DICTATORSHIP

The response to the problems posed by the Great Depression in countries such as Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy, and elsewhere, was the rise or tightening of dictatorial regimes to the point that dictatorship was considered by many people to be a feasible alternative to liberal democracy during the 1930s. Certain features characterized these dictatorships: the concentration of power in the hands of a single leader, a one-party system with mass membership, a secret police prepared to use terror as a tool of policy, and a control of the popular media to promote the regime's doctrine. These features were certainly all present to varying degrees under the Nazi regime in Germany, Communism in the Soviet Union, and Fascism in Italy.

In Germany, against a backdrop of economic chaos caused by the Great Depression, Adolf Hitler, without ever winning a national election or having a popular majority, was appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933, just four weeks before Franklin Roosevelt took office. Once in office Hitler employed the attributes of a dictatorship to remove domestic opposition and established the preeminence of the Nazi Party. He sought to increase industrial production, especially through rearmament and public works schemes, and so provide work for millions of unemployed Germans. Considerable scholarly debate exists over how far Hitler intended to follow the foreign policy espoused in Mein Kampf (1925) or whether he was merely pragmatic in pursuing an expansionist foreign policy during the late 1930s. In remilitarizing the Rhineland in March 1936, completing the Anschluss (unification) of Austria and Germany in February 1938, and then securing the Sudetenland in September 1938, Hitler seemed to be rectifying the perceived deficiencies of the Treaty of Versailles. This was widely popular within Germany and received tacit support abroad. Even after Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, the quick successes of Nazi Germany in 1940 made many consider that Hitler's dictatorship provided the way ahead.

Joseph Stalin had become leader of the Soviet Union following V. I. Lenin's death in 1924. By 1929 Stalin had consolidated his leadership, totally overcoming opponents within the Communist Party and eliminating all organized opposition outside the party. In 1928 Stalin embarked the Soviet Union upon the first Five-Year Plan. This plan for economic growth through mass industrialization and collectivization of agriculture came under the banner of "Socialism in One Country" and saw notable achievements, such as the establishment of the city of Magnitogorsk in the Urals dedicated to steel production. This success and others seemed to show that despite Western scepticism, with Stalin as dictator Communism could avoid the problems of the Great Depression. However, the price for economic progress in the Soviet Union was extremely high. Stalin deported over ten million people to Siberia, and purged the Soviet officer corps with disastrous effect during World War II.

In Italy, Benito Mussolini, prime minister since 1922, tightened the grip of his dictatorship in the face of the Great Depression. The policy of the "Corporate State," combined employer-employee syndicates established during the 1920s, seemed to prevent Italy from suffering the worst effects of the economic downturn. However, the regime failed to wholly implement an integrated economic program, as state investment did not begin until the 1930s and then only sporadically. Mussolini also sought to promote Italian national prestige in foreign affairs, most notably through the invasion and subsequent occupation of Abyssinia in 1935. Italy was criticized by the League of Nations and this encouraged closer collaboration with Nazi Germany. An Axis with Berlin encouraged Mussolini to claim that Italy was ready for war, despite Italian industry and military being underprepared. Indeed, when Mussolini joined the war in June 1940, Italy proved a drain on German resources.

While these three regimes would be devastated in different ways during World War II, the era of the Great Depression saw the rise of other dictatorships. The Francisco Franco regime in Spain began in 1936 and overcame the republicans in the Spanish civil war by 1939 with the support of Germany and Italy. Franco modeled his regime on Mussolini's corporate state under a single party (the Falange), and remained in office until his death in 1975. Other dictatorships were also established during this era in South America. The influence of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, although receiving tacit approval from the United States, became increasingly dictatorial during the period, as did the regime of President Getúlio Vargas, who had assumed power in Brazil in 1930.

Whatever the fate of the dictatorships of the 1930s their most remarkable feature was their physical and intellectual control over their own populations, which in the case of Stalin and Hitler allowed for the mass slaughter of millions of people.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bosworth, Richard. Mussolini. 2002.

Brooker, Paul. Twentieth-Century Dictatorships: The Ideological One-Party States. 1995.

Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, 2nd edition. 1998.

Kershaw, Ian. The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, 4th edition. 2000.

Noakes, Jeremy, and Geoffrey Pridham, eds. Nazism 1919–1945, 2nd edition. Vol. 1: The Rise to Power, 1919–1934; Vol. 2: State, Economy, and Society, 1933–1939. 1998.

Pauley, Bruce F. Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century. 1997.

Siegelbaum, Lewis H., and Andrei Sokolov. Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents, translated by Thomas Hoisington and Steven Shabad. 2000.