His Mo End Term Lectures

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His Mo End Term Lectures
History of the Modern World (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
StudeerSnel wordt niet gesponsord of ondersteund door een hogeschool of universiteit

Gedownload door Floris Alderliefste (falderliefste@gmail.com)
lOMoARcPSD|9504701
WW1
• Modern Warfare and the concept of ‘Total War’.
o Fist modern war (use of modern weapons, communications, and methods of
transportation)
o Civic damage
o Not fought on a particular area
o 1648–1789: Wars of Kings
▪ Mercenaries, (relatively) limited in scale, switching alliances
o After 1789: Modern Warfare
▪ General (military) conscription
▪ Von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege:
▪ “War is the continuation of politics by other means”
o Total War:
▪ Complete mobilization of means, society and politics for the war effort
▪ The mobilization of means, complete or total mobilization of means,
society and politics for the war effort so that every aspect of a society of
its economy is working towards one goal
▪ Massive impact on society
• Causes of WW I: undermining the Concert of Europe
o Undermining of the Concert of Europe (1815-1871): Collaboration of European
powers to maintain a certain balance of power within Europe
▪ Sort of started at the Congress of Vienna: Balance of power between the
great powers, the great nations of the great states of Europe
▪ Creation of stability
▪ Wouldn't take away too much of each other's colonies
▪ Wouldn't take away too much with each other territories within Europe
▪ Treaties to make sure that there is a balance of power that everyone is not
may be fully happy but happy enough in order to prevent military conflicts
o Crimean War (1854-1856) and the unification of Italy and Germany undermined
this process
▪ Unification of Italy and Germany to states that were not recognized as
such at the Congress of Vienna because they weren't a major power at that
time
o Imperialism made things even more problematic
▪ Germany and Italy also wanted colonies
o Franco-German war
o International Anarchy
▪ No overarching power to regulate the behavior of the regulate actions by
states, nation states
▪ Anarchist global stage
▪ Every state's fences for itself

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▪ Specific interests of states are the most important. It's also something you
could refer to as realism in international relations or political realism,
which simply states that power and interests are always the driving forces
of states
▪ States seek to increase or protect their interests
o UN
▪ The UN represents a desire for some form of an international order, for
some form of international cooperation
▪ Desire to have an international set of rules and international set of
something like international law that most countries abide to most of the
time
• Bismarck’s System:
o After the Congress of Berlin (1878)
o Number of alliances and treaties aiming at the consolidation of Germany’s power
in Europe and at the same time isolating France (arch nemesis)
▪ 1879 Zweibund: union of two nations between Austria-Hungarian Empire
and Germany
▪ 1881 Dreikaiserbund: Three emperors’ union between the emperor of
Germany, Austria Hungarian Empire, and the Russian Empire
▪ 1882 Dreibund with Italy (Triple Alliance)
• If one of its three nations, one of the three countries was in a
situation of war the other two would support that nation
• Italy withdrew from that just at the beginning of the First World
War
o Secret treaties against Russia
▪ Keep Russian in check
o Strategy behind this: preventing a war on two fronts (focus on the East and the
West)
o Political realism because of distrust between European Powers
▪ Defend your position, you defend your power, you defend your interests.
And these interests almost always collide with the interests of another
great power in Europe and outside of Europe through imperialism.
o Britain:
▪ Splendid isolation:
• Separating the idea of Britan with the idea of Europe
• Perceiving Britain not really as a part of Europe
▪ Navy League & Tariff Reform League and the Two Powers Standard
• Two Power Standard: The idea that the British Navy should always
be twice as strong as the other importance powers navies combined
• Idea of keeping up a certain military expenditure
• The navy was the main weapon you could say that they used in
controlling their empire
▪ Empire in relative decline: jingoism

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• Power decreases compared to other countries (e.g. Germany)

• Germany starts to become a military power and a huge player on
the European and global stage
• Jingo: Sort of nice way of refraining from saying the word Jesus.
Idea is that we don't want to get involved in a war, we don't want
to fight, but if we have to, we will, also win.
▪ From having France (1898 Fashoda) and Russia as its main adversaries to
competing with Germany
• Germany becomes a threat
• Focus shifts towards Germany
▪ Entente Cordiale with France (1904)
o France:
▪ Humiliation of the French-German war: chauvinism and revanchism (War
of 1870/71)
• French need for revenge
▪ Domestic unrest: Boulangism/revanchism (1886-1891) and the Dreyfus-
affaire
• Domestic political changes, international context, changing.
Domestic politicians using that international changing contexts are
also fire up forms of nationalism or at least firing, firing up
agitation towards other people
• Changing internal relations by focusing on an external enemy.
▪ Consolidation of parliamentary democracy, Third Republic, but also an
unrelenting hatred for Germany
o Austrian-Hungarian Empire:
▪ Old empire with an old emperor.
▪ Separatism
• Serbs, Croats, and the Hungarians wanted to separate themselves
• Strong Pan-Slav movements
▪ Fixed on the Balkans and the demise of the Ottoman Empire
• Not a country that went through massive social and political
change compared to other large European, Western European
countries
▪ Trails behind economically & politically
▪ Seeks support from Germany and Russia (Dreikeiserbund).
• Conservative empire who do not seek to politically modernize their
countries
o Russia:
▪ Behind in modernization (both politically and economically)
▪ Conservatism and Pan-Slavism
▪ Looking for support from France (financially)
▪ 1907 Triple Entente (with GB and France)

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o Germany:
▪ Verspätete Nation and ‘Place in the sun’: Weltpolitik
▪ Flottenverein and Bund der Landwirte (pressure groups)
▪ Conflict with France, competition with GB (Navy League) and distrust of
Russia
▪ Focus on Dreibund
▪ Military leadership: Von-Schlieffenplan and ‘war before it is too late’
• Defeat France first and then focus in Russia on the Eastern Front
• Overrun Belgium to get to France
o The Great War: summer of 1914
▪ 28 June: murder of the Austrian successor to the throne: Francis Ferdinand
in Sarajevo by the Black Hand a Pan-Slavic nationalistic terrorist group
that was against being part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
▪ 28 July: Austrian Empire declares war on Serbia
▪ Russia mobilizes
▪ Response from Germany: declaration of war on Russia
▪ 3 August: Germany declares war on France
▪ 4 August: Britain declares war on Germany
o From Blitzkrieg to Sitzkrieg
▪ Blitzkrieg:
• Moving fast, striking, with some element of surprise; winning the
war very quickly
• An intense military campaign intended to bring about a swift
victory
o E.g. Schlieffenplan
▪ Sitzkrieg
• A war, or a phase of a war, in which there is little or no active
warfare
• Stalemate position of not being able to move from one side to the
other.
o E.g. Trench Warfare
o Trench Warfare:
▪ Use of chemical warfare
▪ Use of machine guns
▪ Little movement
▪ Artillery
• Use of heavy artillery to try and make it easier to reach the other
trench, reach another area. Also known as this no man's land
between the trenches because of course the area was completely
destroyed and shot to pieces.
▪ The Great War: Victims

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• To give you an idea, military deaths, civilian deaths, total deaths

and military wounded, which was not heard of before. And this is
of course on a massive scale
• Another important aspect of the effect of fighting in the trenches
during WWI was post-traumatic stress for instance, and the effect
that that held on large groups of people. The combination of
having these deplorable circumstances in which you had to fight
• The trench war was sort of futile fighting back and forth and
hundreds of thousands of people dying during these battles.
▪ 1917: turning point
• (Political) consequences of Attrition warfare:
o Exhaustion war
o Sustained process of wearing down an opponent so as to
force their physical collapse through continuous losses in
personnel, equipment and supplies or [wearing] them down
to such an extent that their will to fight collapses (Wiki)
o Continue to fight simply exhaust the other party to such an
extent that they will at certain points give up
o Try to cripple your enemy as much as possible at a certain
time, he will just simply give up. But this idea of having a
definitive military strike that will defeat your enemy has
gone to the background
• 31 January 1917: unlimited submarine warfare and the US ‘joins
in’
o Germany sank American Naval ship that were providing
supplies towards Europe, America said that if Germany
was to of this again it would be seen as an act of war
o Germany uses its submarines to sink American ships again
and this leads to the involvement of the US in WWI
• Russian Revolution (Russia is out)
• From Sept 1917 onwards: military dictatorship in Germany (Von
Hindenburg)
• French mutiny until the arrival of ‘le Tigre’ in November 1917
o Prime Minister of France/ Minister of War
o He creates a sort of mini cabinet of a few very important
ministers that have full authority over French resources
o The goal of his administration was to win the war
• Versailles Treaty and the Fourteen Points of Woodrow Wilson:
o The 14 points (January 1918):
▪ The main idea of this new diplomacy of these 14 points is that we need to
create again, a new system which stimulates countries too to talk, to create
treaties to find different ways of preventing conflict/ armed conflict
o New Diplomacy

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▪ Open covenants openly arrived that was before any important phrase of
this new diplomacy (e.g. Congress of Vienna)
▪ Transparency, according to Wilson, the only way to make sure that you
prevent that distrust is if you deal with each other openly and fairly and
that everything is discussed in an open way, but also that treaties and
comparable documents or anyway, public so that everyone who is
interested can get that information. That everyone also understands what
the deals are and not again, behind closed doors, making sort of extra
deals to undermine this new system
▪ “The war to end all wars”
• Idea that this had, this, this war will have such a massively
negative effect and will scare countries, politicians into not going
to war ever again, but more importantly, create a new international
system to say goodbye to international anarchy, to try and create
that institution that, that rises above nation states and tries to
prevent conflict. The League of Nations was already mentions
o Freedom of the Seas
▪ It entails the idea that the seas are international public goods
▪ The limitations lay under territorial waters and international agreements
o Some autonomy for the peoples of the colonies
o Right to self-determination for the peoples of Europe (vote!)
▪ Right to self-determination: Be able to determine your own fate and future
▪ Inspired by French Revolution, by enlightened thinking. This idea that the
people are the highest authority in a country, that they are the sovereign of
a nation and they should have the final say in what's the direction that the
country takes
o Founding of an international organization to uphold international peace
o Liberal idealism
• Punitive Peace of Versailles:
o Italian, British, and French Minister + Wilson as the four major actors deciding
the fate of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Europe for the decades to come
o Alleinschuld Germany
o Territorial losses for the Central Powers.
o Germany’s colonies taken away
▪ Germany size reduced
o Severe military restrictions
▪ Particularly against Germany
o Enormous reparations (20 billion Gold Marks)
▪ Germany had to pay war reparations
o Self-determination in Europe (end of Austrian-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires)
o The main focus, the main problem was seen, was identified as Germany.
Germany also pay for most of the costs involved in the Treaty of Versailles. And
it also creates this, this mythical idea of the humiliation later in German politics

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sites, it's very important to realize what this punitive peace debts to the German
political thinking, the German national psyche, if you will. This becomes an
important aspect also for the rise of National Socialism in Germany in the decades
to follow after the First World War
• WWI as point in history:
o End of Tsarist-Russia > founding of the USSR
o Collapse of Austro-Hungarian Empire, German and Ottoman Empires
▪ Huge geopolitical impact on international affairs
▪ Indirectly created the revival of French and British position in the world
o Rise of the US > end of European supremacy
o Deployment of soldiers from the colonies > rising nationalism in these colonies
▪ Rise of nationalism in the colonies
▪ Idea of self-determination becomes popular
o Shortage of labor > strengthening position of unions
o Necessity of women for the economy > breakthrough in women’s emancipation
o Total War > increase in bureaucracy and interventionist state (also in the
economy)
▪ every aspect of society, every aspect of society at large, needed to be used
for the war efforts
o WW I was not the cause, but catalyst of much of these situations
▪ Austrian-Hungarian empire was already weak, the Ottoman Empire was
already crumbling
▪ There was opposition in Tsar Russia
▪ There was a growing Bolshevik revolutionary mood in Russia already
▪ All of this accelerated during WWI
The Russian Revolution
• Socio-economic background:
o Primitive economy based on agriculture
▪ Primitive from a Western European perspective
o Mujiks in the countryside: illiterate, ‘back warded’ farmers
o Belief in Father Tsar and the power of the orthodox Church (Tsar-myth)
o But: declining revenue Russian agriculture since mid-19th century
o Lacking a substantial middle class in the countryside
• Political background:
o Autocratic rule by the Romanovs (Tsars):
▪ Alexander II, 1855-1881
▪ Alexander III, 1881-1894
▪ Nicolas II, 1894-1917
o Autocracy of the Tsar: 19th century Russia was governed/rule by ukase (decree,
order) with the assistance of the state’s bureaucracy, police and the army
(despotism)

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o Legitimizing perspective also a role for the Russian Orthodox Church, the
Russian Orthodox Church also legitimize the power of the Tsar by enforcing this
idea that this was a God given rights to rule to that family, the autocracy of the
Tsar was the only viable way to run the country, and other alternatives were anti-
Russian, and church and anti-Tsar
o Feudal system: serfdom. Circa (approx..) 3% of 74.1 million inhabitants (in
1860): bureaucrats, military personnel and landowners (gentry)
▪ People that owned other people: allowed to sell them, to buy them, to use
them as collateral for mortgages, for loans. Considered more of a
commodity than people.
• Westernizers and Slavophil's: Western liberal culture vs. the ‘Russian soul’
Westernizers Slavophil’s
• Westernizers (zapadniki): want to • Slavophils: Russia is unique because
import European political institutions, of the Tsar, the orthodox church and
technology and rationalistic culture its sense of community
• Russia is unique because of
• Liberal, highly educated intellectuals recombination and tradition of Tsar,
that see Russia's future in a more Orthodox church and sense of
liberal, modern way community; thus, it should not follow
Western European path because that
• Not automatically completely will corrupt the typically Russian
democratic way, but towards maybe at system. That corruption will destroy
some point, working towards a the existing Russian society
constitutional monarchy as is
becoming normal in many Western • Russia is unique and it should remain
European countries. So not so much a and keep its unique position and
republic, not so much maybe should stay away from Western
democratic for all, but at least knew influences
and steps towards more modern
Russian society.
• Some form of self-determination for

its people
• Moving within the system, to a more

Constitutional, more modern in an
economic sense. So, to industrialize
more, to give capitalism more of a free
rein in the economic system and to
move more to that western political,
Western European ideal
o Russian Intelligentsia: a small group in a world of ‘barbarism and obscurity’
o Count Sergei Witte, Zapadnik Minister of Finance (1892-1903)
▪ More of A Westernizer

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▪ He tried to modernize Russia

• Reform, autocracy and protest movements 1850-1881
o Russian defeat during the Crimean War (1854-56) and continuous unrest in the
countryside
▪ France and Britan defeated Russia with relatively little effort, in the
Crimean War
▪ This sparked the idea of the need to modernize some aspects of Russian
society: economy, infrastructure, and militarily we need to be stronger.
o Ukase of 1861 gives the right to ‘own’ farmland to 22 million mujiks and results
in the end of serfdom in Russia: Emancipation Act of 1861
o The state compensates former noble landowners
▪ The state pays compensation to these gentry, the former landowners that
used to own the land that now goes to these large groups of poor farmers.
And these poor farmers (Mujiks) have to pay taxes to the state in which
the stage uses also pay back these landowners.
▪ the position of landowners, in a sort of superficial way. You would say
they, it's weekends because they lose their serves, and they lose parts of
their lands. But on the other hand, they are being handsomely repaid for
that. And at the same time have no longer any responsibility to take care
of the people that live and work on the land because serve them in a way
▪ 1862: The Emancipation Proclamation, and the Emancipation Act
• The US government and Congress agreed with the idea that slavery
should be abolished
• Northern states though of slavery as an immoral act, while Souther
states were not willing to give up slavery (Civil War)
▪ The end of serfdom was not out to ethical persuasion but in order to boot
the Russian economy, to make it stronger and make it more self-reliance
against other countries as well
o These new (collective) owners have to pay the government yearly taxes for their
land
• Reforms during the reign of Tsar Alexander II
o Military reform and general conscription
▪ Make sure there is a larger pool of people that are, can be active in the
military if necessary
▪ Direct response to the defeat of the Crimean War
o Founding of a Russian bank of the state and trade/credit bank
o Railroads
o More free higher education: limiting censorship at universities on education
▪ Limited to a group of people
o Slow industrialization
o Some political decentralization (zemstvos)
▪ The idea of giving certain political rights away too small decentralized
communities (zemstvos)

