. Hungary and Yugoslavia closed borders to refugees and other countries tightened their borders including Britain, France, and the US.
The Swiss government suggested that German officials stamp “non-Aryan” on passports of Jews so they could be turned back at the border.

Kristallnacht

November 9, 1938 following the assassination of a German embassy official in Paris by a Polish Jew whose parents had been deported from Germany, SS and other Nazi activists launched planned attacks on specific Jewish businesses and homes throughout Germany.
They destroyed stores, killed several hundred and beat up thousands of Jews.
30,000 Jews were imprisoned in camps.
This event is known as Kristallnacht because of the sound of shattering glass windows.

Kindertransport

In November 1938, following Kristallnacht, British refugee organizations persuaded the British government to permit Jewish children under 17 to come temporarily to Britain.
Each child’s keep, education, and eventual emigration had to be paid for by private individuals and in return the government agreed to permit refugee children to enter the country on travel visas – pa1rents were not allowed to accompany their children, unemployment was high and the British did not want more competition for jobs.
Between December 1938 and September 1939, when the war began, kindertransport trains brought 10,000 children to Britain, many never saw their parents again
Kindertransport Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=28&v=Qduycstt9oE&feature=emb_logo

Invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union

Hitler announced to the Reichstag (German Parliament) on Jan 30, 1939 that the result of the anticipated war would be the “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” the “final solution” to what Hitler considered the Jewish problem.
The conquest and occupation of Poland gave Hitler the territory in which the Final Solution would take place in 1939.
6 units of Einsatzgruppen, special killing units attached to the regular army but with orders to track down opponents of Nazism, began rounding up Polish Jews and putting them in ghettos.
The Holocaust, the systematic mass murder of Europe’s Jews, synchronized with the assault on the SU in June 1941.
In July 1941, Nazi’s began preparation for the Holocaust.
The regular German army was followed by mobile killing units of Einstazgruppen that varied in size from 500-900 usually pulled from the SS or the Gestapo – leaders came from highly qualified academics, some with Ph.D’s, lawyers, ministerial officials and even one Protestant minister.
In addition to basic training, they were carefully indoctrinated with Nazi ideology
The day after the invasion of Russia, the four Einstazgruppen entered he SU with 3000 men in search of Jews.
Each group used similar methods of terror, deception, and savagery to accomplish its goal of exterminating men, women, and children. Initially, most were shot. By the end of 1941 about a million Jews had been massacred.
Constant killing produced morale problems for the German executioners and many restored to frequent use of alcohol. Himmler told them that they were just following orders and he was responsible for everything that happened.

Death Camps

Einstazgruppen approach to solving the Jewish question was soon seen to be inadequate. It was too slow and required too many resources.
In January 1942, Nazi officials met in Wannsee a Berlin suburb, and they drew up even more systematic plans for genocide.
Murders of Jews began in mobile vans using carbon monoxide gas then in the concentration camp of Auschwitz in Poland, which had been build near the Warsaw ghetto.
5 other major killing camps were established in or near Poland: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Majdanek and Treblinka.
Many other smaller camps all over Eastern Europe.
Most victims were exterminated in airtight gas chambers with Zyklon B gas (also known as hydrogen cyanide or prussic acid) chosen because it killed with efficiency.
Much of the assistance in technical details of gassing people was provided by the T-4 program which had previously killed mental and physical disabled people in Germany,
Gold from teeth, eyeglasses and all other valuables became property of the Reich.
Inmates of the camps were identified by numbers tattooed on their arms and wore tattered striped uniforms.
Periodically they were ordered to file by an officer who selected those deemed unfit for hard work and sent to a building marked shower and each were given a small piece of soap
At Auschwitz, the daily death count reached as high as 15,000.
Nazi doctors also preformed experiments on Jewish prisoners.

Reaction in the West

By the summer of 1942, Jews were being shipped from western Europe, France, Belgium, and Holland.
Despite desperate military needs, the Final Solution was given top priority in using RR cars for shipment of Jews.
One of the most haunting questions of WWII is at what point the leaders of the Allies and of neutral states actually learned that the Nazis were undertaking the extermination of an entire people.
People in Germany knew – train drivers saw people being deported, enough people worked in the camps and talked, soldiers participated in mass executions and talked when they came home – the whole population was complicit.
Jews knew what was going on and so did the rest of the population.
Rumors of mass exterminations began to reach Britain and the US by 1942 but even after confirmation provided by 4 young Jews who escaped from Auschwitz in the summer of 1942 and by information arriving via the Polish underground and diffused by the Polish government in London many chose not to believe it. By the end of the year however, news of the Holocaust had become widespread.
The US and British governments had no official reactions to the terrifying news.
President Roosevelt believed that only sustained military effort could defeat the Nazis.

Jewish resistance movements

Resistance occurred at different levels.
Overt physical resistance was the most difficult – inhibited by terror and a lack of knowledge – how do you start or join a resistance group?
Terror and starvation weakened social bonds, and Jews were not a well-organized group to begin with.
It was hard to get support from the general population or governments abroad and without support resistance movements were impossible.
Despite the problems armed resistance did occur in many ghettos.
The most famous resistance was in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland.
Attempts in early 1942 to establish a Jewish fighting organization failed, but after the deportation of 265,000 Jews to the gas chambers of Treblinka between July and September 1942, a Jewish Fighting Organization was formed.
Arms were bought, stolen, or smuggled into the ghetto and the resistance movement managed to gain the support of the remaining 55000 to 65000 Jews in the ghetto.
When Nazis entered the ghetto in Apr 19, 1942, they met fierce resistance and had to retreat.
Nazis eventually overpowered the ghetto but with a considerable struggle – the ghetto was obliterated but the Jews who fought are remembered as heroes.

Rescue of Jews

Some people did try to help the Jews and help sometimes came from unlikely sources.
Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and a drunkard and a womanizer who often treated his wife badly.
He couldn’t hold a regular job in peacetime, but after the defeat of Poland, he moved to Cracow, purchased a Jewish enamelware factory from its German liberators, and began to produce kitchenware for the German army and the black market.
He gradually built up a Jewish labor force of workers from the Cracow ghetto and then from the Plaszow labor camp once the ghetto was liquidated.
When the Germans began to liquidate the Plaszow camp in the fall of 1944, Schindler received permission to transfer his factory and about 1100 Jewish workers whose names were put on “Schindler’s list” to his native Sudetenland.
Schindlers willingness to take risks, bribing German officials, forging documents, and placating SS officers with gifts of vodka saved the lives of his Jewish workers.
When asked later why he risked his own life to save those of the Jews he replied “I knew the people who worked for me. When you know people, you have to behave towards them like human beings”
Another important rescue center was the Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon, a village of 5000 inhabitants in southern France.
The inhabitants were mostly Protestants whose ancestors had once faced persecution in the French religious wars, the village residents helped Jews who were pursued by German and Vichy officials.
Denmark put together the only example of national resistance against the Holocaust. Denmark managed to gather almost its entire Jewish population and send them to neutral Sweden where they survived the war
Video about people hiding Jewish children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPurVP_WhPM&feature=emb_logo

Lecture: US Enters the War

Power Point (PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII

Power Point (PP) – Post- WWI French and German Women

Years of Japanese aggression in Asia brought the resource poor island to the point of confrontation with the US.
Since invading Manchuria in 1931, Japan had sought to expand its influence and territory in the Pacific.
Southeast Asian oil was one Japanese target, particularly after the economic boycott imposed by the US, Great Britain and the Netherlands following the Manchurian invasion.
The Japanese quest for rubber, tin, and other raw materials threatened British economic interests in Burma and Malaya as well as those of the Dutch in Java and of the US in the Philippines.
In an effort to stop the flow of allied supplies to Chinese forces from Hanoi and Burma, Japan had assumed a “protective” occupation of French Indochina (Vietnam) in July 1941.

