Chapter 27 Flashcards
Totalitarianism
A radical dictatorship that exercises “total claim” over the beliefs and behavior of its citizens by taking control of the economic, social, intellectual, and cultural aspects of society.
Fascism
A movement characterized by extreme, often expansionist nationalism, antisocialism, a dynamic and violent leader, and glorification of war and the military.
Eugenics
A pseudoscientific doctrine that maintains that the selective breeding of human beings can improve the general characteristics of a national population, which helped inspire Nazi ideas about “race and space” and ultimately contributed to the Holocaust.
Five-Year Plan
A plan launched by Stalin in 1928, and termed the “revolution from above,” aimed at modernizing the Soviet Union and creating a new Communist society with new attitudes, new loyalties, and a new socialist humanity.
New Economic Policy (NEP)
Lenin’s 1921 policy to re-establish limited economic freedom in an attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry in the face of economic disintegration.
Collectivization of agriculture
The forcible consolidation of individual peasant farms into large state-controlled enterprises in the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Kulaks
The better-off peasants who were stripped of land and livestock under Stalin and were generally not permitted to join collective farms; many of them starved or were deported to forced-labor camps for “re-education”.
Black Shirts
Mussolini’s private militia that destroyed socialist newspapers, union halls, and Socialist Party headquarters, eventually pushing Socialists out of the city governments of northern Italy.
Lateran Agreement
A 1929 agreement that recognized the Vatican as an independent state, with Mussolini agreeing to give the church heavy financial support in return for public support from the pope.
Enabling Act
An act pushed through the Reichstag by the Nazis that gave Hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years.
Appeasement
The British policy toward Germany prior to WW2 that aimed at granting HItler whatever he wanted, including western Czechoslovakia in order to avoid war.
New Order
HItler’s program based on racial imperialism, which gave preferential treatment to the Nordic peoples; the French, an “inferior” Latin people, occupied a middle position; amd Slavs and Jews were treated harshly as “subhumans”.
Holocaust
The systematic effort of the Nazi state to exterminate all European Jews and other groups deemed racially inferior during the Second World War.
National Socialism
A movement and political party driven by extreme nationalism and racism, led by Adolf Hitler; its adherents ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945 and forced Europe into WW2.
