Chapter 25: Turmoil Between the Wars
Research Topics
The Crisis of Interwar Europe
Why was democracy in retreat in the interwar years. Why did it seem to some people that some kind of "middle way" was a viable alternative?
Although Europe celebrated the end of war, the years ahead would prove to be bleak ones indeed. In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin instituted his "revolution from above," which ultimately led to the death of millions during the Great Terror. Mussolini led his black shirts into Rome and the Fascists came to power. And in Germany, a country demoralized by war, Adolf Hitler rose from obscurity in Vienna to lead the Nazi Party in its quest for a thousand year Reich. In the arts, the "lost generation" faced the enormous task of making sense of the senseless.
Why was democracy in retreat in the interwar years. Why did it seem to some people that some kind of "middle way" was a viable alternative?
Although Europe celebrated the end of war, the years ahead would prove to be bleak ones indeed. In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin instituted his "revolution from above," which ultimately led to the death of millions during the Great Terror. Mussolini led his black shirts into Rome and the Fascists came to power. And in Germany, a country demoralized by war, Adolf Hitler rose from obscurity in Vienna to lead the Nazi Party in its quest for a thousand year Reich. In the arts, the "lost generation" faced the enormous task of making sense of the senseless.
- Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (1922)
Spengler posited that the birth, development, and eventual fall of all civilizations was part of a cyclical world process. - Surrealism: The Declaration of January 27, 1924
Surrealism was a cultural movement that appeared in Paris following the Great War that attempted the revolutionize art as well as the experience of the everyday. - Joseph Goebbels, "We Demand" (1927)
Goebbels' general and somewhat unspecific attack on the government of the Weimar Republic. - Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (1930)
The Spanish philosopher warns of the dangers implicit in a society that is composed of the masses and a small minority of elites. - Stalin, Dizzy with Success (Concerning Questions of the Collective-Farm Movement) (1930)
In the middle of the First Five Year Plan, Stalin chose to defect the blame for the harsh aspects of collectivization from himself to those zealous party officials, who were "dizzy with success." - Mussolini, "What is Fascism?" (1932)
With the help of the Italian philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, Mussolini wrote this definition of fascism for the Enciclopedia Italiana. - M. W. Fodor, "The Spread of Hitlerism" (1936)
M. W. Fodor was the Central European correspondent for the Manchester Guardian and in this article, discusses the penetration of Hitlerism and Nazism among the Germans in Central and Southeastern Europe.
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