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▪ Demonstrate that there is change, but it’s only possible within the system
o Start of a ‘liberal Russia’?
o Defensive modernism?
▪ A passive revolution is another term that relates to this in a way, this is
idea that you have a group opposing the system, wants you to change the
system, maybe even revolutionized systems or change it in a fundamental
way. Rules gives a little bit into wishes from other groups in society
▪ Exponential political changer either out of contention or agreement
▪ You need to accept certain changes for the system to survive. So, you
want the system to survive, you want changes within that.
• Radicalization of (parts of) the Russian Intelligentsia (circa 1850)
o Upper-class/ Educated Upper-class
o Tension between modernization and tsarist political culture
o Population expanding, but faced with very limited outlooks
o Critique on the Tsarist system
o Sentimental glorification of the Russian soul, embodied by the Russian farmers
(mir): romantic outlook
o Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) and anarchism
• One of the founding members, are very important voice in Russian
anarchism, fundamental critique on the Tsar system
• Extremist views: Everything that you do that will destruction of the
would lead to the destruction of Tsar system is morally good and
everything that you do, opposed that is immoral
o The political importance is that it has a fundamental critique on the Tsar system.
And the only alternative that anarchists or nihilist accepts is the destruction of the
Tsar system and to create something completely new
o Anarchism and Nihilism is indirectly referred in the book as popularism
• Narodnaya Volya (‘The People’s Will’) and the assassination of Alexander II in
1881
o Narodnaya Volya (‘The People’s Will’), terrorist organization
o Idea of representing the people's will in a very extremist way, in a very violent
way, was an important aspect of anarchism, nihilism in Russia in the 19th century
o It took 4 attempts to assassinate Alexander II
o Alexander II inclined more to some social, economic, and even political reforms
than his predecessors. And yet he was assassinated because he is much more
radical opposition did not accept baby steps, but wanted again, complete overhaul,
a complete revolutionary reform of society.
• Overpopulation and the hunger for land, factory work and rising Bolshevism, 1870-
1917
o Continuous exploitation of the Russian worker by nobility and kulaks (farmers
that owned large pieces of land)
o Reactionary Tsar Alexander III (1881-1894) and the restauration of the old
regime, cancelling his father’s reforms

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▪ Reactionary figure: The reforms that his father implemented to go back to

the period before of sort of absolute autocratic rule. And on a political
level definitely moving back, restoration of the old regime and canceling
out his father's reform. Also, with this idea, that is typically Russian, the
autocracy of Tsar is the only system that will function in Russia.
▪ That is a very fundamental belief of the czar and his family, but also of the
political class surrounding him
▪ No internal domestic political reform
o ‘Russification’
o Alexander III and his successor Nicholas II (1894-1917) believed that
industrialization was the key to strengthen the military and political position of
Russia
• Industrialization and modernization (from 1880’s onwards)
o Sergei Witte, minister of Finance (1892-1903), seen as ‘modernizer’ of the
Russian economy
o Attracting foreign capital– particularly from France – to improve the socio-
economic and industrial infrastructure of Russia
o Expansion of railways coal, iron, steel production and textile industry
o Migration of land workers to factories in the cities: demographic changes and
political position of Russia
o Massive expansion of housing
o Poverty, huge groups of people living together in small houses, which have one
importance, unforeseen for the people that's from the political upper class and the
economic upper-class
▪ One very important, unforeseen consequence: The creation on an
environment with more than enough opportunity for these groups to
organize themselves and to start collaborating on other issues with other
interests. Or be used by, let's say, political demagogues by other political
organizations to manifest their power through
▪ Advantage from a revolutionary standpoint from four different political
movements that large groups of people live in the same deplorable
conditions, usually in and surrounding the large west Russian cities
• Underground left-wing radical political movements in Russia
o Cadets (constitutional-democrats)
▪ Opposition to the monarchical system
▪ Liberals, supporters of constitutional monarchy
▪ In favor of a western-style democracy
▪ Less radical, want change within the system
▪ Reform the system instead of abolishing it
o Social-Revolutionaries (SR’s).
▪ Slavophil's
▪ Strong base among farmers (so called ‘Agrarian’ Socialists)

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o Anarchists and/or Nihilistic movements: Tsarist state can only be combated

through the use of force
o Marxists: revolution by the proletariat (Russian Social Democratic Party,
founded in 1898)
▪ Both left-wing and revolutionary movements
▪ Marxists were theoretical, ideologically more extreme in the sense that
they really follow the Marxist Maxime, this idea that because of capitalism
and because of the accumulation of capital in the hands of the happy few,
you create a huge proletariat and that will create the world revolution and
that will create the dictatorship or Despotism by the proletariat rule
▪ The Social Revolutionaries did not see all of these steps as a necessary
prerequisite for revolution. They thought you can also skip capitalism and
move towards revolution immediately. And according to Marxists, of
course, you need capitalism first. You need the resistance against
capitalism in order to create those circumstances that will make a
revolution possible. (Main theorical difference)
▪ Both anti-system
• Russia’s opposition: Western vs. Slavic orientation
o Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets), inspired by liberal parties in Western-
Europe
o Social-Democratic Labor Party: Marxist party with revolutionary ideas
o Social-Revolutionaries (SR’s). Glorifying the Russian soul and opposed to
Western-style industrialization
▪ Focused more on the agricultural proletariat
▪ The people still working in the countryside and seeing them as a true
representative of the Russian soul
▪ More focused on Russia and typical aspects of what should change in
Russia
o Marxist focus more the working classes, the proletariat in cities, in the factories
because that represents capitalism as Marx described it, of course, in what he saw
in the UK and later in France.
▪ More internationally minded. Because Marxists believe in the
international revolution. It's not something that is limited to one place, but
a revolution that will expand throughout the world and as a sort of domino
effect. If it starts at one place, it will continue in other places as well, if the
circumstances are ready for that revolution
• Vladimir Illich Ulanov (1870-1924)/ Lenin
o Political prisoner in Siberia (1895)
▪ Because of his opposition against states
▪ That is not political prisoners, as we will get to know them 40-50 years
later in Russia
▪ Vanished to Siberia in relatively okay circumstances

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▪ He was taken out of context so he couldn't do harm to the states and to the
system
o From 1900 - 1917 he lived in Switzerland (in Russia persona non grata)
▪ He was exiled, he moves out of the country and worked on his political
views, political party, on his political future from outside of Russia and
waited for the right moment to return, which will take about 17 years
• Socialist movements in Europe and Russia:
o Marx, Engels and the beginning of the communist movement (1848)
o Edouard Bernstein: political participation vs. revolutionary strategy (revisionism)
o Pamphlet by Lenin (1901): What to do?
o Don’t participate in parliamentary elections
The Social Democratic Party in Germany Social Democratic Labor Party in Russia
• Strong, stable political parties • Hold on to the Marxist idea that there
is only one way to improve the
• One of the oldest political parties in position of the proletariat, and that is
Europe. It is the oldest political party through revolution
in Germany
• Destroy the political system and
• It has a very long tradition and history, creates something new
and it was a good example of “how to
organize yourself politically” • Revolutionize the system from the
outside
• A very important aspect is that quite
early on the Social Democratic Party • Inspired by anarchism
in Germany came to the conclusion
decided, or saw because of changes • “Destruction is also a creative
within German society that the process.” So if you destroy something,
parliamentary road, the road of that is the first step into creating
compromise, of working together with something new, but you must destroy
other political movements, other something,
political parties can also affect
positive change for the people that you
represent. So, the working class,
people of these countries
• Revisionism: So it's sort of a revision

of Marxism that perhaps the end result
is not revolution, but the end result
can also be change through the
political system and by using getting
votes in Parliament, by making sure
the universal suffrage becomes a
reality, you can implement social
welfare loss that will change the
position of your people for the better.

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• Division within the Russian Social-Democratic Party during party conference in

London in 1903
o Forced by Lenin, division in:
o Mensheviks (minority): less radical.
o Bolsheviks (majority) following Lenin’s revolutionary vision. In 1912 the
Bolsheviks organize themselves separately.
o Lenin’s strategic plan: a ‘professional’ revolutionary vanguard needed to
stimulate unity amongst (radical) workers and disillusioned people in the
countryside. These groups together should form the revolutionary movement.
o Party discipline.
o Although Lenin doesn't agree with the ideological path the German Social
Democratic party chooses, is inspired and interested in the professional
organization of that political party. And he sees the importance of sort of political
class, reveler, revolutionary vanguard, sort of revolutionary leadership that is
important and organized in a certain way to lead the revolution in Russia. Which
is somewhat different in that sense of anarchism. It's less extremist violence
sense, but it's also much more organized than anarchists prefer to be. So party
discipline is very important.
o Education and political mobilization of factory workers and farmers.
▪ Educate people on Marxist ideas
o St. Petersburg, which is sort of the birth grounds, starting ground of the Bolshevik
movements
• Tsar Nicolas II and the violent oppression of all forms of political critique. Result:
Revolution in 1905 and 1917
o Believing in the strong political position of the star, that the autocracy of bizarre
is elemental to the survival of the Russian state, is bound to the Russian state
o Russian State=Tsar Family: So the Russian people can only be ruled by this
autocracy of the Tsar, by this form of complete despotism of it's sort of
totalitarian states
• 1905: a year of unrest
o Economic recession in 1901; political unrest in 1903 because of horrible labor
circumstances and food shortages
o Russo-Japanese war (1904/5): humiliation
▪ Defeated by what was seen by the Russian upper-class as an inferior race
▪ The Russians saw themselves as an important European group, an
important European race agreed with many of the European upper classes
that the Europeans have proved social Darwinism
▪ Massive blow on Russian self-confidence
o Demands made to create a National Assembly (Duma)
o Circa 500 workers hand a petition to Tsar Nicolas II at his Winter palace in St
Petersburg asking for better social conditions but were met with military force,

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police force, and about a 100 of them are killed. And this is also remembered as
Bloody Sunday
o The idea of the Tsar as the father of the nation was destroyed
o Government troops shoot at the peaceful demonstrators and kill around 100
people (Bloody Sunday)
• The unexpected ‘Revolution’ of 1905 (Responses to the bloody Sunday)
o Social unrest on the lands of noble families and wealthy farmers.
o Strikes in large factory cities.
o In some of these cities local workers’ councils (soviets) seize power.
o Rebellion in the Russian navy.
o October 1905: Nicolas II promises creation of a constitutional monarchy: October
manifesto
o Election of a parliament (Duma) in 1906
o New constitutional framework in Russia 1905-1906:
▪ So more political power is in the hands of ministers, of politicians that get
their mandate from Parliament, not from the monarch, but a lot of
economic, military, and for instance, foreign policy remain exclusive
rights to desire
o Ministerial responsibility, but economic, military and foreign policy remain
exclusively with the Tsar.
▪ Weakening of the position of the Tsar but definitely not a step towards an
actual constitutional monarchy
▪ If you still have economic, military, and foreign policy and as your
exclusive dominion, you still are a very important political actor.
▪ This is only done because of civil unrest and because of responses
particularly also the mutiny within the Army
• Response to ‘1905’
o Election 1906: radical members elected in the Duma
o The autocratic, reactionary Finance minister, P. A. Stolypin, convinces Nicolas II
to dissolve the Duma after only 4 months
▪ No new parliament elections
o Agricultural reforms by Stolypin in 1906-1911: stimulating private ownership of
land and weakening of the mir (collective ownership)
• Russia during WW I 1914-1917/8
o Military and organizational chaos
▪ Because of French loans, the Russians decided to fight on the French
British side against the German empire during WWI, but weren’t military
successful
▪ Although it helped the British and French on the other side because it did
create this dreaded two fronts, a war on two fronts for Germany; it wasn’t
a successful fight from the Russian perspective
▪ Massive German victories
o Collapse of the bureaucratic and military infrastructure of the tsarist system

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o Fading faith in the ‘divine’ power of the Tsar:

o ‘the Tsar wants to betray Russia’ and ‘the Tsarina is a German spy’
o Strikes, hunger
▪ Domestic unrest and issues during the largest military conflict yet
• Revolution in March 1917
o International women’s day, 8 March 1917: demonstration of both female and
male workers.
o 500.000 demonstrators and the renewal of the soviets.
▪ What is a Soviet?
• Workers collective, small scale groups that organize themselves
and form their own political system
o 11 March: violent response by government troops.
o 12 March: mutiny of military forces in St. Petersburg (Petrograd).
o Tsar’s authority rejected.
o 17 March: Tsar abdicates.
o The son of Tsar indicates his not interested in taking over which in practice leads
to the end, the abolition of monarchy in Russia after hundreds of years in a
relatively short period of time. Although the Romanovs are shot and killed. But it
starts with its application on the 17th of March 1917
• March-November 1917: rise of a new political structure
o Provisional government lead by Prince Lvov, (dominated by liberals)
▪ Continues the war effort against Germany
o Petrograd soviet as political powerhouse of the revolutionary parties (Bolsheviks
(Led by Lenin), Mensheviks, SR’s)
o ‘Dual Power’ of the new Russia
• Duma, soviets and revolutionary masses:
o Loyalty towards the soviets
o Mensheviks and SR’s join the Provisional Government
o April: Lenin returns to Russia
▪ Takes over again leadership of his Bolshevik movements and denounces
the provisional government and declares all power should go to the
Soviets
▪ April Theses Lenin: denouncing the Provisional Government “All power
to the Soviets!”
o Defeat of the Russian army, summer 1917 (War still raging)
▪ Strenghtnes the outcry for peace
▪ he popular resentment against the Russian involvement in the war
▪ Strengthtnes the call for a truce
• Lenin, Trotsky (Bolsheviks) organize the Communist Revolution in Russia
o Leon Trotsky chairs the Petrograd soviet: founding of the Red Gard (Red Army)
o The night before the first national congress of all soviets (25 October 1917) :
occupation of all government buildings
o Soviets claim sovereignty in Russia in November 1917

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▪ Take control of the important political capitals, but also other political
symbolic places
o Peace of Brest-Litovsk, March 3rd, 1918
▪ Russia is no longer a no longer a party in WWI in the sense that it's no
longer follows its obligations to the French and the British and its signs a
peace treaty with the German Empire
• Civil War
o 1918–1922 civil war: Whites (everyone else) vs. Reds (communists)
o Whites: everyone else (conservatives, liberals and moderate revolutionaries)
▪ Relatively weak
▪ Backed by Entente (and US)
▪ Why?
• Ideology
• Anger because the Bolsheviks retreated from the Eastern front
• France invested a lot of money in Tsarist (‘white’) Russia
▪ The whites lose against the communist force:
• The Reds had more popular support than the white
• The fragmentation among the white opposition compared to the
sort of one front that the reds can keep
o The Reds win, partly because of division amongst the Whites (motivation and
organization)
▪ Lenin's capacity to organize a very strong political, to create a very strong
political organization led by a few very important key figures. Trotsky on
the one hand and responsible for the Red Army
▪ Stalin being sort of party secretaries are keeping everyone in check within
the party
▪ Lenin as the ideological charismatic leader of the movement
o Starts with famine and strikes and violence in the early 20th century in 1903,
1904, 1905, 1906
o After the recovery of that, Russia gets sucked into WWI
o After the Revolution of 1917, the country falls into civil war. Another four years
of misery and a lot of casualties
• Lenin’s Politics:
o Nationalization
▪ Industry and agriculture are now owned by the State.
▪ Strict control over farmers (famine)
o NEP (’21) New Economic Policy
▪ Some, modest, privatizations
▪ Farmers can produce a little for themselves.
▪ Modernization of education, health care
▪ But also: start of the Gulag Archipelago (internment camps in Siberia) for
‘enemies of the people’
• Succession:

