Rise of Totalitarian Governments Flashcards
What is a totalitarian government?
A government that has total control of citizens’ lives, public and private spheres.
What are four methods that dictators use to control their people?
Religious Persecution
Propaganda
Censorship
Police States
How does a totalitarian government deal with religion?
Replace old religions with leader worship
What is censorship? Why does it work?
Keeping information damaging to the king from the public. People don’t get mad about what they don’t know about.
What is Propaganda?
Using false or biased information to get the public to believe the government’s ideas
What are the propaganda techniques ?
fear
Plain folks
Emotional words
Bandwagon
Describe what a police state is, and why it works to keep people in line.
A country that is run through fear of being imprisoned or killed by the government. Uses a lot of government spies and secret police that can arrest people for any small thing
What kind of government style did Russia have before its revolutions?
Monarchy
What is a czar?
Russian word for King
Why were people upset about industrialization in Russia?
It was done through low pay, bad conditions, and child labor
What were the long term causes or events that helped to cause the Russian revolution?
- Poor leadership from the czar
- Russo-Japanese War
- Bloody Sunday
- WWI
- Rasputin
- New political ideas
What were the workers asking for on Bloody Sunday?
Better work hours, pay and conditions
Free healthcare
Voting rights
Parliament
Freedoms of speech, religion, press, and association
What happened to the protesters?
Nicholas’ guards fired on them, killing 1,000
Why did Russia lose so many battles in WWI to Germany?
- Lack of weapons
Lack of technology (artillery, -machine guns, etc.)
-Poorly trained troops
-Poorly trained officers
In what ways did WWI lead to the end of the Russian monarchy?
The war and government was already unpopular with the peasants, the Russians lose millions of men and civilians which, and the war effort makes daily essentials like food and heating fuel unavailable.
What action did Nicholas II take to end the riots during WWI?
Steps down as king of Russia
Explain the slogan of the Bolsheviks?
- peace – Get out of WWI
- Land – Split up land from royalty and give to peasants
- Bread – Increase basic living standards, such as making sure bread is available
Who was the Red Army?
The military force of the Bolsheviks (communist)
Who did the Red Army fight during the Russian Civil War?
The white armies
What sort of people were in the White Army?
Royalists, capitalist, people who wanted a democracy, european countries, anti- communist.
Who won the civil war?
Red army
What is the importance of the Russian Civil War in history?
First country to become communists, set the tone for world politics still seen today
What were the reforms the Bolsheviks took once they won the civil war
- Moved capital city to Moscow
- Renamed country Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
- Divided country into “republics” (states) that would report directly to Lenin
- Took land from nobles and gave it to the peasants
- gov’t took over banks
- Gave factory control to workers
- Emptied private bank accounts
- Outlawed all discrimination, and military ranks
Who took over after Lenin died? How did he accomplish this(Great Purge)?
- Joseph Stalin, used blackmail and bribery to get elected, then killed all rivals
- Stalin solidified his power by killing all enemies and high ranking supporters, or anyone who threatened his power. 8-13 million
What is a collective farm?
Massive government-run farms, some had up to 50,000 people working on them.
What was the holodomor?
Stalin’s program to punish Ukrainians for their resistance to Communism by taking away all of their food. Killed 8 million people in one year.
What were the successes and failures of Stalin as a leader?
- Stalin increased industrial and agricultural output, made the country an economic and military power.
- He killed tens of millions of people, ran a society based on fear, and the daily life of a Russian citizen was horrible.
Nicholas II
Last czar of Russia
Rasputin
Supposed holy man who was murdered by Russian nobles. He was one cause of the Russian revolution.
V. I. Lenin
Leader of the bolsheviks and USSR during Russian Revolution
Joseph Stalin
Took control of the USSR after Lenin died, transformed into totalitarian government
Which countries lost their monarchies as a result of WWI?
- Austria-Hungary
- Russia
- Ottoman Empire
- Germany
What were they replaced with?
Democracies
Why was the Weimar Republic despised by the German people from the start?
- Was blamed for losing the war
- Was blamed for signing the Treaty of Versailles
What prompted Germany to hyperinflation its economy? What was the effect of this?
- Was in response to France invading them to take resources as payments
- Destroyed the German economy
What is the Dawes plan, and did it work?
- The United States gave Germany money to restart its economy
- Yes, it worked better than expected
Which country was the world economy build around?
United states
What are two reasons that the US economy grew so fast after WWI?
We didn’t have to rebuild anything
We had sold the world its war goods, and now we sold them its construction goods
What were two underlying structural problem with our economy?
- Uneven distribution of wealth led to too many poor, who then bought everything on credit
- Overproduction of goods led to lowered prices and layoffs
How did most countries get out of the Great Depression?
The governments printed money and hired people as a way to get the money to the citizens
What happened to most of the new democracies in Europe?
They collapsed to totalitarian governments
What is fascism?
Extreme right winged form of totalitarian government
In what ways are fascists similar to Communist dictators?
Uses the 4 methods of control . Both form of totalitarian government
In what ways is fascism different from communism?
-Extreme nationalism
-anti-communists
-
What does Nazi stand for?
National Socialist German Workers Party
What two institutions did both Hitler and the original Nazi party despise?
The Treaty of Versailles
Wiemar government
What were Hitler’s views on race that he wrote about in Mein Kampf?
That the German race was responsible for all good things in the world, and all bad things were the fault of Jews and Communists
What is Lebensraum? What does Hitler want to do with it?
Living Room. He needs to get more land for the growing German population, which he would get from Poland and Russia. He would remove the Poles and Russians and place Germans there.
How did the Reichstag fire help the Nazis gain power?
The Communists were blamed, and Hitler was able to arrest them, and use it as a scare tactic to make people think he was keeping them safe. In the following elections, the Nazi party won a majority.
What was the Enabling Act?
The act the Nazi controlled Reichstag passed to make Hitler a dictator
