Dictatorships and the Second World War

1. Conservative Authoritarianism

a. The traditional form of antidemocratic government in European history was

conservative authoritarianism (leaders of such governments tried to prevent major
changes that would undermine the existing social order)

b. Authoritarian leaders depended on obedient bureaucracies, vigilant police departments

and trustworthy armies; liberals, democrats, and socialists prosecuted

c. The old-fashioned authoritarian government were preoccupied with the goal of mere
survival and limited their demands to taxes, army recruits, and passive acceptance

d. The parliamentary regimes that had been founded on the wreckage of empires in 1918
fell one by one and by early 1938 only economically and socially advanced
Czechoslovakia remained true to liberal political ideals

i. The lands lacked a tradition of self-government, with restraint and compromise

ii. Many of these new states were torn by ethnic conflicts that threatened existence

iii. Dictatorship appealed to nationalists and military leaders as a way to repress such
tensions and preserve national unity (middle class weak in Eastern Europe)

e. Although some of the conservative authoritarian regimes adopted certain Hitlerian and
fascist characteristics in the 1930s, their general aims were limited

i. They were more concerned with maintaining the status quo then with forcing
society into rapid change or war; this tradition has continued into our own time

ii. In Hungary, Bela Kun formed a Lenin-style government, but communism in

Hungary was soon crushed by foreign troops, landowners, and hostile peasants

iii. A combination of landowners instituted a semi-authoritarian regime, which

maintained the status quo in the 1920s; Hungary had a parliament with controlled
elections and the peasants did not have the right to vote (landed aristocracy)

iv. In the 1930s the Hungarian government remained conservative and nationalistic
and it was increasingly opposed by a Nazi-like fascist movement, the Arrow
Cross, which demanded radical reform and mobilization of the masses

f. Another example of conservative authoritarianism was newly independent Poland,

where democratic government was overturned in 1926 when General Joseph Pilsudski
 established a military dictatorship; Pilsudski silenced opposition and tried to build a
strong state (supporters were army, major industrialists, and nationalists)

g. Yet another example of conservative authoritarianism was Portugal in western Europe

i. Shaken by military coups and uprisings after a republican revolution in 1910,

Portugal finally got a strong dictator in Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in 1932

ii. Salazar gave the church the strongest possible position in the country, while
controlling the press and outlawing most political activity but there was no
attempt to mobilize the masses or to accomplish great projects (tradition)

2. Totalitarianism or Fascism?

a. While conservative authoritarianism predominated smaller states of Europe by the

mid-1930s, radical dictatorships emerged in the Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy

b. Leaders of the radical dictatorships rejected parliamentary restraint and liberal values;
they exercised unprecedented control over the masses and sought to mobilize them for
constant action (three main approaches to understanding radical dictatorships)

i. The first approach relates the radical dictatorships to the rise of modern total-
itarianism and the second focuses on the idea of fascism as the unifying impulse

ii. The third stresses the limitations of such generalization and uniqueness of regime

c. The concept of totalitarianism emerged in the 1920s and the 1930s and in 1924
Mussolini spoke of the fierce totalitarian will of his movement in Italy; in the 1930s
many exiled writers used the concept of totalitarianism to link Italian and German
fascism with Society communism under a common antiliberal umbrella

i. Early writers believed that modern totalitarianism burst on the scene with the
revolutionary total war effort of 1914 to 1918 (subordinate all institutions)

ii. As stated by French thinker Halevy, the varieties of modern totalitarian tyranny
fascism, Nazism, and communismare related with the nature of modern war

iii. Writers such as Halevy believed that the crucial experience of WW I was carried
further by Lenin and the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war; Lenin showed
how a dedicated minority could make a total effort and achieve victory

iv. Lenin showed how institutions and human rights are subordinated to the needs of
a single group and its leader and provided a model for single-party dictatorship

v. Modern totalitarianism reached maturity in the 1930s in the Stalinist U.S.S.R. and
Nazi Germany, according to this school of interpretation
d. The grandiose vision of total state control broke decisively not only with conservative
authoritarianism but also with nineteenth-century liberalism and democracy; indeed,
totalitarianism was a radical revolt against liberalism as classical liberalism had sought
to limit the power of the state and to protect the sacred rights of the people

e. Liberals stood for rationality, peaceful progress, economic freedom, and a strong
middle class and the totalitarianism believed in will power, preached conflict, and
worshiped violence (individual was infinitely less valuable than the state)

f. Modern totalitarianism was based not on an elite but on people who had become
engaged in the political process, most notably through nationalism and socialism; real
totalitarian states built on mass movements and possessed boundless dynamism

g. Totalitarianism was in the end a permanent revolution, an unfinished revolution, in

which rapid, profound change imposed from on high went on forever (Trotsky)

h. A second group of writers approached radical dictatorships outside the Soviet Union
through the concept of fascism; a term of pride for Mussolini and Hitler, who used it to
describe the supposedly total and revolutionary character of their movements,
fascism was severely criticized by these writers

i. Fascism was linked to reactionary forces, decaying capitalism and domestic class
conflict and Marxists argued that fascism was the way powerful capitalists sought
to manipulate a mass movement capable of destroying the revolutionary working
class and thus protect eh profits to be reaped through war and territorial expansion

ii. Less doctrinaire socialists saw fascism as only one of the several possible ways
for the ruling class to escape from a general crisis of capitalism

iii. Fascist movements all across Europe showed that they shared many
characteristics, including extreme, often expansionist nationalism; an
antisocialism aimed at destroying working-class movements; alliances with
capitalists and landowners; mass parties appealing to the middle class and
peasantry; a dynamic and violent leader, and glorification of war and the military

iv. European fascism remains a product of class conflict, capitalist crisis, and postwar
upheaval in these more recent studies but interpretation has become convincing

i. Historians often adopt a third approach which emphasizes the uniqueness of

developments in a country (challenge interpretations of totalitarianism and fascism)

j. Four tentative judgments concerning these debates seem appropriate

i. Leading schools of interpretation are rather closely linked to the political passions
and the ideological commitments of the age (some liked totalitarian framework)
 ii. The concept of totalitarianism retains real value (Germany and Soviet Union
made an unprecedented total claim on the belief and behavior of their citizens

iii. Antidemocratic, antisocialist movements sprang up all over Europe but only in
Italy and Germany (and some would say Spain) were they able to take power

iv. The problem of Europes radical dictatorships is complex few easy answers exist

