The Dictators



The Dictators

|Dictators |Events |

|[pic] |Adolf Hitler |

|1. |After Hitler joined the German Workers' Party in 1919 at age thirty. He immediately began a frenzied effort to make it succeed. The German Workers' Party consisted|

|[pic] |mainly of an executive committee which had seven members, including Hitler. To bring in new members Hitler prepared invitations which each committee member gave to|

| |friends asking them to attend the party's monthly public meeting, but few came. Next they tried having invitations printed at a stationary store. A few people |

| |came. Then they placed an advertisement in an anti-Semitic newspaper in Munich and at Hitler's insistence, moved the public meeting to a beer cellar that would |

| |hold about a hundred. The other committee members were concerned they might have trouble filling the place, but just over a hundred showed up at the meeting held |

| |on October 16, 1919. |

|2. |In 1921 Adolf Hitler formed his own private army called SA's - storm troopers or brown shirts) were instructed to disrupt the meetings of political opponents and |

|[pic] |to protect Hitler from revenge attacks. Captain Ernst Roehm of the Bavarian Army played an important role in recruiting these men, and became the SA's first |

| |leader. The SA wore grey jackets, brown shirts (khaki shirts originally intended for soldiers in Africa but purchased in bulk from the German Army by the Nazi |

| |Party), swastika armbands, ski-caps, knee-breeches, thick woolen socks and combat boots. Accompanied by bands of musicians and carrying swastika flags, they would |

| |parade through the streets of Munich. At the end of the march Hitler would make one of his passionate speeches that encouraged his supporters to carry out acts of |

| |violence against Jews and his left-wing political opponents. |

|3. |Hitler was unable to be heard above the crowd, so he fired a shot into the ceiling and jumped on a chair yelling. Hitler hoped his actions would achieve the same |

|[pic] |results that Mussolini had gotten with his March on Rome. On 9 November, Hitler realized that the Putsch was going nowhere. The Putschists did not know what to do |

| |and were about to give up. Then Ludendorff cried out (We will march!). A total of approximately 2000 men) marched out - but with no specific plan of where to go. |

| |Ludendorff led them to the Bavarian Defense Ministry. However, they met a force of 100 soldiers blocking the way. The two groups exchanged fire, killing four. Two |

| |days after the putsch, Hitler was arrested and charged with high treason. The Putsch changed Hitler's outlook on violent revolution to effect change. From then on |

| |he would do everything by the book meaning strictly legal. |

|4. |Hitler never actually sat down and pecked at a typewriter or wrote longhand, but instead dictated it to Rudolph Hess while pacing around his prison cell in |

|[pic] |1923-24. Reading Mein Kampf is like listening to Hitler ramble at length about his youth, early days in the Nazi Party, future plans for Germany, and ideas on |

| |politics and race. Hitler had a longer title in mind for the book but the publisher wisely choose to shorten it to ‘Mein Kampf,' simply My Struggle, or My Battle. |

| |In his book, Hitler divides the population into categories based on physical appearance. Of course at the top is the Germanic man with his fair skin, blond hair |

| |and blue eyes. Hitler refers to this group of people as an Aryan race or the master race. Mein Kampf was first released in 1925 it sold poorly. People had been |

| |hoping for a juicy autobiography or a behind-the-scenes story of the Beer Hall Putsch. |

|5. |Hitler waged a modern whirlwind campaign in 1930. Hitler traveled the country delivering dozens of major speeches, organized by Joseph Goebbels, who organized |

|[pic] |thousands of meetings, torchlight parades, plastered posters everywhere and printed millions of copies of special editions of Nazi newspapers. Each event built |

| |tension. Next, there would be processions of Brown shirts with golden banners, blaring military music, and finally the appearance of Hitler with shouts of Heil! |

| |The theatrical effect and decorations of swastikas was overwhelming. Hitler began each speech in low, hesitating tones, gradually raising the pitch and volume of |

| |his voice then exploding in a climax of frenzied indignation. He combined this with carefully rehearsed hand gestures for maximum effect. He skillfully offered |

| |something to everyone and promised to bring order and make Germany strong again. |

|6. |All three events occurred in 1933 which gave Hitler enormous power. The first, happened on the morning of 30 January 1933, in Hindenburg's office, Adolf Hitler was|

|[pic] |sworn in as Chancellor. His first speech as Chancellor took place on February 10. The next event happened on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag Fire was blamed on |

| |the Communist. Hindenburg responded by cancelling many of the citizens civil liberties. Anyone not friendly to the Nazi cause could be suppressed or imprisoned. |

| |With the Communist parliamentary delegates gone, the Nazis went from being a plurality party to the majority party. These actions allowed Hitler to consolidate his|

| |power. |

| |Dachau also opened in March 1933, it was the first regular concentration camp for political prisoners. |