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o 1924: Lenin dies

o Who will it be? Stalin or Trotsky?
o Commander of the Red Army vs Secretary of the Party
o Ideological struggle within the communist party: ‘Perpetual revolution’ vs.
‘socialism in one country’
▪ Perpetual Revolution (Trotsky): Permanent revolution. So the only focus
of a good Marxism, good Communist should be continuous revolution all
over the world so that the Soviet Union, Union should have a clear look
outwards and, and stimulate or start revolutions as much as possible
outside of the world
▪ Socialism (Stalin): Thinking more in the lines of we must create a stable
Soviet Socialist Union in this country first. And then we'll see what our
international position will be. So much more focusing on consolidating his
own power base and the power base of his party within that enormous
country, that of course the Soviet Union would be, and Russia was before.
o Stalin wins because he has a better network and more power within the party
o 1927: Trotsky flies to Mexico (assassinated in 1940)
• Stalinism (1927-1953)
o Dictatorship (totalitarianism and Terror)
o Cult status (instead of Tsar-myth, Stalin-myth)
o Cleansings (begin ’34; ’36–’39 Great Purge)
o Economic Stalinism: forced industrialization and collectivization.
o Victims: estimates of 3 - 30 million (incl. famines)
Weimar
• Historiographic debate
o None of them is absolutely true
o There is no particular cause but a series of factors
Stillborn Thesis Murder Thesis Suicide Thesis
• Structuralist/deterministic • Elitist • Elitist/institutional
analysis
• Implies that the Republic • The pre-war, the pre-
never had any chance of Weimar imperial • Implies that the
survival from the elites never wanted a institutions and the
beginning because of republican state, people that should
structural issues, never wanted a have supported a
deterministic in the sense democratic state, but strong democratic
that it was determined to wanted to return to political culture,
fail from the get-go, that it the situation before were not capable of
would not be a success the First World War creating a strong
enough democratic
• Sort of a republic without • Implies that there culture that people
any Republicans. So yes, was this influential, believed in and that

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it is technically a republic still very much in people were willing

that has been created, but favor of the imperial to support even
there's simply not enough structure of during more
Republicans living in it Germany. So, in problematic times
that really wants a favor of Germany as
republican sort of forced an empire of a close • This idea of the
upon them, but its not relationship between suicide thesis is that
something they defend the imperial family the politicians that
in the Army for were in favor of a
instance, very democratic state,
traditional They did not created
conservative elites enough of a positive
that were still very democratic political
much in favor of that culture for people
sort of system to, on a massive
scale, tried to
• Reactionary defend and keep the
conservatives, or democracy safe for
they wanted to go their system
back to the situation
before the First • The elite of new
World War. And republic was not
they were waiting the capable of creating
right moment, the a sufficient popular
right time to kill, to support in the
destroy the Weimar 1930s. Allowed for
Republic and rule by decree and
reinstates as system too much fear and
states like the empire leeway for the
before 1914 and for a flanks (NSDAP,
large part until 1970 KDP)
• Aspects of democratization and pitfalls
o Elections:
▪ If you hold an election, it's very important that the minority that usually
loses the election accepts the fact that they lost and sort of waits until the
next election to see if they can win so that you don't get an immediate
armed rebellion just because a group of people lost the election
▪ The majority that won re-election respects the rights of the minority that
might have had different views or had a different opinion during the
election
▪ Rule of law: Yes, there is the right of the majority. The majority decides
within a democracy. But the rule of law guarantees also that minorities
have certain rights
o Democratic Political Culture:

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▪ People believe in democracy, create a democratic political culture even if

this is not attained yet
▪ The majority of people still support the concept of democracy
▪ Even in times of political stress the majority of the people still support the
fact that democracy exists
▪ Political science is called is that democracy is the only game in town so
that people, the majority of people do not consider a viable alternative
next to democracy
▪ Support the democratic system even if not on politicians
• A complicated birth: armistice, Spartacists and Freikorps
o Ludendorff and the stab-in-the-back-legend (Dolchstoßlegende)
▪ So this idea of the elites that are responsible for the situation in 1918
advocated or resign just before the armistice between Germany and the
allied forces were signs that they could say, well, it's the fault of the new
socialist of left wings
▪ Communist, Social Democrats, and Jewish Germans were targeted
▪ This is very much from the extreme right-wing nationalist take later on
national socialistic groups. But this idea, of course, of a massive Jewish
conspiracy, that is also a communist conspiracy tried to destroy, that tried
to destroy the German forces. And that's why one of the reasons why
Germany lost the WWI, not because they were militarily defeated, no, but
because the political structure back home did not have enough confidence
and was weak and cowardly and therefore signs this armistice with the
Allied forces November 9th: declaration of the Republic (Scheidemann)
o Spartacists (January Uprising)
▪ 1918 declaration of the republic
▪ January of 1919, we see the first January uprising by the Spartacists
▪ Spartacists: Communist movement, wanting to overthrow the new
government, provisional government led by Social Democrats inspired by
the Russian Revolution aiming to create a communist revolution in Russia
▪ Rosa Luxemburg
▪ They were referred as the Separatist they were referred to as the Spark
leak or so-called Spark has letters that they used to, to bring out their
message to the world
o Use of the Freikorps (free regiments)
▪ Used to crush this rebellion and both Carly and of course, Luxembourg
were shot and killed after their arrest
o 19 January 1919: elections
▪ 76% of the vote for Weimar Coalition (DDP, SPD, Zentrum)
▪ Democratic German party, which is sort of a Liberal Democratic party
▪ The Social Democratic Party of Germany
▪ Zentrum, which was a Catholic political party

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▪Not parties that agreed on many issues, from the socioeconomic

perspective, but did agree on the fact that it was important that this new
government was created and that there was a broad parliamentary majority
that it could depend on
o July 1919: constitution adopted in city of Weimar
• The Weimar Constitution:
o The president of the republic was also referred to as an Ersatz Kaiser
▪ Most famous president: Hindenburg
• He was a marshal before becoming president. So, he was an
important figure in pre-war Germany, and it was an important
figure during WWI
• He is seen as a sort of representative of a war and prewar elites of
former German system
o Ersatz Kaiser:
▪ Rights of the German President:
• Article 48: State of Emergency:
o In certain circumstances of great internal or external issues,
the domestic issues or foreign issues, the President could
decides to absolve Parliament of its position in a way and
rule by decree.
o The idea is that the President can circumvent Parliament
and that you can circumvent certain rights that are
constitutionally guaranteed for a particular period of time.
o Able to go to the executive. Go to the government or some
central figure within government without needing
parliamentary approval

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• A complicated birth: the punitive peace (Diktat) of Versailles

▪ Alleinschuld Germany
• Idea that Germany was the main culprit of the start of WWI
▪ Territorial losses Central Powers
• Implosion of the Ottoman Empire and the disillusion of the
Austrian-Hungarian empire later. But also taking away substantial
parts of German territory within Europe, mainly in the east but also
parts in the West
▪ Germany stripped of its Colonies
▪ Military restrictions
▪ Reparation payments
▪ Demise German Empire: Wilhelm II ‘flees’ to the Netherlands (Huis
Doorn, dies there in 1941)
▪ Consequence: profound sense of humiliation
• Germany was not invited, of course, the germ join the League of
Nations and they were in many ways seen as a sort of pariah state
in Europe has a clear impact on popular feeling or political culture
in Germany as well, and also on what politicians find important
and try to create
• Crises and coups (1918-1923)

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▪ Political violence
▪ Army and police act mainly against radical left-wing protest
▪ Kapp-putsch (March 1920)
▪ June 1920 the Weimarer Koalition looses its majority in parliament (DVP
joins)
• After two years, the first election after the creation of the Weimar
Republic and its constitution, the coalition loses its majority in
parliament, which also means that you need other parties join. The
Social Democratic Party remains a large party and party in German
parliament. But the three parties that where the Weimar coalition
from the beginning that were sort of the birthright of the Weimar
coalition lose their majority and have to find other parties to work
with as well.
▪ Assassinations Erzberger (Zentrum, 1921) and Rathenau (DDP, 1922)
▪ Bierhallen-putsch (November 1923)
• Coup
• Idea of overthrowing the government and Hitler and his National
Socialist had a role to play in that
• Anti-democratic sentiments rising and specifically far right groups
trying to overthrow the government
▪ Occupation Ruhrgebiet by the French army and hyper-inflation (1923)
• The French occupy that area because the reparation payments
imposed on Germany, on the account that Germany wouldn't be
able to pay for such reparations, thus French reaction was to
occupy the area
• This area in Germany was a massive industrial, the pumping heart
of the industry
• German response by German unions back by the government was
worker strikes, massive worker strikes allowed by and actually in a
way supported by the German government, of course supported by
unions. The German government decided to keep paying them but
didn't really earn the money to do that. So they started the money
presses, which lead to hyperinflation in the 1920s later on
• It's not that the Germans didn't pay reparations, but not in a tempo
and pace and size that the French demanded specific. So the
French response was to the occupation of this industrial area.
• This French demand for operations was backed by Belgium, which
was of course also decimated by the First World War. It was also
backed by the British in many ways and it was indirectly backed
by the US because the US DOT, Well, we set out a lot of loans, we
not investable. We gave a lot of loans to these Western, to the
alliance. The ally parties are France and Britain specifically who

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claimed that they will not be able to pay those loans back without
German reparations
• Hyperinflation: Excessive amount of money printing, that money
losses its value, if you continue to do that on a massively exuberant
scale, the result in this case in Germany was that the money
became worthless, that it could even drop within a day
o Money had no more economic value anymore
o Assets, pensions, savings in a bank account lost their value
which had huge societal impacts
• French response was to the occupation of this industrial area. The
German response was, OK, a general strike. We will not work with
you in impoverishing our own population. The response of the
German government to that general strike was we will pay these
laborers that are on strike. This is a huge group of people that we're
talking about and printed extra money in order to pay for these
wages
• Goldene Zwanziger? (Roaring Twenties) 1924-1929
▪ Gustav Stresemann (DVP)
• Liberal German Party
• Abide to the rules of Versailles, we don't have to agree with every
aspect. We will have to abide to certain things and hopefully we
can sort of create a reasonable compromise. But we need help to
get out of this vicious circle of, of, of unemployment, of
hyperinflation and other issues.
▪ Erfüllungspolitik (abiding to Versailles) end to hyperinflation
▪ 1924: Dawes-plan
• Not only the US, so that the governments or government backed
loans to the German state, but also that Germany now had
permission in a way to lend money from rich individuals are banks,
but also literally individual hedge funds managers
• The US would also be creating a huge market, a consumer, a trade
partner in Europe at the same time
• Win-Win situation
• Idea of giving you sort of start capital to really start Germany again
• Other positive aspect of the one positive aspect you could say of
this hyperinflation of this period of hyperinflation, that many of the
previous internal debts were also written off, say, okay, well,
everyone will start from scratch. There was a sort of level playing
fields to rebuild a German economy which had a very positive
effect, specifically again with American investments. But an
important but it has to be made is that this was, you could all say,
start off sort of credit economy. All of this was based on credits

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that were provided. So, loans that were provided by individual

private creditors in the US and backed by the US government.
▪ Locarno (1925/1926), recognition of the western borders and joining the
League of Nations
• The recognition of the Western borders of Germany and Germany
recognizing its Western borders also in a way. Accepting French
and Belgian claims on certain areas that used to be German during
the German empire. And also, in a way abiding to the eastern
territories, the eastern side of Germany
• Accepting the fact that it would not militarily claim back these
territories. So, we'd get these territories back from Czechoslovakia
and other parts of Eastern Europe. That would go through
international challenge channels, treaties, and there would not be a
military intervention in Eastern Europe. So, this was sort of
normalization of German, the position of Germany within the
world
• Normalization of the position of Germany in the world
economically because it gets backing from the US government and
is allowed to be a player on the international financial market
politically because it recognizes certain borders on the east and the
west and also internationally the fact that it is also not allowed to
become a member of the League of Nations
▪ Hindenburg becomes Reichspräsident (1925)
• Kriegsvereine (Stahlhelm)
• 30.000 Kriegsvereinen (paramilitary groups, affiliated with political
parties/movements)
• Politische Kampfbünde
• Stahlhelm (1 million members)
▪ The helmet of the German military it represents also a favoritism or a
positive outlook towards the German Empire
▪ Affiliated with anti-democratic movements
• Violent political culture?
▪ the German army was reduced in size significantly through the Versailles
Treaty, which also meant that a lot of potential surface men lost their job.
These paramilitary organizations kept there, let's say more aggressive
flame, burning.
• Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold (1924)
• The second largest of these paramilitary groups, and this was the group more in
favor of the Republic.
• Social Democrats, or had a large say in this group, and that's why they got this
name, this idea of the defenders of the Republic.
• The black, red, gold color to defend the German flag, to defend the republic.

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• Founded 1924
• Reichsbanner Jugend
• The youth group, involving the youth from an early age
• Involve young people from an early age to make them part of your political
ideology, but also hopefully defenders of your political future
• Overview Kampfbünde (aprox. 1929)
• Stahlhelm (ties with DNVP/ German Nationalist Party): 1 million members
• Rote Frontkämpferbund (KPD/ Communist Party): 130.000 members
• SA and (later) SS (NSDAP/ Nationalist Socialist Workers Party): 500.000
members
• Reichsbanner Schwarz Rot Gold (Weimarer Koalition): 900.000 members
▪ Republican, somewhat more pro-democracy group
• Intermezzo: the Crash of 1929 (Great Depression)
• Overproduction agriculture and industry US
▪ The main source of income was the production of wheat
▪ During WWI the focus of production in European countries shifts to
military production, thus the production of wheat drops on a global scale
▪ US and Canada stepped up with the production of wheat to make sure that
there was a sort of global level of wheat production to keep exporting to
Europe and other parts of the world
• They expanded their lands and their production by taking loans and
private investors
• They used credit to upscale their production
▪ When WWI ended European countries also upscaled their production,
while the US and Canada kept production at the same rate, thus creating
more supply than demand
▪ Prices drop and North American farmers were no longer capable to pay off
their loans
▪ Institutions stared to demand to get their assets back to avoid bankruptcy
▪ Companies are no longer capable of paying back their loans, are paying
back their debts to private and institutional lenders. And this leads to sort
of global effect. Because at that time the US was a global creditor, which
in many ways it is still today of course. So, it also had global
repercussions, this huge stock market collapse in October 1929.
• Loans to Germany create caution on the US credit market which negatively
effects profit margins in the US
• 24 October 1929: stock market collapses
• US as global creditor, so global repercussions
• Gold Standard and deflation politics
▪ Deflation: Reduction of the general level of prices in an economy.
• The idea is in a way, things become cheaper
• People stop consuming to see if prices keep dropping

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• Unemployment (up to 30%), investments drop, bankruptcies, austerity measures

▪ Reduce the spending by goverments
• Call for government intervention (Keynes)
• Electoral boost for the political flanks
▪ With political flanks, I mean, the more extreme political organizations, the
more extreme political parties, both on the right and on the left, usually >>
benefit from these kind of social economic problems because they, again,
usually offer a more clear cuts, more relatively simple solution. And also
promise that if you just follow them, their solution will make sure that all
your problems disappear and will improve. And of course, you can blame
the former political elite for getting you in that situation
▪ Ride of radical extremist parties, more an extreme overhaul of the system
and a more extreme answer to this huge crash of 1929
• Endspiel Weimarer Republik
• Polarization in parliament
• The Nazi party, Hitler did never, never got the majority in Parliament by popular
vote. But he did gain significant support. And the results of the Great Depression
definitely help push, is popularity up.
• Elections 1932: NSDAP (max. 37%) and KPD gain a lot popular support
• Hindenburg re-elected in 1932
• Conservatives (Von Schleicher/Von Papen) think they can use and manipulate
Hitler to contain his political threat
• Hitler becomes Reichskanzler 30-1-1933
• Elections in March: the ‘last vote’
• What is important for the democracy to endure:
• How much democratic rights should you give to anti-democratic movements?
• If a majority of the people are in favor of that, should you allow such a
movement, such a political party to exist? Or should you say no, there should be
constitutional safeguards against such political movements.
• There's a famous ruling by horizontal ruling. But if there was a ruling by the US
Supreme Court about the rights of anti-democratic movements. And one of the
justices, Andrew Jackson, wrote sort of descending opinion in which he stated
that the Constitution should not be seen as a suicide pact. And he meant by that is
that the Constitution in democratic states guarantees individual liberty and
freedom to everyone. But what do we do with the situation where those liberties
and freedoms are used to destroy that very constitution?
• Reichstag Fire (27 February) and Ermächtigungsgesetz (24 March)
• The Reichstag fire by burning of the building scene as it was through propaganda.
Instead of, this is a communist plot. There's a communist plot against Germany.
So, we need the state of emergency. We need these special powers, the executive
needs to circumvent parliaments in order to fight off this communist threats