2) Stalins Soviet Union

1. From Lenin to Stalin

a. By the spring 1921 after Lenin and the Bolsheviks had won the civil war, in southern
Russia drought combined with the ravages of war to produce one of the worst famines;
the Bolsheviks had destroyed the economy as well as their foes

b. In the face of economic disintegration, riots by peasants and workers, and an open
rebellion by previously pro-Bolsheviks sailors at Kronstadt changed Lenins course

i. In March 1921 Lenin announced the New Economic Plan, which re-established
limited economic freedom in an attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry

ii. With the NEP, Lenin substituted a grain tax on the countrys peasants producers,
who were permitted to sell their surpluses in free markets; peasants were
encouraged to buy as many goods as they could afford from private traders

iii. Heavy industry, railroads, and banks, however, remained wholly nationalized

c. The NEP was shrewd and successful both politically and economically

i. It was a necessary but temporary compromise with the Soviet Union peasantry

ii. Flushed with victory after the revolutionary gains of 1917, the peasants would
have fought to hold onto their land (Lenin realized that in 1921, his government
was not strong enough to take land from the peasants) Brest-Litovsk Treaty

iii. The NEP brought rapid recovery and in 1926 industrial output surpassed levels of
1913 and Soviet peasants were producing almost as much grain as before the war

iv. Counting shorter hours and increased social benefits, workers were living better
than they had lived in the past (as the economy recovered and the government
relaxed its censorship and repression, intense struggle for power began within the
Communist party between stolid Stalin and the flamboyant Trotsky (after 1924)
d. Joseph Dzhugashvili, later known as Stalin, joined the Bolsheviks in 1903 and after
engaging in many revolutionary activities in the southern Transcaucasian area during
the WW I, including a daring bank robbery to get money for the Bolsheviks

e. This raid gained Lenins attention and approval; Stalin in his early writings focused on
the oppression of minority peoples in the Russian Empire (good organizer)

i. Trotsky, a great and inspiring leader who had planned the 1917 takeover and then
created the victorious Red Army, appeared to have all the advantages

ii. Stalin succeeded Lenin because Stalin was more effective at gaining the all-
important support of the party, the only genuine source of power in the state

iii. Rising to general secretary of the partys Central Committee just before Lenins
first stroke in 1922, Stalin used his office to win friends and allies with jobs and
promises and Stalin also won recognition as commissar of nationalities, a key
position in which he governed many of the minorities of the vast Soviet Union

f. The practical Stalin also won because he appeared better able than the brilliant
Trotsky to relate Marxian teaching to Soviet realities in the 1920s

i. As commissar of nationalities he built on Lenins idea of granting minority groups

a certain degree of freedom in culture and language while maintaining rigorous
political control through carefully selected local communists (multinational state)

ii. Stalin developed a theory of socialism in one country that more appealing to the
majority of communists than Trotskys doctrine of permanent revolution

iii. Stalin argued that the Russian-dominated Soviet Union had the ability to build
socialism on its own while Trotsky maintained that socialism in the Soviet Union
could succeed only if revolution occurred quickly throughout Europe

iv. Trotskys views seemed to sell their country short and to promise risky conflicts
with capitalist countries by recklessly encouraging revolutionary movements

v. Stalins willingness to break with the NEP and push socialism at home appealed
to young militants (provided the party with a glimmer of hope against NEP)

g. Stalin achieved absolute power between 1922 and 1927

i. First, Stalin allied with Trotskys personal enemies to crush Trotsky, expelled
from the Soviet Union in 1929 and eventually murdered in Mexico in 1940

ii. Stalin aligned with the moderates, who wanted to go slow at home, to suppress
Trotskys radical followers and third, having defeated all the radicals, he turned
against his allies, the moderates, and destroyed them as well
 iii. Stalins final triumph came at the party congress of December 1927, which
condemned all deviation from the general party line formulated by Stalin

2. The Five-Year Plans

a. The party congress of 1927, which ratified Stalins seizure of power, marked the end of
the NEP and the beginning of the era of socialist five-year plans; the first five-year
plan had staggering economic objectives (total industrial output increases by 250%)

i. Heavy industry, the preferred sector, was to grow even faster (steel production)

ii. Agricultural production was slated to increase by 150 percent and one-fifth of the
peasants in the Soviet Union were scheduled to give up private plots and join
socialist collective farms (by 1930 economic and social change swept the country)

b. Stalin unleashed his second revolution for a variety of interrelated reasons

i. There were ideological considerations and since the country had recovered
economically and their rule was secure, they burned to stamp out the NEPs
private traders, independent artisans, and few well-to-do peasants

ii. A new socialist offensive seemed necessary if the economy were to grow rapidly

iii. There were political considerations and internationally, there was the old problem
of catching up with the advanced and capitalist nations of the West

iv. Domestically, there was what communist writers of the 1920s called the cursed
problemthe problem of the peasants; for centuries, the peasantry had wanted to
own the land and finally they had it and sooner or later, the communists reasoned
that peasants would become conservative capitalists and pose a threat to regime

v. Therefore, Stalin decided on a preventive war against the peasantry (absolutism)

c. The war was collectivizationthe forcible consolidation of individual peasants farms

into large, state-controlled enterprises and beginning in 1929, peasants all over the
Soviet Union were ordered to give up their land and join these collective farms

d. As for the kulaks, the better-off peasants, Stalin instructed party workers to liquidate
them as a class and stripped of land, the kulaks were generally not permitted to join
the collective farms and many starved or were deported to forced-labor camps; the
term kulak soon meant any peasant who opposed the new system

e. Forced collectivization of the peasants led to economic and human disaster

 i. Large numbers of peasants slaughtered their animals and burned their cops in
sullen, hopeless protest, and between 1929 and 1933, the number of livestock fell
by at least half; nor were the state-controlled collective farms more productive

ii. The output of grain barely increased between 1928 and 1938 (identical to 1913)

iii. Communist economists had expected collectivized agriculture to pay for new
factories but instead, the state had to invest heavily in agriculture and was unable
to make any substantial financial contribute to industrial development at first

iv. Collectivization created human-made famine in 1932 and 1933 (many perished)

f. Collectivization was a political victory of sorts for the Soviet Union government

i. Regimented and indoctrinated as employees of the all-powerful state, the peasants