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|7. |In 1934, Adolf Hitler visited Benito Mussolini in Venice. Also in February 1934, Hitler met with the British Lord Privy Seal, Sir Anthony Eden, and hinted strongly|

|[pic] |that Germany already possessed an Air Force, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. |

| |The Night of the Long Knives or (Operation Hummingbird), was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried|

| |out a series of political executions. At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll may have been in the hundreds, and more than a |

| |thousand perceived opponents were arrested. |

| |After President Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934, Hitler declared himself Fuehrer (Leader) of a new German Reich – the Third Reich. |

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|8. |The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, started a policy of appeasement (making concessions to an aggressor in order to preserve peace). On September 29,|

|[pic] |1938, a conference was held at Munich, Germany where France, Britain, Italy, and Germany would decide the fate of Czechoslovakia. Three million Germans lived in |

| |the area of Czechoslovakia called Sudetenland. The leaders gave Hitler the Sudetenland and in return he would respect the new borders of Czechoslovakia. (Within 6 |

| |months Hitler took Czechoslovakia. |

| |On November 9–10, 1938, began Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass. German authorities did not intervene. Over 1,000 synagogues were burned|

| |and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged. |

| |At least 91 Jews were killed in the attacks, and a further 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps. Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were |

| |ransacked with sledgehammers. |

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|[pic] |Benito Mussolini |

|1. |In 1903, he was arrested by the Bernese police because of his advocacy of a violent general strike, spent two weeks in jail, was deported to Italy, set free there,|

|[pic] |and returned to Switzerland. In 1904, after having been arrested again in Geneva for falsifying his papers, he was expelled from this canton and came back to |

| |Lausanne, where he attended the department of Social Science, following the lessons of Vilfredo Pareto. In December 1904, he returned to Italy to take advantage of|

| |an amnesty for desertion, for which he had been convicted in absentia. |

|2. |The word fascist comes from the Latin word fasces, meaning a bundle of rods tied around an ax handle. Back in Roman time the fasces stood for unity and authority. |

|[pic] |Mussolini’s plan was to bind Italians together and give them reminders of the glory of Rome to inspire more patriotism. American dimes from 1916 to 1945 had a |

| |figure of Liberty on one side, and a fasci on the other, the latter being a Roman symbol of strength through the union of states. The bundle of rods, with an axe |

| |in center, was stronger than an individual rod. This dime was retired in 1946 when the FDR dime replaced it following FDR's death in 1945. |

|3. |The popularity of the growing socialist party was demonstrated by the election of 1919, when the socialist won more seats in parliament than any other party. The |

|[pic] |Italian government was unable to stop worker revolts or preserve order which opened the door for an ambitious politician to use the turmoil to gain power. In the |

| |early 1920's, bands of Mussolini's followers roamed the streets in Italy beating up members of the communist or socialist parties. The Black Shirts had success in |

| |Bologna and Milan and with each victory the number of Fascists grew. |

|4. |Mussolini realized that his support was increasing so he decided to plan a coup d'état. Mussolini announced in October of 1922, that he would march on Rome to |

|[pic] |defend the capital from a communist revolution. Mussolini hoped that the march of the Black Shirts would scare the government into surrender. It worked. The Black |

| |Shirts entered Rome from four different directions which frightened the government. King Victor Emmanuel III refused to oppose them with the army. Within a few |

| |days, the king announced Mussolini as the prime minister in October 1922. |

|5. |Mussolini was given emergency powers for one year because he was now the Prime Minister. He put in many laws to extend his power and made provisions to make the |

|[pic] |Fascists as the majority party in parliament. As time went by, the Fascist party controlled elections and outlawed all opposition parties. Other methods of the |

| |totalitarian state included giving important jobs to party members. He censored the press and banned any criticism of his government. Mussolini was known as Il |

| |Duce, meaning the leader. Mussolini introduced a new type of economic organization called the corporation. Employers and employees joined a government-sponsored |