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• Ermächtigungsgesetz: A law decision also and enforced by parlements, which de

facto put Parliament out of control in the German situation and gave all the rights
and powers of the German states to the executive, in this case led by Hitler
• After this Hindenburg diets and there was never a new president's re-elected. But
Hitler positioned themselves from Chancellor of the Empire
• Fourth Theses:
• Sort of a combination of the three previous theses, with one important point to
add: The Internal Rot theses
• Internal Rot Theses: Implies that it's an institutionalized, it looks at its deep
theoretical research done to the German institutions in the 1920s and in the 1930s
It also combines in a way, the other three, but it also looks at the role of civil
society in a German state
▪ Civil Society:
• Parallel society developing besides politics
• Feeling of belonging
• Consolidation of democratic culture fails, thereby strengthening its enemies and
leaves room for violence
• Broad institutional analysis of democratic society and the relationship between
state and society
• Relevance for debate amongst pol. scientists:
• Strong civil society is not always benevolent for democracy
▪ Strong civil society is almost by definition positive for a strong democratic
state. Because if people feel connection amongst themselves, you trust
your neighbors. You are much more inclined to also have a sort of an open
outlook to society at large. Participate in society and politically participate
in society. And if you feel more threatened by groups who usually have
more the inclination of, of closing yourself off from society, ultimately
closing yourself off from the political system
▪ Paramilitary groups were a very good example in many ways of civil
society groups organizing themselves and doing stuff together and sharing
beliefs. But not by definition in a positive contributing way for democracy
▪ This one-on-one strong civil society leads to strong democracy might not
always be true. This is sort of thought, thought for further research for you
to continue. We do have very strong indications that when civil societies
weaken, it usually also has a negative effect on a consolidated democracy
• Democratic system needs to protect itself
• Current day populism (left- and right-wing)
Threat to liberalism
• The Inter-bellum (period between the two World Wars) and the State
o ‘The Roaring Twenties’: mass production, mass consumption,
multinationals and unlimited capitalism?

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▪ 1924-1929, Global economy was booming in US and Western

Europe
▪ One of the driving forces was a credit driven economy and lack of
regulation, aspects of capitalism
▪ Not much regulation that is still sort of a remnant of the 19th
century laissez-faire capitalism, a lot of new aspects of capitalism.
So the credits, the flow of credit, but also stock markets investing
in stocks etc.
o De Wall Street Crash of 1929: start of the Great Depression in the US and
the rest of the world
▪ Overproduction and US being a global creditor to the world
▪ As soon as we hit the Great Depression, the start of the recession
hit in the US that had repercussions over for the rest of the world at
the same time, economic decline and at some point, even towards
deflation
o Unemployment, inflation and economic decline: Government steps in in
Western Europe and the US
o Franklin D. Roosevelt: US president and the beginning of the New Deal,
1932-1941
o Totalitarian power of the state: fascism in Italy and national socialism in
Germany
• The Crisis:
o Causes:
▪ Overproduction in US industry and agriculture
▪ Demand falls back because of income distribution
▪ Value of stocks overrated because of faith in economic growth:
speculation
• People and banks start to invest much more in the stock
exchange, buying stocks of certain companies, but not
having enough collateral for specific loans
o E.g. Loans for business and private investors
▪ Banks use high risk financial constructions (no or unclear
collateral for loans). Or even using stock as collateral to buy more
stocks
• Private investors: Individual private investors use lend
money from banks, buy more stocks from different
companies and sometimes use other stocks that they
already have in their portfolio as collateral. This is the sort
of high-risk financial game or high-risk financial
constructions at certain banks. Use is one of the reasons
why the collapse was so severe and so heavy at the crash of
1929

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▪ Effect: lower profit margins in US ► lay-offs, less credit and more

bankruptcies
o 24 October 1929: Crash starts
• The Great Depression
o US as global creditor: global repercussions.
o Unemployment (25-30% in ’33), hardly any investments, bankruptcies
(also banks), austerity and protectionism.
▪ If the capital markets, the financial markets. If capitalism itself, if
industry is no longer providing for the necessary money, the
necessary funds to jumpstart the economy should perhaps another
big player in society and an economy play a large role in this case,
of course, should government have a bigger role in jump starting
the economy again
▪ Government has the power to produce, find ways to find extra
money and have a higher deficit
▪ The government, the state that can intervene in these kind of
situations
▪ Austerity: Combination of higher taxes and cutting spending by
governments. Government invest less in society, raises taxes,
which means that usually the burden on individuals and companies
is increased, which also does not favor their position to consume or
invest more
• E.g. Public services
▪ Germany has an allergy towards high deficits
o The call for more government intervention and growing populism
(political flanks)
▪ There also a call for government intervention by particular groups
in some instances
• One response: New Deal (I)
o Herbert Hoover views on the Great Depression: The Great Depression as
a ‘natural’ aspect of the free market (economic cycle)
▪ Economic cycle: There are years and times of overproduction of a
well-functioning economy where everyone gains, and everyone
profits from it. And there is always a sort of time where the
economy slows down, and it has a negative effect on everyone. So,
there's no role to play for government, this is something simply we
have to sit out of. And I'm paraphrasing here, but one of his other
quarters, prosperity is around the corner. We will get through this
and just have to wait and sit it out. The economy will start to rise
again.
▪ Hoover opted for no government intervention as he viewed this
recession as part of the natural cycle of economy
o Roosevelt (1932): “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself”:

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▪ Rosavelt believed that governments should take control of the

economic situation
▪ Inauguration address:
• Roosevelt remarks the existing problems: livelihoods,
unemployment, farmers that are not capable of finding a
market for their products, etc.
• He points to a corporate, to a group that is responsible for
the present economic situation, he blames
moneylenders/bankers:
o Roosevelt argues that they corrupted the seats on
the holy temple of the people, they corrupted the
political system and its very important to take back
control of that system. The people need to take back
control of that system and improve it.
o Roosevelt uses populist rhetoric emphasizing
polarization the between the good people of the VS
an elite corrupt that tries to destroy or is at least
responsible for the detrimental situation where there
are good people of that moment find themselves:
populism
o Start New Deal: Steps being taken by FDR administration/government
through legislation to re-organize the economic system
▪ Bank holiday closing of weak banks
• Bank Holiday: Suspending banks from operating for a
couple of days (in this case 4 days) in order to stop lending,
and retiring their money (empty their bank accounts) the
repercussion of this actions are liquidity problems and even
worst bankruptcy, thus the bank freezes financial assets but
also to make it impossible for people to get their money
from a bank
• The ratio of the in-house money in comparison with the
money they lend
• The Supreme Court rules one of these acts as
unconstitutional, thus untangling a political struggle
between the US Supreme Court and the Roosevelt
administration, that rules that some of the regulation that is
part of the New Deal is not constitutional and therefore
should not be implemented as law: The Social Security Act
is denied
▪ Farmers receive subsidies in exchange for limiting production
▪ National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) ‘codes of fair
competition’ (until 1935: Supreme Court unconstitutional)

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▪ Works Progress Administration (WPA 1935): public works

initiated by the federal government
• New Deal (II): Big Labor & Big Government
• After 1934 (mid-term elections): further polarization
o Midterm Elections:
▪ During the midterm elections Americans chose the entire House of
Representatives and a third of the senate
▪ A member of the House of Representatives holds his or her job for
two years and then has to go for re-election.
▪ A senator holds his or her position for six years and then has to go
up for re-election.
▪ A legislative body (Senate) needs more time for reflecting on
existing legislation
▪ The lower house, the house of representatives really represents the
wishes of the people, and therefore, you need to re-elect them
much sooner
• Corporate resistance (Red Deal) and growing populism
o There was a lot of resistance against the Social Security Act, specifically
from the more conservative right-wing group.
o The New Deal was also called the so-called red Deal. Roosevelt was
socialists want to socialize us, but he did have one big advantage and that
was popular support, we won the midterm elections in 1934 (which sitting
presidents usually lose), thus the democratic party gains majority in the
House of Representatives and they increase their majority in the Senate
Parliament making it much easier to circumvent opposition, to not listen to
any of the wishes of the opposition, mainly the Republican Party, which
also led to more political polarization as an effect.
o Big businesses, big banks, tried to resist this new implementation of policy
and this new legislation that is introduced in 1936
o Social Security Act (1935) and its implementation after general election of
1936
o Fair Labor Standards Act & National Labor Relations Act (1935):
protection of employee, and growing power of union: Big Labor
o The Revenue Act (“soak the rich!”)
▪ Progressive taxation system
▪ Revenue=taxes
▪ Idea of get more money from rich people
▪ More intervention by the states, more federal civil servants
o More intervention by the state and more federal civil servants: ‘Big
Government’
▪ The organization that is the federal government became larger
▪ Generally, Republicans conservatives in the US refer to
government at the federal government has big government when

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they imply that it's not, it's not used as a good or a positive thing. It
doesn't have a positive connotation. It usually means big
government, it should be smaller, it should involve less, should be
involved less in daily lives of the people and with the economy as
well.
▪ Big labor=big government
• End New Deal:
o The specific works of the new deal passed introduce and passed by
government between 1930, 1932, 1936, 1937 started to end because of a
conflict between Roosvelt and the Supreme country which again decided
or rules that some legislation that was part of the New Deal was
unconstitutional, which is always a problem for a sitting president because
technically it cannot be implemented as law
o Roosevelt attempted to manipulate the Supreme Court
o Roosevelt (re-elected) vs. Supreme Court (1936) and checks & balances
o Budget-politics change (Keynes): rising debt
▪ The idea of a clear focus on deficit, deficit reduction is abandoned
▪ This idea that you should be able to allow the rise of the national
deficit in order to stimulate the economy
o Southern Democrats move towards Republicans (conservative coalition)
because they believe Roosevelt is too liberal to much of a “northerner,”
too much focus on urbanization’ (big cities) and focus on minorities, they
are not in favor of Roosevelt’s progressive policies and troubles with the
Supreme Court
o Problems within the democratic party entangle, the democratic party had
popularity in the South
o 1960s Johnson implements a lot of civil rights acts, you see that the South
becomes a sort of permanent stronghold for the Republican party. And
Democratic party usually wins elections in the coast areas and in the larger
cities in the US
• Consequences:
o Bigger role for the federal government
o Employers must allow unions (‘Big Labor’)
o A minimum wage, guaranteed by the state
o Supreme Court after 1937 focusses less on economics and the role of the
state and more on rights of US citizens
o Democratic party gains support in the (Northern) cities and among non-
whites
o And loses support in traditional strongholds in the South
• John Maynard Keynes, Famous Book: The General Theory of Employment,
Interest and Money (1936)
o Criticism on laissez-faire capitalism, but not a criticism of capitalism per
se, but that capitalism should be more balance by the government, he

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argued that the government should have a larger role to play in the
economic system
o Keynesian idea to invest money in order to strengthen the economy on the
long run
o His book becomes explains steps need to be taken to achieve what is
previously stated (look up), this becomes a very important influential way
of thinking in Western politics roughly between the 1930s up until the
1970s
o Criticizing the Treaty of Versailles in The Economic Consequences of the
Peace (1919)
o Government needs to act in situations of hyper-inflation or continuing
deflation
o An individual’s prosperity depends on the total of consumption,
investment and government spending.
o Fighting unemployment and forcing income distribution (égalité) by
increased spending and, temporarily, expanding deficits
o ‘Public works’ and regulation of private initiative
▪ Idea that government should invest in society (usually by lending
money) in a way that everyone benefits from it. For instance, in
infrastructure, in education, in health care, which creates jobs by
simply doing it. But it also improves generally the economy on the
longer run, because a good infrastructure is usually important for
trade and other aspects
o Milton Friedman disagrees with Keynes:
▪ Milton argues that the risk of Keynesian economics is that if the
role of the government becomes too big, that there is no longer sort
of capitalist's incentive in the free markets. We need to let the free
market do its business. We need to let the free market work on its
own and we need to deregulate a lot of the financial institutions
and take away a lot of the recommendations that were
implemented to strengthen governments grasp on the economy
II. Benito Mussolini and the fascist movement in Italy
o Italy was a parliamentary democracy since the 1860s, but in 1920-1922 it became
the first fascist dictatorship in Europe
o Italy was a one of the Allied powers in WWI
o After the conference of London decides to fight on Allied side and expecting
something in return for that allegiant during the Versailles treaty conference and
are disappointed with what they get. They do get some territory from Austrian-
Hungarian empire but no colonial areas
o Political corruption and the vulnerability of Italian democracy
o Division between North and South

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▪ There are the, the one of the largest parties right now is now referred to as
the league average. For a very long time, It used to be called the leg North. Commented [AF1]: correct
The North. So it was really fighting for the interests of North Italy against
the South. And he became a broader populace anti-immigration party in
general. But it started, was founded as a conservative right-wing >> Party
that said, well, we need to sort of separate from the, from the South
because the South is not case, is too poor and too much money that is
being made in the north flows to the south. So, this division between
North and South has always been an important aspect in Italian politics.
o Ambivalent response by the Pope and Italian Catholics
o Political struggle between the left and right:
▪ Referring to the hard left: communists and radical groups VS radical
groups from the right the fasci italiani di combattimento (facism)
o 1918-1922 Election: political chaos, strikes and tensions between the left and the
right.
▪ Fascist don't win, but they do become an important player in Italian
politics.
o Mussolini founded the ultra-nationalist, paramilitary fighting bands: Fasci Italiani
di Combattimento.
o Fascism:
▪ Denouncing free trade and capitalism, which of course becomes much
more popular later on during the Great Depression and also resonated with
people due to the pre-WWI period in economic and societal troubles
▪ Corporatism, state control over the economy
▪ Denouncing free trade and capitalism
• From a liberal, constitutional democracy to a fascist dictatorship
o King Victor Immanuel III and the collapse of constitutional monarchy and the
democratic society
o Growing violence in Italian society (and political culture)
o The March on Rome (27-29 October 1922)
▪ Mussolini joins and a group of people make their way to the Roman
palace enrollment parliaments to take over control. The setting
government asks the king to implement a state of emergency to responds
to these fascist ports as they were seen moving to the capital of Rome. The
king refuses, and that is, of course always in hindsight, but that is seen as
sort of the king letting go of parliamentary democracy, of not defending
democratic system
• Mussolini:
o Named Prime Minister in the early 1920s
o Changes electoral laws (1924) he creates a one-party state. In Italy abolishing the
rights, generally abolishing the rights of parliament, but mainly abolishing other
parties to be members of parliament, to be active during elections and abolishing
elections