23 July American Sec. of State Cordell Hull ended diplomatic negotiations that had been trying to improve relations between US and Japan.
3 days later, all Japanese assets in the US were frozen – Britain, Canada, Philippines, New Zealand and the Netherlands took similar measures. The US also enacted an oil embargo against Japan.

To continue empire building, Japan had to have oil of Dutch East Indies. This meant certain clash with US, Britain and Dutch.
Almost everyone was sure that Japan could not win a long war with the United States, and war with the US was likely to be long. Most people, even the Japanese military expected this to be a disaster for Japan. However, there was a certain fatalism among Japanese military leaders. They believed it was better to be destroyed with honor than retreat with shame.

Japan Attacks

On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, a Japanese force of fighters and dive bombers surprised the American naval and air force base at Pearl Harbor.
Three US battleships were sunk and 5 were severely damaged – 10 other vessels were destroyed or disabled, 188 planes were destroyed and many others damaged, and 2403 naval and other military personnel were killed and more than a thousand were wounded.
However, 3 aircraft carriers were at sea and therefore escaped and vast stocks of oil also survived.
Japan followed with a successful invasion of Malaya, the Philippines and Singapore and other Pacific Islands.
President Roosevelt had known that Japan was planning to launch a war against the US but not sure where or when.
Calling December 7, 1941 “a day that will live in infamy” Roosevelt declared war on Japan.
Hitler, bound by treaty to Japan then declared war against the US on December 11, to the surprise of some of his generals.
Hitler thought that public opinion in the US was against American involvement in the war, but he actually knew very little about the US, viewing it as an inferior, racially mixed state.
Upon hearing the news of Pearl Harbor, Churchill is reported to have exclaimed, “We have won the war!”
The US was the largest industrial power in the world, producing more than the next 6 powers combined.
American factories were quickly converted to military production.
American citizens rallied to the call of “Remember Pearl Harbor!” which struck a cord in a way that remember Belgium or France would not have done.
The first of several meetings between the British and American military chiefs of staff took place in Washington in Jan. 1942.
The Allied commanders decided to give the European theatre of war the highest priority.
An immediate concentration of attacks against Japanese forces seemed less urgent.

- US Home front Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGp93ijzok4&feature=emb_logo
- Wartime Nutrition Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=AYemY4O5Ubg&feature=emb_logo

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slides 7-10

Operation Torch, November 8, 1942

The Allies now faced major strategic decisions. The big question was where to attack the Germans first.
Churchill wanted to strike at what he called the “soft underbelly” of the axis through Italy, the Balkans and the Danube Basin after driving Hitler’s armies from North Africa
This would leave British forces in an excellent position to protect British interests in the Middle East.
Stalin continued insisted on a major Allied attack against Germany in France to force Hitler to divert resources from the Russian campaign.
Churchill feared that direct confrontation with the largest concentration of German forces might turn into a disaster and wanted to postpone a cross Channel invasion of France as long as possible.
Allied commanders decided to first drive all Germany and Italian troops out of North Africa.
In November 1942, the Allies launched Operation Torch.

Dwight Eisenhower

A British and American force was commanded by Eisenhower, which was astonishing given that he was junior to many other Allied generals and he had never held a field command.
Eisenhower had grown up in the small Kansas town of Abilene where his father toiled as a creamery worker.
He won an appointment to West Point by virtue of his strong performance in a competitive exam.
He was a good planner and organizer, and he could blend diverse personalities in a common enterprise.
He helped secure cooperation between British and American officers who often did not like each other.
He had an outgoing personality and people liked him.
General Montgomery, British Commander in North Africa who had a huge ego and was very difficult to work with once commented that Eisenhower “merely had to smile at you and you trust him at once.”

Operation Torch

In November 1942, allied troops landed on the coast of French Algeria and Morocco.
Allies then slogged their way across Tunisia.

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slide 6

The Tide Turns in Russia 1942

It is clear that 1941 was a crucial year of the war because of the failure of the German offensive in the SU and the entry of the US into the conflict.

But it was in 1942 that the war began to turn against the Axis both in the Pacific and in the SU as well.
By Feb. 1942, Hitler decided to concentrate on an attack in southern Russia and abandon his attempt to capture Moscow.
His primary aim in the 1942 campaign was the oil fields of the Caucasus Mountains.
This would cut off the Soviets from their chief source of petroleum and greatly increase German oil supplies.
It also meant that Hitler was abandoning the stated objectives of Operation Barbarossa – the destruction of the main Soviet forces which lay before Moscow.

Battle of Stalingrad – August 1942 – February 1943

The battle of Stalingrad was a great turning point in the European war.
Soviets had begun concentrating a huge force around the city even as early German successes deluded Hitler into thinking Stalingrad’s fall was inevitable.
In November 1942, as Soviet troops held off the German’s assault in house to house fighting, Hitler confidently began to transfer some of his exhausted troops to the north.
The Soviet army counterattacked on Nov. 19, trapping the weakened German armies as Soviet tanks moved easily across the frozen ground.
From Berlin, Hitler ordered his troops to hold out until the last man.
By the time German survivors surrendered on Feb. 2, 1943, the German army had lost more than 300,000 soldiers.

Soviet troops then fought their way into Leningrad winning another great victory in January 1944 lifting a 900 day siege.

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slide 11

Allied Invasion of Sicily, July 10, 1943

With North Africa secured, the Allies decided to invade Sicily as the first step in an invasion of Italy.
Anglo-American planners paved the way for the invasion of Sicily with an elaborate hoax that later became the basis for a book and a film titled The Man Who Never Was.
It involved the corpse of a vagrant, who had died of pneumonia.
British agents removed the body from a morgue and provided it with a uniform complete with various papers identifying the bearer as a major in the British Royal Marines.
A submarine then deposited the body along the coast of Spain where it washed ashore with a courier’s briefcase attached to its belt.
The case contained official documents indicating the Allied plan to invade Sardinia or Greece.
This information soon fell into the hands of Nazi agents who notified Berlin.
Hitler responded by diverting troops to Greece.
He had already sent troops to Sardinia.
These diversions as well as the loss of many Axis soldiers in Tunisia resulted in a shortage of manpower for the defense of Sicily.

Mussolini and the Italian Government

On July 10, the Allies attacked Sicily and lasted until about the end of July.
By this time, Italians were sick of war and sick of Mussolini.
The assault on Sicily convinced dissidents that Mussolini had to go.
On July 24, King Victor Emmanuel III dismissed Mussolini as premier and the police placed him under arrest.
On Sept. 12, German commandos landed in gliders on the mountaintop where he was held prisoner and rescued him and escaped by plane.
Hitler tried to install Mussolini as puppet ruler of northern Italy.
In the South, the Fascist party was dissolved and secret negotiations opened for an armistice.
The new PM wanted to switch sides and join the British and Americans in ridding Italy of the Germans.
Negotiations finally concluded on Sept. 3.
Italy handed over its navy, merchant fleet and air force to the Allies, and they joined the Allies against Germany.

Attack Begins on Italy –

Sept. 3, 1943 Italy secretly signed an armistice with the Allies. – That the same day, the Allied invasion began to rid Italy of the German military.
Germans counterattacked and fought hard.
Germans slowly retreated with both sides taking huge losses
Allies took Rome 4 June 1944.

