Chapter 18 - Catholic Textbook Project

Transcription

18 The Rise of
Totalitarian
Regimes
A
t about midnight of July 16–17, 1918, Nikolai Romanov, the deposed tsar
of Russia, and Aleksandra Feodorovna, his wife, were awakened and
told to dress quickly. There was unrest in the town, they were told; it
was dangerous to remain in the top floors of the house. They had to be
moved below floors.
In the spring of 1918, the Bolshevik government had moved Tsar Nikolai and his
family to the town Yekaterinburg, east of the Ural Mountains, in Siberia. A house,
owned by a successful local merchant named Ipatiev had been fitted out for them.
But Yekaterinburg did not turn out to be a safe place to store a tsar. In mid July,
an army of anti-Bolshevik counterrevolutionaries were approaching the town; the
sound of their gunfire could be heard from the Ipatiev house. Orders had come
from Moscow to Yakov Yurovsky, the commander of the soldiers guarding the
royal family, to remove them immediately.
“We must shoot them all tonight,” Yurovsky told a soldier.
Because the Tsarevich Alexei could not walk, his father carried him down the
stairs to the first floor and then into a room in the basement, where other members
of the family had gathered—the tsarina and her four daughters were there, as well
as a doctor and several servants. Chairs had been set in the room, and Nikolai
placed Alexei on one of them. The door that had been closed now opened, and
men armed with revolvers entered the room. Yurovsky told Nikolai that because
his relatives were trying to rescue him, the Ural Soviet of Workers’ Deputies had
condemned him and his family to death.
“What?” Nikolai said, and he turned to Alexei.
“At that moment,” Yurovsky later wrote, “I shot him and killed him outright.”
Disorganized firing broke out. Bullets ricocheted off the brick walls. The tsar’s
daughters, still alive after the shooting (precious stones, secretly sewn into their
clothes, had protected them), were finally dispatched at close range. “Alexei
remained sitting, petrified,” wrote Yurovsky. “I killed him.”
Whites and Reds
Many years later, Lev Trotsky wrote that Lenin, not he, had made the decision to
execute the tsar and his family. Yet, Trotsky said, the execution “was not only expedient but necessary.” This act of “justice,” said Trotsky, “showed the world that we
would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing.”
expedient: suitable to achieve a
certain goal
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LIGHT TO THE NATIONS II: The Making of the Modern World
White propaganda poster, depicting the Bolsheviks as a red
dragon
By July 1918, the Bolsheviks needed to fight. Though they
had hoped for peace to conduct their socialist experiment,
Lenin and his Bolsheviks had too many enemies. In Russia, not
only Mensheviks, Liberal democrats, and monarchists opposed
them, but so did the Socialist Revolutionaries. Lenin had made
enemies of the peasants by seizing their crops. He had
made other enemies by giving control of all industry and trade
to the government and punishing those who engaged in private
buying and selling.
The Allies, too, threatened the new government. British
troops had landed at the port cities of Arkhangelsk and
Murmansk in the north, and in November 1918, the French
took the Black Sea port of Odessa, while the Japanese captured Vladivostok on the Pacific coast. After the surrender
of Germany, the Allies remained in Russia, hoping to aid the
enemies of the Bolshevik government—counterrevolutionary
armies known as the Whites.
The civil war that rocked Russia looked as if it would end
in the defeat of the Bolsheviks. By July 31, 1918, nearly all of
Siberia was under White control. By the end of 1918, thousands
more British, American, French, and Japanese troops had been
stationed in Russia. White armies were being trained to march
on Moscow from the north, west, south, and east.
Against the White threat, Trotsky organized the “Red Army,”
which soon grew to 100,000 men. Trotsky succeeded in part
because, though most Russians were not Bolsheviks, they thought the Whites were
fighting for the landlords and the capitalists. Peasants did not want to lose the lands
they had won in the revolution, and factory workers feared that they would be
forced to return to “wage slavery.” Another problem with the Whites was that they
were supported by foreign powers that Russians saw as invaders—and the White
armies were terrorizing the regions they marched through.
The year 1919 was one of victories for the Red Army. In September the Red Army
stopped a White offensive from Ukraine, another from Estonia, and then began a
counteroffensive that forced the Whites to retreat. The Allies, who had taken very
little part in the fighting, began withdrawing from Odessa in March and April, and
from Arkhangelsk and Murmansk in the fall. By 1920, the Reds had destroyed the
White armies or driven them from Russia.
The Red Terror
It was late August 1918. The Whites were still triumphing in their war with
the Reds. The Russian people were suffering from poverty and hunger. Russian
money had become worthless. The peasants were rebellious. All the radical political parties had turned against the Bolsheviks. It appeared their days of power
soon would end.
The 28-year-old Socialist Revolutionary, Fanya Kaplan, was one of those radicals
who believed Lenin had betrayed the socialist revolution. On August 30, she was
in Moscow, standing on the street outside a factory where Lenin was addressing
workers. As Lenin left the building and was preparing to climb into his car, Kaplan
called out to him. He turned toward her. She fired three shots at him, hitting him
in the jaw and the left shoulder. Lenin was rushed to his apartment in the Kremlin
(the tsar’s former palace). Despite his severe injuries, Lenin survived. A firing squad
executed Kaplan a few days later.
Chapter 18 The Rise of Totalitarian Regimes
The attempt to assassinate Lenin and the murder, the same day in Petrograd, of
Moisei Solomonovich Uritsky, a prominent Bolshevik, convinced the Bolsheviks
that they had to take stern measures to destroy their adversaries. The same day
Lenin was shot, the Bolsheviks rounded up 500 people who were known to be supporters of the old tsarist government and executed them. Similar killings were carried out in Petrograd in revenge for Uritsky’s murder. So began what the Bolsheviks
themselves called the Red Terror.
To carry out the Red Terror, Lenin and his Bolshevik comrades used a police force
Lenin had created in December 1917—called the Extraordinary Commission for the
Battle against Counter-Revolutionary Sabotage and Speculation, or Cheka, for short.
The Cheka’s task was to “stand guard” over the revolution and terrorize anyone who
would dare oppose it. Four days after the shooting of Lenin, the Moscow government declared that “for every drop of proletariat blood there will be shed a stream of
the blood of those who oppose the Soviets and the proletarian leaders.”
The Bolsheviks saw the Red Terror as an instrument to aid the proletariat against
every other class, especially the middle class. As Robespierre had used terror to
destroy the enemies of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie, so the Bolsheviks were
using the Red Terror to destroy the foes of the proletariat. “We are not making war
on individuals,” said Martin Ivanovich Latsis, one of the creators of the Terror. “We
are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class.”
Everyone who opposed the Bolsheviks (including other socialists, workers,
and peasants) were called bourgeois and counterrevolutionary; and, if captured,
they were shot. The Cheka and mass murder were used against striking workers
throughout Russia, who in the spring of 1919 had risen against the Bolsheviks. In
Astrakhan, a city on the Volga River, the Bolsheviks carried out mass executions of
striking workers—from 2,000 to 4,000 were shot or drowned in the Volga. A slaughter of the bourgeoisie of the city followed, in which 600 to 1,000 died. By 1921, the
Red Terror had killed about 140,000 people throughout Russia.
The Cheka had the absolute power to arrest, judge, condemn, and execute anyone
it suspected to be a bourgeois counterrevolutionary. The Cheka’s power reflected
the power of the Bolshevik government. The government claimed it had the right
to do whatever it thought was necessary to “save the revolution” and liberate the
proletariat. No person or group had any rights or freedoms unless they had received
them from the government—and the government claimed it had the absolute right
to abolish any and all rights and freedoms. It had the absolute power of life or death
over every person in Russia.
We call governments like that of the Bolsheviks totalitarian, for such governments claim absolute power and authority over the total life of society and individuals. The Bolsheviks were not the first to claim totalitarian powers; as we have
seen, Robespierre and his Jacobins had claimed just such powers during the French
Revolution. Some Enlightenment thinkers, like Rousseau, had taught that the government held absolute authority over citizens, who had surrendered their natural
rights to the state. Absolute monarchs, like Friedrich the Great of Prussia, Emperor
Josef of Austria, Louis XIV of France, and Napoleon Bonaparte, had demanded
that every organization, even the Church, be subject to their control. Even those
“Liberals” who claimed they stood for individual freedom had fought so that no
authority (Church, guild, local government, or even the family) stood between the
individual citizen and his government. The Bolsheviks were taking the idea of
the absolute state one step further.
The 20th century was to become the century of totalitarianism. Not just in
Europe, but in Asia and the Americas, nations would adopt totalitarian regimes.
And the result would be oppression, murder, and more and more war. We shall
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totalitarian: referring to a
government that claims absolute power and authority over
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discuss some of these totalitarian regimes, but first we must turn to the events that
made the rise of totalitarian governments possible in Europe: the peace negotiations
that followed the war that was supposed to make the world “safe for democracy.”
The Peace of Paris
German Reich: a name referring to both the imperial
German government under
the Hohenzollerns and the
German republic after the war
The Big Four at Versailles.
Left to right, David Lloyd George,
Vittorio Orlando, Georges
Clemenceau, and Woodrow
Wilson
On June 28, 1919, almost exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke
Franz Ferdinand, representatives of the Allied governments gathered in the Hall of
Mirrors at Versailles for the signing of the peace treaty that would end the “Great
War.” At three o’clock in the afternoon, the delegates of Germany were admitted.
After they signed the treaty, it was signed by President Wilson of the United States
and then by representatives of each of the Allied powers. After only 40 minutes, the
ceremony was over. As the Allied delegates filed from the hall, cheering throngs
greeted them and the leaping fountains of Versailles sent out sprays of water, glistening in the sunlight.
The German Reich’s new republican government was appalled when it first saw
the treaty on May 7, 1919. Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann protested that Germany
had surrendered with the understanding that the treaty would be based on Wilson’s
Fourteen Points, but it was far harsher. Scheidemann would not sign the treaty,
and he resigned. Knowing the Allies would renew the war if Germany rejected the
treaty, the new chancellor, Gustav Bauer, and Hermann Müller, his foreign minister,
agreed to sign the treaty.
Known as the Treaty of Versailles, the peace agreement was drawn up by the
“Big Four”—President Wilson; Great Britain’s prime minister, David Lloyd George;
French premier Georges Clemenceau; and Italy’s prime minister, Vittorio Orlando.
Clemenceau, known as the le Tigre (“The Tiger”), was hungry for vengeance. He
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wanted to break German power once and for all and demanded harsh punishments.
Lloyd George also wanted vengeance—in fact, Great Britain had not lifted its crippling blockade against Germany after the armistice. But Lloyd George at times
worked to soften Clemenceau’s demands. It was President Wilson who kept the
Treaty of Versailles from being even harsher than it was. Full of lofty ideals, Wilson
also convinced the Allies to approve an international authority, called the League of
Nations, with the power to decide disputes between nations so that they would not
resort to war. On February 15, the peace conference agreed to include the “Covenant
of the League of Nations” (an agreement to form the league) as a part of the treaty.
Wilson was successful in keeping The Tiger, Clemenceau, from forcing Germany
to pay for the entire cost of the war—which, according to one estimate, was
$120 billion. Still, Germany’s payment was to be very high. She had to admit that
the Central Powers were entirely responsible for the war and accept responsibility for the losses and damage to the Allies. Germany would have to pay the Allies
$5 billion by May 1921, and both Clemenceau and Lloyd George insisted that, after
that date, the Allies could demand billions more from Germany.
Both Wilson and Lloyd George protested against Clemenceau’s attempts to
redraw Germany’s borders. Instead, the Treaty of Versailles said that for 15 years,
Europe following the Treaty
of Versailles
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Allied armies would occupy the lands between Germany’s western border and the
Rhine River to make sure that Germany fulfilled her obligations under the treaty.
Germany, too, could not keep troops and maintain fortresses anywhere within a
strip running 10 miles east of the Rhine. This, and the fact that Germany could not
have an army of over 100,000 men, meant that she could not defend herself if the
Allies decided to invade German territory.
Under the treaty, Germany had to give up large swaths of territory. She lost most
of West Prussia; it was given to the nation of Poland, which the Allies reestablished
after the war. Poland received the right to use the port of Danzig, which was made an
independent city under the League of Nations. In the west, Germany lost economic
control of the Saar Basin, a highly populated region with much industry and coal.
Because Germany had destroyed France’s coal mines in 1918, France received the
right to all the profits from the Saar’s industry and coal production for 15 years.
Though the Treaty of Versailles could have been harsher than it was, it was still a
great blow to Germany. Because of the treaty, the Reich lost 25,000 square miles of
territory and 6 million of its population. The Allies forced Germany to abandon all
her overseas colonies and deprived her of much of her wealth in iron ore, coal, and
other metals used in industry. The empire founded by Bismarck in 1870 was thus
reduced to only a faint shadow of its former greatness.
The Fate of the Habsburg Empire
Emperor Karl’s withdrawal from power on November 11, 1918, marked the end of
one of Europe’s oldest institutions—the Habsburg monarchy. The heir of the great
family that had ruled the Holy Roman Empire now lived in exile in Switzerland. Karl
had hoped to remain in Austria, but the new republican government in Vienna had
given him an ultimatum—either he abdicate or risk imprisonment. Convinced that
he would be betraying his God-given duty by abdicating, Karl chose exile. On the
rainy night of March 23, 1919, Karl and his family boarded a train for Switzerland.
Instead of a united empire, Central Europe now had three newly independent states—Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Both Austria and Hungary
themselves were greatly reduced in size. Austria had to abandon Trentino, part of
the Tyrol, as well as her territory on the Adriatic to Italy; she also had to give
over Bosnia and Herzegovina to the kingdom of Yugoslavia, as Serbia now was
called. Bohemia and Slovakia had been joined in the independent republic of
Czechoslovakia, while Galicia became part of the newly reconstructed Poland.
Hungary had to abandon Croatia and Slavonia to Yugoslavia, while Transylvania
and other lands formerly part of Hungary went to Romania.
Austria thus went from a land of 30 million people to a small, landlocked country
of only 6.5 million. Since most of these people spoke German, the Austrians hoped
that they could be united to Germany—after all, Wilson and the Allies had said that
people of a common race should be ruled by one government. But though Wilson
thought it made sense that Austria be joined to Germany, he saw one problem with
the plan—with Austria, the majority of Germany’s population would be Catholic.
Austria should never be united to Germany, said Wilson, for it “would mean the
establishment of a great Roman Catholic nation which would be under the control
of the Papacy.”
Hungary had fallen into anarchy even before Emperor Karl withdrew from
power. The attempt by Liberals to form a new democratic government had failed.
The socialists were gaining popular support and power.
In December 1918, a Hungarian Jew named Béla Kun arrived in Hungary’s
capital, Budapest. Kun had been living in Russia since 1914 and had become a
Bolshevik. Vladimir Lenin himself had trained Kun in revolutionary tactics and,
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when Hungary’s government collapsed in November, Lenin sent Kun with a large
amount of money to organize a revolution in his homeland. In Budapest, Kun published a Bolshevik newspaper in which he criticized the Liberal government. Even
after being imprisoned, he continued to spread Bolshevik propaganda and organize
a Hungarian Communist party. By February 1919, the party numbered 30,000 to
40,000 members.
Upon his release from prison, Kun organized a coalition government with
the socialists and on March 21, 1919, proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
Though Kun and his Bolshevik Communists were supposed to be sharing power
Death Comes for the Emperor
them. At Tihany, Karl received a visit from Hungary’s
primate archbishop, Cardinal Czernoch. Czernoch later
t was a cold day in late October 1921 when a small airwrote that at Tihany he had expected to find “a broken,
plane from Switzerland landed in western Hungary. The
fearful, suffering king,” but instead, he discovered that
airplane carried Karl, the emperor of Austria and king of
Karl needed no comfort. “I have done my duty, as I came
Hungary, and his wife, the Empress Zita. Loyal troops
here to do,” he told the cardinal. “As crowned king, I not
of the Hungarian army greeted the royal couple and
only have a right, I also have a duty. I must uphold the
swore allegiance to them. After hearing an open-air Mass,
right and the dignity of the crown.” The king said “Our
King Karl, Queen Zita, their generals and troops boarded
Lord and Savior had led me” to try to regain
a train that would take them to Budapest, where
the throne.
Karl hoped to take up once again the govOn October 30, Allied authorities
ernment of Hungary.
removed Karl and Zita from Tihany to
Karl knew this would be no easy
a port on the Danube River, where
task. This was his second journey to
they were placed on a British ship.
Hungary since the end of the war.
They did not know their destinaIn March 1921, he, with his loyal
tion, but they would soon learn
followers, had entered Budapest,
that it was Madeira, a Portuguese
where he met with Hungary’s
island in the Atlantic, 535 miles
regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy.
off the coast of Portugal. This
But though he claimed to rule in
would be the place of exile for the
the name of King Karl, Horthy was
royal couple and their children. But
unwilling to give over the governKarl’s sojourn on Madeira was short.
ment to him. Karl, who had fallen
In March, he caught a cold that soon
sick, was forced to leave Hungary—but
turned to pneumonia. On April 1, 1922,
he promised he would return.
Karl, the last reigning Habsburg emperor, died,
Thousands of Hungarians joyfully greeted
Karl I in Chernivtzi,
while gazing on a crucifix Zita held for him
the return of the king in October 1921. But
Ukraine, July 6, 1917
in her hands. The emperor’s last words
though he had an army faithful to him, Karl faced
were, “Thy will be done. Yes, yes. As you
tremendous difficulties. Since Horthy controlled
will it. Jesus!”
the greater part of the army, he was very powerful. The
Karl’s title of emperor passed to his eldest son,
regent also had the support of the British government,
Otto—who, as a man, later dedicated himself to work for
which did not want to see a Habsburg return to power
the good of the peoples over whom his family once had
anywhere in Europe. Finally, many of Karl’s military
ruled. Yet, though Karl and Zita’s family lost the imperial
leaders—men who had sworn allegiance to him—proved
title, a greater honor awaited them. On October 3, 2004,
unfaithful. At last Horthy’s army overran the troops faithPope John Paul II declared Karl “blessed”—the last step
ful to Karl; and he, to avoid further bloodshed, withdrew
before being proclaimed a saint of the Catholic Church.
from Budapest.
The Church remembers Blessed Karl on October 21,
Karl and Zita were detained at Tihany Abbey in westthe day he and Zita were married in 1911.
ern Hungary until the Allies decided what to do with
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communal: shared, or used in
common by those who belong
to a group or community
Miklós Horthy
with the socialists, it was not long before all moderate socialists were removed from
the government and Kun became dictator of Hungary.
Kun kept in continual contact with Lenin and began imitating the Russian
Bolsheviks by seizing factories and large landholdings. The Magyar peasants had
hoped Kun would hand lands over to them, but he did not. Instead, he planned to
force the peasants to work without payment on communal farms, where he required
them to provide food for the cities. When opposition arose against him, Kun began
his own Red Terror. Revolutionary tribunals were established, which condemned
590 to death. Secret police and red militias terrorized people in the countryside.
But Kun was unable, as he had promised, to recover the lands the
Allies had taken from Hungary. By late July, the Romanians were
marching on Budapest, and Kun fled to Vienna on August 1. Three days
later, the French-supported Romanian army entered Budapest.
The Allies hoped to establish a democratic republic in Hungary, but
counterrevolutionary forces under Admiral Miklós Horthy were moving against Budapest. Parts of this army carried on a brutal “White
Terror” against socialists, Communists, workers’ leaders, and Jews—
because some Jews, like Béla Kun, had been active in Communist
groups. After the Romanians withdrew from Budapest on November 14
(after looting the city), Horthy and his forces entered the capital and
restored the kingdom of Hungary. On March 1, 1920, Horthy was
elected regent—he ruled the kingdom in the name of Emperor Karl,
known in Hungary as King Károly IV. Horthy, however, did not ask
Karl to return to Hungary (in part because the Allies would not allow
it). Under Horthy’s regency, anticommunist groups carried on a White
Terror, unopposed by the government.
Not until June 1920 did Hungary sign her peace treaty with the
Allies. By the treaty, the territory of Hungary was reduced from 125,000
to 35,000 square miles and went from a population of 20 million to
8 million. The treaty was a bitter blow to the proud Magyar nation.
The New Nations of Central Europe
In his Fourteen Points, President Woodrow Wilson had called for the formation
of new states made up of people sharing the same nationality. In Wilson’s mind,
governments like Austria-Hungary’s Dual Monarchy were unjust because they
did not allow their various nationalities to form their own national governments.
Each European national group, thought Wilson, should form its own independent
government.
Thus, part of the task of the Allied peace conference in Paris in 1919 was to
draw boundaries for new nation-states in Central and Eastern Europe. This task,
however, proved much harder than it might have seemed at first. Especially in
Central Europe, people of different races lived jumbled up together, like the squares
on a patchwork quilt. One region could have Germans and Czechs, or Italians
and Croats, or Magyars, Romanians, and Germans—all living close to each other.
Thus, any line drawn would inevitably cut off some people from others of the same
nationality. An example of this was Hungary. When Hungary’s new national lines
were drawn, about three million Magyars found themselves living in Romania, not
Hungary. And Transylvania (now part of Romania) contained a sizable population
of Germans.
The new Republic of Czechoslovakia was formed on the idea that Czechs (in
Bohemia) and Slovaks were the same race and spoke basically the same language.
Yet, within the borders of Czechoslovakia lived a large minority of “Sudeten”
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Germans and Slavic Ruthenians. And there were significant differences between
the Slovaks, who were strongly Catholic and a farming people, and the Czechs,
who were more urban and prosperous and among whom were many Protestants.
Though Czechoslovakia was able to form a strong democratic government under its
first president, the Czech Tomáš Masaryk, and to enjoy some prosperity, tensions
smoldered between the racial groups. Many Germans wanted to join their “brothers” in the German Reich, while Slovaks and Ruthenians objected that the Czechs
The principal nationalities of
dominated the government and economic life of the country.
Yugoslavia
The uniting of Croatians, Slovenians,
and Bosnians with Serbs in the KingAU S T R I A
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H U N G A RY
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S LOV E N I A
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between them. There were religious differences. The Serbs were Orthodox in
SERBIA
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H E R Z E G OV I NA
were Catholic; and in Bosnia lived over
one million Muslims. The Serbs were
Adriatic
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MONTENEGRO
Principal Nationalities of Yugoslavia in 2008
than the Croats and Slovenes. There were
KOSOVO
Serbians
Macédonians
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Croatians
Monténegrans
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Bosniaks
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Slovenians
Bulgarians
Albanians
Karl had proposed for Austria-Hungary),
GREECE
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Chamber of Deputies in Belgrade to govern all of Yugoslavia. Such disputes led to
so much violence that in 1928 King Aleksandar dissolved the Chamber and ruled
Yugoslavia as an absolute monarchy.
Nationalism was thus as much of a problem for the new Central European
nations as it had been for Austria-Hungary. The difference was that, under the
empire, many if not most of the common people of every national group had been
devoted to their traditional Habsburg monarch, their emperor and king. As a Czech,
Masaryk could not win the love and devotion of Slovaks, Germans, and Ruthenians;
and Croats and Slovenes looked on the Serbian King Aleksandar as a foreign monarch. This lack of unity in the new countries of Central Europe made them weak
and unstable.
The New Nations of Northeastern Europe
homogenous: the same
throughout; not diverse
Following the Great War, new, independent nations were formed in northeastern
Europe as well. The Allies did not hand back to Russia the lands she had lost by the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; instead, the regions of Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,
and Poland were erected into independent states.
Since she had long had her own government under the Russian tsar, Finland
was able to create a prosperous democracy after the war. Finland also benefited
from her racially homogenous population; unlike Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia,
Finland did not suffer from fights between national groups. The same was mostly
true for Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, each of which established its own democratic republic.
The restored nation of Poland was somewhat different. Though the vast majority
of her 30 million people were Polish, Poland’s boundaries contained large minorities of Germans and other nationalities. The new Polish government, too, proved to
be aggressive. Hoping to regain at least part of the great empire the Poles had once
ruled, Poland took advantage of her neighbors’ weaknesses. In 1919, Poland carried
on a war with western Ukraine; in 1920, Poland seized the Vilnius region from
Lithuania. Poland fought a war with Bolshevik Russia over disputed territories; that
conflict ended in March 1921.
The Republic of Poland suffered from struggles between various political parties
until, in 1926, Marshal Josef Pilsudski established a kind of military dictatorship
over the country. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia did not have the same problems;
but they were small, weak nations that could easily be gobbled up by more powerful
neighbors.
Such a neighbor, Bolshevik Russia, was forming to the east of them. It was a
nation founded on a ruthless ideal that favored violent revolution. Though still weak
in the early 1920s, Bolshevik Russia was soon to become a powerful force in Eastern
Europe—and, eventually, one of the most powerful nations in Europe and, indeed,
the entire world.
The Development of Red Russia
In Russia, the civil war was over. Against all odds, the Bolsheviks had defeated
their enemies and defended their government from foreign invaders. But could
the government survive the new challenges it faced? War, civil strife, brutality, and
sheer stupidity had impoverished Russia and created unimaginable suffering. By
1921, there was not enough food to feed the Russian people; millions were starving,
and horrible stories were told of murder and even cannibalism. The famine that hit
Russia was so terrible that, by 1922, some five million people had died of starvation.
The Bolshevik government was largely to blame for this. Lenin’s plan
to seize the produce of peasant farms to feed workers in the cities had
been a failure, for the peasants simply decided not to grow anything
the government would not pay them for. This meant, of course,
that far less food was on the market. The government had
turned factories over to workers, but it did not train them to
manage the factories. Industrial production thus declined
dramatically.
By the spring of 1921, Lenin saw that the peasants were
just not ready for the revolution, and he realized he had to
give in to some of their demands. He thus came up with
what he called his New Economic Policy (NEP), by which
he would preserve some Bolshevik ideals by abandoning
others. For instance, instead of having to give all surplus
produce to the government, peasants had simply to pay
a tax. The NEP allowed private ownership of small factories, though the government continued to control the
large- and middle-sized factories (which produced most of
Russia’s industrial wealth). Such changes restored Russia’s
economic life to what it had been before the Great War.
Though Russia had lost Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia,
and Finland, she had been able to regain all the other territories that had been ruled by the tsars. By 1922 Ukraine, and all of
Siberian Russia from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific, was under
the rule of the Bolshevik government in Moscow. By threats and Red
Army invasions, the Bolsheviks were able to force the transcaucasus lands
of Azerbaijan and Georgia, as well as a portion of Armenia, to join Russia. By the
end of 1921, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were ready to take the next step to strengthen
their power by establishing a permanent constitution for their “dictatorship of the
proletariat.”
The USSR and the Party
531
Lenin in 1920
transcaucasus: referring to the
region on the other side of the
Caucasus Mountains in Asia
In December 1922, the tenth All-Russian Congress of Soviets gathered in Moscow
and formed a union of four Soviet Socialist Republics (the Russian Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic).
A new constitution joined these republics in a federal union called the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
On paper, at least, the new union was both democratic and federal. It was democratic insofar as all working men and women, ages 18 and older, were given the
suffrage. It was federal because each republic had its own independent government
and sent representatives to the union’s central government in Moscow.
But the reality was far different from what appeared on paper. Several classes
(such as landowners, employers, and clergy) were forbidden to vote. And those
who voted could only vote directly for members of the village or city soviets. Local
soviets appointed members of higher district governments, which appointed the
members of the governments in the republics, and so on. Thus, many levels of government existed between the voters and the supreme governments in each republic
and the federal union. Voting, too, was by show of hand—which meant voters could
easily be intimidated to vote for the “right” candidates.
Though the constitution gave some authority to republic governments, in
reality, the central government held almost all political power in the USSR. And
PROOF
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532
this government was under the complete control of the
Bolshevik party, which in 1919 had begun to be called
The Soviet Government
the Communist Party. Since the Communist Party was the
Central Government of the USSR
only legal party in the USSR, its members controlled all higher
political offices both in the republics and the union. Directing
United Council of Commissars
the Communist Party was a Central Committee, called the
(executive authority)
Politburo (short for Political Bureau of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). The Politburo
Union Central Executive Committee
was controlled by its chairman, Vladimir Lenin, who held the
(bicameral, legislative authority)
power of a dictator over both the party and the government.
Lenin insisted on strict discipline in the Communist Party.
Union Congress of Soviets
To be a party member, one had to go through a probation period
Government of a Soviet Socialist Republic
in which he learned to abandon his mind, will, and body to the
control of the party leadership. Lenin demanded such discipline
Government of a Soviet Republic
because party members were to lead all workers (by force, if necCentral Government
essary) into the Communist paradise. This paradise would have
no private property and no government, for all would be equal;
none would be poor or oppressed, for all together would hold
Provincial Congress
all property and wealth. But, in the meantime, since society had
not yet been “revolutionized,” a dictatorship was needed—Karl
District Congress
Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Lenin and the Communist Party used every means at their
Village Soviet
City Soviet
disposal to disseminate Communist ideas and to crush all
opposition to the party. The party established Communist
youth organizations for children, ages 8 to 16, and for young
Voters in the Villages
Voters in the Cities
adults, ages 16 to 23. By means of the Cheka (which in 1922
became known as the State Political Directorate, or Ogpu), the
Communists terrorized anyone who opposed their regime.
Among the Communists’ chief opponents were religious groups, especially the
Russian Orthodox and Catholic Churches. Like Marx, the Communists called relidisseminate: to spread abroad,
as if one were sowing seed
gion the “opiate of the people.” By promising a future life after death, religion, the
opiate: something (such as
Communists said, made people willing to bear injustices in this life.
the drug, opium) that causes
Communist persecution of the Church began as soon as the Bolsheviks seized
a person to feel sleepy, dull, or
power in 1917. Lenin’s government immediately passed laws separating church and
inactive
state, denying the Church any legal rights, and seizing Church bank accounts. The
Bolsheviks declared that church marriages were not legal marriages and forbade
any organized religious instruction of anyone under 18 years of age. The Red Terror
had killed large numbers of Orthodox priests in the most brutal fashion. (There
were reports of priests crucified on the doors of their churches.) At least 28 Russian
Orthodox bishops were murdered between 1918 and 1920.
Lenin stopped at nothing to destroy the Church. While the famine was raging in
Russia, the government asked the Church to give over all its valuables to raise money
to feed the poor, and on February 19, 1922, Moscow’s Patriarch Tikhon Bellavin
asked all his parishes to donate their precious articles. They were to keep only the
chalices, vestments, and other items used in divine worship. The Bolsheviks, however, called this generous act heartless; the clergy, they said, were refusing to give
up their wealth even to feed the starving! The government then ordered the Church
to give over all its valuables. Believers resisted. Fights broke out between Christians
and Bolsheviks. The government retaliated by closing rural churches and arresting
priests and bishops. This was just what Lenin had wanted to happen. “Now our victory over the reactionary clergy is guaranteed,” he told his fellow Communists.
533
Though he had greatly weakened the Orthodox Church, Lenin could not destroy
it. Vast numbers of Russians remained faithful to their religion, and the Orthodox
Church actually grew in numbers in the 1920s. The Communists, however, had not
given over their fight against religion. That fight would continue and grow more violent under the man who was soon to seize control of the party and the government
of the USSR—the ruthless “man of steel,” Josif Stalin.
“Man of Steel”
Vladimir Lenin’s dream was not simply to make Russia a Communist state. He
wanted to use the Soviet Union as the springboard for Communist revolutions in
every European country and, indeed, throughout the world. Communism is universalist; it rejects nationalism and the kind of imperialism whereby one nation or
race dominates another. Communists want neither class, religion, nor race to separate men from each other. They want only one, worldwide class—the proletariat or
working class. Indeed, Lenin and his followers thought that until all nations were
Communist, there would be no workers’ paradise on earth.
It was for this reason that in 1919 the Bolshevik Communists broke from more
moderate socialists in the Second International and formed the Third International
(Komintern). From Komintern’s headquarters in Moscow, the Russian Communist
Party directed the activities of Communist parties in Germany, France, Italy,
and other countries, including the United States of America. Under orders from
Komintern, Communists worked to inspire revolution throughout the world.
Lenin’s leadership of the party, however, was drawing to an end. In
May 1922, he suffered the first of three strokes that soon left him
unable to be as active in the Politburo and government as he had
been. In the summer he began to lose the power of speech, and by
December his right arm and leg were paralyzed. On January 21,
1924, Lenin died at Gorky, near Moscow. He was 53 years old.
After Lenin’s death, conflicts broke out in the party over
who should lead the party. Two factions vied for power.
Trotsky, who had served as war commissar and had been
Lenin’s right-hand man, led those Communists who wanted
to finish the work of the revolution. Peasants, they said,
had to abandon their private farms and work on communal farms, and the last remnants of private property
had to be abolished in the Soviet Union. Convinced that
the Russian revolution would not succeed as long the rest
of the world was not Communist, Trotsky thought the
Soviet Union should actively support revolution in every part
of the world.
The second faction formed around Josif Stalin, the powerful
secretary of the Politburo. While Trotsky was a man of ideas,
Stalin was a man of action. He opposed communal farms, saying the party still had to give into the demands of the peasants,
as Lenin’s NEP had done. Stalin said Communism could succeed in
Russia, even if the rest of the world remained capitalist. He thus was less
eager to aid revolutions throughout the rest of the world.
Unlike many of the Bolsheviks, Stalin was not Russian. He had been born in
1879 in Gori, a town in Georgia, and was baptized Ioseb Besarionis dze Jugashvili.
His parents had destined him for the Orthodox priesthood, but he was thrown out
of the seminary due to his Marxist ideas. After becoming an active socialist, he was
universalist: that which is
universal in scope and interest;
something that has interest in
all human beings, not just particular nations. The Catholic
Church is universalist.
Josif Stalin in 1917
PROOF
1 2 3 4 5 6
534
Stalin and Lenin in 1919
collectivize: to organize property (for instance, land, factories, tools, farms) so that they
are not owned privately but in
common or by the government
liquidation: the act of killing
or getting rid of (from
liquidate)
arrested by the tsar’s government in 1902 and exiled
to Siberia. In 1903, he joined the Bolshevik party;
the following year, he escaped from Siberia. A
man of great physical strength, Jugashvili was also
clever; he was arrested six times between 1904 and
1914, and he escaped five times—feats for which his
comrades gave him the nickname, Stalin (“Steel”).
After being arrested again in 1913, he was exiled to
Siberia, within the Arctic Circle, where he worked
at hard labor and underwent severe suffering and
torture.
When freed from exile in 1917, Stalin returned to
Petrograd, where he organized soviets and helped
rebuild the Bolshevik party. But Lenin did not trust
Stalin. Lenin, who warned his comrades that Stalin
was “too cruel” and “brutal,” was alarmed when in
1922 the party elected Stalin its general secretary—
a position that gave him a great deal of power in the
party. In a letter he wrote to the party’s Congress, Lenin suggested “that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin” from the post of general secretary.
Stalin, however, remained general secretary, a position he used to overcome
Trotsky’s opposition. In early 1925, under Stalin’s influence, the Communist Party
forced Trotsky to resign as commissar for war and removed Trotsky’s followers from
the army and navy. Trotsky fought back, and with other powerful Communists
tried to oust Stalin from the party’s leadership. The “Man of Steel,” however, had
become too powerful. In 1928, he expelled Trotsky and about 80 other Communists
from Russia. In February 1929, Trotsky fled to Turkey; and in April of that year, the
Communist Party confirmed Stalin as their undisputed leader—the dictator of
the Soviet Union.
Stalin soon proved he was as cruel and brutal as Lenin had said he was. Though
he had earlier opposed communal farms, in 1929 he ordered all farms to be
collectivized. The peasants, especially the wealthy kulaks, resisted orders to hand
over their farming tools and livestock to the government. During the winter of 1930,
they slaughtered millions of cattle, horses, pigs, and other livestock so the government could not take them. Stalin responded by ordering the liquidation of the
kulaks as a class. In the persecution that followed, tens of thousands of kulaks were
executed, whole families were deported to Siberia, and their property was seized
and incorporated into communal farms.
Stalin intensified the persecution of the Orthodox Church. The government
already had forbidden any public expression of religion, such as processions; but in
1929, churches were forbidden to run any charitable organizations, such as relief for
the poor, medical institutions, and orphanages. The same year, the state confiscated
all church bells and instituted a new workweek that would allow only one Sunday a
month free to attend religious services. Attempts to spread religious ideas were also
banned. Believers now could express their beliefs and worship God only within the
walls of church buildings.
Such antireligious laws were only the beginning. Persecution of Christians grew
more intense and brutal during the years of Stalin’s rule. Countless new martyrs
were to join the ranks of those who, throughout the ages, had proven their love and
devotion to Christ by professing him before man—even at the cost of exile, torture,
and death.
535
Fascism in Italy
Even as a child, Benito Mussolini had been unruly and aggressive. At home, he was
disobedient to his parents and ill tempered. The teachers at the village school at
Forli, in Romagna, where he grew up, could not control Benito; and after he stabbed
a student with a penknife, he was sent to a school run by the Salesian order. There,
too, he proved to be a problem. He stabbed another student and attacked one of the
Salesians who was trying to discipline him. For these misdeeds, Benito was expelled
from the school.
Benito’s home life was not a happy one. His family was poor. His father, a blacksmith, was a socialist who spent much of his time arguing about politics in the tavern and wasted money on a woman who was not his wife. It is, perhaps, no wonder
that Benito Mussolini was an angry, violent boy.
Benito Mussolini became a socialist like his father. In 1902, when he was 19, he
left home. With only a medallion of Karl Marx in his pocket, he went to Switzerland,
where he worked at odd jobs. In Switzerland he read the works of various modern
philosophers, adopting ideas that pleased him and discarding the rest. He gradually
became well known as a talented journalist and a moving public speaker. Finally,
even tolerant Switzerland had heard enough of his calls for revolution, and in 1904
he was forced to return to his native Italy.
In Italy, Mussolini worked for a time as a schoolteacher, but it was not long
before he returned to journalism, trade union work, and revolutionary politics.
He was arrested and spent time in prison. By 1912, he had become so well known
that the Italian Socialist party made him editor of its official newspaper, Avanti!
(“Forward!”), in which he attacked the military, nationalism, and imperialism.
When the Great War broke out, