Paper 2: Topic 10 - Authoritarian states

• Conditions in which authoritarian states emerged: economic

factors; social division; impact of war; weakness of political
• Emergence of system
authoritarian states • Methods used to establish authoritarian states: persuasion
and coercion; the role of leaders; ideology; the use of force;
propaganda
• Use of legal methods; use of force; charismatic
• Consolidation and leadership; dissemination of propaganda
maintenance of • Nature, extent and treatment of opposition
power • The impact of the success and/or failure of foreign policy
on the maintenance of power

• Aims and results of • Aims and impact of domestic economic, political, cultural and
policies social policies
• The impact of policies on women and minorities
• Authoritarian control and the extent to which it was achieved
 HL - 14: European states in the inter-war years
(1918–1939)
• • Weimar Germany: constitutional, political, economic/financial and social issues
(1918–1933); initial challenges (1918–1923); “Golden Era” under Stresemann
(1924–1929); the crisis years and the rise of Hitler (1929–1933)
• Hitler’s Germany (1933–1939): consolidation of power; Hitler’s pre-war domestic
policies, including economic, social and political policies; nature of the Nazi state;
the extent of resistance to the Nazis
• • Italy (1918–1939): rise of Mussolini; consolidation of power; Mussolini’s pre-war
domestic policies, including economic, social and political policies; nature of the
fascist state
• • Spain (1918–1939): political, social and economic conditions in Spain; the Primo
de Rivera regime; polarization and political parties under the Second Republic;
Azaña and Gil Robles; causes of the Civil War; foreign involvement; reasons for
nationalist victory under Franco
• • Case study of domestic political, economic and social developments in one
European country (other than Germany, Italy or Spain) in the inter-war years.
 Vocab
• Gleichschaltung – co-ordination of power
• Law Against the Establishment of Parties
• German Labour Front
• Concordot
• People’s Court
• Social Democrats (SPD)
• Red Shock Troops
• Sopade
• Germany report of the Sopade
• Priest Trials
• Bishop von Galen
 Examine the methods used by one authoritarian
leader in the maintenance and consolidation of
power
Topics Policies Consequence - Opposition

Legal Means

Force

Propaganda

Foreign Policy
 Legal Means
• July 1933 – Law Against the
Establishment of Parties
• All political parties are banned
• Ex. November Elections
• August 2, 1934 – Death of President
Hindenburg and Hitler combines the
office of President and Chancellor
• August 19 Plebisite gave 90% of Germans
supported this change
• Oath of loyalty
• Army is required to make an oath of loyalty
towards Hitler, not the state
• August 20 – all public officials make an
oath to Hitler
 Legal Means
• May 1933 – All trade unions are merged
into the Nazi controlled German Labour
Front
• 20 million members
• Banned strikes and employers controlled
workers salaries
• July 1933 – Concordot
• An agreement in made with the Pope that the
Catholic Church would stay out of politics in
return for leaving the Catholic Church alone
• April 1934 – People’s Courts are
established
• Worked as show trials where punishments
were handed out within an hour with
predetermined guilty verdicts
• 225,000 people sentenced for political crimes
 Impact - Opposition
• Social Democrats(SPD) – centre-left party
that was the second largest party in the
Reichstag
• received most of their support from trade unions
• SPD Resistance
• Red Shock Troops – 3000 members published
underground newspapers, but by 1934, the Gestapo
had arrested them
• Renamed Sopade, maintaining opposition in
Prague, Paris and London
• Published anti-Nazi reports calling for Hitler’s
overthrow
• ex. Germany Report of the Sopade
• Impact
• 1934 - SPD admitted that they had lost support
in Germany
Impact - Opposition
• Catholic Church – opposition due to breaking the terms of
the Concordot.
• 1936 – Priest Trials, charged with corruption,
homosexualtiy, prostitution and pedophilia
• Resistance
• Ex. 1937 – Pope Puis wrote a letter read by all priests
calling Hitler “a mad prophet with repulsive arrogance”
• the Gestapo seizing all printing equipment and
arrested 2500 priests
• Ex. August 1941 – Bishop von Galen declared the
murders of the Nazis illegal and that all christians need
to oppose this
• Many would “indirectly” criticize within “the guise of
pastoral stricture”
• Impact
• 1941 – Euthanasia program was reduced
• the number of Catholics actually rose
• Ex. 1933 – 32% Catholic vs. 1939 – 40%
Catholic
Vocab
• Heinrich Himmler
• RHSA
• Gestapo
• SD
• SS
• Night of the Long Knives
• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
 Use of Force
• Heinrich Himmler – head
of the the entire state
terror structure
• 1939 – RHSA is created to
place all police forces under
the control of the SS
• Important Groups
• Gestapo – Secret Police
• SD – Intelligence Agency
• SS
 SS
• Emerged as the chief police arm
after the Emergency Power Decree
• 1933~39 – 225,000 convicted and
imprisoned for political crimes
• 1939 – 162,000 were in ‘protective
custody’ without trial
• Controlled the Ghettos,
Concentration & Death camp
system
• An estimated 40,000 camps with
between 15-20 million people
• Organized and implemented the
Holocaust
• Estimated 2.5-6 million deaths
 Opposition - SA
• SA – 3 million member paramilitary force led by
Ernst Rohm.
• Rohm wished or the SA to take over the army, which
the Military and Conservatives opposed
• Hitler believed they were planning a “second
revolution”
• June 30, 1934 – Night of the Long Knives
• Claiming that Rohm was planning a revolt, Hitler
ordered the SS to arrest and murder members of the
SA
• Other opposition were murdered
• Ex. Ex-chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, Gregor Stressor
(former Nazi, second to Hitler), journalists, etc…
• Estimated 400 people were murdered
• Impact
• Hitler gained the full support of the military
• The German population did not protest these
murders
 Opposition – Jewish Resistance
• Resistance – estimated 100 examples
of armed Jewish resistance within the
ghettos
• 1943 – Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – out
of fear of being deported to death camps,
Jewish resistance groups (ZOB) began to
smuggle weapons into the Ghetto. When
the SS attempted to organize the
deportation, they were attacked
• SS responded by burning down the
ghetto
• Estimated 13,000 Jews were killed vs.
less than 150 Germans
Vocab
• The Red Flag
• Red Orchestra
 Gestapo
• Secret Police force that relied on
informants to report any anti-Nazi
sentiment
• 1939 – claimed 162,000 in “protective
custody”
• Relied exclusively on the local
German people
• At its peak, 30,000 officers
• Ex. Dusseldorf (500,000 people) had
only 126 officers
• Ex. Between 50%-80% of all
investigations were instigated
voluntarily by local people

