IMPORTANT
EVENTS: World War II & Beyond
WORLD WAR II
Dictators come
to power in Europe
Totalitarian
leaders
Hitler (Germany)
& Mussolini (Italy) have fascist dictatorships
Fascism =
- Nationalism and super-patriotism with a sense
of historic mission.
- Aggressive militarism even to the extent of
glorifying war as good for the national or individual spirit.
- Authoritarian reliance on a leader or elite
not constitutionally responsible to an electorate.
- Cult of personality around a charismatic
leader.
- Reaction against the values of Modernism,
usually with emotional attacks against both liberalism and communism
GERMANY
(Hitler)
The humiliation
imposed by the victors in the Great War, coupled with the hardship of
the economic Depression, created bitterness and anger. That anger
frequently found its outlet in an ideology that asserted not just the
importance of the nation, but its unquestionable primacy and central
predestined role in history.
In identifying
"goodness" and "superiority" with "us," there was a tendency to
identify "evil" with "them." This process involves scapegoating and
dehumanization. It was then an easy step to blame all societal problems
on "them," and presuppose a conspiracy of these evildoers, which had
emasculated and humiliated the idealized core group of the nation. To
solve society's problems one need only unmask the conspirators and
eliminate them. For Germany, the “them”
was the Jews.
Example of
economic hardship: War Reparations 33 Billion. = 1922, 162 Marks per dollar / November 1923 =
4,200 Billion Marks per dollar
ITALY
(Mussolini)
Italy was the birthplace of fascist ideology. Mussolini, a former socialist journalist, organized the first fascist movement in 1919 at Milan. In 1922 Mussolini led a march on Rome, was given a government post by the king, and began transforming the Italian political system into a fascist state. In 1938 he forced the last vestige of democracy, the Council of Deputies, to vote themselves out of existence, leaving Mussolini dictator of fascist Italy.
Wanted to
capture glory of Old Rome (ancient Roman Images)
“Everything in
the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
- Mussolini
Allowed private
owned business, but with strict control – not a true communistic state
Arrested +
murdered anyone against him *the state
Japan
Population more
than doubled in 60 years. Needed more
land, coal, oil, & resources in general. A
generally Democratic government gets over run by a strong military. Westernized in the late 1800’s...far superior
to China...attacked Manchuria in 1931, China in 1937, signed on with
Italy & Germany in 1936. Resented
dependence on the US for raw materials (high tariffs prevented
independence and wealth)
AXIS (as in AXIS
of evil “BUSH 2002”) = Germany, Italy & Japan
Leading
Nazis, and early 1900 influential German biologists, revealed in their
writings that Darwin’s theory and publications had a major influence
upon Nazi race policies. Hitler believed that the human gene pool could
be improved by using selective breeding similar to how farmers breed
superior cattle strains. In the formulation of their racial policies,
Hitler’s government relied heavily upon Darwinism, especially the
elaborations by Spencer and Haeckel. As a result, a central policy of
Hitler’s administration was the development and implementation of
policies designed to protect the ‘superior race’. This required at the
very least preventing the ‘inferior races’ from mixing with those
judged superior, in order to reduce contamination of the latter’s gene
pool. The ‘superior race’ belief was based on the theory of group
inequality within each species, a major presumption and requirement of
Darwin’s original ‘survival of the fittest’ theory. This philosophy
culminated in the ‘final solution’, the extermination of approximately
six million Jews and four million other people who belonged to what
German scientists judged as ‘inferior races’.
The
very heart of Darwinism is the belief that evolution proceeds by the
differential survival of the fittest or superior individuals. This
requires differences among a species, which in time become great enough
so that those individuals that possess advantageous features — the
fittest — are more apt to survive. Although the process of raciation
may begin with slight differences, differential survival rates in time
produce distinct races by a process called speciation, meaning the
development of a new species.
Hitler
believed humans were animals to whom the genetics laws, learned from
livestock breeding, could be applied. The Nazis believed that instead
of permitting natural forces and chance to control evolution, they must
direct the process to advance the human race. The first step to achieve
this goal was to isolate the ‘inferior races’ in order to prevent them
from further contaminating the ‘Aryan’ gene pool. The widespread public
support for this policy was a result of the belief, common in the
educated classes, in the conclusion that certain races were genetically
inferior as was scientifically ‘proven’ by Darwinism. The Nazis believed
that they were simply applying facts, proven by science, to produce a
superior race of humans as part of their plan for a better world: ‘The
business of the corporate state was eugenics or artificial selection —
politics as applied biology.’
(Eugenics = encouraging the production of healthy
children, selective breeding)
War
of Ideas (as portrayed in the West)
- Freedom of Speech, Worship,
from Want, from Fear vs. Racial Superiority, Fascism, Dictatorship
War of
Ideas key to motivating American Public
Appeasement: to
keep peace by giving in to someone’s demands
- 1936 Germany marches troops into the
Rhineland (breaking the Versailles Treaty)
- 1938 Germany annexes Sudetenland, a portion
of Czechoslovakia inhabited by Germans
- 1938 Germany annexes Austria
US ENTERS THE WAR
· France falls within months in 1940
· USA Helps England financially (Lend-Lease Act)
· England is bombed relentlessly by Germany
· USA is Attacked at Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941
· 3 days later Italy & Germany declare War
on the USA
The Atomic Bomb
· Manhattan Project = 1939 Einstein wrote
President Roosevelt – incredibly powerful bomb could be built by
splitting the nucleus of a Uranium Atom (Einstein suggested the Germans
were working on a similar project)
· Enrico Fermi (left fascist Italy) completed a
controlled chain reaction in a lab at University of Chicago
· Worked in New Mexico, where the detonated the
first Atomic Bomb
Why drop the
BOMB?
· Russia & the US had agreed that once
Germany was defeated – the Russians would assist in defeating Japan
(Yalta Conference)
· Island hopping & Fighting a fanatical
Japanese army (And Population) would cost many lives
· The Potsdam Proclamation, which demanded the unconditional surrender of Japan, was issued. It made no mention of Japan's central surrender condition: the status of the Emperor. Japan rejected the Proclamation.
· The Japanese believed the Emperor to be a god
(this is a key point).
· To surrender unconditionally meant breaking a
6000 year cultural tradition…losing the Emperor…
· The USA was aware of this, but still demanded
the Emperor step aside as a condition of surrender
· After the bombing – the Japanese were allowed
to keep the Emperor anyway
· The Emperor was key for the US occupation of
Japan after the war – he pledged his peoples compliance and they
followed his wishes