were no longer even a potential political threat to Stalin and the Communist party

ii. The state was assured of grain for bread for urban workers, who were much more
important politically than the peasants (collective farmers had to meet quotas)

g. The industrial side of the five-year plans was more successfulquite spectacular

i. The output of industry doubled in the first five-year plan and doubled in the
second; No other major country had ever achieved such rapid industrial growth

ii. Heavy industry led the way, consumer industry grew slowly, and steel production
(Stalin means man of steel) increased roughly 500 percent from 1928 to 1937

h. Industrial growth also went hand in hand with urban development and more than
twenty-five million people migrated to cities during the 1930s in the Soviet Union

i. The great industrialization drive was achieved at enormous sacrifice and the
creation of new factories required a great increase in total investment and a sharp
decrease in consumption (few nations had ever invested more than one-sixth of
their net national income); Soviet planners decreed more than one-third of the net
income be devoted and that meant money being collect by hidden sales taxes

ii. There was therefore no improvement in average standard of living and average
wages apparently purchases only about half as many goods in 1932 as in 1928

i. Two other factors contributed to rapid growth: labor discipline and foreign engineers

i. Between 1930 and 1932, trade unions lost most of their power and the
government could assign workers to any job and individuals could not move
 ii. Foreign engineers were hired to plan and construct many of the new factories and
highly skilled American engineers were particularly important until newly trained
Soviet experts began to replace them after 1932 (surge of socialist industry)

3. Life in Stalinist Society

a. The aim of Stalins five-year plans was to create a new kind of society and human
personality as well as a strong industrial economy and a powerful army for the state

b. Once everything was owned by the state, they believed, a socialist society and a new
kind of human being would inevitably emerge and this had both good and bad aspects

i. The most frightening aspect of society was brutal, unrestrained police terrorism;
first directed against the peasants after 1929, terror was increasingly turned on
leading Communists, powerful administrators, and ordinary people for no reason

ii. In the early 1930s, the top members of the party and government were Stalins
obedient servants but there was some grumbling in the party

iii. After Stalins wife complained at a small gathering in November 1932, she died
that same night, apparently by her own hand and in late 1934 Stalins number-two
man, Sergei Kirov, was suddenly and mysteriously murdered

iv. In August 1936, sixteen prominent old Bolsheviks confessed to all manner of
plots against Stalin in spectacular public trials in Moscow and then in 1937 lesser
party officials and newer henchmen were arrested; in addition to party members,
union officials, managers, intellectuals, army officers, and citizens were struck

v. In all, at least eight million people were probably arrested

c. Stalins mass purges were baffling and many explanations have been given for them

i. Possibly Stalin believed that the old Communists, like the peasants under NEP,
were a potential threat to be wiped out in a preventative attack

ii. Many leading Communists confessed to the crimes probably in order to do a last
service to the Party, the party they loved even when it was wrong

iii. Some prisoners were cruelly tortured and warned that their loved ones would also
die if they did not confess (Stalins bloodbath weakened the government/army)

iv. Others see the terror as an aspect of the fully developed totalitarian state, which
must by its nature always be fighting real or imaginary enemies (message)

d. Another aspect of life in the 1930s was constant propaganda and indoctrination
 i. Party activists lectured workers in factories and peasants on collective farms,
while newspapers, films, and radio broadcasts endlessly recounted achievements

ii. Art and literature became highly political (engineers of human minds)

iii. Writers who could effectively combine creativity and political propaganda often
lived better than top members of the political elite (glorified Russian nationalism)

iv. Stalin seldom appeared in public, but his presence was everywhere and although
the government persecuted religion and turned churches into museums of
atheism, the state had both Marxism-Leninism and Joseph Stalin

e. Life was hard in Stalins Soviet Union and mass of people lived primarily on black
bread and wore old, shabby clothing (constant shortages in the stores and in housing)

f. A relatively lucky family received one room for all its members and shared both a
kitchen and a toilet with others on the same floor as that family (average 4 per room)

g. Idealism and ideology had real appeal for many communists, who saw themselves
heroically building the worlds first socialist society while capitalism crumbled

h. On a more practical level, Soviet workers did receive some important social benefits,
such as old-age pensions, free medical services, free education and day-care centers

i. The keys to improving ones position were specialized skills and technical education

i. Industrialization required massive numbers of train experts, such as skilled

workers, engineers and plant managers (state provided tremendous incentives)

ii. The technical elite joined with the political and artistic elites in a new upper class,
who members were rich, powerful, and insecure, especially during the purges

iii. Yet the possible gains of moving up outweighed the risks of the purges

4. Mobilizing Women in the Soviet Union

a. Marxists had traditionally believed that both capitalism and the middle-class husband
exploited women and the Russian Revolution of 1917 immediately proclaimed
complete equality of rights for women (in the 1920s divorce and abortion available)

b. Women were encouraged to work outside the home and liberate themselves sexually

c. After Stalin came to power, sexual and familial liberation was played down and the
most lasting changes for women involved work and education
 i. Young women were constantly told that they had to be fully equal to men, that
they could and should do anything men could do (peasant women enjoyed
equality on collective farms with the advent of the five-year plans)

ii. Most of the opportunities open to men through education were also open to
women and determined women pursued their studies and entered the ranks of the
better-paid specialists in industry and science (medicine became womens job)

iii. Stalinist society gave women great opportunities but demanded great sacrifices

d. The vast majority of women simply had to work outside because wages were so low
that its was almost impossible for a family to live only on the husbands wages

e. Most of the Soviet men in the 1930s still considered the home and the children the
womans responsibility (men continued to monopolize the best jobs)

