okay so World War one was fought at least by American President Woodrow Wilson's Reckoning to make the world safe for democracy but that didn't really work out too well because in the Years between the two World Wars totalitarian government sprang up dang near everywhere in Europe and so we need to figure out why that is if you're ready to get them brain cows milked with a healthy dose of right and left-wing extremism let's get to it so Woodrow Wilson's desire for democracy to flourish after World War one was not going to be a thing instead what we see in several places across Europe is the rise of fascist States and let me Define that before going up and for a definition let's consult the man who was most associated with the term namely the Italian fascist Benito Mussolini his chosen symbol for fascism was a bundle of sticks and an app what that represented was a group of people bound to the authority of a single powerful leader so ultimately fascism is a political philosophy that emphasizes obedience to an authoritarian leader and which leverages all the resources of the state to fulfill the leader's ambition now we here in the 21st century are trained to think of fascism as a bad thing and just to be clear I agree like nobody wants to live under the rule of an authoritarian turn and get to Europeans in the inter-war Years fascism was an attractive option and we need to understand why the first reason was the proliferation of World War One bitter many European societies were deeply divided along class lines in the post-war year because of the immense need for wartime production the working class grew in power during the war while middle class power and influence declined because of the suffering of consumer industry there was also bitterness among gender lines as well many women had gone to work while their men were off fighting and many of them cherished their Newfound sense of importance to working Society but for the most part when the men returned women were expected to go back home and live their days making their husbands sandwiches and that to many women was no bueno the second reason people were open to fascist States was the rise of Communism many folks in Europe communism especially in Russia represented a fearful situation should it come to dominate other states in Europe and just hold on to that for a second we'll talk about it more later the third reason people are open to fascist States was economic instability recall in the last video we talked about the devastating economic effects of the Great Depression huge percentages of the population were out of work and inflation was out of control there seemed to be no way out of it it's hard to overestimate the insecurity such a condition caused among the average European so when strong fascist leaders style themselves as saviors from these conditions and put the blame for those conditions in all the right places and tapped into a powerful sense of victimization that people felt for many people that seemed like a no-brainer okay so let's start with the birthplace of fascism proper and consider Mussolini's Italy so all the social difficulties I just mentioned were present in Italy in the 1920s like high employment severe War debt Etc and the Italian government was not able to effectively deal with these problems so Benito Mussolini who started his career as a left-wing socialist changed his position to extreme right-wing fascism because he saw that by championing those ideals he and his followers could gain power in Italy he spoke ardently against communism at least all of his language with a healthy dose of Italian nationalism so by 1922 after threatening to march on Rome with his army of fascists the king of Italy made Mussolini the prime minister of Italy now only a few years later the Italian parliament granted Mussolini dictatorial powers for a year which as you can probably guess he never gave up so now Mussolini is in total control of Italy and worked quickly to establish a totalitarian fascist State and how did he do it well first he used modern technology and propaganda introduce spread his message to all Italians these messages glorified War exposed the dangers of democracy and communism and most of all demonstrated how fascism was the answer to the political and economic instability of the post-war world for anyone who was disillusioned by the state of post-war Europe especially for those countries who had lost the war these appeals made a whole lot of sense a second Mussolini made use of a secret police which in Italy was known as the black shirt for Mussolini violence was key to squashing any dissent to his message and plan many of the members of the secret police were students and War veterans who were eager to use violence in an unrestricted way and one of their favorite ways to keep people in line was by giving dissenters horse doses of castor oil if you don't know what that is it's basically a naturally occurring diuretic which in small doses you know gets things moving down but the secret police would pour whole bottles of this stuff into people's mouth and that would have them suffering from violent diarrhea for days which was not only inconvenient but could often lead to death through dehydration so you know that's fun but despite Mussolini's tactics Italy never fully came entirely under his control the Italian monarchy in the armed forces retained some degree of Independence but if you want an example of a faster state which gained entire control over the state and I know that you do then let's go visit Germany during the interwar year the next faster state to emerge was in Germany under the leadership of supreme historical turd Adolf hit and again after World War One Germany maybe more than any other European nation suffered Terror because they received the most severe punishments from the Treaty of Versailles their economy went down the toilet and they were humiliated on the international State and because the Weimar government could not address these problems many German people were ripe for the extremist policies of Adolf Hitler now early in his life Hitler developed deeply rooted racialist ideas most notably a virulent anti-Semitism which is to say a hatred of the Jews by the 1920s Hitler had gained control of the National Socialist German Workers Party which for short was known as the Nazi party throughout the beginning of the 20s the Nazis gained more and more power in Germany and by the beginning of the 1930s Hitler like Mussolini convinced the parliament to Grant him emergency dictatorial powers and like Mussolini he never gave them up so with Hitler in power he used many of the same tactics as Mussolini to stay in power but was much more effective in his use of those attacks Hitler used the radio video and television to broadcast his speeches which were positively overflowing with nationalist messages anti-semitic claims and plans to restore the glory of German in fact Hitler had his own propaganda Minister named Joseph Goebel those