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slide 12

The Big Three at Teheran

Soviet advances against German forces increasingly focused Western attention on the future of Central and Eastern Europe once Hitler’s Germany had been defeated.
In November 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin finally met face to face.

The meeting took place in the capital of Iran, Teheran, a country that Soviet and British troops had jointly occupied in the summer of 1941.
At Teheran, Stalin and Roosevelt convinced Churchill to accept a plan for the invasion of France.

D-Day Invasion, June 6, 1944.

General Eisenhower coordinated the D-Day invasion known as Operation Overlord.
The plan called for 150,000 troops to attack the English Channel beaches of Normandy in western France, followed in the next days and weeks by almost half a million more.
About 4 million tons of support material would have to be landed as well.
German commanders believed that the most likely place for an all out assault was the Pas-de-Calais the closest French crossing point from England.
The first hours of Operation Overlord would be critical.
The allies needed to take and protect a beachhead that would allow the bulk of their troops to get ashore quickly.
Planes would drop squadrons of parachutists behind German lines.
After 1 day postponement because of a gale, at dawn on the morning of June 6, 1944, Allied troops struggled ashore in shallow water from landing craft and established beachheads on the coast of Normandy.
Almost everything possible went wrong with this invasion.
Paratroopers dropped under the cover of darkness and were badly scattered and lost their way.
Many were dead before they landed.
As troops struggled onto the beaches, they confronted murderous fire from the cliffs above, taking heavy losses.
The landing succeeded at least partially because the German air force was outnumbered by 20 to 1 preventing rapid German reinforcements.
German troops gradually fell back.
By the end of July, despite fierce resistance, the allies held most of Normandy
After 7 weeks, the allies had landed 1.3 million troops and sustained over 120,000 casualties.
The Germans lost half a million men trying to defend Normandy.
On August 15, another Allied army landed on the French Mediterranean coast and moved up the Rhone Valley with little opposition.
Paris fell to the Allies on August 25.

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slides 13-16

Attempt on Hitler’s Life

These developments coincided with an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.
When the tide turned against Germany on the Eastern Front, a group of German officers concluded that it was necessary to end the war.
This would only be possible if Hitler were eliminated.
They planned no fewer than 6 attempts to kill him in 1943, but all efforts misfired.
On July 20, Hitler attended a meeting at his headquarters in East Prussia.
A conspirator placed a briefcase containing a bomb under the conference table where Hitler usually sat then left.
The bomb exploded a few minutes later. Unfortunately, Hitler decided to sit across the table from his usual spot.
It killed 4 men and wounded 20 others but the table’s heavy oak top absorbed enough of the blast to spare Hitler.
The conspirators were arrested and executed – a few lucky ones were shot, the others were hanged with piano wire.
Hitler had the execution filmed so he could watch.
From all accounts, he enjoyed the show.

Battle of the Bulge

German resistance stiffened as the Allies got closer to Germany.
Hitler, whose moods varied between wild optimism and resigned depression had aged rapidly and trembled through recurring bouts of illness.
Although Germany’s collapse seemed imminent, he refused to consider surrender
In the midst of this crisis, Hitler decided on an ambitious counter attack thorough the Ardennes forests in Belgium. The Germans had done very well here in the 1940 attack on France, and the Allies did not have this area well-fortified.
Before the attack, a few English speaking German commandos, dressed as American soldiers infiltrated American lines.
They cut telephone lines, changed road signs and killed military policemen in charge fo directing troop convoys.
They spread fear among American personnel.
To confirm identities, military personnel had to answer questions about the identity of major league batting champions to the names of state capitals.
Even genuine Americans didn’t always know the answers.
American general Bradley at one point had to confess that he didn’t know the husband of popular movie star Betty Grable but his interrogator let him pass anyway.
Later on he correctly identified Springfield as the capital of Illinois only to be told that it was actually Chicago.

Operation Autumn Fog – Attack, December 16, 1944

December 16, 1944, Hitler ordered a massive counterattack in the hills and forests of the Ardennes in Belgium and Luxembourg with the goal of pushing rapidly toward the Belgian river port of Antwerp.
Attack began under heavy cloud cover which prevented the air force from bombing German tank divisions.
The weather was miserable, cold and raining and snowing.
German armor overwhelmed badly outnumbered American forces along a 70 mile front.
Allied leaders were slow to grasp the gravity of the situation.
After retreating 45 miles, the US army pushed the Germans back in the Battle of the Bulge.
As the Nazi army retreated in the West, the Red Army approached Germany from the east.
On every front, Allied troops increasingly found that their enemies turned out to be boys and old men who had been rushed to the front with virtually no training.

(PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slide 17

Allied Bombing

By 1943, the British and Americans were heavily bombing German cities.
Incendiary bombs created fire storms.
In some cases, a 1 ½ mile wide column of super-heated air rose 8000 fear into the sky sucking in the air from the surrounding area and suffocating thousands of people.
The intense heat turned air raid shelters into ovens and literally baked alive thousands of people.
Temperatures rose to over 1000 degrees and winds reached 300 miles per hour.
German cities burned, notably Dresden which American planes fire-bombed early in 1945.
Allied bombs destroyed 30 to 80% of 50 major cities

PP: Post-WWII French and German Women slide 1-2

Yalta, February 1945

When the Big Three met in the Soviet Black Sea resort of Yalta in Feb. 1945, the Red Army was 45 miles from Berlin.
The Yalta meeting was crucial for the future of post-war Europe.
The Allies agreed to divide Germany into zones of occupation once the war ended.
Stalin also agreed to Roosevelt’s demand that the Soviet Union declare war on Japan which the US president believed would expedite Japan’s defeat.

Final Attack

The Red Army launched a final attack on Berlin in April 1945.
Italian partisans captured Mussolini near the Swiss frontier where they executed him and his mistress, hanging their bodies upside down at a Milan gas station.
As Soviet tanks drew near on the night of April 28/29, 1945, Hitler married his longtime mistress, Eva Braun in the depths of a fortified bunker in central Berlin.
They committed suicide on April 30 as Russian tanks could be heard above.
Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda, poisoned his 6 children, shot his wife and killed himself.
Admiral Karl Donitz to whom Hitler had delegated authority surrendered on behalf of Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 8, 1945.
WWII in the West came to an end.

Defeat of Japan

The German collapse allowed the Allies to turn their attention toward the Pacific.
Troops and supplies poured into the Pacific from the US.
August 6 and 9, 1945 the US dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Sept. 2, 1945 Japanese representatives signed documents of unconditional surrender on the aircraft carrier Missouri ending the Second World War.

Conclusion

The first Soviet troops arriving at the Nazi death camps discovered nightmarish horrors – piles of bodies, children’s shoes, and a few survivors.
The death camps became the most awful symbol of WWII – 6 million Jews died and only about 40-50,000 European Jews had survived the Holocaust
17 million people were killed in the fighting and another 20 million civilians died, half in the SU
no way to know precisely the full extent of the losses
Husbands, wives, children and other relatives were lost forever and Europe became a continent of displaced persons
Little optimism that such a war would not occur again – rising tensions between the US and the SU

Lecture: Rebuilding Europe

Power Point (PP): Post-WWII French and German Women

Introduction

The Second World War ended with little optimism.
Jews who survived returned home to find that most of their families and friends had been killed.
Countries occupied by the Germans had to deal with collaborators and reestablish democratic politics.
Red Army’s presence in the East meant new tensions between East and West.

Europe at the end of the war

Putting Europe back together proved a daunting task.
By the time WWII ended, at least 37 million people had been killed as a direct result of the war – 4 times the number in WWI – tolls in Central and Eastern Europe were almost beyond comprehension.
In the Soviet Union, deaths due to the war could only be estimated at about 25 million.
1700 cities and towns and 70,000 villages were completely destroyed.
20% of the Polish population died and 90% of Polish Jews died.
Damage to property was incalculable.