| |corporation. The purpose of the corporation was to control wages and prices of that industry. Labor unions were abolished and the now corporations were dominated |

| |by the government. |

|6. |A Fascist youth group parades past Benito Mussolini in 1935. Schools taught the virtues of obeying Il Duce with slogans like 'Believe! Obey! Fight!' They also wore|

|[pic] |black uniforms and learned the virtues that made Rome strong such as, discipline, duty and obedience. The motto of the Italians was 'Mussolini is always right.' |

| |Opponents were beat up by police or held in remote prisons. . Boys were taught that fighting was a natural extension of being a male. One of the Fascist slogans to|

| |enforce this thought was ‘War is to the male what childbearing is to the female.’ In 1927, Mussolini started the Battle for Births which was a program to encourage|

| |women to have at least five children. Mussolini wanted a population of 60 million by 1950. It turned out that between 1927 and 1934 the birth rate decreased. |

|7. |Mussolini told the Italians, that 'we have a right to an empire.' He negotiated a treaty with Yugoslavia (Croatia) giving the city of Fiume (now Rijeka) to Italy. |

|[pic] |In 1927, he also made Italy a protectorate over Albania. Italy had been defeated by Ethiopia in 1896, so in 1934, when there was a border clash between the Italian|

|[pic][pic] |colony of Somaliland and Ethiopia it gave Mussolini the opportunity to demand territory from Ethiopia. Ethiopia appealed to the League of Nations for help but the|

| |League delayed action. In October 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia. The League of Nations called for sanctions against Italy but the Italian invasion came anyway. The |

| |Ethiopians, with their cavalry and ancient rifles were no match for the Italian artillery, tanks, or planes. In May of 1936, Haile Selassie, the exiled emperor of|

| |Ethiopia traveled to Geneva, Switzerland and appealed for help. By the end of July, the League of Nations dropped the economic sanctions against Italy. |

|[pic] |Hirohito |

|1. |In the 1920's according to Japanese tradition a person was to give unquestioned obedience to the emperor. Hirohito was caught in a struggle between liberals and |

|[pic] |leftists on one side, and ultraconservatives on the other. Emperor Hirohito was a puppet of the military rulers, who ruled Japan from the late 1930s through World |

| |War II. He reportedly made no decisions, and was not involved in the running of the government. Japan emerged from World War I with a prosperous economy. Japan was|

| |also moving to a more democratic government as they had a Diet or Parliament similar to that of Great Britain. The government added more voters by giving suffrage |

| |to all man over the age of 25. It also started a national health insurance plan and removed restrictions on unions. |

|2. |Japan was hard hit by the Great Depression. Japanese exports fell by 50% and the price of silk declined. As a result unemployment grew and people such as the |

|[pic] |military grew tired of parliamentary government, especially the military. The depression hurt the Japanese economy as other nations bumped up their tariffs on |

| |foreign goods. Japanese manufacturers lost to foreign markets and unemployment started to go up. To solve the problems of the depression the Japanese army invaded |

| |Manchuria to provide raw materials such as iron and coal and an outlet for increased population. In 1931, the Japanese army crushed all resistance and turned |

| |Manchuria into an independent state which they called Manchukuo. Manchukuo was a Japanese puppet state. |

|3. |In 1937, a border incident touched off a full scale war between China and Japan. Even though China had an army of one million soldiers, it was not enough to match |

|[pic] |the well equipped and better trained Japanese army. The Japanese army advanced quickly and occupied Peking. By December, the Japanese had defeated Chinese forces |

| |at Shanghai and seized Nanking. In Nanking, the Japanese troops committed the greatest atrocity of the invasion, the ‘Rape of Nanking’, in which an estimated |

| |300,000 civilians were slaughtered. |

|4. |Tojo became prime minister on 16th October 1941. He initially backed the foreign office's efforts to reach agreement with the United States. However, when |

|[pic] |convinced that a negotiated deal was possible, ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. |

|[pic] |Mao Zedong |

|1. |Jiang Jieshi or Chiang Kai-shek* was a young officer in the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) army which was trained by the Soviet Union. After the death of Sun |

|[pic] |Yat-sen, Jiang Jieshi led his army on a victorious march from Canton in 1927. By 1928, the Kuomintang was powerful enough to proclaim the Republic of China as the |