Opposition - Communists
• KPD – German Communist Party had 350,000
members in 1932
• Most members were arrested after the Reichstag Fire
Decree
• Resistance
• 30,000 members
• Many fled and continued their newspaper– The Red
Flag –publishing millions of anti-Nazi messages
• Red Orchestra – spy network of around 100
organized by the USSR within Germany to share
military secrets
• 1942 – Gestapo arrest the leaders and are brutally killed
(ex. Hung by a meat hook)
• Impact
• 1944 – all members of the communist resistance had
been arrested or left the country
"They ordered me to take off my pants and then
two men grabbed me by the back of the neck
and placed me across a footstool. A uniformed
Gestapo officer with a whip of hippopotamus
hide in his hand then beat my buttocks with
measured strokes, Driven wild with pain I
repeatedly screamed at the top of my voice.
Then they held my mouth shut for a while and
hit me in the face, and with a whip across chest
and back. I then collapsed, rolled on the floor,
always keeping face down and no longer
replied to any of their questions.”
Ernst Thalmann – 1933 treatment in a
concentration camp
 Opposition
• Some people used the
Gestapo to remove people
for personal, rather than
political reasons
• Ex. Story of Maria Kraus
• Impact
• Most German people were
not committed Nazis
• Ex. Himmler threatened
those with false
accusations would be
sent to concertation
camps
Vocab
• Joseph Goebbels
• Hitler Myth
• Reich Press Law
• People’s Receiver
• Triumph of the Will
• Eternal Jew
 Propaganda
• Joseph Goebbels – Reich Minister
of Public Enlightenment &
Propaganda
• Goal: the Hitler Myth
• Hitler had a special relationship
with the German people
• Defended Germany against its
enemies (ex. Communists, Jews)
• Was responsible for all major
successes (ex. Economic, Foreign
Policy)
• Not responsible for any problems
 Propaganda
• 1933 – Reich Press Law allowed for
the ban of all newspapers not approved
• Volkischer Beobachter (Racial Observer)
primary newspaper of the Nazi Party
• Der Sturmer (The Attacker) – Hitler’s
favourite paper as was owned by a fierce
anti-Semite Julius Streicher
• Music was also censored and had to
conform to the Nazi ideal
• Jazz was banned as it was seen as black
music (ex. Negro Music) and therefore
inferior
• Hitler particularly liked the work of Richard
Wagner, who he thought ‘personified’
Nazism
 Propaganda – Radio & Cinema
• Radio – make radios
accessible/affordable to
everyone to place propaganda in
people’s homes
• People’s Receivers (35 & 72
marks)
• Impact – more radios than people
in Germany
• Cinema – 1934 – all films had to
be approved by Goebbels office
• Ex. Triumph of the Will (1934),
Eternal Jew (1942)
 Propaganda - Sport
• Use sporting events to show German
power, efficiency and Aryan
Superiority
• 1933 – Aryans only policy is
extablished in all German Athletic
associations
• Ex. Lightheavyweight boxing
champion, Erich Seelig, is banned
• Ex. 1936 Berlin Olympics -
Germany won the most gold
medals (33)
Vocab
• Swing Youth
 Impact
• Hitler Myth – estimated that 90% of
Germans admired him
• Day-to-day problems were blamed
on minor party leaders, never Hitler
• 1938 – Sopade claimed that "that
Hitler could count on the agreement
of the majority of the people on two
essential points: 1) he had created
jobs and 2) he had made Germany
strong."
 Impact
• Problem – Hitler began to believe
it himself leading to major military
failures in WW2