Potsdam Settlement

In July 1945, Stalin, Churchill, and the new US president Harry Truman met in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam to consider the fate of defeated Germany.
Roosevelt had died the previous April.
Truman found out the day before the Potsdam meeting that the US had the an atomic weapon and told Stalin.
The news of the bomb made Stalin more hostile toward the US which had no intention of sharing its new military secret.
The devastation wrought by the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki carried Europe and the world into a new and frightening era.
The Potsdam conference was affected by the growing mistrust between the Western Allies and the SU.
In some ways, the Cold War began at Potsdam.

Refugees

At the end of WWI, new boundaries and countries were created to deal with nationalities problems.
After 1945, the boundaries stayed basically the same but people moved around.
At the end of the war, millions of people were homeless, displaced from their home countries and starving.
Initially, only the US army had the resources and the organizational capacity deal with the refugee crisis.
A system of camps were set up to care for and eventually repatriate refugees. Eventually, these camps were turned over to the newly formed United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA).
The agency spent 10 billion between July 1945 and June 1947, almost all of it furnished by the US, Canada and the UK..
By June 1947 it had 762 units in Western Europe, most in Western Zones of Germany
Many more people would have died otherwise.

Jewish Refugees

Jewish refugees, all of whom were Holocaust survivors, faced particular problems.
At first, Western authorities treated them like other displaced persons putting them in camps with former persecutors.
But in August 1945, President Truman announced that separate facilities should be provided for all Jewish refugees in the American Zone of Germany. They were cared for separately in recognition of the special suffering they had been through.
Jewish refugees did not really have a solution to their status Israel was created in 1948. Between 1948 and 1951, about 332,000 European Jews left for Israel either from IRO centers in Germany or from Romania, Poland and elsewhere.

Collaboration vs Résistance

All countries occupied by the Nazis also had to deal with the problem of collaborators, people who had actively cooperated with the Nazis during the war.
Trying to determine what people had actually done during the war and who was a real criminal, was no easy task.
After liberation from the Nazis, the French people and their new Resistance governments agreed that the first order of business was the purge of collaborators.
However, France faced a severe shortage of trained and reliable police officers because policemen who had seriously compromised themselves under Vichy had to be replaced.

The resistance had begun executing collaborators even before the war ended.
However, violent purging was the exception rather than the rule and most collaborators were arrested and turned over to authorities.
It was not easy to determine what constituted anti-national activity.
Some offences escaped the government’s net, but fell into the communities. French women who had relationships with German soldiers were accused of horizontal collaboration, – sleeping with the enemy
Journalists took famous photos of women having their heads shaved or being paraded through town naked and tarred with the swastika for horizontal collaboration.
At the liberation in 1944, shaving the heads of collaborationist women struck many French men and women as a natural and appropriate activity.

German War Criminals

The situation for Germany was even more critical in terms of dealing with war criminals than in France.
German society had rested on Nazi ideology since the mid-1920’s and once the war ended, in many ways, the ideological base of German society, what people had believed in, was completely destroyed.
People had to deal with the fact that the regime they had supported, benefited from and worked for had committed horrendous crimes that were now being condemned by the world.
German’s also created the myth that only a small number of people were involved in the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime and everyone else had not known about the camps and the mass murders.
Much of the responsibility for dealing with collaborators fell on the allied victors.
Once the allied powers took over, they began a process of denazification which aimed at removing the discredited ruling class and replacing it with a new democratic elite.
However, this was not easily done, and by 1948 many western observers agreed that the process of denazification was a complete failure, which had left many Nazis in responsible positions and alienated the German population.
At the Postdam meeting, it had been agreed that the Nazi Party, and organization linked to it would be destroyed and that war criminals were to be arrested and put on trial. All Nazis would be removed from positions of responsibility in public and private sectors.
22 Nazi leaders, of whom 12 were condemned to death were tried by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg for conspiracy against peace and crimes against humanity.
The denazification processes impacted the whole German population although often in arbitrary and inefficient ways.
Denazification started off as a purge rigorously enforced by the occupying powers but was gradually turned over to the German’s themselves and phased out completely when the Cold War turned West Germany into an ally with the West.
The Russians had the most complete process of denazification, and managed to weed out many Nazis judges, teachers, industrialists.
The Americans started out purging Nazis from various sectors of German society with zeal, but were quickly overwhelmed by the impossibility of the task.
Denazification quickly ran into serious problems.
It deprived local and provincial administration of personnel and impeded the reconstruction of mines and other industrial plants by removing managers.
Out of sheer necessity and self-interest, all four occupying powers at times turned a blind eye to the employment of Nazis in key positions.
To ease the pressure on the allied control council, in Oct 1946, the Council divided the Germans into 5 categories ranging from major offenders to non-offenders then handed over the responsibility for denazification to German tribunals who worked under limited supervision.
Although permitting the Germans to purge themselves of Nazism was a major step toward democratization, serious abuses occurred.
In the American zone, the Munich Denazification Tribunal had to be dismissed and replaced with new personnel because of its unwillingness to prosecute former Nazis.
Denazification went hand in hand with an ambitious attempt to reeducate the German people.
Nazi teachers were suspended and replaced at first by elderly staff.
Nazi textbooks were destroyed – or at least the offending pages were removed – and replaced with either specially written new books or with the ole pre 1933 editions
Teacher training colleges were also hastily opened to train new teachers.

PP: Post-WWII French and German Women slides 3-12

Lecture: Cold War

Power Point (PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII

Power Point (PP) – Berlin Airlift

Power Point (PP) – Post-WWII Consumerism

The Cold War is generally placed with the end of WWII.
However, tensions between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, and especially between Washington and Moscow began in 1917 with the Bolshevik Revolution.
There is considerable historical debate about who was most responsible for starting the Cold War – both sides have some responsibility. The US and the Soviet Union had very different ideological views.
SU not prepared to give up advantages it had gained in Eastern Europe and US not willing to give up power and prestige it had through the world

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe was the first area of disagreement.
Us and Britain had championed self-determination and democratic freedom for the liberated nations, but Stalin feared East would return to traditional anti-Soviet attitudes of they were permitted free elections.
Having liberated Eastern Europe from the Nazis, the Red Army proceeded to install pro-Soviet governing regimes in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
These governments satisfied Stalin’s desire for a buffer zone against the West, but the local population and their sympathizers in the West saw the regimes as an expansion of Stalin’s empire.
Only another war could have changed the situation and few people wanted that.
The United States was very unhappy with Stalin’s take over of Eastern Europe, but the only way to remove the Red Army from Eastern Europe was another war, which no one wanted.

Power Point (PP) – Maps of Europe WWII and Post WWII slide 20

Truman Doctrine

Between 1946 and 1949, a civil war occurred in Greece roughly between Communist and anti-Communist forces.
US President Harry Truman became very worried about the possibility of Communist expansion.
Truman worried that if the Soviets were not stopped in Greece, the US would have to face the spread of communism throughout the free world.
As Dean Acheson, the American secretary of state explained “Like apples in a barrel infected by disease, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all the East … likewise Africa … Italy … France … Not since Rome and Carthage had there been such a polarization of power on this earth.”
In response, in 1947, Truman created the Truman Doctrine, also known as the Doctrine of Containment.
It offered American aid to any country trying to avoid a Communist takeover.