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o One party state: labor programs, improving infrastructure and amenities

o Lateran Accord (1929)
▪ Accord between Mussolini and the Catholic Church, specifically the
Vatican
▪ They agreed that the Vatican would keep its independence position as sort
of miniaturized independent states and at the same time, of course,
allowing or in that way, giving its approval to this new regime in Italy,
which in is a very Catholic country with a very clear tradition and, and
relationship with the Catholic Church is not something to discard it's a
very important step
▪ You need some kind of Catholic approval in order to be successful in
Italian politics, Mussolini understood that
o Aggressive foreign policy: invasion of Ethiopia (1935)
▪ Aggressive foreign policy by the invasion of Abyssinia, later known as
Ethiopia and indeed, great power, ambition.
o Great Power ambitions (Roman Empire)
▪ Mussolini saw himself and his idea of the Italian state as sort of heir to the
Roman Empire, becoming that, getting that status back in the world, which
of course implement, imply that you need a colonial empire, that you need
an empire to rule
o Mussolini referred himself as Il Duce
• Italian fascism (ideology)
o Extreme nationalism: Romanita
▪ Glorification of the Roman Empire
o Dynamic: Giovinezza
▪ The importance of a, a vital young society. So, let's have a lot of children
and large families
▪ Start influencing people from a very young age to not question the existing
order, to accept the existing order, and to even relish or love that existing
order, to be convinced of that leading ideology.
o Glorifying violence: Forza
• Fascism is notoriously nationalistic, in favor of their own specific culture
• Leninism, Bolshevism, Marxism is almost by definition, more international, believing in
the global revolution and a, an international communism
Nationalistic movements in Asia:
o The supremacy of Europe
o Again: Russo-Japanese War
▪ Important for the rise of nationalism in certain part of East Asian colonies
because it showed that an Asian country could defeat a major European
power

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▪ The significance of this is that it dimmish the belief of the supremacy of

Europe and such idea of its “natural order” as an Asian power defeated a
major European power
o Influence of the Russian Revolution (1917): ideal of radical, social and political
equality without class and/or ethnic division.
▪ No class differences that really resonates with many nationalistic
movements, not only in Asia, but also for instance, in North America
(against anti-colonial movements)
o Example of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) and Young Turks (1924): Turkey’s re-
invention as a modern, secular state.
▪ After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of the Turkish
Republic, and a very strong and strict secular Turkish republic
▪ Religion had no role in the public sphere. It should be the public sphere
and public office governments should be fully, completely secular.
o Local elites that enjoyed Western, academic training: Gandhi and Nehru study at
Oxford, Ho Chi Minh in Paris and Mohammad Hatta in Amsterdam and
Rotterdam.
o “To use the master’s tools to destroy the master’s house”
▪ Allowing certain members of groups within the colonies to study abroad,
to study in the mother country as they were called. But also, through doing
that, introducing certain ideas of enlightenment, self-determination,
nationalism in these groups. And these groups going back to their country
and country of origin and introducing these ideas there
▪ Mixing Western, certain western political ideas, not everyone, all political
ideas with anti-colonial nationalism
o Or: Western political ideas mixed with anti-colonial nationalism in India,
Indochina/Vietnam, and the Dutch Indies
• Anti-British political activism in India, 1885-1948
o Founding Indian National Congress Party, 1885 (Majority Hindu)
o Founding Muslim League, 1905
o Groups organizing themselves politically created a British fear for Muslim-Hindu
violence
o Independence and partition of India
▪ The creation of the Islamic state of Pakistan and leaving Hindu ideas
behind
▪ It is considered the largest forced movement of people from one border
that previously didn't exist. So, Muslims from what was then India into
Pakistan and Hindus from what was then Pakistan into India in human
history
▪ One of the largest displacement dramas in human history, and a lot of
victims
▪ A lot of people died during that course of independence, but also the
partition of India, Pakistan.

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▪ So that fear for Muslim, Hindu violence was no unjustified, but it's very
important to note that that was also, there was also politically very
convenient for the British to use that argument, strengthen their own grip.
o Demand by Indian politicians: dominion status
▪ There are other areas that we used to be part of the British Empire that had
so-called dominion status, which means that there is some level of
autonomy, there's some level of self-governance to some level of self-
determination, but there's not complete independence
▪ E.g. Palestine used to be a sort of British protectorate, sort of dominion
status within the British Empire with some rules, some self-rule, some
self-government, but clearly under British supervision
o Defense of India Act 1919: grants the army/police the authority to arrest and
detain suspects of terrorism and political conspiracies
o Protest and massacre in Amritsar, 1919: General Reginald Dyer, the‘butcher of
Amritsar’
▪ Where a British general ordered his troops to shoot at protestors
• Indian nationalist movement radicalizes
o (Mahatma) Mohandas Gandhi leads the peaceful anti-colonial movement. Civil
disobedience and non-violent protest
o Civil disobedience: Non-violent protests to state that civilians do not recognize
the legitimacy of government, of the controlling forces of India and therefore, we
do not feel that we have to comply to its rules and regulations
o Gandhi: “In India the nation at large has generally used passive resistance in all
and departments of life. We cease to cooperate with our rulers when they
displease us.”
• Salt March (1930)
o Huge march through a large part of India
o Marching and adding people joining him in that March because the British had a
monopoly on salt
o Ro show the lack of support in any way the colonial rule
o Premise: “I don't want to support the British government in India and British
governments side of India as well. We'll walk to the sea and I will get my own
salt.”
o Very clear symbolic act of resistance joined by a lot of people
o Boycott and protest vs. cooperating towards independence
o Evading British salt taxes: Dandi Salt March 1930
• Leader National Congress Party, 1921
• ‘Quit India!’ movement before and during WW II
• “At the stroke of midnight”: independence in 1947
o Prime Minister of India, independent India, Nehru
o It represents the hope of a political class of what is to come and better times that
are ahead. Which start off again quite dramatically with the partition of India in
the late 1940s

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The League of Nations under attack and the failing of ‘new diplomacy’
o Woodrow Wilson’s idealism in Versailles, 1919 (Congress rejects US joining
League)
▪ Self-determination
▪ Recognition of national sovereignty and the ‘demilitarization’ of
international relations, use of force is no longer an automatic force
▪ Wilson's New diplomacy of Wilson's idea that he spoke of in his 14
points of how the new world order should be organized and specifically
the importance of self-determination, even also self-determination for
colonized groups
▪ Openness in international relations so that it's not cloak and dagger a, it is
not behind closed doors that people are countries come to certain
agreements and treaties, but that it is open and free and checkable by
others
▪ League of Nations not capable of imposing sanctions
o Early 1930s: Germany, Italy and Japan challenge the status quo of the liberal
order of the Lague of Nations
▪ These three very nationalistic and radically anti-democratic regimes in
these countries reject what the League of Nations stands for
▪ They leave the League
▪ Japan occupies Manchuria (1931).
▪ Mussolini’s conquest of Ethiopia (1935/6).
▪ Emperor Haile Selassie pleads for help at the League of Nations, but to no
avail
• Endgame of the League
o No real power, it never is given a proper mandates
o It starts of with a very clearly weakened position because the country that's
initiates the creation of the League of Nations, the United States doesn’t become a
member
o Too many of the most powerful countries never joined (US) or withdrew
(Germany, Japan, Italy)
o Strong disagreements within the League: Latin American countries leave the
League of Nation because they disagree with the position that certain countries,
specifically European countries
o Seen as a political (colonial?) tool for Britain and France
o It was meant as a defense mechanism to defend the liberal order, but most
importantly created as an institution to prevent war.
o World War II
o 1945: founding of the UN
o April 16th, 1946: League of Nations officially dissolved
WWI

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The Third Reich and the Second World War in Europe: 1933-1945
Totalitarianism:
o Definition that Palmer and the others used in the book is that is sort of a total
philosophy of life, which means that influence control every aspect of daily life so
not just the political aspect of not having elections, controlling people's views
through media propaganda try and impact each aspect of daily life tablet
o Philosophy of life (Palmer et al)
▪ E.g. North Korea
o Selective in it looking at (national) history: historic nationalism
▪ Not always truthful
▪ Romanticizing it’s national history’s, and an specific era of great power
▪ Also used as state propaganda (political gain)
o Future utopia
▪ If you follow this party line, there are limitless opportunities
▪ Third Reich: 3 Empires in German History; German Empire, Weimar
Republic, Nazi Germany
▪ Hitler’s promise was too create the third Reich which would be glorious
and remain in power for a long time if the German people would follow
the national socialist party
o Centralized mass movement (authoritarian, hierarchical)
▪ Having the masses support you
o Control over communication (censorship, propaganda)
▪ Mass media became a thing
▪ Media now reached large groups of people
▪ Way of reaching large groups of people
▪ Newspapers became widely available
o (Bureaucratic) control over economic, social and cultural life
o Glorification of violence
▪ Not in every totalitarian state but specifically on fascists and national
socialist ideology
▪ Violence is a legitimate way of realizing a specific political goal
▪ Hold the monopoly of violence to reach certain political goals
▪ Use of force to enhance power
Authoritarianism Totalitarianism
• There is still some freedom • Infiltrate control check every
• Elections (not necessarily fair) aspect of daily life
• Some room from free press • Full control of the state and all the
• The way a state is organized as a state powers
governing body • Use that control to influence
• The way the state is organized as a almost every aspect of daily life
governing body there’s some form
of representation, this idea of

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mandate with the general will

conception of the leader
internalizing the general will of the
people
• There’s much less division of
powers
• Are usually okay with people
having their own opinions as long
as they don’t revel against the
government
• National-socialism
o Domestic (Blut):
▪ Ethnic nation
• You can only be born German
• It was very hard to become German
• Ethnic Germans VS the rest
▪ Volksgemeinschaft
• Community of the people
▪ Über- & Untermensch
• Über (super people) VS Untermensch (subhuman races, that are
less valuable and successful than other races)
• Clear distinction in National socialist ideology
• Hierarchy between the distinction of the races
• German people, white Europeans, Eastern Europe, Non-white
races, and at the bottom Jewish people
• Racist ideology
• Incorporate the racist ideology into the state system
o Foreign (Boden):
▪ Heim ins Reich
• All Germans need to live in the German Empire
• Expand the German Empire in order for all Germans to live in the
German Empire
• Conquer the areas where the majority or minority of Germans lived
• Go back to the borders of the second empire, the Bismark Empire
and expand beyond that as well
▪ Autarky
• Self-sufficient state
• The idea that Germany should be economically self-sufficient
• Detach themselves from other countries
• Transform the agriculture
▪ Lebensraum

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• The territory which a group, state, or nation believes is needed for

its natural development.
• The need for a “living space”
• More space to produce more food, take up more space to do so
• Utopia: an imagined place or state of things in which everything is
perfect; perfect ideal future society
• Third Reich: Totalitarianism
o Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer:
▪ One people, one empire, one leader
▪ Unification of these three aspects
▪ One people: Who is part of that people and who is not?
▪ One empire: that needs to grow and expand
▪ One leader: Führerprinzip, one clear leadership structure with one person
in charge representing the true German people (general will)
• Again “who is part of the people?” if you resist, if you rebel, if you
oppose the system you would be defined as not part of the people,
the enemy and therefore certain treatments are legitimized
▪ Ideology: national-socialism
o Centralized mass movement: NSDAP and affiliated organizations (SA/SS)
▪ SA: Paramilitary fighting force affiliated to the National Socialist German
Working Party of Hitler
o Propaganda: Goebbels, censorship
▪ Joseph Goebbels propaganda minister very important figure in National
Socialist ideology
• Very prominence spokesperson
• Ideological severity of his character
o Gestapo: important organization for the use of force and coercion mostly
domestically
▪ Secret police of the state
▪ Press through national socialist ideology in the state
o Control over:
▪ Economy: state run economy (Mussolini)
• Not so much anti-capitalist Hitler understood was that he needed
the majority of large industrial is behind him not only because of
its economic position but also industrial fire power to remilitarize
the country (come within the country)
• Remilitarization
• No free market
▪ Society:
• Gleichschaltung (1933/’34)
o Getting everything in line with Nazi ideology

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o Not only the state apparatus but also the people with Nazi
ideology
o Putting everyone in check within an ideological framework
• Racial (Neurenberg) Laws (1935)
o The Nuremberg Laws were antisemitic and racist laws that
were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a
special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the
annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party
▪ Cultural: Entartete Kunst (1937)
• Degenerate Art
• Everything that was not in line with the Nazi idea of what true
German culture was
• Not what true “Germaness” represented
• Censorship
o E.g. burning books (democratic and Enlighted literature)
• Third Reich: Night of the Long Knifes
o Night (Weekend) of the Long Knifes 30 June 1934
▪ Purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934
▪ Against SA Chief Ernst Röhm and the leaders of the SA
▪ Position of power SA was over, it continued as an organization, it retained
but reduced its membership, lost affiliation, replaced by the SS
▪ Rumors that Röhm was plotting against Hitler and that's the reason why he
needed to be taken out
▪ The Nazi Party and the SA grew simultaneously and at a certain point
Hitler grabbed power to establish dominance
▪ Disputes between Hitler and Röhm:
• Practical:
o Hitler wanted to incorporate the SA into the army, Röhm
wanted to replace the army with the SA being skeptical of
the allegiance of the members of the army who worked for
the army during the Weimar coalition so they could be
suspected democrats
• Ideological:
o Röhm was more anti-capitalistic than Hitler
o Fearing that Röhm will gain a powerful position within the
party and state system
▪ Oath of allegiance/ Hitler Oath Wehrmacht (army) (1934 onwards)
• Soldiers need to swear a vote of allegiance to Hitler and the
National Socialist Party to gain further control over the army in
Germany
o Resistance:
▪ Isolated: strong organized support, both foreign and domestic, was
lacking.

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▪ Violent oppression (Gestapo, SS, Concentration camps)

• Totalitarian regimes in Italy and Germany compared:
Italy Germany
Fascists had to build a modern machinery of In Germany there was no counterweight like
State in Italy: monarchy and Church (although
weak in Italy)
Italy was unified approximately as the same
time as Germany, but it didn’t have such a Terror and indoctrination in Hitler’s Germany
modern state apparatus as the Germans were comparable to terror comparable under
Stalin in the USSR
Italian fascists were not as violently anti-
Semitic as the Nazi's and it became part of the The Nazi's on the other hand, took over one of
fascist ideology much later the (if not the) most disciplined and well-
organized states in the world (bureaucracy).
• Foreign Policy:
o The crash of 1926 was a favorable event for Hitler, popularity became bigger with
the idea that Germany was deplorable position because of what other foreign
countries do to it
o Germany was heavily affected by the Great Depression, no country was as
devastated as Germany
▪ E.g. Versailles
o No longer recognizing the Treaty of Versailles
o Heim ins Reich
▪ Expanding empire, all Germans need to live in the German Empire,
therefore German empire must expand
o Lebensraum
▪ More living space
▪ More agricultural lands to sustain large German numbers
▪ “Germanness”
• Versailles:
o Exit League of Nations (1933)
o General military service (conscription) (1935)
▪ Expanding the military
▪ Remilitarization, fortifying German military strength
o Remilitarization Rhineland (March 1936)
▪ Violation of the Pact of Locarno and Versailles
• Pact of Locarno:
• Secured the Western boarders of Germany
• Also, the Easter boarder but with the idea that the debate of
expanding towards the East

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• Series of agreements whereby Germany, France, Belgium, Great

Britain, and Italy mutually guaranteed peace in western Europe
• Heim ins Reich:
o Anschluss Austria (1938)
▪ Adding Austria to the German Empire
▪ There was a referendum where the majority of Austrians agreed to be part
of the German Empire
o Conference of Munich (Sudeten/Bohemen, 1938): “Peace in our time”
▪ Idea to create a new balance of power comparable with the congress of
Vienna in which the large European Powers balanced each other out to
prevent massive conflict on the European Stage
▪ Hitler was granted most of his wishes
o Memel-area (Lithuania, 1939)
• Appeasement (1936-1939) & the Conference of Munich (1938)
o Desire of the French and the British to not being drag into a military conflict with
Germany
o Trying to do everything they could politically to prevent military action (use of
diplomatic means)
o Attempt to contain Hitler’s foreign aggression
o Chamberlain, British PM (1937-1940)
▪ British interest was peace (Empire in decline) war was seen as too much
of a strain on British resources.
▪ New System in Europe (comparable to Concert of Europe): Balance of
Power
▪ 29 September Munich: Sudentenland (Hitler’s ‘last territorial demand’)
▪ Identify appeasement with the British position
▪ French also supported appeasement because of the national trauma of
WWI, French position was also to prevent military conflict with Germany
▪ The French created a military strategy if the Germans were to get
aggressive again during the inter-bellum period to prevent a massive loss
of life and to prevent trench warfare as it took place in WWI, the Maginot
Line
▪ The Maginot Line: clear fortifications between the France and Germany
(on the French side) a military strong buffer that would keep the German
troops out, although it forgot one important military innovation which was
the use of airplanes
o 15 March 1939: occupation of Czech Republic
o 31 March (after Memel) Polish independence guaranteed, Germany invasion of
Poland and the declaration of war
▪ 23/24 August: Molotov-Ribbentrop-pact.
• Treaty between Germany and the USSR where they promise non-
aggression

