So, despite improvement in living conditions across much of Europe after 1925, wartime

resentments and disruption lingered. and then a momentous event in 1929 gradually

turned into a wide-ranging disaster: in that year, the U.S. stock market crashed.What came

after is known as the Great Depression, and today, we're gonna talk about how that impacted

Europe, and how it coincided with the rise of dictators in Europe.

[Intro] the stock market crash came after several

years of citizens enthusiastically “playing the market” with borrowed money, and commentators

had fueled the rise in stock prices by saying that the stock market was on a permanently

high plateau, implying that prices could never fall so borrowing funds to “buy on margin”

was a sure thing.

Listen, I'm not a financial advisor, so take this with a grain of salt, but when people

start saying that buying stocks is a sure thing, it ain't!

You can't time the market, and there are no sure things!

Except for death...even taxes are not a sure thing.

Just ask Amazon.

Anyaway, having made a ton of money while Europeans were bankrupting themselves in World

War I, the United States had become a huge source of loans for financing postwar recovery

in Europe and elsewhere, as well as agricultural and industrial modernization, and the creation

of new businesses.

But as the stock market dropped, bankers began demanding payment for loans that had been

used to buy stocks or invest in major projects, including international ones.

And in many cases, these loans couldn't be paid back, causing banks to fail;

businesses also failed as consumers had less money to make purchases, and workers lost

jobs by the millions.

When the economy is working, its virtuous cycles seem endless; and when the economy

stops working, its vicious cycles also seem endless.

And by 1933, six million Germans were unemployed, that was one-third of the total workforce.

In terms of keeping their jobs, women were actually sometimes better off than men--but

only because they received drastically lower wages, and so single women at least were less

likely to be laid off.

It was men who came to epitomize the unemployed.

Unemployed women could pick up bits of outwork such as laundering and childcare, but men

had few such opportunities.

And so the ideology of men as the main breadwinner was threatened; some men pretended to go to

work even after they had lost jobs.

Adolf Hitler, like Benito Mussolini, said he wanted to restore not just the reputation

of his country but the war-shattered masculinity of the individual man.

Hard times further undermined that sense of strong and secure manhood, but Stormtroopers

felt they were reviving German masculinity by marching through neighborhoods and beating

people up Communists and Jewish People.

Their violence also discredited the democratically run Weimar Republic, which couldn't keep

order.

And Nazis did employ men via this paramilitary organization, the kind of jobs that the Weimar

Republic seemed unable to create.

Of course, this is ultimately an example of only solving problems that you yourself have

created...a long-standing tradition in authoritarian regimes.

Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, youth were flocking to Joseph Stalin as they did in Germany

to Hitler.

By 1929 Stalin had consolidated his power in part by bringing thousands of new people

to serve in the post-Lenin government, at the local, regional, and national level.

But the Soviets had big problems, beginning with food scarcity, even though it contained

huge amounts of fertile land.

Stalin put the blame on kulaks, or well-to-do peasants, which was an extension of Lenin's

demonization of Kulaks.

Lenin once ordered, “Hang (absolutely hang, in full view of the people) no fewer than

one hundred known kulaks.”

Lenin ordered many such killings, actually, and believed ongoing violence was essential

to revolution, a practice that Stalin dramatically expanded.

So, in Russian kulak means “fist” and for Communists the property-owning kulaks

held communism in their greedy grip, by hiding surplus crops from the government.

So Stalin roused Soviet youth to a war on kulaks, calling them enemies wedded to individualism

and personal wealth.

However, as with Nazism, neighbors often denounced anyone whose property they coveted.

In Germany, Hitler built unity among his followers by pointing to the false worldwide Jewish

conspiracy that supposedly had one goal—the annihilation of the Aryan race. and likewise,

Stalin continued the Bolshevik trend of slaughtering supposed enemies of the people, in this case

the “bloodsuckers, cattle, swine, loathsome, repulsive [kulaks]; they had no souls, they

stank” as one Soviet citizen recalled in his memoirs.

In both cases, the dehumanization of the Other was profound--I mean, you can see it in that

quote, actually, as people are not called people but “cattle” and “swine.”

But Stalin's goal was not only to fortify communism through the murder of enemies.

He also wanted to reorganize the agricultural economy by seizing individual farms and converting

them into collective farms that would replace private ownership.

and Ukraine was one of the major agricultural regions of the USSR, which made Ukrainians

especially vulnerable to the widespread violence of the Stalin regime.

Rebelling against the murder and oppression of their friends and neighbors, individual

farmers sometimes even slaughtered livestock and destroyed crops.

But the execution and persecution of kulaks, friends of kulaks, and anyone else against

whom there were grudges did nothing to increase agricultural productivity.

In fact, the communalization of farms lowered yields and caused a famine.

In total, Stalin's purges and the resulting famine likely resulted in at least 10 million

deaths by the mid-1930s. and then Stalin turned to other elements in

the population to “purge.”

As famine unfolded, Communist leaders found more enemies, this time Bolsheviks themselves—both

high and low—as well as the military, many of whom confessed in their “show” trials

(after having been tortured for days).

Some faithful friends of Stalin even admitted to having disloyal thoughts if not deeds,

which was adequate sin to justify execution.

On the eve of his death, one old Bolshevik thanked Stalin for devising “the great and

bold political idea behind the general purge.”

Which speaks to how deeply propaganda can work on humans.

Rapid industrialization in a series of five-year plans accompanied the purges.

Stalin especially admired the United States and aimed to match their modernization.

He had entire cities built around new factories and mining operations.

For instance, with the assistance of U.S. and German consultants, the city of Magnitogorsk

became the center of Soviet steel production.