Marshal Plan

Truman Doctrine followed quickly in June 1947 with the European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan.
The Marshall Plan was designed to rebuild prosperity and stability by offering 13 billion for the economic recovery of war-torn Europe.
Underlying it was the belief that Communist aggression fed off economic turmoil.
General George Marshall had noted in his commencement speech at Harvard “Our policy is not directed against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos”
From the Soviet perspective, it seemed aimed at the construction of a bloc of states bound by obligations to the US and guaranteed the American loans in return for political and military alliances.
Marshall Aid was offered to East Europe and the Soviet Union, but there were strings attached. It required transparency in economics that the Soviets could not agree to and Soviet Union also prevented East Europe from accepting aid.
By 1947, the split between east and west Europe was a fact.

PP: Post-WWII Consumerism slides 1-4

Broadcasting Freedom

The US also developed more innovated cultural ways to combat Communism in Europe, especially in Central Europe but also in Eastern Europe.
In 1949, US planners such as George Kennan began developing what became known as Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty – a series of radio stations all over Europe that broadcast in different languages and were run by opposition politicians from Eastern Europe. It began broadcasting in May 1951.
Their goal was to bring about the peaceful demise of the Communist system in the East by offering people alternative ideas to what their governments provided and giving them insight into the Western world. Radio programs expressed the frustrations of people in the East with their governments.
Radio stations were established in Germany and beamed signals to the east. The Soviets tried to block the stations but were not completely successful.
Radio Free Europe broadcast in 8 languages: Bulgarian, Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian. It also had correspondents from the Ukraine and Belarus – largest language constituent and most programming was in Russian.
Radio Free Europe created a variety of programs, cultural, political, sports, entertainment.
Writers were people like Evgeny Rubin, a highly regarded Soviet sports writer in the Soviet Union. His passion was hockey, and he knew everything about hockey. He was Jewish and tired of strict censorship. He used his discussion hockey to inform the Russian people about the uglier side of Soviet Sports industry.
Commentators had pretty flexible limits about what they could say. The US didn’t want programs to seem scripted by the US government.

Getting the word out

One of the most spectacular projects undertaken by Radio Free Europe was the balloon operation.
Beginning in August, 1951 to November 1956, each night balloons were sent toward Eastern Europe with millions and millions of leaflets, newspapers, stickers, and political souvenirs bearing messages that reinforced the themes featured in RFE broadcasts.
Radio Free Europe also helped spread American youth culture by playing jazz and rock and roll with a program begun in 1956 called Teenager Party that aired for 30 min each week with 2 repeats.

Hot Flashes in the Cold War

The Cold War was marked by a series of hot flashes, moments when the US and the Soviet Union almost came to war.

Berlin Blockade, 1948

One of the first hot flashes in the Cold War involved Berlin.
Remember, after WWII, Germany had been divided into four zones of occupation. Berlin, which lay in the Soviet zone, was also divided among the four allies.
In 1948, Britain, France, and Germany began planning to unify their zones of Germany to create a new German state.
Stalin strongly opposed the creation of a German state that would become another ally for the West against the Soviet Union.
In response, in June 1948, Stalin enacted a blockade against West Berlin.
Stalin shut off all land traffic into and out of Berlin which was deep inside the Soviet zone. He also cut off food, electricity and all other supplies to West Berlin.
Stalin hoped force the Allies out of West Berlin, thereby isolating the Soviet sphere of influence from contact with freedom in the Western sectors.
Stalin also hoped the blockade would be a bargaining weapon to prevent the establishment of a strong German state under Western auspices. He also hoped to make the US commitment to Western Europe seem weak.

Berlin Airlift

The Berlin blockade set off a major crisis for the US and Britain.
Maintaining the Western presence in the city became a symbol of Western will to guarantee democracy in West Germany.
The US could not let Stalin take Berlin. However, trying to run the blockade would almost certainly mean war.
Since ground transportation of goods to Berlin was impossible, American military planners devised the Berlin Airlift. The US and Britain would fly in everything that Berliners needed to survive. The Soviets could do little to stop this since shooting down an American or British plane would mean war, and even Stalin didn’t want that.
The decision to run the blockade by air was taken by General Clay, the American commander in Germany. It was a highly risky plan.
No one knew if enough planes could be found or maintained to make the airlift successful
Clay was very conscious of this when he telephoned the head of the American air force, General Curtis Lemay, in Frankfurt on June 24, 1948. Following is their conversation:

Clay: “Do you have planes that can transport coal?”
Lemay: “Transport what?”
Clay: “Coal”
Lemay: “I cannot hear you very well. It sounds as if you are asking for planes that can transport coal?”
Clay: “Exactly, that’s what I mean.”
Lemay: “The Air Force transports anything.”

US and British air forces formed an “air bridge” as it was called and brought into Berlin virtually everything that was consumed on a daily basis, including milk, meat, fruits and vegetables, medical supplies as well as fuels, such as coal and raw materials.
2.25 million people had to be supplied indefinitely.
The daily requirement for mere subsistence in West Berlin was 8000 tons of supplies daily, and for the first few months this figure was not reached.
By November, the daily total of necessary supplies was being exceeded, and later in the winter, some days saw 11-12000 tons arrive at the Tempelhof airfield in the US sector.
The airplanes themselves were known as “candy bombers” since the pilots often dropped candy out the windows for the children watching the planes come and go.
By the end of the blockade, the Allies had flown 2,325,000 tons of goods to Berlin in more than 275,000 flights.
Berliners themselves also played an integral role in the end of the blockade.
They worked 24 hours a day, including holidays.
They walked long distances to work and were seldom late.
The Western sector’s newspapers, labor unions and political parties all cooperated with each other.
By May 1949, Stalin called off the blockade.
Soon after, Germany was officially divided into two separate states.
West Germany became the German Federal Republic, a democratic state allied with the US. East Germany became the German Democratic Republic, a Communist state under the control of the Soviet Union.
Candy Bomber video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d7eOF8-4gw&feature=emb_logo

PP: Berlin Airlift slides 1-8

1949

1949 was an important year in other ways as well. In 1949, China became a Communist State.
That same year, the Soviet Union also detonated its first atomic bomb and soon both the US and the Soviets were involved in an escalating arms race that led to the development of more powerful nuclear weapons.

Korea, 1950-1953

The Korean War was the next big hot flash in the Cold War.
In 1950, the US became involved in the Korean War.
Probably with Stalin’s approval, North Korea forces invaded South Korea in an effort to unite the peninsula under Communism
The US saw this as another example of Communist aggression and expansion and gained the support of the United Nations to intervene by sending American troops to turn back the invasion.
When American and S. Korean forces pushed the North Koreans back toward the Chinese border, Chinese forces entered to fray and forced the American and S. Korean troops to retreat back to S. Korea.
After 2 more years of inconclusive fighting, an uneasy truce was reached in 1953 leaving Korea divided.
The Korean War seemed to confirm American fears about Communist expansion and reinforced American determination to contain Soviet power.

US-Soviet tensions

In 1953, Stalin finally died and he was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev.
Khrushchev was a less repressive leader than Stalin, and he was responsible for a mild thaw in the Cold War.
In 1959, Khrushchev visited the US, the first Soviet leader to do so.
Khrushchev visited many places while in the US. He requested to visit Roswell Garst, an Iowa farmer who Khrushchev had befriended because of a common interest in hybrid seed corn. He also wanted to visit Disneyland but was prevented from doing so because of security reasons.
Khrushchev’s visit went well and US President Dwight Eisenhower was scheduled to visit the Soviet Union the following year.