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• Germany was anti-Bolshevik, anti-communist, anti-sematic, anti-

socialist rhetoric
o 3 September (after invasion of Poland) public opinion no longer in favor of
Appeasement
o Lack of public support for appeasement politics
• Blitzkrieg (1939)
o The main strategic idea was “fast-warfare,” to make swift and decisive victories
by overwhelming your enemy with either troops of materials or both
o Germany had several technological advancements in the military, new military
material
o The Germans military outweighed other countries
▪ E.g. military conflict between the Dutch and the Germans lasted 3 days
mainly because of the bombardment of the city of Rotterdam to persuade
them to surrender before other cities followed the same fate
▪ E.g. 2: Germany through Belgium attacked France
• Occupation of Poland
o All escalated into WWII
• Russian-German relations during the Interbellum
o Phase 1, 1921-1933: ‘Rapallo’
▪ Regular diplomatic cooperation between Berlin and Moscow
▪ The Allied are seen as the common enemy (Western countries)
o Phase 2, 1933-1939: growing animosity
▪ Communism = anti-fascism and vice versa (Anti-comintern-pact
1936/’37)
• Communism is more focus on the international revolution, racism
is not an ideology of fascism
• Fascism and national socialism have more of a racial element into
it
▪ Moscow and Berlin on opposite sides during the Spanish Civil War (1936-
1939)
o Phase 3, 1939-1941: allies
▪ Molotov-Ribbentrop-pact; Russian-German pact of non-aggression
▪ Dividing countries between both powers, who has influence in what area
o Phase 4, 1941-1945: war
▪ Germany occupies western Russia
▪ Russia joins the Allies
▪ Operation Barbarossa
• Turning Points:
o Extreme long and hard winter of ’41/’42 severe problem for German army and
hardware to survive the Russian winter
o Overreach, the German military was stretched out throughout Europe, because the
occupied countries also needed a German military presence to keep the
occupation going

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o Pearl Harbour (December 1941): US joins the War.

o Germans treat Eastern-Europeans as an inferior race.
o Stalingrad: largest battle in history. In the end leading to a German defeat
o The Anglo-American troops conquer the French territories in Northern Africa
(1942) in order to mount their attack on Italy (1943)
o Fear of was in multiple fronts when German military ambition and appetite for
conquest becomes to big
• ‘The Twisted Road to Auschwitz’
o Industrialized destruction of ethnic groups in Europe, specifically the annihilation
of Jews (or then referred as European Jewry) to destroy and erase Jewish culture
from European history and world history
o Hitler allegedly said “Who remembers the Armenians?” referring to the Armenian
genocide during WWI, with the idea that people might be outraged, but over time
people won’t remember
o Intentionalists vs. Functionalists:
▪ Debate: “Was it the intention from the beginning of Hitler and the
National Socialists to annihilate Jews and other groups?”
▪ Responsibility aspect: What did Hitler knew? How were orders
interpreted?
▪ They disagree on the idea of was it planned and minutely executed from
the beginning, or cumulative radicalization, sort of an spill over effect that
became worst overtime
o ‘Ordinary Men’ (Browning, 2001)
▪ Why they do what they did?
▪ Was the Holocaust specifically German or could it have happened to other
people as well?
▪ What it typically German or where they “ordinary men that were forced
into a specific position and did horrible things”
▪ Could it have happened in another country as well or is it exclusively
German?
▪ Due to historical and social factors it was exclusively German VS this
were ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances that were forced to
implement an evil cruel policy
o Importance of utopia of racial purity
o Secrecy
o Cumulative radicalization
o ‘Banality of Evil’ (Arendt)
▪ Idea of the victims trying their perpetrator
▪ High-ranking Nazi official, Adolf Eichmann who had a very important
role in the operational workings of the Holocaust said “I’m not
responsible, and therefore I’m not guilty, because I was just following
orders”

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o Legally but also politically the trials were interesting, if something is morally you
cannot use a legal legal somethings are so basically wrong is no legal protection
for you if you commit these crimes, there is a moral responsibility and you can be
legally punished for committing those crimes
o Number trials: crimes against humanity
o He’s defensive now or or Monday but she thought of him as a very
unextraordinary person if such a simple normal man then everyone in a certain
condition is capable of commuting these crimes, so we have to be vigilant and
guard our Democrat tic system and human rights against this evils
• Persecution of the European Jews:
o Phase 1, discrimination:
▪ Antisemitic propaganda;
▪ Administrative measurers like the ‘Neurenberg Laws’ (1935) that took
citizenship away from German Jews.
o Phase 2, social exclusion:
▪ De facto banishing Jews from normal societal contact;
▪ Stealing businesses.
o Phase 3, pogroms [Kristallnacht (9 Nov. ’38)]:
▪ Destroying Synagogues and Jewish shops;
▪ Jewish men are molested and send to camps
o Phase 4: annihilation:
▪ Started in Poland and parts of Russia (June ’41);
▪ Wannsee-conference; (Jan ’42)
o Between 5,5 and 6 million Jews systemically murdered
• WW II as a turning point
o Genocide on an unprecedented scale
▪ Resulted in the claim of never again
▪ One of the main tasks of the UN should be to prevent genocide in such
scale
o First step into the nuclear era
▪ Nuclear race
o US and USSR become the dominant powers (bi-polar world system)
▪ After WWII the USSR and the US become the dominant world powers
o European Powers in decline
▪ Lost of colonies
o German Stunde Null (hour zero), divided and start of democracy in the West
o Catalyst for independence of European colonies
• WW II compared to WWI
o Ideological crusade
o Intensity of the air strikes and bombings
o Politicians are much more involved in military strategy (Hitler, Churchill)
o Many more countries affected: most of Europe and large parts of Asia under
dictatorial yoke
o Organized, industrial murder of millions (Shoah)

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Decolonization and the Cold War

• Decolonization
o 27 December 1949: Independence of the Indonesia at the state of Indonesia
o Dam Square was built to be city hall, but eventually became a royal palace
• WW II, Decolonization and the Cold War
o Inter-bellum:
▪ Rising nationalism and independence movements in many colonies
▪ Split up of many countries
▪ Gandhi: India
▪ Sukarno: Indonesia
▪ Ho Chi Minh: Vietnam
o WW II: Japanese occupation and, later, a power vacuum (Indonesia)
▪ The Dutch Indies were occupied by the Japanese during WWII
▪ When the Japanese retreated from Indonesia, created a short-lived power
vacuum because the Dutch didn't return in full strength because they were
still recovering from WWII
o Cold War: after European divide and communist revolution in China,
▪ South-East Asia becomes a new ideological battleground
▪ Between which two main ideologies: Capitalism VS Communism
• Capitalism, which was sort of =democracy and freedom
• Communist east at a very clear anxiety fear from a Western
perspective, specifically American
o US: Domino-theory and containment-politics during the ’50s and ’60s
▪ Domino Theory:
• One country after another would become communists, especially
after the shock of China becoming communist after the Soviet
Union many more countries would become communists in
Southeast Asia
• Simply means the fear of Asian countries one after another as
domino stones will fall over and will become Communists and that
the entire eastern hemisphere would become a communist
▪ Contain the growth of communism in the global stage:
• Economic aid
o Marshall Plan
• Political aid and ‘puppet’-administrations
• Military support and sometimes military intervention
o Vietnam and Korea
• The Middle-East: Arab nationalism and socialism
o 14 May 1948: proclamation of Israel by Ben-Gurion
o 1952: coup d'état Nasser (exit King Faruk):

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▪ Pan Arabism:
• Dream of 1 Arabic State
• Working towards one strong Arab states
• Egypt being a very important player
o Most populous Arab country
o Centralized position in the Arab world
• Socialism, anti-Western and anti-Israel
▪ Nationalizations, land-reforms, secularization
▪ Fighting Western influence (flirting with the USSR)
▪ Attacks and 3 (unsuccessful) wars against Israel
o Spreading (pan) Arabic ‘socialism’
▪ Syria (independence in ’46) 1963 Baath-party seizes control (al-Assad)
▪ Irak (’58 coup d'état) and 1968 Baath-party (al-Bakr and later Sadam
Hoessein)
▪ Libya (independence in ’51) followed by coup d'état 1969 (Gadhafi)
▪ Saudi-Arabia, Gulf States and Jordan remain conservative (no
socialist/revolutionary tendencies)
• Monarchy is key in all of these countries are the fact that there is a
much stricter hereditary system in place is key
o Pan Arabism fails: too much competition amongst Arab states
▪ Too much competition among Arab leader
▪ Lack of consensus on leadership
▪ One very important common denominator, a common enemy, of course, is
the proclamation of the start of the State of Israel, which all Arab states
resist and refused to acknowledge the State of Israel
• Cold War
o The US came out of the WWII as at least the strongest Western economy; rise of
the US was significant
o The USSR and the US had advantage over Europe after WWII
▪ The USSR came out seriously damaged after WWII, but still had a
massive army at its disposal and it still has huge chunks of land so that it
can use to rebuild
▪ The US came out of WWII undamaged compared to other countries
o Europe no longer leading in international politics, but object of:
▪ Europe is no longer leading an international politics, but becomes an
object of international politics
▪ It is a battleground between these ideological superpowers, but is no
longer leading in designing where world politics is taking us
o Multipolar world is shifting to a bipolar world
▪ a world where multiple major powers sort of are in competition with each
other, balance each other out

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▪ Two superpowers, two major powers that are the determining factors in
the world and world history between, let's say 1945-1946 until the demise
of the Soviet Union in 1989, but officially in the early 1990s
o Key points:
▪ 1648 Peace of Westphalia
• Sovereignty became a significant no; sovereignty became an
essential part of political life. States recognizing up, up to certain
point. And again, I'm talking about insignificant states, the big
countries, large states, the great powers, somewhat respecting each
other's sovereignty, but more importantly, that sovereignty became
a sort of absolute right
• Ended the Thirty Years' War
• Idea that within a state's borders there is no higher authority than
the government of the state itself
• What is a domestic affair needs to stay a domestic affair in other
countries should not get involved in another country's domestic
affair
• Sovereignty is sort of considered an absolute sacred right
o 1815 Congress of Vienna
▪ The balance of power system that is created within Europe, which has a
significant impact on the rest of the world, because it, in a way it creates a
look outwards that people are starting to focus more on their colonies.
▪ Starts that sort of new imperialism
▪ The beginning of that of, of countries getting more and more involved
colonizers getting more and more involved in their colonies, in the daily
life of their colonies.
o 1918 Treaty of Versailles and the attempts to find a balance of power and control
large conflicts: focus on Europe.
▪ The beginning of the decline of Europe in a much higher pace than at the
end of the 19th century
▪ A clear containment politics, if you will, against Germany, which was
very important aspects and which is generally seen as one of the seed that
was planted that lead to WWII
o New, global, conflict between two superpowers (USSR and US):
▪ Power and interests
▪ But also: both have a set of values with a universal claim (communism vs.
liberal democracy/capitalism)
o Terminology Cold War: conflict in which all sorts of non-military means
(economic, political, ideological, etc.) are used
o Hot War: Direct military confrontation was prevented (no ‘hot war’).
o Lots of proxy-wars
• Historiography:

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Orthodox vision • US wants to contain Soviet expansionism: containment politics

(‘46/’50): (Truman, Eisenhower)
USSR's to blame • Eisenhower focus particularly on Asia because of the domino

theory
Historical context:
WWII • Truman is concerned about the rise of communism in Europe
and the popularity of certain communist parties in western
European countries
• Italy is part of the western hemisphere, but the Communist

Party is quite popular and big in Italian politics
• Moving away from an alliance between the US and the USSR

to a security question to becoming adversaries
• Moving from alliance (WWII) to a security question
• Very simply put, the orthodox vision states, it's, the Cold War,
is the only reason that we have a whole war is because of
USSR expansionism
o The fact that the Soviet Union expanded all the way
through Eastern Europe, that it expanded it influence in
Asia, and Chinese communism
o Had the Soviets not expanded as far as they did, the US
position would have been completely different
• The reason that we had a cold war is because of the Soviet

behavior, because of Soviet expansionism
• The sizable increase in land that the USSR received or claimed

after WWII. It claims entire eastern Europe
• China becoming communists in the 1950s
• Only course of action would be to fight that threat, to try to

contain that threat
Revisionism • Revisionism (started 1960s, dominated by left-wing thinkers):
o US are the expanding power (‘economic imperialism’
US is to blame according to neo-Marxists)
▪ It uses its economic might
Historical Context: ▪ It uses programs like Marshall Plan, to provide
Vietnam (1960s) aid in order to gain its influence in the world
(European Recovery Program)
▪ It's not actually the Soviet Union that was
expanding. It was the US that was expanding its

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
power. And obviously the USSR had to respond

to react
o Vietnam
▪ E.g. of American expansionism
o Vietnam VS Korean War

▪ Vietnam had a higher number of casualties on
US sites
▪ Korea there was an international coalition of
troops, UN troops. The UN was involved in the
Korean conflict
▪ Vietnam, we're seeing much more of the
Vietnam War as a unilateral action by the US
that had no humanitarian background, that they
didn't simply want to protect the Vietnamese
people, protect Vietnam from communism, and
at a certain point, did not simply want to retreat
from Vietnam because Nixon was very much
focused on what he called a peace with honor.
He was only willing to retreat from Vietnam to
sign an armistice under his conditions primarily
and not work towards a deal, not proportional
military response
o USSR was focused on its own security and didn’t want

a World Revolution (Stalin vs. Trotsky)
▪ Stalin was much more focused on socialism in
one country was clear about that man that did
propose perpetual revolution, international
revolution had to flee to Mexico
o “Even from his own words, there was no clear necessity
for a world revolutions” that argument is false,
according to revisionists
Realism (IR)’60s and • Interests always leading in international relations and politics
beyond:
• Conflict of interests between the US and the USSR
• Conflict, from the natural order of international relations

because of international anarchy
• Cold War is a misplaced phrase, because conflicts form the

natural order of international relations (international anarchy)
• USSR surrounded by power vacuums after decimation of

Germany and Japan and decides to step in

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• Which led to a conflict with the US
• Ideology is not leading, interests are leading

Post-revisionism • It tries to explain why the Cold War happens from and because
(starting 1975): of that conflict of ideology
• Importance of Ideology
• USSR and the US, they agree in that way with realists, the
conflict is inevitable because both have as their ideological
core values system. That is by definition, expansionist,
International and has emission. It has the mission to include
other countries of that system
• The US clearly has that shiny city on a hill view which Reagan
used to refer to the country that is an example for others to
follow because it is the epitome of freedom and of success of
democratic states
• Communism, which is also almost by definition the

international struggle against capital
• The fact that these two major forces to clash were to collide
was inevitable
• Look at the more fundamental causes of this conflict,

summarized in a way that both countries desire security and
have a tendency to expand their influence and power because
of their ideological frameworks and systems.
• USSR and US: ‘national’ unity not based on ethnicity, but on

shared values with universal pretenses
• Difficult to determine what transcends national interest and

what doesn’t
• USSR and US both desire security and expansionism
• Act I: distrust between West and USSR

o Russian civil war: WWI
▪ USSR retreating, retreating from the eastern France during WWI which
was a significant blow to the allied forces to the West
o Treaty of Versailles: excluding the USSR

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
▪ Sign of disrespect towards the USSR

o Conference of Munich and the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact
▪ Shows a different perspective of interests and a different perspective of
values
▪ Appeasement, deal making or the other between Stalin and Hitler also
trying to divide as much as possible in Eastern Europe
Act II: Conferences:
Context: WWII
1941 The Atlantic • Before the US was actively involved militarily in WWII (Before
Charter Pearl Harbor)
• Meeting mainly between Churchill and Roosevelt
• Saying that if this war is over, we should work towards (from a

US perspective, it's very important to focus on self-
determination, self-governance, also for the colonies to slowly
work towards that) To find a way where economic cooperation
between countries is leading, trade becomes leading and
importance and acting against international aggression
• Agreeing on the fact that the League of Nations was not a very
big success, and another type of organization should be created
• Self-determination (self-government), economic cooperation,

and open markets
• Acting against international aggression, new international

organization (exit League)
1943 Tehran • Stalin already puts on the table that if Roosevelt and Churchill
want Stalin to push through, push the German troops back from
Eastern Europe he would in return demand sort of buffer zone
as a protection against German aggression (due to the massive
amount of casualties during both wars)
• US understanding security concerns of USSR, but also adamant

about elections in Poland
1944 Moscow • Churchill and Stalin divide Europe
(without Roosevelt)
1945 Yalta • Elections in Europe (democratic farce in Eastern-Europe) and
Polish question ends as a win for the USSR
• Mr. X

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o 1947 George Kennan in Foreign Affairs ‘The sources of Soviet conduct’ under
pseudonym Mr. X
o Gave a historical overview of explaining why Soviet politicians, Soviet diplomats,
policymakers, why they act in a certain way:
▪ Soviets
▪ Russian tradition
▪ Russian diplomats and politicians used to get sort of an historical
overview in a way try and explain what the future, the near future will
look like
o He simply states that containment is the only viable answer from a US perspective
to the USSR and Soviets politics
o 1947 Truman-doctrine
▪ Containment policy
▪ Makes the US a global military, political, and economic player because as
the response, the reaction of US leadership, political leadership after the
First World War was isolationism; US isolationist response to the rest of
the world after WWI
▪ US becomes a main player
▪ Start containment policy US
▪ The way the power vacuum, the military vacuum that The Great Britain,
UK leaves behind specifically in the Mediterranean, looking at Greece,
looking at Turkey, that is also one of the places where the US steps in
▪ Decision, the US is becoming a global military and economic player. And
again, that containment policy gets started.
• Marshal Plan
o The American Way of Life, Marshall plan (Secretary of State)
o Exporting the American way of life, that is a combination of altruism and self-
interest
▪ Provide stability for Europe, but also make profits and loans to get back
▪ Investing in Western economies to secure new beginnings
▪ The US benefits economically and it fastens the pace of recovery in
Europe, and it also creates, at least in Western Europe, it's sort of damn
against Communism
o The US was also leading in the process of denitrification in western Germany
specifically. Making sure that Nazi ideology was uprooted, but also that Naziism
was completely cleansed from the legal system, from the political system
o Between ‘48 and ’51: 12 billion to economies in Europe (also offered to Eastern-
European countries, but they ‘declined’ because of USSR)
o 3 aims:
▪ US benefits economically,
▪ Recovery in Europe as a dam against communism (Kennan’s containment)
▪ Embarrassing USSR by forcing its hand in refusal money eastern block
• Blockade of Berlin

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o 1947: Western zones unified and in1948 D-mark as currency (Marshallplan)

o It starts with something sounding relatively innocence, namely the introduction of
the Deutsche Mark of a new currency in West Germany, which was seen as a sort
of first step into the unification of Western Germany as a country and also, the,
the first step in German independence, at least West German independence
o From 1946 onwards US no longer strives for unified Germany
o The western area of Germany was divided in multiple sections:
▪ The American section
▪ The British zone
▪ The French zone
▪ Berlin was divided the way the country was divided in a Soviet section on
the one hand, and a Western Allied section on the other
o Stalin responds with blockade of Berlin
▪ Not allowing goods to travel over land to the west side of Berlin
▪ American airlift: Stalin gives in
o 1949: BRD and DDR created
▪ The Federal Republic of Germany is created
▪ The German Democratic Republic, democratic republic on eastern sides
▪ Official West and East Germany
o West Germany:
▪ BRD led by Konrad Adenauer
▪ Reconstruction, orientation on the West and consolidation of its
democracy
▪ Trying to again create normal diplomatic relations with his countries,
which is sort of summarized in the phrase:
o Westbindung: Germany needs to be ‘capsulated’ in European and Western
organizations. That way it will never be a threat again.
o " Westbindung” Connection to the West Commented [AF2]: add german phrase
o Germany needs to be sort of capsulated in European and Western organizations
and that way it will never be a threat again
o That works both ways:
▪ On the one hand, from the German perspective, to become a normal
member of the International European society
▪ From the other country's perspective, make sure we put Germany as much
interconnected, politically, economically, and in a very minute way
militarily and it will not become a threat, will not fall back in an isolated
position and fallback in an aggressive position
▪ Help to consolidate German democracy, which was of course, still again
in its infant stage in Germany because it was never something that was not
much of a democratic tradition in German political culture
• Iron Curtain:
o Military demarcation line between Red Army and US/NATO forces.

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o Eastern-Europe: Baltic states incorporated in Soviet sphere, also Hungary,

Rumania, Bulgaria (no uprising)
o Exceptions:
▪ Yugoslavia efficiently is, is a communist state, but is seen as one of the
most autonomous or free from soviets influence
▪ Greece, which was also part of the deal between Stalin, Churchill joins the
Western Bloc and becomes also an important member of NATO
▪ Greece joins western block (NATO)
▪ Yugoslavia (Tito) goes its own direction
o Iron Curtain by Churchill:
▪ Churchill’s vivid picture and a continent divided by an Iron Curtain
▪ “The Soviets are knifing themselves into Eastern Europe. And on the other
hand, the US of course, has, have to safeguard European Liberty”
o 1948: Clear circle of satellite states
o But security USSR still a concern, because:
▪ 1) unified block in the West
▪ 2) Not so unified block in the East
▪ 3) How much protection do buffer-states offer in a time of aerial attacks
and nuclear weapons?
• Institutionalizing the blocks:
o OECD (1948) because of Marshall plan
▪ Economic cooperation between European countries
o NATO (1949)
▪ EU needs NATO
▪ Eu is military dependent on the US
▪ EU doesn’t invest or meet the military means for NATO
▪ “To keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down" (1st
Sec-gen. Lord Ismay)
o ECSC (1951) Benelux, F. BRD, I
▪ Predecessor of the EU
▪ Agree that on the issues regarding steel and coal, because those were the
most important ingredients for military investment and expansion
▪ Supernational organization
▪ Multilateral decision-making
▪ EEC (1957) Treaty of Rome, Benelux, F, BRD, I
▪ COMECON (1949)
o Warschaupact (1955) after BRD joines NATO
▪ Response to NATO
▪ West Germany becoming a member of NATO
o Supranational: Simply means that you have an organization that has taken some
privileges, some rights from sovereign states
• Nuclear Age
o Manhattan Project in the US

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o Soviets and the Germans trying to create the atomic bomb

o 1945: Hiroshima & Nagasaki (15 kiloton)
▪ Only bombs ever used on a civilian in a war
o 1949: Atomic bomb USSR
▪ Not a question of if, but a question of when the USSR would be able to
create its own nuclear device
▪ This is what led to the nuclear arms race
o 1952 US and ‘53 USSR: H-bomb (max. 50 megaton)
o 1954 Dulles: ‘massive retaliation’
o ‘first strike capability’
o 1955 ICBM development
▪ International Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
o Result: enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world over and over again
o 1961 McNamara: ‘second strike capability’ causes Mutual Assured Destruction
(MAD)
▪ The idea was that it would be so detrimental to both sides if they ever
started a nuclear war that, that would be the main deterrence in using a
nuclear weapon
▪ We cannot attack each other with a nuclear strike, because that will
guarantee the destruction of the other side as well
▪ No one will be able to win a nuclear war
o ‘Flexibel response’ as the new doctrine
• Korea
o Battleground between capitalist Western ideology on the one hand, communist
ideology on the other
o Truman-doctrine and containment lead to rising tensions: focus in Asia
▪ Combination of Truman doctrine and containment politics. So this idea of
us needs to step up, needs to play an international role politically,
militarily, economically. Containment politics to contain the rise of
communism in the world
▪ In this timeframe, we're talking about a new American precedence
Eisenhower afraid of the domino theory
o 1949 China ‘turns red’.
o Soviet troops, Soviets declared war on Japan in August of 1945. Also had troops
positioned in all sorts of places to keep the Japanese out and left a lot of their
troops in the Northern part of Korea and the Americans had troops in the southern
part of Southern Korea
▪ Korea first actual battleground. After 1945, 38th parallel as demarcation
line
▪ Making sure that Korea does not become a communist state
o 25 June 1950: North invades the South (civil war) UN-troops defend the south
(huge American involvement).
o Gen. MacArthur suggests dropping an atomic bomb on China (fired by Truman).

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
o At the same time senator McCarthy starts his witch-hunt in the US

▪ McCarthyism: this idea of having political, using political power in order
to describe people as communists and that was enough to ruin their
societal position in the US
o Armistice 1953
▪ It ended exactly as begun, namely at this demarcation line between North
and South, the arms of 1953
o 1954 Eisenhower: domino theory and massive retaliation
o One of those first actual battlegrounds, one of those proxy wars that happens in
the fight between, in the ideological struggle between the USSR and the US,
between international communism and international kept capitalism
• Peaceful coexistence?
o After Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev becomes the new leader of the USSR (23
February ‘56 speech on Stalin’s cruelty)
o Goal is peaceful coexistence between USSR and US (attention needed in the
Eastern Block: rebellion in Hungary 1956).
o 1957 Sputnik!
▪ Satellites
▪ Creates the beginning of the Space race between the US and USSR
▪ Who will reach the moon first?
o 1957 Eisenhower-doctrine
o 1961 Kennedy president
▪ Liberal and younger
▪ Sees opportunity of a new relationship between the superpowers
o Peaceful coexistence? No, because there were two main conflicts:
▪ The position of Germany, so the building of the Berlin Wall from 1960
onwards to prevent people to leave the Soviets area, the Soviet sphere,
through East Berlin to West Berlin and traveling to Western Europe
▪ The Cuban Missile Crisis
• The Cuban Missile Crisis:
o Cuba is a communist country
o 1959 Revolution in Cuba
▪ Ending the dictatorship and establishing a communist state in Cuba
▪ Blowback to the US in relation of their containment politics
▪ Meant that there was a communist country very close to their physical
presence to American borders (to close to home)
o April 1961 invasion Bay of Pigs fails
▪ American response
▪ Fails miserably
o April 1962 Khrushchev orders Operation Anadyr
▪ Building a military presence on Cuba
▪ That was the main thing and that was indeed kept secrets

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
▪ US used spy planes also to make pictures and fly over Cuba at a certain
point in certain parts of Cuba, they saw the buildup missile, missile silos
and other military material being created coming from the USSR
o Cuba and Turkey used as launching platforms ballistic missiles (first strike)
o Timeline:
▪ 14 October 1962: U2 discovers missile site
▪ 16 October: Kennedy calls for meeting of Executive Committee of the
National Security Council
▪ 18 October: Gromyko denies the existence of offensive weapons on Cuba’
▪ 19 October: quarantine of the Island
• Quarantine of the island
• The US creates US Navy crazy sort of line around Cuba saying
that, that the Soviets are not allowed to cross that line and are not
allowed to bring any more weapons, missiles, and military material
to Cuba
• Fear of new killer capable ballistic missiles on the island of Cuba,
they could reach us, not just perhaps New York and other cities on
the eastern coast or just in the western coast, but they could reach
entire areas of the continental US
▪ 22 October: Kennedy goes public
▪ 23 October: Khrushchev determined not to give in
▪ 26 October: first proposal Khrushchev
▪ 27 October: second proposal Khrushchev
▪ 28 October: solution found (public and secretive element)
▪ Solution:
• The removal of missiles us is our missiles from Cuba military
material
• The US would guarantee Cuba's independence, the US will not try
to invade the country again, no military invasion
• The world was very close to a third world war and very close to
nuclear war
▪ Conclusion:
• Public recognition that the US would not at least try to invade,
recognize Cuban sovereignty
o USSR train of thought about Cuba: The US already have the capacity to attack us
from the continental Europe. So there needs to be some form of balance between
that
▪ NATO troops were literally at the border of what was considered the
Soviet sphere
▪ Huge military presence
▪ Ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons were also not only because France and
Britain created their own nuclear weapons, but also there were nuclear, US
nuclear weapons were positioned in this country

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
▪ Provocation
▪ The Soviets tried to make use of that strategic advantage
o Exit Khrushchev (1964)
▪ Missile crisis speed up his process of having to resign
o Hotline between Washington and Moscow
▪ Contact and discussion and slow beginning of détente so a slow beginning
of a relaxation of the relationship between the USSR and the US
▪ Beginning of detente
o Awareness grows of the potential devastation of nuclear war
▪ There are no winners
o Arms race continues
• Reconstruction, Prosperity and Polarization: Dutch Politics & shifts in modern

mass culture
o Inter-bellum: 1918, 1940, 1945
Pillarized inter-bellum: • Late 19th century, 1917-1918 universal suffrage had a huge
Catholics impact on the popular vote and the mandate that individual
parties or political groups receives
• The RKSP founded on June 3rd 1926
• RKSP became the political party/home of all Dutch
Catholics (went through all the class differences within
Dutch society, upper, lower, working class, farmers,
(small)business owners etc.)
o Almost everyone in that Catholic community voted
for this party, which meant that they had a very
strong popular mandate in a very strong position in
Dutch parliament as they form the largest majority
• Catholics wanted to cooperate with the ARP and CHU
(Coalition)
• Since 1918 the RKSP got around 30% of the vote
• It served in all coalition governments between 1918 and
1945
o After WWII, 1970s it became sort of normal that the
largest party within the coalition will always deliver
the Prime Minister for that coalition government but
that has been a relatively recent phenomenon
• Supported state intervention
• The Christian parties almost naturally move towards each
other, and again, almost always had a majority in parliament,
made them the most logical partners to work with
• If you look at the period after WWII specifically after the
1970s, there is this huge Christian Democratic Party which

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
either governed with the liberals or with the Social

Democrats
• Centric
• Collective responsibilities/interest
• An economic perspective, a clear left-wing minority within
the Catholic party really supported a much bigger role for
government and a much smaller role for business. So against
laissez-faire capitalism
Protestants: • Dominated by a reforms more orthodox church
• De ‘Mannenbroeders’ (brethren of the faith)
• The Protestant Pillar was dominated by Reformed
(Orthodox) Church
• The main Protestant parties were the anti-revolutionary party
at the Christian historical union
• Opposed state inttervention
• Important aspect of the anti-revolutionary party is this idea
of sovereignty in your own circle. Deciding for yourself
within your own community without state interference on all
sorts of societal things that you can control on your own:
o Education
o Sporting associations
o There are a few things that you have to do nationally,
but all of these things that you don't have to do
nationally, it should remain with the groups and the
state should not intervene with that policy
o They also had their own university (VU Amsterdam)
and, of course, political party (ARP)
• Suffrage issue:
o Anti-revolutionary group was in favor of expanding
the vote, but step-by-step
o They were open to the idea suffrage as they were
quite convinced that people would vote primarily by
religious lines instead of by class lines (quite
accurate)
• The ARP opposed and feared the French revolution
o They oppose what the French Revolution stood for
o They believed in a sort of what they call more of an
organic society that in their view, which is usually a
romanticized view existed before the French
Revolution. Much more community based instead of
centralized political power from a capital. Much
more community based and much less individualistic
o Opposed the revolutionary uprisings of 1848
• Kuyper, and later Colijn
o Politics is much more about your value system than it
is about your rational thinking

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• The less orthodox joined the CHU and some even the liberal
party
• Responsibilities of an specific group
Socialists: • From the darkness into the light! (1925):
• Classic image symbolizing the strength of the working
classes and movement: a young worker in front of smoking
factories and in his hand a vote for the SDAP
o Proletarians know your duty
• Supported state intervention
• Collective responsabilities
Liberals: • Liberals had a more elitist position, in their view:
o sophisticated, neutral and open minded
• Liberal union
• They opposed Pillarization and claimed to represent the
public interest
• Dominated sciences and government (civil service)
• Because they didn’t belong to a pillar, they became a pillar
• Opposed state intervention
• The Socialist were kept out of government until 1939 and
became an actual group to be reckoned with from a political
power position from 1945 onwards, but not in the inter
bellum periods
• Individual responsibilities

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• Pillarization:
• Goes beyond political organization, that goes beyond voting for the same political
party because you have the same religious or ideological preferences. Now, it is
also you are organized within that part of community
• Entrenched in every aspect of daily life
• Information you get and the discussions that you have are about certain topics that
are important for your specific group, for your specific pillar
▪ Own media
▪ Own schools
• Representation system: every group, every denominational, but also every
ideological group, should be able to be represented in Parliament
• Tries to be part of everyday life
• It started with the Protestants organizing themselves, led by Kuyper, led by the
anti-revolutionary party Politically, also with newspapers, also with the
university. So, this was the first group that's really started to organize themselves
into a pillar and other groups in many ways followed
• The Catholic pillar and specifically the more orthodox part of the Protestant pillar,
we're definitely stronger because of that religious base. Because even if you could
say that if you moved from working class and middle class, you might be inclined
to move from social democratic voting for Social Democrats to more liberal. But
if you move from working class Catholic into middle-class Catholic or still

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
catholic, and that's still defines you more than your class. So, it is logical that that
is stronger. And what you see these pillars, the depolarization starts in many ways
also with the start of the society becoming more and more secular, people
becoming less religious has an impact on the strength of pillarization
• Stability:
• 100 seats in Dutch Tweede Kamer (Lower House of parliament with direct
popular mandate) until 1956. Since then: 150 seats
• Period 1946 – 1968:
▪ KVP: 32 - 32 – 30 – 49 – 49 - 50 – 42
• Catholic People's Party, which drops at the election in the late
1960s and you would say, well, it's only from 50 to 42 votes
• Significant defeat lead to a closer collaboration with the protestant
parties which at the end leads to a merger of these three political
parties into one large political party, particularly by the Labour
Party
▪ PvdA: 29 – 27 – 30 - 50 – 48 – 43 – 37
• Quite stable
▪ VVD: 8 – 9 – 13 – 19 – 16 – 17 – 16
• Central right-wing liberal party, stays still relatively small, but
stable
• Effect of Pillarization: parties had rather fixed constituencies
▪ Period of pacification (political and policy standpoints) as:
• When you have very fixed constituency constituencies. If you're
quite certain of the number of people that will vote for you, the
percentage of the people that votes for you, stay stable. You can
take some risk, for instance, policy wise, but you don't have to
really attack your political opponents that much because you're
quite certain of the number of votes that you will get
• Which made it easier for them to cooperate
o Continuation creates political stability policy wise
• Pragmatism, compromise, cooperation among elites
▪ Pillars separate different groups in society
▪ Elites are the roof that do closely work together or at least are in close
contact with one another
• Atmosphere of pragmatism and compromise
• Breakthrough?
• After WW II
• Nederlandse Volksbeweging (NVB. Dutch People’s Movement)
• Aim: to change the political and social order and separate religious and political
life: end Pillarization

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
• However, in many ways that did not follow through because in many ways' cases,
some of the old political parties that existed before the WWII continued with the
new name after the WWII
▪ Very specifically, the Roman Catholic state party became the Catholic
People's Party, but fundamentally did not change that much from an
ideological standpoint
▪ Success with the founding of the Labor Party because it did reach a
broader group of potential voters after the second WWII than it reached
before WWII
• December’45, founding of the KVP (former RKSP): failure of the breakthrough?
• February ’46, founding PvdA (former SDAP)
• Economics and Prosperity:
• The Netherlands really came out of the WWI because it was neutral during the
WII relatively unharmed (not significant impact)
• After WWII the impact compared to Western European countries was quite
significance comparable to other western European countries
• The Dutch were considered racially almost equal to the Germans, which made the
Duchy of the German Nazi administration in the Netherlands relatively mild and
sympathetic towards its population, except of course, for the Jewish minority in
the country
• Until 1944 for daily life, for many people continued except very notoriously, of
course, for Dutch Jews
• Jews population decrease significantly
• After WWII the outlook change to positivity:
▪ 1945-1963 wage policy, huge economic growth.
▪ CPB (Tinbergen) and SER
• Tinbergen argued that we need scientific institutions. It can back
up or can support government with scientific data that also shows
why specific policy might have this effect or that effect and is it a
positive effect or a negative effect
• CPB is an agency that look at what the impact will be for a specific
societal group and based on that, we might change our policy,
change our ideas, or we move forward and try to see if we can get
a majority in parliament for this idea
• Institutions based on scientific research that advise governments
and other institutions on policy
▪ Neo-corporatism:
• Democratic corporatism
• Certain groups that are represented in an institutional,
institutionalized way. They're interests are defended, discussed,
and a compromise that is always the result of give-and-take of all
of these different groups

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
• Folder model: The Dutch have created quite a lot of organizations

where we put different groups that might have an adversarial
position. For instance, unions and employers put these together in
certain institutions and make sure they figure out what the best
way forward is for all of these, for the common good
o E.g. Social Economic Council: Come together and discuss
the future of pensions, for instance, or the future of specific
collective labor agreements in this country
• A system of balanced representation of interests in which
organized groups (Unions, employers) conduct (institutional) talks
with government
• Prosperity and Welfare State:
• Parallel to Marshall plan (1948)
• Expansion of industries
• Not solely due to the Marshall plan Dutch industry was doing quite well also in
the 1920s and even up until some parts of the 1930s as well. There was, the
knowledge was here, the ideas were there, but there is, there was a shortage of
capital, which was a general problem, of course, in Europe after the WWII
• An important aspect is expanding of social legislation, welfare legislation
• Mechanizing agriculture (much larger scale)
• Expanding welfare (social) legislation (AOW, 1957)
▪ Centralized pension for everyone after a certain age, state guaranteed
pension
▪ As long as you're a Dutch citizen living in this country, even some cases
not living in this country, but as long as you're a Dutch citizen at a certain
age, you receive a state pension
▪ Prevent dying from poverty at old age
• Roman-Red Coalition
▪ Political foundation, the political backbone for these decisions
▪ oman read as in Roman Catholic Coalition, which was dominated by the
Catholic People's Party at the Labor Party
• (KVP and PvdA)
• Welfare State:
• Build up in the 1950s and 1960s
• Protecting the citizens well being
• (Thoenes, 1962) A system of government care, based on democratic values, that
guarantees the collective, social wellbeing of its citizens. By ensuring a
reasonable level of:
▪ Employment
• Infrastructural investments
• Gas supplies in the north of the country
▪ Income

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
• Minimum wage
• Dutch international competition, competition level was good: Kept
wages down relatively in order to make sure that the Dutch
industry had a good competitive position in the global market and
on a global scale
▪ Consuming
▪ Social security
• Pensions
▪ Cultural life
• E.g. Theaters: People should also enjoy cultural life, so there
should be a theatre within 20 kilometers of each individual living
in this country we have
▪ Citizenship
• Much bigger influence of governments, much higher revenues for government
simply because government is spending much more money on many things
• Since the economy in many Western European states and again also Netherlands,
started really to boom from the early 1950s to the late 1960s. This money was
spent and a lot of it was invested in physical infrastructure, but you could also say
in social infrastructure. Making sure that people were taken care of
• (Party)Political developments:
• Roman-Red Coalition 1945-1959 (’48-’58 ‘Father’ Drees): center-left
▪ The 1920s, Dutch bishops' sort of gave catholic bishops, gave an order
that the Catholic party was not allowed to work with the Labour Party
except in extreme necessity
▪ The Catholic Church and this country were adamantly against
collaboration between the Catholic party and the Labour Party for a very
long time
▪ The fact that these two forms, the foundation of reconstruction and
political stability after WWII, that you could see as a sort of breakthrough,
although it was clearly in party lines and within polarized society
• Pacification democracy (paternalistic)
▪ Big ideological differences were set aside and the common good as sort of
pragmatic outlook was leading
▪ Most of the political leaders of political parties were very much aware of
the necessity of Reconstruction. The fact that a political stable climate was
necessary was maybe even essential to make reconstruction work.
▪ The huge political or ideological differences that might have existed
before the WWII were put aside and the focus was on cooperation
• Crisis and War
• Pillarized organizations professionalize and de-ideologize
• Politics of polarization:

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
• New generation was growing up. A generation that was either born during the
WWII, but was so young that they did not have an insignificant memories of that
period. And a generation that generally grew up in the prosperity that was created
after WWII especially from 1955 onwards (Baby Boomers)
• Founding D66, PPR
▪ Democrats 66: Founded in 1966
▪ One of their main points was that the political system needed to become
more democratic. Not just the political system but society at large.
▪ They were in favor of referendums. They were in favor of directly electing
the Prime Minister, directly electing mayors
▪ In favor of more direct mandates from the people, from the voters
• New Left PvdA (1970): dominated by a new post-war generation
▪ A new left movement within the Labor Party, dominated by, again, a new
post-war generation young people demanding that the Labour Party would
invest in its ideal, in its ideological standpoints, would become more
outspoken in its convictions and would be less inclined to compromise and
have this pragmatic political outlook
• Christian parties loose voters (particularly KVP): Secularization of society
▪ Secularization of society
▪ The Catholic People's Party start to lose a significant amount of their
constituents. And these three mains, there were very tiny Christian parties
as well
▪ The three main religious parties start to look at working together more
closely and also starting to form a federation and later on merging into one
political party
• Polarization
▪ Amongst political parties due to ideological differences
▪ Clear change compared to this pacification politics specification
democracy
▪ More polarized political landscape (1940s-1960s)
• Den Uyl-administration: progressive majority within cabinet, but not in
parliament (center-right parties necessary for majority)
• Shifts in mass culture:
• Context 1950-1960: Baby boom generation born, reconstruction, economic
growth and the ideal of family life (‘Motherhood and apple pie’)
• Living standards rise: healthier food, good housing, cars, tv’s etc
• More educated people (especially higher education)
▪ Availability of universities increased
▪ Non-elites started attending to university
▪ This idea from the 1950s, 1960s onwards is that higher education is sort of
education is a human right
• There was hardly a shortage of houses in the 1960s

lOMoARcPSD|9504701
• There was hardly any unemployment in the 1960s

• People also have time to focus on more nonmaterial things, a more intellectual,
spiritual, whatever you'd like to call it, but much more focused on what kind of
society do we want to be ideologically, not just economically and welfare based
• Modern means of (mass)production:
• Scientific management by Frederick W. Taylor (1866-1915): more efficient
division of labor (specialization)
▪ New way of looking at mass production, but also a new way of looking at
the value of individual workers in these types of organizations, which of
course spawned the reaction again from unions and other people trying to
defend the workers rights more significantly
• Ford Motor Company and the assembly line
▪ Give every worker a very small individual task that will increase
efficiency, at least you will increase your output
▪ Created a problem of efficiency, which was deemed the fact that workers
were not stimulated to work hard enough
• 1950-1960: criticizing society
• Context: Cold War (anti-communist, senator McCarthy)
• What is the level of critique that you're allowed to have on your society?
• It's criticizing your own society, your own political elites
▪ Massive demonstrations against the war of Vietnam
• Conservatives perceived criticism in society seen as supportive of communism,
pro-socialists, and anti-American
• Criticizing older generations
• McCarthyism: Senator McCarthy of course, being the sort of figurehead of anti-
communist policies and anti-communist rhetoric in the US. Saying that if you
oppose certain decisions in US government, if you're critical of specific basic
American values, you are probably communists and therefore should not be taken
seriously, worse, you are a danger to society
• Access to higher education is an important aspect of that because that also
introduces new ideas to larger groups of people compared to the periods before
• ‘Sex, drugs & rock ‘n roll’
• More people have access to higher education than ever before
• Existentialism (Sartre) and the ideal of personal development
• Student protest in the spring (May) of 1968
• Call for more democracy (at university level, but also state)
• A lot of media attention
• Growing opposition to the War in Vietnam (both in the US and in Europe)
• Radical Weather Underground movement: violent actions against the US
government

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▪ Radical left-wing organization in the US that plotted violent actions

against the US government. It wanted it to end capitalist society and create
a communist socialist society in the US
• Civil Rights Movement US after WWII:
• Focus on Western European Countries:
▪ Ending a long period of political pacification of specific elites being in
power for quite a significant number of time prime ministers or presidents
having 10 or 12 years in office
▪ In the US. There's also different, there's difference in political position and
political views that change. It also has a very clear racial component, as
was mentioned. And that really has to do, of course, with the civil rights
movement:
• 1954: Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
▪ Segregation in education
▪ Supreme Court ruling stating that a black student was, was supposed to be
allowed to go to a White school, which she wasn't. And she won that case
▪ This mean, meant that segregation in education was unconstitutional
• 1955: Rosa Parks and the Alabama bus boycott
• 1955: Founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference lead by Martin
Luther King jr.
▪ Stating that non-violence, civil disobedience would be a very good way in
reaching political equality for non-white groups in the US
• 1957: “Little Rock Nine” protection by the National Guard for black students in
order to attend High school in Little Rock Arkansas
• 1961-1964: Summers of the ‘freedom riders’: helping black voters to register in
southern states
▪ Combination of both whites and mainly black male students' white
students from Northern states going to Southern states and helping people
also to register to vote
▪ Institutional racism to complicate the registration of voting
▪ Practical limitations
• Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Ending discrimination against African Americans (and women) regarding voting,
education and employment
• Affirmative action:
▪ Policy in which an individual's color, race, sex, religion or national origin
are taken into account to increase opportunities provided to an
underrepresented part of society
▪ Help to reach levels of equality
▪ Ideas of compensation towards African American people and increase
representation
▪ Quotas of representation

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• Assassination of Martin Luther King jr. on April 4th 1968

• Radicalizing: Black Panthers
• Bobby Seale and Huey Newton (1967):
• ‘We want Freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black
community. We want full employment, decent housing, land, bread, education
and peace’.
• End to civil disobedience by Martin Luther King?
• Netherlands:
• Depillarization and secularization
• Provo: against existing order and consumerism
• Dolle Mina (feminist)
• 1956: amendments by Corry Tendeloo (PvdA):
▪ Abolishing automatic discharge of married women from government
service
▪ Abolishing legal incapacitation of married women
• Squatters (picture)
• Pacifist movement

His Mo End Term Lectures

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His Mo End Term Lectures

History of the Modern World (Universiteit van Amsterdam)

StudeerSnel wordt niet gesponsord of ondersteund door een hogeschool of universiteit

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• Power decreases compared to other countries (e.g. Germany)

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• To give you an idea, military deaths, civilian deaths, total deaths

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• Some form of self-determination for

• Moving within the system, to a more

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▪ He tried to modernize Russia

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▪ Reactionary figure: The reforms that his father implemented to go back to

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o Anarchists and/or Nihilistic movements: Tsarist state can only be combated

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• Revisionism: So it's sort of a revision

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• Division within the Russian Social-Democratic Party during party conference in

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o Fading faith in the ‘divine’ power of the Tsar:

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o 1924: Lenin dies

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it is technically a republic still very much in people were willing

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▪ People believe in democracy, create a democratic political culture even if

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▪Not parties that agreed on many issues, from the socioeconomic

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• A complicated birth: the punitive peace (Diktat) of Versailles

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that were provided. So, loans that were provided by individual

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• Unemployment (up to 30%), investments drop, bankruptcies, austerity measures

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• Ermächtigungsgesetz: A law decision also and enforced by parlements, which de

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▪ 1924-1929, Global economy was booming in US and Western

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▪ Effect: lower profit margins in US ► lay-offs, less credit and more

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▪ Rosavelt believed that governments should take control of the

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▪ Works Progress Administration (WPA 1935): public works

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o One party state: labor programs, improving infrastructure and amenities

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