The government summoned workers, both men and women, from across the vast Soviet lands

to work there and in other factories.

The living conditions were often terrible.

The working conditions difficult or even lethal.

Yet, as one woman lathe operator explained proudly, “We mastered this new profession—completely

new to us—with great pleasure.”

And to many both inside the was utopia in the making.

Idealists from all over the world flocked to what promised to be a wonderland of egalitarian

achievement.

And its important to note that Hitler also attracted admirers from outside of Germany,

such as industrialist Henry Ford and aviator Charles Lindbergh in the United States.

Which brings us back to Germany.

In the fall of 1932, elections in Germany saw the communists and the Nazis receive similarly

strong support, although the Nazis actually lost a few seats in the election.

But afterwards, conservative leaders persuaded President Hindenberg--for whom, incidentally,

history's most disastrous airship was named--to appoint Hitler chancellor.

The theory was that he would be easier to control than the Communists, but with the

backing of his passionate supporters, Hitler began to dismantle Germany's democratic

system--which at that point had only really existed for a bit more than a decade.

Through intimidation and brutal treatment of elected representatives, Hitler soon passed

an Enabling Act that allowed him virtually unchecked power.

I mean, rarely has an act been more aptly named than the enabling act.

He then moved in many directions in order to create a “people's community” or

volksgemeinschaft.

He had a protection squad created—the SS (Schutzstaffel)—that rounded up dissenters

or anyone not seen as meeting Nazi standards of proper German-ness.

Ways of 'not being properly German' included being Jewish, being gay, being a Communist,

or being of Roma ancestry, among many others.

The SS had vast powers to imprison so-called “enemies” in concentration camps or to

execute them.

In “the night of the long knives” in 1934 Hitler's forces massacred hundreds of Nazis

who had called for a restoration of Nazi purity by ending alliances with businessmen and military

elite.

That massacre purged the so-called “socialist” or anti-elitist element in the original Party

in order to emphasize German nationalism alone.

Nazis held massive book burnings; Nazi youth groups built loyalty from an early age; and

it became common for young Nazis to turn in anyone who uttered criticism of the regime,

including their own parents and other relatives.

Alongside arrests and purges, Nazi policy turned to deficit financing to build infrastructure

such as modern highways that would put men back to work; by 1936, fewer than 1.6 million

men were still unemployed.

Hitler justified deficits by saying he would pay for them via future conquests.

The Nazis were also concerned with reversing population decline, and so they instituted

loans for couples giving birth to babies that were deemed pure Aryans, with the wife agreeing

to surrender her employment as part of the deal.

Birth control and abortion were forbidden to German women, but they were readily available

for those the Nazis considered inferior.

And then, in the 1930s, foreshadowing broader policies, the government began to murder physically

or mentally disabled people in mobile gas chambers that traveled to hospitals and other

institutions.

The aim was the creation of a master race, purged of purportedly “inferior” types

such as Roma, Slavs, and above all, Jewish people, whose supposed inferiority, in Hitler's

word, was documented by “the greatest of scientific knowledge.”

We've talked before about “negative integration” and “positive integration” techniques

for building a community--positive integration techniques involve celebrating shared values

and finding a definition for what “we” are.

Negative integration techniques involve defining a community by what we aren't--especially

by finding enemies or targeting outsiders to unify a community.

In Hitler's Germany, the population coalesced into a volksgemeinschaft by a shared dehumanization

and shared hatred of outsiders, especially Jewish people.

German feelings of worth, and even superiority, were restored and strengthened by hating others.

And this was a long term, and very public practice that people both inside of Germany

and outside of it knew about.

For instance, The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 removed Jewish peoples' German citizenship and barred

them from most jobs and from marriage to Aryans.

The government moved Jews from their housing, reduced the food they were allowed, and forced

them to work at lowly jobs for virtually no pay.

Officials and neighbors then stole Jewish housing and personal property, showing that

Nazi claims to high ideals masked outright theft and greed.

Jewish people first suffered what historians call a “social death” as their lives were

degraded by the Nazis, making any harm that might come to them appear natural.

Indeed, so-called Social Death often precedes widespread murder.

In 1938, the son of a harassed Jewish couple killed an official, which the Nazis used an

excuse for a rampage against synagogues, businesses, homes, and individuals—a horrific event

that came to be known as “The Night of Broken Glass” or Kristallnacht.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

1.

The Nazi regime rampaged and plundered internationally as well.

2.

In 1935, Germany began openly boosting military power,

3. which had been curtailed by the Versailles treaty.

4.

In 1936, German troops occupied the Rhineland

5. —an area in western Germany bordering France.

6.

In 1938, Germany occupied Austria to cheering crowds, and then absorbed Austria into the

Reich

7. (which was forbidden by the Peace of Paris),

8. and proceeded to seize Austria's large supply of gold

9. —an act that would be repeated across Europe alongside the seizure of Jewish wealth.

10.

Later that year, Hitler claimed the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia

11. because of its large German population

12. and secured that claim with a meeting in Munich

13.

that included British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French Premier Edouard Daladier,

and Mussolini.

14.

Crowds rejoiced at the peace Hitler promised in exchange for this “appeasement” of

his demands,

15.

but as future Prime Minister Winston Churchill commented “Those poor people.

They little know what they will have to face.”

16.

In March 1939, Germany annexed all of Czechoslovakia.

17.

In addition to making deals with the French and British, Hitler made deals with Stalin,

18. trading Soviet grain for German machinery and other industrial goods.

19.

And it should be noted that Hitler was not alone in authoritarian conquest at the time.

20.

Mussolini joined in, sending the Italian army to Ethiopia in 1936

21. and announcing “the Roman legions are on the march again” as fascism thrived.