Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union
I. Nazi Germany
i. What was National Socialism?
ii. Explaining the Nazis' success: how did the they come to power?
iii. The Nazi regime
II. Stalin’s Soviet Union
i. The USSR in the 1920s: a new direction?
ii. "Stalinism":  The Soviet Union in the 1930s

I. Nazi Germany

Why did the Nazis succeed?
1. weaknesses of the Weimar Republic
2. the Nazis' own movement and appeal

National Socialist German Workers Party

Nazi ideology
1. Extreme racist nationalism: anti-Semitic, anti-Slavic, and also directed at other groups
Volk = the “folk,” defined as a biological ace (“blood and soil”)
Lebensraum = “living space,” room for the race to expand
Social Darwinism
2. The promise of a conflict-free society
Volksgemeinschaft = Volk community
anti-liberal, anti-socialist/communist
3. The Führer (leader) principle
united will
total subordination
4. Negative integration
unity created by demonizing enemies
again: anti-Semitic, anti-Slavic; also anti-Communist
5. Total mobilization
state of permanent emergency (WWI front experience)
“Sieg oder Untergang,” victory or destruction

two perspectives on modern German history:
Sonderweg, or German special path: an authoritarian political culture produced by uneven modernization
or
rapid, intensive modernization plus a series of catastrophes

Problems of the Weimar Republic:
1. Constitution:
a. proportional representation: weak coalition governments
b. presidential emergency powers to rule by decree (Article 48)
2. Treaty of Versailles (not the absolute amount of reparations; instead: gave radical nationalists an issue)
3. Opposition of elites (army, heavy industry, judges, professors, university students)
4. Catastrophic social experiences (1923 hyperinflation, Great Depression after 1929)
5. Political polarization (Nazis; Communists; weak centrist parties)

The Nazis’ path to power
1. genuine social and electoral support
2. learned how to be effective at organizing a mass political party
3. dual strategy: street violence and electoral politics
4. collusion of elites

The Nazis in power: four goals
1. consolidate political power (Gleichschaltung)
2. generate economic recovery
3. carry out racial policies
4. mobilize for expansion

II. Stalin’s Soviet Union

“socialism in one country”
Trotsky
NEP = New Economic Policy (1920s)

constructivism
Tatlin, "Monument to the Third International"
photomontage
socialist realism

"We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must catch up this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we go under."
--Stalin, ca. 1931

Stalin (Josef Djugashvili)
"comrade card file"
cult of Lenin

Five Year Plans
forced collectivization of agriculture
kulaks / “liquidating the kulaks as a class”
mass famine | Ukraine and northern Caucasus 1932-1933
death toll: ca. 3 million
Stakhanov, "overfulfill your quota"

gulag = network of prison/forced labor camps in east ("Siberia")
political purges
show trials of old Bolshevik leaders, 1936-1938