Between the wars

The first principle

Democracy survives when most citizens and elites believe it delivers security and prosperity and that the rules of the game are fair. Between 1919 and 1939 many new democracies were born without that belief, and then lost what support they had when inflation, depression and the fear of communism struck together. Where democracy was old and its institutions deep, it adapted; where it was young and tied to a humiliating peace, it gave way to dictatorship, and the dictators' wars destroyed the system meant to keep the peace.

The core

The Russian Revolution (1917)

The Tsar fell in February 1917, and in October the Bolsheviks under Lenin seized power, took Russia out of the war and built a one party communist state, consolidated after a civil war. Its ideology is covered in the note on capitalism, socialism and communism, but its political effect was immediate: fear of a communist revolution pushed property owners, the army and the churches across Europe towards authoritarian parties.

Fascism in Italy

Italy was on the winning side in 1918 but felt cheated of the territory promised to it, and it faced inflation, strikes and land seizures. Benito Mussolini's Fascists used black shirted squads against socialists, and after the March on Rome in October 1922 the King appointed him Prime Minister. By 1926 Italy was a one party state built on the cult of the leader, corporatism and the glorification of war.

Weimar Germany and the rise of Nazism

• The Weimar Republic (1919) was born of defeat and carried the burden of Versailles. Its proportional representation produced many parties and short lived coalitions, and Article 48 gave the President power to rule by emergency decree.
• When Germany fell behind on reparations, France occupied the Ruhr (1923), and the mark collapsed in hyperinflation, wiping out middle class savings. Recovery under Gustav Stresemann, helped by American loans under the Dawes Plan (1924), lasted only until the Wall Street Crash.
• The Great Depression that began in October 1929 cut world trade, recalled American loans and pushed German unemployment above six million by 1932. Voters turned to extremes, the Nazi vote rose from 2.6 per cent in 1928 to 37.3 per cent in July 1932, and conservative elites made Hitler Chancellor in January 1933, believing they could control him.
• After the Reichstag fire, the Enabling Act (March 1933) let Hitler make laws without Parliament, and within months other parties and trade unions were banned.

Japan and Spain

• In Japan, the Depression ruined silk exporting farmers, and army officers who distrusted party politicians gained control of policy through assassinations and pressure, making Japan a militarist state that sought an empire in Manchuria and China.
• In Spain, the Second Republic (1931) was torn between left and right. General Francisco Franco's rising in 1936 began a civil war in which Germany and Italy helped Franco and the Soviet Union helped the Republic, and Franco's victory in 1939 produced a dictatorship that lasted until 1975.

Dimensions

• Political. By 1938 most of the new states of central and eastern Europe, from Poland to Yugoslavia and Romania, had become dictatorships of the army, the king or a single party, and democracy survived mainly in north western Europe.
• Economic. The gold standard and cuts in spending deepened the Depression, and protectionism such as the American Smoot Hawley tariff (1930) shrank trade further. John Maynard Keynes's General Theory (1936) argued that governments must spend to restore demand.
• Social. Mass unemployment, ruined savings and humiliated veterans gave fascism its followers, and propaganda through radio, film and rallies reached them in new ways.
• Ideological. Fascism rejected liberal democracy and communism alike in favour of the nation, the leader and the use of force, while totalitarian regimes on both left and right sought control of every part of life.
• International. The United States stayed out of the League of Nations, Germany and the Soviet Union were at first excluded, and decisions needed unanimity, so collective security depended on Britain and France, who were unwilling to fight.

In practice

The failure of the League and the path to war

• Manchuria (1931). Japan staged an incident at Mukden and occupied Manchuria. The League's Lytton Commission condemned Japan, which simply left the League in 1933.
• Abyssinia (1935). Italy invaded Ethiopia. The League imposed sanctions but excluded oil, and Britain kept the Suez Canal open, so the sanctions failed and Italy moved towards Germany.
• Rhineland and Austria. Hitler sent troops into the demilitarised Rhineland in March 1936 without resistance, and annexed Austria (the Anschluss) in March 1938.
• Munich (September 1938). Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier agreed that Germany could take the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, which was not consulted. Hitler occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Italy took Albania in April, and after the Nazi Soviet Pact (August 1939) Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939.

Case: the New Deal. Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal (from 1933) used public works, relief, banking reform, the Social Security Act (1935) and the right of workers to bargain collectively to fight the Depression within democracy. It showed that a democratic state could act boldly without becoming a dictatorship.

Case: Scandinavia. In Sweden the Social Democrats made a compromise with farmers (1933) and with employers (1938) that combined markets with welfare and wage bargaining, an early version of the welfare state.

Issues and way forward

Did a serious challenge arise to the democratic state system?

• Yes. The challenge was real and widespread. Democracies were new and lacked loyal elites, Versailles tied them to defeat, hyperinflation and depression destroyed faith in liberal economics, fear of communism drove the middle classes and elites to the right, proportional representation produced weak coalitions, and mass propaganda and private armies made street violence part of politics. By 1939 Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal and most of eastern Europe were dictatorships, and Japan was run by its army.
• But not a collapse. Britain, France, the United States, the Low Countries, Switzerland and Scandinavia stayed democratic through the same Depression. They had older institutions, strong parties and civil society, and legitimacy not tied to a lost war, and they adapted through the New Deal, welfare compromises and, in France, the Popular Front (1936). Czechoslovakia remained a democracy until it was destroyed from outside at Munich.
• The lesson. Democracy failed where economic crisis met weak institutions and a sense of national humiliation, not everywhere. After 1945 the victors built safeguards against a repeat: the Bretton Woods institutions for economic stability, the Marshall Plan, the United Nations with a Security Council, and in West Germany a constitution with a constructive vote of no confidence and a five per cent threshold for parties.

Appeasement debated. Critics, beginning with Guilty Men (1940), saw appeasement as cowardice that fed Hitler's appetite. Defenders point to Britain's unready rearmament, divided public opinion and the absence of reliable allies, and argue that Munich bought a year to prepare; most historians accept that Hitler's aims could not be satisfied by concessions.

Common confusions

• Fascism and Nazism. Both were nationalist, anti communist and anti democratic; Nazism added a racial ideology of antisemitism and living space (Lebensraum) at its core.
• Appeasement and collective security. Collective security meant all League members acting together against an aggressor; appeasement meant meeting an aggressor's demands to avoid war.
• Weimar's hyperinflation and the Depression. Hyperinflation (1923) ruined savings; the Depression (1929 onwards) brought mass unemployment. The Nazis gained mainly from the second.
• Anschluss and Munich. The Anschluss (March 1938) joined Austria to Germany; the Munich Agreement (September 1938) gave Germany the Sudetenland.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: Weimar Republic, Article 48, hyperinflation, Dawes Plan, Great Depression, March on Rome, Enabling Act, totalitarianism, militarism, collective security, Lytton Commission, appeasement, Anschluss, Munich Agreement, New Deal.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction (data): The Nazi Party won 2.6 per cent of the vote in 1928 and 37.3 per cent in July 1932, a rise that tracked German unemployment as it passed six million.
  • Introduction (report or scholar): E H Carr called the inter war period the "twenty years' crisis", in which a fragile peace and fragile democracies failed together.
  • Conclusion: Between the wars democracy was seriously challenged where economic crisis met young institutions and national humiliation, but it survived and reformed itself where its roots were deep.
  • Conclusion: The failures of the 1930s shaped the post war world, from the United Nations to the welfare state, built to ensure that economic despair would not again become a path to dictatorship.