Gobles who harnessed the power of film to get Hitler in front of the eyes of Germans across the country filming Hitler's powerful speeches and his adoring fans lined up to greet him in downtown parades had a way of making Hitler's appeal seem Universal now Hitler also made use of a secret police known as the shootstaffen or SS for sure the SS introduced no small amount of Terror to anyone who opposed Hitler in his policies and all of it was organized by a guy named Heinrich Himmler and I pray to the good Lord in heaven that I am not somehow related to this guy because he was the worst Himmler was the architect of murder and oppression the organizer of concentration camps and the main proponent of purifying the races of Germany so I'm not even going to look for a family connection there like I think I'd rather not know now while all this is going on in Italy and Germany similar episodes were occurring in Spain because of the economic and political turmoil in the years right after the war Spain went into a tailsman there the Great Depression ultimately led to the lapse of parliamentary democracy and that is when competing factions begin fighting for dominance by 1936 a group of leftists called the popular front took control and their group represented the interest of workers and Communists now the one group who vehemently opposed this new government was the Spanish Army led by General Francisco Franco he led a violent Uprising against the popular front and installed himself as the head of state and this forcible seizure of power led directly to the Spanish Civil War Between Franco and the popular front now the reason the Civil War is relevant to what we're talking about here is not just that Franco was another fascist-like dictator but the Spanish Civil War represented a kind of testing ground for World War II and here's what I mean because fascist dictators love to see other fascist dictators come to power Franco gained the support for his cause from both Hitler and mussolin Franco let me ask you something how do you feel about explosive diarrhea I love it all right I'm in I'm in however the popular front didn't receive nearly as much support from the Western democracies of Europe and ultimately Franco won that war and ruled Spain without rival and I said this war was a testing ground for World War II and that's because Hitler and Mussolini observed with great relish that when fascism asserted itself in Europe Western democracies did almost nothing to oppose and that will be a useful bit of information that they will put right in their pockets and come back to in the second half of the 1930s but totalitarian governments are not only being installed in Western Europe Eastern Europe jumped in on the fascist party too recall that several new states were created in the East after World War one and they were established as parliamentary democracy but those democracies suffered first of all with all the same economic problems plaguing the rest of the continent and second of all because democracy was a very new thing to them and it is difficult to establish such a system in the midst of a deep economic stuff you just want someone to come in and solve all your problems and that is how fascist and authoritarian governments were installed in Poland Hungary Romania and other states as well and speaking of authoritarian governments let's check in with Russia now officially known as the Soviet Union last time we visited the Russian Revolution was freshly over and Lenin had turned Russia into a communist state it's important to know here that while right-wing fascists despise communism the Communist Soviet Union was very similar in a lot of ways which is to say authoritarianism is just as likely on the left wing as it is on the right anyway after Lennon died Joseph Stalin Rose to power in his place and I know that I said that Himmler was the worst but this guy is also the worst like there's just so many worst in this video Stalin was responsible for sending over a million political dissidents to force labor camps called gulags and he had no qualms about allowing torture to gain false confessions out of his enemy anyway after consolidating party power under himself Stalin implemented A Five-Year Plan and the goal of this was to rapidly modernize which is to say industrialize the Soviet Union the truth is the growth of Soviet industrialization during this period was staggering you know that's a good thing right not so much the consequences of that Five-Year Plan were devastating to the Russian people millions of workers flooded into these new industrial centers and because Stalin wasn't much interested in providing decent housing for them they lived in squalid conditions but don't worry their wages were rapidly decreasing as well and why well because if Stalin told them through an elaborate propaganda campaign they were working for the progress of the Socialist Utopia promised them in the revolution not only that but after The First Five-Year Plan failed criticism against Stalin reached a fever pitch and many in the Communist Party called for his removal not least of which was the luminary of linen's regime Lee Beyond trotsk in response Stalin authorized the Great Purge which was a systematic removal of all Stalin's enemies from the state which eventually filtered down to some Russian citizens as well The Purge was carried out by Stalin's secret police who imprisoned tortured and executed those who disagreed with stopping by now it should go without saying that totalitarian States made frequent use of their secret police forces to silence political dissent additionally during Lenin's time a wealthy group of landowners called kulaks emerged and employed peasants to work their Lane Stalin however believed that such a class of people were nothing but dirty capitalists and had no place in the Soviet Union so he implemented a plan of collectivization in which land was taken from these landowners and placed under the authority of the state and this happened in many places but the consequences were most severe in Ukraine which was the Soviet Union's most abundant producer of grain because the Ukrainian kulak so deeply resented Stalin's collectivization program and worked hard to resist and undermine it Stalin responded with a policy that would lead to the starvation and death of something like 7 million people in the Ukraine region alone it was an event that the ukrainians dubbed the holodomor which means death Stalin literally cut off their food supply arrested tortured or executed any farmer who withheld food for themselves and blocked ukrainians from leaving their region to buy bread elsewhere it was a truly devastating result of Soviet collectivization and Stalin's ruthless attempts to consolidate power under himself Okay click here to keep reviewing Unit 8 of AP Europe and click here to grab my AP Euro review pack which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a five on your exam inmate I'll catch you on the flip-flop imler out