3) Mussolini and Fascism in Italy

1. The Seizure of Power

a. In the early twentieth century Italy was a liberal state with civil rights and a
constitutional monarchy and on the eve of WW I, the parliamentary regime finally
granted universal male suffrage but serious problems existed in Italy

i. Much of the Italian population was still poor and many peasants were more
attached to their villages and local interests than to the national state

ii. The papacy, many devout Catholics, conservatives, and landowners remained
strongly opposed to liberal institutions and to the heirs of Cavour and Garibaldi,
the middle-class lawyers and politicians who ran the country for their own benefit

iii. Class differences were also extreme and a revolutionary socialists movement
developed and only in Italy did the radical left win go the Socialist party gain the
leadership as early as 1912 (Socialists party from Italy opposed war in beginning)

b. The war worsened the political situation (having fought on the side of the Allies for
purposes of territorial expansions, the parliamentary government bitterly disappointed
Italian nationalists with Italys modest gains at Versailles; no social and land reform)

i. The Russian Revolution inspired and energized Italys revolutionary socialist

movement and the radical workers and peasants began occupying factories and
seizing land in 1920, scaring and mobilizing the property-owning class

ii. After the war, the pope lifted his ban on participation by Catholics in Italian
politics and a strong Catholic party quickly emerged and thus by 1921
 revolutionary socialists, antiliberal conservatives, and property owners were all
opposedthrough for different reasonto the liberal parliamentary government

c. Into the crosscurrents of unrest and fear stepped Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)

i. Influenced by antidemocratic cults of violent action, the young Mussolini urged

that Italy join the Allies, or which he was expelled from the Socialist party

ii. Returning home after being wounded at the front in 1917, Mussolini began
organizing bitter war veterans into a band of fascists (a union of forces)

iii. Mussolinis program was a radical combination of nationalists and socialists

demands, including territorial expansion, benefits for workers, and land reform

iv. It competed directly with the well-organized Socialist party and failed to get off;
when Mussolini saw that his violent verbal assaults on rival Socialists won him
growing support from conservatives and middle classes, he shifted gears in 1920

d. Mussolini and his growing private army of Clack Shirts began to grow violent;
typically fascists would sweep down on a few isolated Socialist organizers but soon
socialist newspapers, union halls and local Socialist headquarters were destroyed

e. Mussolinis toughs pushed Socialists out of the city governments of northern Italy

f. Mussolini allowed his followers to convince themselves that they were not just
opposing the reds but also making a real revolution of their own (dynamic)

g. With the government breaking down in 1922, Mussolini stepped forward as the savior
of order and property and striking a conservative note in his speeches and gaining the
sympathetic neutrality of army leaders, Mussolini demanded the resignation of the
existing government and his own appointment by the king

h. Victor Emmanuel II asked Mussolini to form a new cabinet, Mussolini seized power
legally and was granted dictatorial authority for one year by king and parliament

2. The Regime in Action

a. Mussolini became dictator on the strength of Italians rejection of parliamentary

government coupled with fears of Soviet-style revolution (power not clear until 1924)
Some of his dedicated supports pressed for a second revolution but Mussolinis
ministers included conservatives, moderates, and reform-minded Socialists

b. A new electoral law was passed giving two-thirds of the representatives in the
parliament to the party that won the most votes, a change that allowed the Fascists and
their allies to win an overwhelming majority in the elections of 1924
 c. Shortly after, five of Mussolinis fascist kidnapped and murdered Giacomo Matteotti,
the leader of the Socialists in the parliament (opposition demanded violence cease)

d. Declaring his desire to make the nation Fascist, he imposed a series of repressive
measures; freedom of the press was abolished, elections were fixed, and the
government ruled by decrees (Mussolini arrested his political opponents) and
moreover, he created a fascist youth movement, fascist labor unions/organizations

e. By the end of 1926, Italy was a one-party dictatorship under Mussolinis leadership but
Mussolini did not complete the establishment of a modern totalitarian state

i. His Fascist party never destroyed the old power structure, as the communists did
in the Soviet Union, or succeeded in dominating it, as the Nazis did in Germany

ii. Interested primarily in personal power, Mussolini was content to compromise

with the old conservative classes that controlled the army, the economy, and state

iii. Mussolini never tried to purge these classes and controlled and propagandized
labor but left big business to regulate itself (no land reform occurred in Italy)

f. Mussolini also drew increasing support from the Catholic church and in the Lateran
Agreement of 1929, he recognized the Vatican as a tiny independent state and he
agreed to give the church heavy financial support (pope urged Italians to support)

g. Mussolini abolished divorce and told women to say at home and produce children and
to promote that goal, he decreed a special tax on bachelors in 1934 and in 1938 women
were limited by law to a maximum of 10 percent of the better-paying job in industry
and government (no change in attitude toward Italian women under fascism)

h. Mussolinis government did not pass racial laws until 1938 and did not persecute Jews
savagely until late in the Second World War, when Italy was under Nazi control

i. Nor did Mussolini establish a ruthless state police (never a totalitarian government)

4) Hitler and Nazism in Germany

1. The Roots of Nazism

a. Nazism grew out of many complex developments: extreme nationalism and racism;
these two ideas captured the mind of the young Hitler who dominated Nazism

i. Adolf Hitler was born in Austria but after dropping out of high school following
the death of his father he left for Vienna to become an artist

ii. Denied admission to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, the dejected Hitler
stayed in Vienna and found many beliefs that guided his later life
 iii. In Vienna Hitler soaked up extreme German nationalism (Austro-German
nationalists believed Germans to be a superior people and natural rulers of central
Europe; advocated union with Germany and expulsion of inferior people)

b. Hitler was deeply impressed by Viennas mayor, Karl Lueger (Christian socialist)

i. With the help of the Catholic trade unions, he had succeeded in winning the
support of the little people of Vienna for an attack on capitalism and liberalism

ii. Lueger showed Hitler the potential of anti-capitalist and antiliberal propaganda

iii. From Lueger and others, Hitler absorbed virulent anti-Semitism, racism, and
hatred of the Slavs (particularly inspired by racism of Lanz von Liebenfels)

iv. Liebenfels stressed the superiority of Germanic races, the inevitability of racial
conflict, and the inferiority of the Jews (anticipated policies of the Nazi state)

c. Anti-Semitism and racism became Hitlers most passionate convictions; the Jews, he
claimed, directed an international conspiracy of finance capitalism and Marxian
socialism against German culture, German unity, and the German race

d. After he moved to Munich in 1913 to avoid the draft, Hitler greeted the outbreak of the
First World War as salvation and the struggle and discipline of war gave life meaning
and Hitler served bravely as a dispatch carrier on the western front

e. When Germany was suddenly defeated in 1918, Hitlers world was shattered as war
was his reason for living; convinced that Jews and Marxists had stabbed Germany in
the back, he vowed to fight on and his speeches began to attract attention

i. In later 1919 Hitler joined a tiny extremist group in Munich called the German
Workers party and in addition to denouncing Jews, Marxists, and democrats, the
German Workers party promised unity under a German national socialism
which would abolish injustices of capitalism and create a peoples community