U-2 Spy Plane Incident, May 1960

Before Eisenhower’s visit to the Soviet Union could occur, the Soviets shot down a U-2 spy plane taking spy photos from high over the SU.
The US initially denied it but then the SU said it had the pilot alive.
The U-2 Incident increased tensions between the Soviets and Americans and Eisenhower’s invitation to the Soviet Union was withdrawn.
Soviets demanded an apology for this violation of Soviet air space but received none.

Berlin Wall, 1961

In Europe, West Berlin had remained a “Western island” of prosperity in the midst of poverty-stricken East Germany, and many East Germans managed to escape West Germany by fleeing through West Berlin.
Streams of East Germans – about 2.6 million people between 1950 and 1962 – continued to leave for the West, most to the Federal Republic.
The exodus included many doctors and other trained specialists vital to East Germany.
Aug 17, 1961, Berliners awoke in the morning to find East German workers building a wall to divide East and West Berlin.
Ground floor windows that permitted escape were boarded up and telephone lines to West Berlin were cut.
The Berlin Wall became a symbol of the Cold War.
US President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin later that summer express support with Berliners.
After the construction of the wall, Berliners continued to try to escape, but it was dangerous. Many were shot making the effort.
Berlin Wall videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwOfphFsUwM&feature=emb_logo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExOYvW5vCj4&feature=emb_logo

Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962

Because of the nuclear threat, the Cuban missile Crisis of 1962 was the world’s most dangerous moment since the end of WWII.
Cuba became a Communist state in 1959 after Fidel Castro led a guerrilla attack that succeeded in ousting the corrupt American-backed leader Fulgencio Batista.
In October, 1962, American aerial photographs revealed that Soviet missiles capable of being armed with nuclear warheads were stationed on the island.
The US government demanded that the missiles be removed and threatened to destroy them if not.
Khrushchev pointed out that the US had missiles in Turkey that he wanted removed.
When the US intelligence discovered that Soviet fleet carrying missiles was headed to Cuba, President Kennedy decided to blockade Cuba and prevent the fleet from taking the missiles to Cuba.
Kennedy’s approach helped to buy more time to find a solution to the problem.
Debates in the UN helped buy time while negotiations proceeded and Khrushchev eventually agreed to take the missiles out if Kennedy agreed not to attack Cuba.
The intense feeling that the world might have been annihilated in a few days had a profound influence on both sides.
A hotline communication system between Moscow and Washington was installed in 1963 to expedite rapid communications in times of crisis.

Vietnam, 1964-1975

In 1964, the United States became officially involved in the Vietnam War. War had been going on in Vietnam since 1945. The situation was similar to Korea. Communists were trying to unify all of Vietnam under a Communist regime.
Vietnam became a black hole for the United States where men and money were dumped to no effect. It was a terrible place for soldiers to fight. The jungle made fighting difficult and it was hard to tell what part of the population was friendly and what part was enemy. The land war grew until more than 500,000 Americans were stationed in South Vietnam.
In 1975, the United States finally pulled out of Vietnam and Vietnam became Communist. It was a loss for the US.

Lecture: 1960s Protest Culture and Second Wave Feminism

Generation Gap

The prosperity that characterized the period from the mid 1950’s to the mid-1960s throughout the West provided a secure base from which radical dissenters could launch their protests.
Young people of the 1960’s were the first generation to come of age after WWII.
After WWII, changes in manners and morals were far more extensive and far more noticeable.
Introduction of the birth control pill, which became widely available by the mid-1960s gave people more freedom in sexual behavior.
The new standards were evident in the breakdown of the traditional family.
Divorce rates increased dramatically, especially in the 1960’s and premarital and extramarital relationships rose substantially.
The decade of the 1960’s saw the emergence of drug culture.
Marijuana was widely used among college and university students as a recreational drug.
For young people interested in mind expansion into higher levels of consciousness, Timothy Leary who had done research at Harvard on the hallucinogenic effect of LSD became the high priest of “psychedelic” experiences.

Youth movement

The youth movement was spurred on by the Vietnam War and a growing political consciousness. Youth rebellion became a youth protest movement by the second half of the 1960s also influenced by the Civil rights Movement.

Education and student Revolt

Before WWII, higher education had largely remained the preserve of Europe’s wealthier classes.
After the war, European states began to foster greater equality of opportunity in higher education by eliminating fees and universities experienced an influx of students from the middle and lower classes.
Enrollments grew dramatically: France 4.5% of young people went to a university in 1950 but by 1965 the figure had increased to 14.5 percent.
Many problems resulted.
Overcrowded classrooms, professors who paid little attention to the students, administrators who acted in an authoritarian fashion and an education that too many seemed irrelevant to the realities of the modern age led to an outburst of student revolts in the late 1960s.
In part, these protests were an extension of the spontaneous disruptions in American universities in the mid-1960s which were often sparked by student opposition to the Vietnam War.

Social Explosion May 1968 in France

Perhaps the most famous student revolt occurred in France in 1968.
In 1958, 5 times more degrees were awarded than in 1958.
World events also fueled the student activism for social justice ad political freedom.
The Algerian War had laid the basis for student organization by forcing concerned students to take sides.
After the war, student politics developed into a minefield of competing groups with few if any links to adult political parties.
In May, 1968, Nanterre and Paris students met in the Sorbonne courtyard to protest. Police responded by forcing them all to leave.
Students went without resistance, but as they were herded into police vans, onlookers grew angry and someone threw the first stone breaking a police car windshield.
Police responded with tear gas and students began lifting cars and stones to form a barricade.
Students began attacking police and police responded in kind.
During the next week, students gained sympathy because of police repression.
By May 8-9. students were winning the battle for hearts and minds and sensing opposition politicians came to their support esp. Communists and Socialists.
Students would fail to see changes in universities happen immediately, but over time most of their requests were met: revised curriculum, more student leadership in universities, smaller classes, better facilities.
Student prost movements reached its high point in 1968 although scattered incidents occurred into the early 1970s.
Similar protest movements occurred in the United States, other parts of Europe and around the world.
1960s Protest Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBjZRh4KOOI&feature=emb_logo

Second Wave Feminism

Traditional Roles for Women

Women’s Movement Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nxpyonf5j4&feature=emb_logo

Despite their enormous contributions to the war effort, women at the end of WWII were removed from the workforce to provide jobs for the soldiers returning home.
After the horrors and separations of the war, people seemed willing, for a while to return to traditional family life.
Female participation in the workforce declined and birthrates began to rise, creating a “baby boom.”
Women were in charge of familial well-being – they were encouraged to exert influence over their families such as preventing or stopping husbands from being alcoholics.
The emphasis on traditional roles for men and women were seen in Europe an dthe United States.
In November 1946, Elle published an article, “Even more beautiful when it’s just for him,” cautioning its readers about taking a night off from being gorgeous and charming, even if their men felt like spending the evening at home:

You’re beautiful and your husband loves you. Don’t take advantage of that by letting yourself go in his presence. Don’t forget that if he found you attractive, it is without a doubt because you are charming, intelligent, and prudent, but also because that day you were particularly beautiful, well made-up, clean, polished, with combed, shiny, luscious hair, a fresh, smiling mouth, and brilliant eyes. Don’t forget that you have to earn his happiness every day, that nothing is a given, and nothing comes from indifference or negligence…Yes, men are repulsed by unkempt women.