| |nation's government.\n\n\n*In 1979, the Chinese government adopted a new system of spelling, the Pinyin system. Mao Zedong is the Pinyin spelling of Mao Tse-tung. |

|2. |Jiang also had to deal with a rival political organization, the Chinese Communist party (CCP) which was founded in 1921. Their goal was to become bigger than the |

|[pic] |Kuomintang and control the Chinese Republic. The CCP was outmaneuvered by the more powerful and larger Kuomintang led by Jiang. He struck quickly in 1927, killing |

| |many and forcing the rest of the survivors into hiding. Mao Zedong was one of the communists who managed to escape from Jiang. Mao began rebuilding the destroyed |

| |party by winning the support of the landless peasants. Soon, he had an army from the remote mountain region in southeastern China. |

|3. |Jiang unleashed four campaigns to wipe out the communists. In 1934, the Kuomintang routed Mao's armies. Mao's remaining force of about 90,000 troops fled from |

|[pic] |Kiangsi and started a 6,000 mile march to the desolate Shensi Province in Northwestern China. Only about 7,000 troops survived this 'Long March.' From the Shensi |

| |Province the battered forces of Mao seemed to have little hope. However, while these two forces were fighting another force was about to threaten the Chinese. In |

| |1937, the Japanese attacked China. |

|4. |Japan held control of a large part of China by 1938. The Japanese takeover forced an tense truce between Mao's and Jiang’s forces. The civil war gradually ground |

|[pic] |to a halt as Nationalists and Communists temporarily united to fight the Japanese. |

|5. |During the fight with Japan, Mao developed a disciplined army. Instead of plundering a village, Mao had his soldiers obey three rules when in the village. |

|[pic] |1) Do not take needle or thread. |

| |2) Consider the village people as your family. |

| |3) Return whatever you borrow. |

| |As a result the village people looked on these soldiers as their defenders and Mao's troops gained more support. Soon, more military victories followed Mao's |

| |armies and Jiang lost the support of the middle class when inflation and official corruption destroyed their confidence in his leadership. |

|6. |In 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China. In reality, Mao's new government was a dictatorship controlled by the communist party. Mao was now |

|[pic] |the most powerful man in China and he was about to introduce new revolutionary changes like land reform and the 'Great Leap Forward'. |

|7. |In 1949, the communist won control of mainland China. Jiang and his army retreated to the island of Taiwan which was about 100 miles off the coast of China. |

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|[pic] |Joseph Stalin |

|1. |The mystery still remains. Lenin was in bad health probably due to family history and several other factors. At 48, he was shot twice in an assassination attempt. |

|[pic] |One bullet lodged in his collarbone after puncturing his lung. Another got caught in the base of his neck. Both bullets remained in place for life. According to |

| |Dr. Giffi, Lenin’s cerebral arteries were so calcified that when tapped with tweezers they sounded like stone. In the two years before he died, Lenin had three |

| |debilitating strokes. But Lenin’s seizures in the hours and days before he died are a puzzle and perhaps historically significant. Severe seizures, Dr. Vinters |

| |added, are quite unusual in a stroke patient and almost any poison can cause seizures. |

|2. |Stalin managed to outmaneuver Leon Trotsky. Stalin used his position as secretary-general of the Communist party to build up support for himself and party members |

|[pic] |loyal to him. While Trotsky thought the Soviet Union should move quicker towards communism and increase its efforts to bring about a world-wide revolution. Stalin |

| |said that Trotsky was undermining the state. The party expelled Trotsky and his followers to Siberia. In 1929, Trotsky left the Soviet Union and settled in Mexico.|

| |On August 20, 1940, Trotsky was attacked in his home in Mexico with an ice axe by undercover NKVD agent Ramón Mercader. Trotsky was taken to a hospital, operated |

| |on, and survived for more than a day, dying at the age of 60 on August 21, 1940, as a result of blood loss and shock. |

|3. | |Stalin saw the Soviet Union as a country behind the advanced countries about fifty or one hundred years. The only way the Soviet Union could survive was to develop|

|[pic] |[pic] |its industry. In 1928, Stalin launched his first five-year plan, an economic program that set specific goals. His main focus was the rapid growth of heavy industry|

| | |and to increase agricultural production. Stalin poured the countries resources into building steel mills, electric power stations, chemical plants, cement plants, |