ii. By 1921 Hitler had gained absolute control of this small but growing party and
Hitler was already a master of mass propaganda and political showmanship

iii. Hitlers most effective tool was the mass rally, a kind of political revival meeting
and when he arrived he would work the audience with attacks on the Versailles
treaty, the Jews, the war profiteers, and Germanys Weimar Republic

f. Party membership multiplied tenfold after early 1922 and in late 1923 Hitler decided
on an armed uprising in Munich; Hitler found an ally in General Ludendorff
 g. After Hitler had overthrown the Bavarian government, Ludendorff was supposed to
march on Berlin with Hitlers support but the plot was poorly organized and it was
crushed by the police and back up by the army, in less than a day

h. Hitler was arrested, tried, and sentenced to five years in prison

2. Hitlers Road to Power

a. At his trial, Hitler violently denounced the Weimar Republic and skillfully presented
his own program and in doing so, gained enormous publicity and attention; Hitler
concluded that he had to undermine, rather than overthrow, the government, that he
had to used its democratic framework to intimidate the opposition and come to power

i. Hitler forced his more violent supporters to accept his new strategy and he used
his brief prison term (released in less than a year) to dictate Mein Kampf

ii. There he expounded on his basic themes: race, with a stress on anti-Semitism;
living space, with a sweeping vision of war and conquered territory; and the
leader-dictator (Fuhrer) with unlimited, arbitrary power

b. In the years of prosperity and relative stability between 1924 and 1929, Hitler
concentrated on building his National Socialist German Workers party, or Nazi party

i. By 1928 the party had 100,000 highly disciplined members under Hitlers
absolute control and to appeal to the middle classes, Hitler de-emphasized the
anti-capitalist elements of national socialism and vowed to fight Bolshevism

ii. The Nazi were still a small group in 1928 and only received 2.6 percent of the
vote in the general elections and twelve seats in the Reichstag (parliament)

iii. There the Nazi deputies pursued the legal strategy of using democracy to destroy
democracy (Hitlers talented future minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels)

c. In 1929 the Great Depression began striking down economic prosperity as

unemployment jumped from 1.3 million in 1929 to 5 million in 1930; industrial
production fell by between 1929 and 1932 (by 1932, 43 percent unemployed); No
factor contributed more to Hitlers success than the economic crisis (promises)

d. Hitler pitched his speeches especially to the middle and lower middle class business
people, office workers, artisans and peasants (left conservative/moderate parties)

e. Simultaneously, Hitler worked hard to win the support of two key elite groups

i. Hitler promised big business leaders that he would restore their depression-
shattered profits, by breaking Germanys labor movement even reducing wages
 ii. He reassured top army leaders that the Nazis would overturn the Versailles
settlement and rearm Germany (successfully followed Mussolinis fascist recipe)

iii. Hitler won at least the tacit approval of powerful conservatives

f. The Nazis appealed strongly to German youth (mass movement of young Germans)

i. Hitler and most of his top aides were much younger than other leading German
politicians (National Socialism is the organized will of the youth)

ii. National recovery, exciting and rapid change, and personal advancement: these
were the appeals of Nazism to the millions and millions of German youth

g. In the election of 1930, the Nazis won 6.5 million votes and 107 seats, which made
them second in strength only to the Social Democrats, the moderate socialists; as
economic and political situation deteriorated, Hitler and the Nazis kept promising that
they would bring economy recovery/national unity (largest party in Reichstag 1932)

h. Another reason Hitler came to power was breakdown of democratic government as

early as May 1930; unable to gain support of a majority in the Reichstag, Chancellor
Heinrich Bruning convinced the president General Hindenburg, to authorize rule by
decree (before, only used in emergency but Bruning intended to use it indefinitely)

i. Bruning was determined to overcome the economic crisis by cutting back government
spending and forcing down prices and wages (intensified economic collapse and
convinced lower middle classes that the republican countrys leaders were corrupt)

j. After President Hindenburg forced Bruning to resign in May 1932, the new
government, headed by Franz von Papen, continued to rule by decree

k. The continuation of the struggle between the Social Democrats and Communists was
another aspect of the breakdown of democratic government

i. The Communists refused to cooperate with the Social Democrats even after the
elections of 1932; German Communists were blinded by the hatred of Socialists
and by ideology: the Communists believed that fascism was reactionary

ii. Hitlers rise represented the last agonies of monopoly capitalism and that a
communist revolution would soon follow his taking of power

iii. Socialist leaders pleaded for at least a temporary alliance with the Communists to
block Hitler but to no avail and perhaps the Weimar Republic had gone too far

l. Finally, there was Hitlers skill as a politician and as a master of mass propaganda and
psychology, he had written in Mein Kampf that the masses were the driving force of
the most important changes in this world and were driven by fanaticism
 m. To arouse such hysterical fanaticism, he believed that all propaganda had to be limited
to a few simple, endlessly repeated slogans (passionate, irrational oratory)

n. At the same time, Hitler continued to excel at dirty, back-room politics and in the
complicated in-fighting in 1932, he succeeded in gaining additional support from key
people in army and big business (thought they could use Hitler for own advantage)

o. There would be only two other National Socialists and nine solid conservatives as
ministers, and in such a coalition government, they reasoned, Hitler could be used and
controlled; on January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg

3. The Nazi State and Society

a. Hitler moved rapidly and skillfully to establish an unshakable dictatorship

i. His first step was to continue using terror and threats to gain more power while
maintaining legal appearances; he immediately called for new elections and
applied the enormous power of the government to restrict his opponents

ii. In the midst of a violent electoral campaign, the Reichstag building was partly
destroyed by fire and Hitler screamed that the Communist party was responsible

iii. On the strength of this accusation, he convinced President Hinenburg to sign

dictatorial emergency acts that practically abolished the freedom of speech and
assembly as well as most of the basic personal liberties

iv. When the Nazis won only 44 percent of the vote in the elections, Hitler quickly
outlawed the Communist party and arrested its parliamentary representatives

b. On March 23, 1933, the Nazis pushed through the Reichstag the so-called Enabling
Act, which gave Hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years (only Social
Democrats voted against this bill, for Hitler blackmailed the Center Catholic party)

i. Hitler and the Nazis moved to smash or control all independent organizations

ii. Hitler and his propagandists constantly proclaimed that their revolution was legal
and constitutional and this stress on legality, coupled with divide-and-conquer
techniques, disarmed the opposition until it was too late for effective resistance