Thus, a woman had to be constantly on her guard in order to preserve the stability of her home. Her aesthetic appearance had to be as perfect as her outward carriage and her inner qualities. A wife or girlfriend could not relax and let down her guard even for a moment, lest her man be displeased. If that were to happen, he could leave her and threaten the stable sanctimony of the home.
- In 1956, Life magazine produced a special issue on women profiling Marjorie Sutton. The magazine spoke of the “busy Wife’s Achievements “ as “Home Manager, Mother, Hostess, and Useful Civic Worker.”
- Married at 16, Marjorie was now involved with the PTA, Campfire Girls, and charity causes.
- She cooked and sewed for her family, which included 4 children, supported her husband by entertaining 1500 guests each year, and worked out on the trampoline to keep her size 12 figure.
- Prominent doctors such as Benjamin Spock in his book Baby and Child Care (1946) the book most responsible for the child-rearing patterns of the post-war generation advised mothers to stay at home if they wanted to raise stable and secure youngsters – working outside the home might jeopardize their children’s mental and emotional health.

Changes in the 1950s

In 1956, a London journalist wrote in The Evening Standard about feminism: “Today, the spirit of the old pioneers is so dead it seems a miracle it ever existed.”
This was the conventional wisdom at the time.
However, many goals of the supposedly dead women’s movement were achieved during these years.
For example, in Great Britain, legislation during the first 15 years after the war mandated equal pay for work in government posts.
In Italy in the 1950s, the government, spurred by the Union of Italian Women that developed out of the resistance, passed a series of programs to move toward equality in the workplace, including a prohibition against firing women just because they got married.
New movements for reform would draw their inspiration from the civil rights movement and nationalist movements in overseas colonies.

Feminist Movement

Some women in postwar US and Europe began to question women’s role and the treatment of women.
Among the most prominent in this quest was Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986).
Beauvoir was an influential existentialist and a rebel against her Parisian family’s middle-class values.
Raised by a devout mother, Beauvoir attended fashionable religious schools as a child.
After the family’s prosperity was ruined by WWI, Beauvoir and her younger sister faced a new reality.
Unlike their mother they would need some way to support themselves.
Against her family’s wishes, Beauvoir chose higher education.
While attending the Sorbonne, she fell in love with Jean-Paul Sartre who was to become the most celebrated intellectual in France.
Refusing to marry, they maintained an intense free union often separated by early teaching careers and by other love affairs.
In 1949, Beauvoir published The Second Sex, which focused on the condition of women.
Beauvoir began with the existential premise of an absurd world, a world of nothingness.
She started out to write a book about herself, but it quickly became a book about being a woman.
The book was published in 1949 consisted of 2 volumes, some 1200 pages and sold 20,000 copies almost immediately.
Beauvoir was sharply criticized – some argued that since she didn’t have children she could know little about what womanhood was really like.

Argument of The Second Sex

Beauvoir believed that she lived a “liberated” life for a 20^th century woman – she had a long-term if fluid relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre and supported herself writing and teaching – but for all of her freedom, she still came to perceive that as women she faced limits that men did not.
Beauvoir argued that men were the center of Western culture and the female was the “other.”
She argued that neither men nor women liked being under the orders of a woman and women professionals constantly had to try to gain people’s confidence.
If you think of a doctor or a lawyer people think of men – men have a certain amount of credibility because they were men.
Most women doctors, for example had too much or too little air of authority.
If they acted naturally, they failed to take control and the patient who likes to be dominated will be disappointed by plain advice.
Aware of this, the woman doctor assumed a grave accent, but she then lacks the bluff and charm of a man who is naturally sure of himself.
Beauvoir also criticized women for failing to take full control and responsibility for their lives.
It’s hard to take full responsibility for yourself and your thoughts and actions – to make decisions and think for yourself – what Beauvoir called living an authentic existence.
She believed it was easier to give up liberty and accept the protection and leadership of a man.
Beauvoir’s work took an active role in the French women’s movement of the 1970’s and her book was a major influence on the feminist movement in the US as well – her work became a handbook for the women’s movement in the 1960s.

Betty Friedan

Another author who highlighted the plight of women and had a significant impact on how women through about themselves was Betty Friedan in her work, The Feminine Mystique (1963).
Friedan shifted attention away from working-class women and union issues that had concerned her before and undertook an exhaustive examination of women’s magazines and other publications to provide a profile of women in the 1950’s and early 1960’s – in particular middle-class women, many of whom had college degrees.
Friedan voiced the grievances of a previously politically quiescent group of women.
She was a suburban homemaker, and the mother of three children when she wrote about the gap in her own middle-class world between the reality of women’s lives and the idealized image of the perfect homemaker.
After WWII, women were expected to find fulfillment in the domestic sphere, but Friedan found women suffering from the “sickness with no name” and the “nameless desperation” of a profound crisis of identity.
Friedan’s opening chapter, “The Problem that Has no Name” presented a devastating account of talented, educated women trapped in a world where fulfilling their femininity – “the feminine mystique” – meant marriage and motherhood while those who desired to pursue careers were deemed neurotic and unwomanly.
Friedan was deluged by desperate letters from female readers who felt like the suburban dream had become a nightmare.
Readers spoke of the home as a “prison,” of their subtle bondage,” and of the Feminine Mystique as women’s “Emancipation Proclamation.”
However, it was not received well by everyone. Friedan published a summary of her argument in McCall’s, the mass circulation women’s magazine, and the reaction from readers was not favorable.
Many found the article insulting or condescending in denying that homemaking was an honorable calling and a “satisfying career.”
Among the largely working class readers of McCall’s, Friedan’s analysis raised issues of class relations.
The feminist movement grew out of the agitation for civil rights and employed a confrontational approach and the vocabulary of civil rights to create pressure for change.

American Women’s movement

Although the civil rights movement helped spark the women’s movement, broad social changes also provided preconditions.
Women increasingly participated in the job market and more were going to college.
In 1966, a group of professional US women including Betty Friedan established the National Organization for Women (NOW) to take action to bring American women into full participation in the mainstream of American society.
Radicals gained mass media attention at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City in September 1968.
On the Boardwalk, a hundred women nominated a sheep as their candidate for Miss America.
They also set up a “freedom trash can” and placed in it “instruments of torture”: bras, girdles, hair curlers, high heels and copies of Playboy and Cosmopolitan magazines
In the pageant hall, they chanted “Freedom for women” and marched with banners reading “Women’s Liberation.”
Bra burning women’s libers was the label adopted by the press.

Europe

Women in Europe watched what was happening in the US and many women’s organizations formed in Europe as well to demand greater rights.
Similar movements developed in Britain and change slowly happened.
Women began to organize, protesting the lack of opportunities in employment as well as the harassment women often faced on the street with whistles and inappropriate comments.
At the BBC in 1969 women weren’t allowed to wear trousers. That year, Susannah Simons got hired as one of the new studio managers.
Her favorite outfit was a white polo sweater, white trousers and a knee length jerkin.
A senior executive pointed out her transgression so she got up, took off her trousers leaving only the shortest of miniskirts – the rules soon changes.

France

The rebirth of feminism in France had as its background the towering theoretical work of Simone de Beauvoir as well as the student movement of the 1960s.
In the years since WWII, contraception, in particular the 1920 law abrogating women’s reproductive rights, had come to the fore as a major issue.
France had never had a strong feminist movement, in 1970, small groups of young women began to meet to discuss their condition and to read books like Beauvoir’s Le Deuxieme sexe and the translation of Betty Friedan’s work Feminine Mystique.
Abortion rights quickly became an important issue for many women involved in the emerging feminist movement.
Women soon began demanding legalized abortions, and they got 343 famous women to sign a manifesto for legalized abortions admitting or claiming that they had had abortions – Beauvoir signed it as well as actress Catherine Deneuve then at the height of her fame.
All the names were printed in Le Nouvel observateur on 5 April 1971 – this coming just a couple of years before Roe v Wade in 1973.
Beauvoir founded a pro-choice organization, Choisir, later in 1971, and Choisir soon had the perfect case to argue for abortion.
A 17 year old girl, Marie-Claire Chevalier, found herself pregnant after a boy forced her to have sex.
Marie-Claire lived in the working-class suburb of Bobigny, and her mother had raised 3 children by working in the Metro after being deserted by her husband.
Two friends at work helped Marie-Claire find an abortionist.
The baby’s father was questioned by police for car theft and to divert attention he told the story of the abortion, which he had refused to pay for.
Marie-Clarie, her mother, the abortionist and the 2 friends were charged with abortion or complicity.
However, these women were politically aware and knew of the manifesto.
Marie-Claire’s mother protested that the law was wrong and the case was taken up by members of Choisir in what became known at the Bobigny Affair
They lost the case but were given very light sentences, and abortion reform happened on 13 December 1973 when the Assembly threw out the abortion restriction after a bitter debate.