• "It depends essentially on me, on my being, on my political skills," he told his

generals on the eve of the war. He stressed, as part of this reasoning, "the fact
that no one else will ever have the trust of the whole German people as I do.
There will never be a man in the future, who has more authority than me. My
being is therefore a huge value factor …No one knows how much longer I will
live. Therefore, it is better to have the conflict now."
 Opposition
• The Swing Youth – a group of young
people who danced to Jazz in private
clubs
• Rejected Nazi uniformity, militarism,
Fuhrer principle
• Resistance
• Men would grow their hair long and
attach a union jack to their jackets
while women wore lipstick and short
skirts
• “Swing Heil” instead of “Seig Heil”
• Spoke English
• 1941 – police crackdown resulted in
300 being arrested and sent to
concentration camps
Vocab
• “Anti-War” Group
• 1938 Putsch
• July Bomb Plot
• White Rose
 Foreign Policy
• Successful foreign policy
• 1936 – Rhineland
• 1938 – Anschluss
• 1938 – Sudetenland
• 1939 – Czechoslovakia
• 1939 – Poland
• 1940 – France
• 1941 – invasion of the USSR
• Failed Foreign Policy
• Defeat in Stalingrad(1943) to
Berlin (1945)
 Army Oppostion – “Anti-
war” Group (Pre-1939)
• “Anti-War” Group – some army officers
who wished to avoid war as Germany
would lose
• Resistance
• 1938 Putsch – led by Hans Olster the plan
was to organize a coup if Hitler drew Germany
close to war.
• Ended with the Munich Agreement and
only had the of some officers, not the
soldiers support
• Impact
• As long as Hitler’s foreign policy was
successful, he was untouchable
• News of these plots were kept secret by the
military
Opposition – War –
post 1942
• After the defeat at Stalingrad
(1943), it became clear that
Germany would lose the war,
opposition grew
• Resistance - Military
• Between 1939-1945, there
were 17 planned assasination
attempts on Hitler’s life by the
military or those within the
government
• The July Bomb Plot
(1944) – failed army
assasination attempt on
Hitler organized by Claus
Von Stauffenburg
 Oppositon – War –
One of the leaflets entitled “Passive Resistance to
post 1942 National Socialism” stated:
• Resistance – Civilian The meaning and goal of passive resistance is to
topple National Socialism, and in this struggle we
• 1942-43 – White
must not recoil from any course, any action,
Rose – organized by whatever its nature. A victory of fascist Germany
students Hans and in this war would have immeasurable frightful
Sophie Scholl consequences. We cannot provide each man with
distributed anti-war the blueprint for his acts, we can only suggest
and anti-Nazi them in general terms. Sabotage in armaments
leaflets promoting plants and war industries, at all gatherings, rallies
passive resistance and organisations of the National Socialist
• 1943 – People’s Party…………….convince all your acquaintances
Court found them of the hopelessness of this war………………and
guilty and ordered urge them to passive resistance.”
their beheading
 Failed Foreign Policy
• April 30,1945 - Ultimately, Hitler’s failed
foreign policy (WW2), as Soviet troops were
500m from his bunker, forced him to commit
suicide
 • What is the most effective method
Conceptual Statement for consolidating and maintaining
power?
• Create a 1st Conceptual Statement using 2-3 of
our DP History Concepts
• Change
• Continuity
• Cause
• Consequence
• Significance
• Perspective
• Helpful Vocab, some should be included:
• Consolidate/maintain
• Force
• Propaganda
• Foreign policy
• Opposition