iii. The systematic subjugation of independent organizations and the apparent

creation of a totalitarian state had massive repercussions; the Social Democratic
and Center parties were soon dissolved and Germany became a one-party state

iv. Only the Nazi party was legal, elections were shams, Hitler and the Nazis took
over the government bureaucracy that was intact, and created a series of
overlapping Nazi part organizations responsible solely to Hitler
 v. The resulting system of dual government was riddled with rivalries, contra-
dictions, and inefficiencies; Nazi state lacked the all-compassing unity

c. The fractured system suited Hitler as he could play the established bureaucracy against
his personal party government and maintain his freedom of action

d. In the economic sphere, on big decision outlawed strikes and abolished independent
labor unions, which were replaced by the Nazi Labor Front

i. Professional peopledoctors, lawyers, teachers, engineerssaw their previously

independent organizations swallowed up in Nazi organizations; publishing houses
were put under Nazi control, and universities and writers were quickly controlled

ii. Democratic, socialist, and Jewish literature was put on ever-growing blacklists

iii. Modern art and architecture were prohibited and life became anti-intellectual

e. Only the army retained independence, and Hitler moved brutally and skillfully to
establish his control there, too; he realized that the army as well as big business was
suspicious of the Nazi storm troops (SA), the quasi-military band of three million
toughs in brown shirts who had fought communists and beaten up Jews

i. The storm troopers expected top positions in the army and even talked of a
second revolution against capitalism; Hitler decided that the SA leaders had to
be eliminated and on the night of June 30, 1934, Hitlers elite personal guard (SS)
arrested and shot without trial a thousand SA leaders and political enemies

ii. Army leaders and President Hindenburg responded to the purge with
congratulatory telegrams and shortly thereafter army leaders whore a binding oath

iii. The SS grew rapidly and under its methodical, inhuman leader, Heinrich
Himmler, the SS joined with the political police, the Gestapo, to expand its
network of special courts and concentration camps; no one was safe

f. From the beginning, Jews were a special object of Nazi persecution and by the end of
1934, most Jewish lawyers, doctors, professors, civil servants, and musicians had lost
their jobs and the right to practice their professions; in 1935 the infamous Nuremberg
Laws classified as Jewish as anyone having at least one Jewish grandparent and
deprived Jews of all rights of citizenship (by 1938 of Germanys Jews had left)

g. Following the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a young Jewish boy

trying desperately to strike out at persecution, the attack on Jews accelerated

h. A well-organized wave of violence destroyed homes, synagogues, and businesses, after

which German Jews were rounded up and made to pay for the damage
 i. It became very difficult for Jews to leave Germany; many Germans went along or
looked the other way reflecting strong popular support Hitlers government enjoyed

4. Hitlers Popularity

a. Hitler had promised the masses economic recoverywork and breadand he did

i. Breaking with Brunings do-nothing policies, Hitler immediately launched a large

public works program to pull Germany out of the depression

ii. Work began on superhighways, offices, gigantic sports stadiums, and public
housing; in 1936 Germany turned toward rearmament, and government spending
began to concentrate on the military (unemployment dropped steadily)

iii. By 1938 there was a shortage of workers, and women eventually took many jobs
previously denied them by the antifeminist Nazis (everyone had to work and
between 1932 and 1938 standard of living for the worker increased moderately

iv. The profits of business rose sharply and economic recovery was tangible evidence
in their daily lives that the excitement and dynamism of Nazi rule was positive

b. For masses of ordinary German citizens, who were not Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Jehovahs
Witnesses, communists, or homosexuals, Hitlers government meant greater equality
and more opportunities (position of traditional German elites strong)

c. Barriers between classes were generally high and Hitlers rule introduced changes that
lowered barriers (stiff educational requirements favoring well-to-do relaxed)

d. The new Nazi elite included many young and poorly educated dropouts and Nazis
tolerated privilege and wealth only as long as they served the needs of the party

e. Millions of modest middle-class and lower-middle-class people felt that Germany was
becoming more open and equal, as Nazi propagandists constantly claimed

f. It is significant that the Nazis shared with the Italian fascists the stereotypic view of
women as housewives and mothers (pressure of war mobilized German women)

g. Hitlers rapid nationalism continued to appeal to Germans after 1933 and since the
wars against Napoleon, many Germans had believed in a special mission for them

h. When Hitler went from one foreign triumph to another and a great German empire
seemed within reach, the majority of the population was delighted

i. Not all Germans supported Hitler, however, and a number of German groups actively
resisted him after 1933 (tens of thousands of political enemies were imprisoned)
 j. Opponents of the Nazis pursued various goals and under totalitarian conditions they
were never unified (communists and social democrats in the trade unions); after 1935,
a second group do opponents arose in the Catholic and Protestant churches; finally in
1938, some high-ranking army officers plotted against him, unsuccessfully

5) Nazi Expansion and the Second World War

1. Aggression and Appeasement, 1933-1939

a. When Hitler was weak, he righteously proclaimed that he intended to overturn the
unjust system established by the treaties of Versailles and Locarno (legal means)

i. As Hitler grew stronger and as other leaders showed willingness to compromise,

he increased his demands and finally began attacking his independent neighbors

ii. Hitler realized that his aggressive policies had to be carefully camouflaged at first,
for Germanys army was limited by the Treaty of Versailles to only 100,00 men;
conquest of living space in the East and its ruthless Germanization had dangers

iii. To avoid such threats, Hitler loudly proclaimed his peaceful intentions to all

iv. Hitler still felt strong enough to walk out of a sixty-nation disarmament
conference and withdrawn from the League of Nations in October of 1933

b. Following the action, met with widespread approval at home, Hitler moved to
incorporate independent Austria into a greater Germany; Austrian Nazis climaxed an
attempted overthrow by murdering the Austrian chancellor in July 1934 but failed to
take power because a worried Mussolini mass his troops and threatened to fight

c. When in March 1935 Hitler established a general military draft and declared the
unequal disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles null and void, other
countries appeared to understand the danger (France, Italy, Britain warned Germany)

i. The emerging united front against Hitler quickly collapsed and of crucial
importance, Britain adopted a policy of appeasement, granting Hitler everything
he could reasonable want (and more) in order to avoid a war

ii. The first step was an Anglo-German naval agreement in June 1935 that broke
Germanys isolation and the second step came in March 1936 when Hitler
suddenly marched his armies into the demilitarized Rhineland (violating treaties)

iii. Hitler had ordered his troops to retreat if France resisted militarily but an
uncertain France would not move without British support and the occupation of
German soil by German armies seemed right to Britain (psychological defeat)
 iv. British appeasement, which practically dictated French policy, lasted far in 1939
and was motivated by British feelings of guilt toward Germany and the pacifism
of a population still horrified by the memory of the First World War

v. Many powerful conservatives in Britain underestimated Hitler and believed that