| | |oil refineries. These industries would be the industries to build a strong nation. Between 1928 and 1940 the five year plans resulted in some impressive gains. |

| | |Steel production more the quadrupled and oil production tripled. By 1940, the Soviet Union was the second largest producer of iron and steel in Europe. |

|4. |Next on the list to improve the Soviet Union, Stalin ordered all peasants to give up their land to form collectives. A collective was a government-run enterprise. |

|[pic] |On these collectives the peasants were paid according to the amount of work they did and a portion of the harvest was paid to the government. The three goals of |

| |collectivization were to increase food production by mechanizing, give the government control over farm production, and free people from farming so they could work|

| |in industry. Stalin had brought socialism to the countryside. |

|5. |The Kulaks were prosperous Russian peasants who resisted collectivization starting in 1928. Sometimes the Kulaks would destroy their own livestock or crops. Stalin|

|[pic] |responded with a brutal crackdown to any opposition. Millions of Kulaks were executed or sent to forced-labor camps in Siberia. As a result farm production fell in|

| |the 1930’s and the Soviet Union suffered widespread starvation. Stalin later admitted that 10 million had died as a result of collectivization. By 1939, most |

| |peasants had been forced onto collective farms and food shortages still occurred. Finally, Stalin compromised and let the peasants on the collectives keep small |

| |garden plots, which were used to feed their families. |

|6. |For Stalin to make the Soviet Union a strong communist state he had to organize what we call today, a totalitarian state. In a totalitarian state there is only one|

|[pic] |political party which controls every aspect of its citizen’s lives. Individual right accounted for little. The citizens are expected to obey without question every|

| |government policy or law. Any opposition is quickly silenced. Nationalism is extremely important and religion was outlawed and replaced with atheism. The |

| |government controlled the newspapers and radio as well as other means of communication. The media was used to pour out propaganda and praise the policies of |

| |Stalin. Does this sound like what is going on in the United States in 2013? |

|7. |Stalin used terror to silence critics of his rule. Stalin used the same kind of tactics that he used on the Kulaks. Thousands of party members were expelled from |

|[pic] |the party or purged. These people were then charged, tried and executed. No one was safe in this communist state and the Great Purge wiped out millions of critics.|

|[pic] |Francisco Franco |

|1. |In the 1930's, Spain had experienced a lot of unrest. In 1931, Primo-de-Rivera had been forced to step down as king and a republican government had been setup. The|

|[pic] |new government was controlled by liberals and socialist. The Catholic church had lost its status and much of its property had been confiscated under that |

| |leadership. The size of the army had been reduced. |

|2. |Political unrest continued under the republican government. Socialist unions staged disruptive strikes and anticlerical forces set fire to Catholic convents. The |

|[pic] |clergy denounced the policies of the government, and the monarchists called for a return of the king. A more conservative government was elected in 1933, but in |

| |the 1936 elections a coalition of liberals, socialists, and communists won. |

|3. |In July 1936, a group of generals led by Francisco Franco started an uprising against the republican government. The generals wanted to restore power to the church|

|[pic] |and destroy communism and socialism in Spain. The group called themselves Nationalists and called for a fascist state. The defenders of the government were called |

| |Republicans or Loyalists. |

|4. |It was Monday April 26, 1937, or market day in the small northern Spanish village of Guernica. As the farmers gathered in the main square and families did their |

|[pic] |shopping, two nuns noticed a group of planes and went to sound the alarm. Bombs rained death on the men, women, and children in the crowded square. The bombing |

| |left 1,600 people dead. The Spanish Republican government commissioned Picasso to create a large mural for the Spanish display at the Paris International |

| |Exposition at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. |

|5. |The Spanish Civil War became an international issue. The League of Nations was unable to stop arms from reaching either side. Mussolini and Hitler supplied arms |

|[pic] |and manpower to the Nationalists. While Hitler supplied the planes to bomb Guernica the plane in this picture came from the Italians. Spain proved to be a great |

| |testing ground for new weapons and tactics. |

|6. |Meanwhile, Stalin sent weapons and advisors to the Republicans, but the Soviet help did not match the help given by the Axis Powers. The Spanish Civil War lasted |

|[pic] |until 1939 with a victory for the Nationalists. Franco then imposed a fascist dictatorship on Spain. The failure of the democratic powers to stop the Axis Powers |

| |in Spain only encouraged Mussolini and Hitler to interfere elsewhere. |

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