West German Movements

For the most part, feminist activism in Germany remained even less mainstream than elsewhere.
In the first place, there was no strong middle-class feminist organization like the National Organization of Women in the US.
In a country aiming for respectability after the Nazi experience, women in the professions and at home hesitated to take any step indicating political difference.
Also in the shadow of the Cold War, West German feminists wanted to distinguish themselves from their socialist and Marxist feminist tradition.
So, the isolated movement set out in 1971 by convening a national conference and drawing up an abortion petition.
These concrete acts led to the organization of women on a local level but drew little positive response from the government.
The abortion drive ended when the government passed a law allowing abortions only when a medical or psychological reason made it imperative.
Along with doing local organizing, feminists devoted themselves to theoretical investigations of women’s experiences.

Conclusion:

Women gradually gained more access to jobs and more equal treatment – gap began to close.
Feminists were criticized by more traditional women who believed they were undermining the position of housewives and not creating happy lives for women but promoting immoral decisions.

Lecture: Fall of Communism

Opposition to Communist rule mounted in all East European states in the 1980s.
The overwhelming economic failures of the communist regimes grew more apparent especially in contrast with the standard of living in Western states.
Well-developed social services could not compensate for economic in efficiency and massive demoralization of East European populations.

Brezhnev Era

Between 1964 and 1982, the Soviet Union was ruled by Leonid Brezhnev. Brezhnev reinforced the powers of the oppressive Soviet bureaucracy and the prestige of the army and KGB.
He made huge expenditures on arms and weapons because of the chill in relations with the US after the Soviets launched a war in Afghanistan in 1979.
Brezhnev finally died in 1982.

Mikhail Gorbachev

Brezhnev was succeeded in 1985 by Michael Gorbachev.
Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader since Lenin to have earned a university degree, and he was a skillful politician.
He believed that revolution would come to Moscow if reforms were not made and he embraced a policy of liberation known as glasnost – openness in government combined with a greater degree of free expression.
He put some liberals in positions of responsibility and ordered the relaxation of censorship – This facilitated new art and literature.
Under Gorbachev, more forthright accounts of life in the West appeared on TV news which put Soviet economy and its living standards in a particularly unflattering light.
Gorbachev increasingly spoke openly about the failure of economic planning without sufficient material incentives for workers. However, he continued to believe that communism could be rescued by necessary reforms once the inefficiency and brutality of Stalinism had been completely eliminated.
He also espoused perestroika, a restructuring of the Soviet system in order to make it more efficient and responsive to the needs of Soviet citizens.
In 1987, he paved the way for increasing privatization of the economy and encouraged foreign investment.
Gorbachev also expressed determination to continue the thaw with the West that had ended during the Brezhnev era.

Gorbachev and Foreign Policy

By 1988, the economic crisis in Eastern Europe increased. So did the number of Soviet citizens convinced that a Communist government could not bring about a meaningful improvement in the quality of their lives.
As the Soviet economy collapsed, Gorbachev determined that the Soviet Union could not afford to continue the arms race with the US. He engaged in arms limitations negotiations with the US.
He made a highly successful visits to Washington and New York in 1987 that gave the Soviet leader considerable world television exposure and led to great personal popularity.
He charmed Western leaders by promising to establish a free market economy
He was fairly open about Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine in 1986.

Gorbachev and Eastern Europe

Soon after he came to power, Gorbachev made it clear that the Soviets would no longer crush popular political movements in Eastern Europe. People in Eastern Europe were free to find their own path.
Poland became the first test case for the new Soviet relationship with its former satellites.
The Polish Revolution would be led by the trade union organization Solidarity under the leadership of Lech Walesa.
By 1989, a combination of economic deterioration and organized opposition convinced the Communist leadership in Poland to seek political compromise with opposition leaders.
Polish Communists hoped to avoid violent insurrection like the one that had occurred in Hungary in 1956 because Soviet tanks no longer available to help.
In Aug. 1988, after years of protests by Solidarity, the Communist government invited Solidarity to negotiate with it. The Communist government recognized the legal status of Solidarity to represent people who opposed the Communist party.
Solidarity demanded free elections in Poland and the Communist Party agreed.
In 1989, the first relatively free elections took place in Poland since the immediate post-war period and Solidarity swept to victory – the Communists were humiliated – Solidarity won all 161 parliamentary seats.
Communist candidates won only 2 of the 35 seats in elections in which they ran unopposed.
Gorbachev pressured the Polish Communist party to accept the election results.
In 1990, the Communist era ended in Poland when the Polish Communist Party changed its name.
Lech Walesa – leader of Solidarity – was elected president.
A similar situation occurred in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and most other parts of Easter Europe at the same time, 1989.

East Germany

As pressure mounted in Poland and Hungary, East Germans fled the GDR in record numbers, many traveling to the GFR via Czechoslovakia then Hungary whose government in May 1989 had torn down the barbed wire stretching across the border with Austria.
East German Communist leader Erich Honecker, in June 1989 had praised the Chinese army and police for crushing the pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing. Honecker rejected all of Gorbachev’s reforms and demanded that Hungary return fleeing East Germans to the country. The Hungarian government refused to do so.
In October 1989, Gorbachev visited East Berlin and demonstrators chanted his name, which had virtually become synonymous with opposition to the East German regime.
Demonstrations spread to other cities and Honecker ordered the police to attack them – state security chief refused to follow his orders.
On Oct 23, Soviet Foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze declared that each country in east Europe “has the right to an absolute, absolute freedom of choice.”
By November 4, Honecker was deposed and the new East German leader, Egon Krenz announced that East Germans were free to leave for West Germany via Czechoslovakia and wholesale exodus began – sweeping changes followed.
Egon Krenz promised legislation granting right to travel and ordered that the Berlin Wall be torn down November 1989.
Elections held March 1990 were won by German conservatives in favor of reunification.
Unification between the two German states happened October 3, 1990 and in December newly unified Germany returned the Christian Democrats to power under the direction of Helmut Kohl.
Fall of Berlin Wall Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snsdDb7KDkg&feature=emb_err_watch_on_yt

Collapse of the Soviet Union

As the former East European satellites of the Soviet Union abandoned communism, discontent with communism spread to the Soviet Union itself.
Pressure for the breakup of the Soviet Union mounted from its various republics.
In June 1990, Lithuania unilaterally declared its independence.
Gorbachev initially tried to maintain communism and keep the Soviet Union together, but he failed.
One by one, other republics took steps to leave the Soviet Union.
By the end of 1991, Gorbachev acknowledged that the Soviet Union no longer existed.
Symbolically, Leningrad again assumed its old name of St. Petersburg.
On December 25, 1991 Gorbachev resigned closing on one the most remarkable political eras in modern European history.
Gorbachev Pizza Hut Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgm14D1jHUw&feature=emb_logo

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