Soviet communism was the real danger and that Hitler could be used to stop it

d. The Soviet Union watched developments suspiciously as Hitler found powerful allies

i. In 1935 Mussolini decided that imperial expansion was needed to revitalize

Italian fascism and attacked the independent African kingdom of Ethiopia

ii. Western powers and the League of Nations condemned Italian aggression without
saving Ethiopia from defeat and Hitler (secretly supplied Ethiopia) supported Italy
energetically and thereby overcame Mussolinis lingering doubts about the Nazis

iii. The result in 1936 was an agreement on close cooperation between Italy and
Germany, the so-called Rome-Berlin Axis and Japan soon joined the Axis alliance

iv. Germany and Italy intervened in the long, complicated Spanish Civil War, where
their support eventually helped General Francisco Francos fascist movement
defeat republican Spain (Spains only official aid came from the U.S.S.R)

e. In late 1937 while proclaiming peaceful intentions to the British and gullible prime
minister, Neville Chamberlain, Hitler told his generals his real plans; his unshakable
decision to crush Austria and Czechoslovakia at the earliest possible moment as the
first step in his long-contemplated drive to the east for extra living space

i. By threatening Austria with invasion, Hitler forced the Austrian chancellor in

March 1938 to put local Nazis in control of the government and Austria became
two more provinces of Greater Germany in March of 1938

ii. Hitler began demanding that the pro-Nazi, German-speaking minority of western
Czechoslovakiathe Sudetenlandbe turned over to Germany (but
Czechoslovakia was prepared to defend as France had been its ally since 1924
and if France fought, the Soviet Union was pledge to help)

iii. In September 1938 negotiations to which the U.S.S.R. was not invited,
Chamberlain and the French agreed with Hitler that the Sudetenland should be
ceded to Germany and sold out by Western powers, Czechoslovakia gave in

f. Confirmed once again in this opinion of the Western democracies as weak and racially
degenerate, Hitler accelerate his aggression and in a violation of his assurances that
Sudetenland was his last territorial demand, Hitlers armies occupied the Czech lands
in March 1939, while Slovakia became a puppet state
 g. When Hitler used the question of German minorities in Danzig as a pretext to confront
Poland, a suddenly militant Chamberlain declared that Britain and France would fight
if Hitler attacked his eastern neighbor (Hitler decided to press on)

h. Hitler and Stalin signed a ten-year Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact in August 1939
whereby each dictator promised to remain neutral if the other became involved in war;
an attached protocol divided eastern Europe into German and Soviet zones in the
event of a political territorial reorganization (total secret protocol)

i. Stalin had remained distrustful of Western intentions and on September 1, 1939,

German armies and warplanes smashed into Poland from three sides

j. Two days later, Britain and France, finally true to their word, declared war on
Germany; the Second World War had begun

2. Hitlers Empire, 1939-1942

a. Hitlers armies crushed Poland in four weeks using a blitzkrieg or lightning war

i. While the Soviet Union took the eastern half of Poland and the Baltic states of
Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, French and British armies dug in in the west

ii. In Spring 1940 after occupying Denmark, Norway, and Holland, German columns
broke through southern Belgium, split the Franco-British forces, and trapped the
entire British army on the beaches of Dunkirk (lightning war struck again)

b. France was taken by the Nazis and the marshal Henri-Philippe Petain formed a new
French government (Vichy government) to accept the defeat and German armies
occupied most of France (By July 1940 Italy was an ally and Soviet Union a neutral)

c. Only Britain led by the uncompromising Winston Churchill remained unconquered and
Churchill proved to be one of historys greatest wartime leaders, rallying the British
with stirring speeches, infectious confidence, and bulldog determination

i. Germany sought to gain control of the air and the Battle of Britain, up to a
thousand German planes attacked British airfields and key factories in a single
day, dueling with British defenders high in the skies (heavy losses on both sides)

ii. Hitler changed his strategy in September and turned from military objectives to
indiscriminate bombing of British cities in an attempt to break British morale

iii. British factories increased production of their excellent fighter planes, anti-aircraft
defense improved with the help of radar and in September and October 1940,
Britain was beating Germany three to one in air war (no possibility of invasion)
d. The most reasonable German strategy would have been to attack Britain through the
eastern Mediterranean, taking Egypt and the Suez Canal and pinching off Britains
supply of oil and Mussolinis defeats in Greece had drawn Hitler into the Balkans
where Germany had conquered Greece and Yugoslavia while forcing Hungary,
Rumania, and Bulgaria into alliances with Germany by April 1941

i. By late 1940 Hitler decided on his next move and in June 1941 German armies
suddenly attacked the Soviet Union along a vast front and Hitlers decision was a
wild, irrational gamble epitomizing the self-destructive ambitions of Nazism

ii. Faithfully fulfilling all obligations under the Nazi-Soviet pact and even ignoring
warnings of impending invasion, Stalin was caught off guard

iii. By October 1941 Leningrad was practically surrounded but when a severe winter
struck German armies, the invaders stopped as they wore summer uniforms

e. Engaged in a general but undeclared war against China since 1937, Japans rulers had
increasingly come into diplomatic conflict with the United States

i. When the Japanese occupied French Indochina in July 1941, the United States
retaliated by cutting off sales of oil products and tension mounted further and on
December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii

ii. Hitler immediately declared war on the United State, without treaty obligations

iii. When Japanese forces advanced swiftly into Southeast Asia, Hitler and his
European allies continued the two-front war against the Soviet Union and Great
Britain and not until late 1942 did the Nazis suffer their first major defeats

f. Hitler and the top Nazi leadership began building their New Order and they
continued their efforts until their final collapse in 1945

i. Hitlers New Order was based on the guiding principle of Nazi totalitarianism:
racial imperialism and Nordic peoples (Dutch, Norwegians, and Danes) received
preferential treatment, for they were racially related to the Germans

ii. The French, an inferior Latin people, occupied the middle position and were
heavily taxed to support the Nazi war effort but were tolerated as a race

iii. Once Nazi reverses began to mount in late 1942, all the occupied territories of
western and northern Europe were exploited with increasing intensity

iv. Slavs in the conquered territories to the east were treated with harsh hatred as
sub-humans and at the height of success in 1941 to 1942, Hitler planned for the
Poles, Ukrainians, and Russian to be enslaved and forced to die out
 v. Himmler and the SS in parts of Poland arrested and evacuated Polish peasants to
create a German mass settlement space; the Polish workers and Soviet prisoners
of war were transported to Germany then systematically worked to death

vi. The conditions of Soviet slave labor in German were so harsh that four out of five
Soviet prisoners did not survive the Second World War

g. Jews were condemned to extermination, along with Gypsies, Jehovahs Witnesses, and
captured communists (by 1939 German Jews had lost all their civil rights)

i. In Poland, Jews from all over Europe were concentrated in ghettos, compelled to
swear the Jewish star, and turned into slave laborers and by late 1941, Himmlers
SS began to carry out the final solution of the Jewish question (Jews murdered)

ii. All over Hitlers empire, Jews were systematically arrested, packed onto freight
trains, and dispatched to extermination camps (concentration camps)

h. At camps, the victims were taken by force or deception to shower rooms, which
were actually gas chambers (first perfected in the execution of seventy thousand
mentally ill Germans between 1938 and 1941) permitted rapid, hideous, and
thoroughly bureaucratized mass murder (people choked to death on poison gas)

i. Body parts were used and at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most infamous of the Nazi death
factories, as many as twelve thousand humans were slaughtered each day

j. The extermination of European Jews was the ultimate monstrosity of Nazi racism and
racial imperialism; by 1945, six million Jews had been murdered

3. The Grand Alliance

a. While the Nazis built their savage empire, the Allies faced the hard fact that change,
rather than choice, had brought them together (only the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor and Hitlers immediate declaration of war had overwhelmed the isolation)

i. The Allies overcame their mutual suspicions and built an unshakable alliance on
the quicksand of accident; by means of three interrelated policies they succeeded

ii. President Roosevelt accepted Churchills contention that the United States should
concentrate first on defeating Hitler and only after victory in Europe would the
United States turn toward the Pacific for on all-out attack on Japan (lesser threat)

iii. Americas policy of Europe first helped solidify the anti-Hitler coalition

b. Second, within the European framework the Americans and the British put immediate
military needs first and avoided conflicts that might have split the alliance until after
 c. To further encourage mutual trust, the Allies adopted the principle of the
unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan (cemented the Grand Alliance
because it denied Hitler any hope of dividing his foes; this also meant that victorious
allies would come together to divide all of Germany, and most of the Continent

d. The United State geared up rapidly for all-out war production and drew heavily on a
generally cooperative Latin America for resources (50 billion dollars given total)

e. Too strong to lose and too weak to win standing alone, Britain continued to make a
great contribution and the economy was totally mobilized and the sharing of burdens
through rationing and heavy taxes on war profits maintained social harmony

f. As for the Soviet Union, in the face of German advance, whole factories an
populations were successfully evacuated to eastern Russia and Siberia, war production
was reorganized and expanded, and the Red Army was well supplied

g. The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union were aided by a growing resistance
movement against the Nazis throughout Europe, even in Germany; after the U.S.S.R.
was invaded in June 1941, communists throughout Europe took the lead in the under-
ground resistance, joined by a growing number of patriots and Christians

4. The Tide of Battle

a. The Germans renewed their offensive against he Soviet Union in July 1942 and

i. They drove toward the southern city of Stalingrad in attempt to cripple

communications and seize crucial oil fields of Baku (occupied the ruined city)

ii. In November 1942, Soviet armies counterattacked, rolled over Rumanian and
Italian troops, and surrounding the entire German Sixth Army of 300,000 men and
by January 1943, only 123,000 soldiers were left to surrender (refused to retreat)

b. In late 1942 the tide also turned in the Pacific and in North Africa and by late spring
1942, Japan had established a great empire in East Asia (appeals to local nationalists
using propaganda and many preferred Japans Greater Asian Co-prosperity Sphere)

i. In the Battle of Coral Sea in May 1942, Allied naval and air power stooped
Japanese advance and also relived Australia from the threat of invasion; this
victory was followed by the Battle of Midway island where American pilots sank
all four attack aircraft carriers establishing American naval superiority in Pacific

ii. In August 1942 American marines attacked Guadalcanal in the Solomon islands
(only 15 percent of Allied resources going to first war in Pacific) the Americans
under General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz, and the
Australians began island hopping toward Japan (Japanese forces on defensive)
c. In May 1942 combined German and Italian armies under General Erwin Rommel
attacked Egypt and the Suez Canal for the second time but were finally defeated by
British forces at the Battle of El Alamein (70 milers from Alexandria)

d. In October the British counterattacked in Egypt and an Anglo-American force landed

in Morocco and Algeria (French possessions went over to the side of the Allies)

e. Having driven the Axis powers from North Africa by the spring of 1934, Allied forces
maintained initiative by invading Sicily and then mainland Italy and Mussolini
disposed, the new Italian government accepted unconditional surrender in September

f. Germany applied itself to total war in 1942 (production tripled between 1942 and
1944) and British and American bomb raids killed many German citizens (no effect)

g. After an unsuccessful attempt on Hitlers life in July 1944, thousands of Germans were
brutally liquidated by SS fanatics (Germans fought on suicidal stoicism)

h. On June 6, 1944, American and British forces under General Dwight Eisenhower
landed on the beaches of Normandy in historys greatest naval invasion (tricked
Germans into believing the attack would come near the Belgian border)

i. In a hundred dramatic days, the 2.5 million men broke through German lines and
Eisenhower moved forward cautiously on a broad front; not until March 1945 did
American troops cross the Rhine River and enter Germany

j. The Soviets reached the outskirts of Warsaw by August 1944 and in January 1945 Red
armies moved westward through Poland and on April 26 met on the Elbe River

k. As Soviet forces fought their way into Berlin, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker
and on May 7, the remaining German commanders capitulated

l. Three months later, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in Japan, the Japanese surrendered, and WW II ended (50 million deaths)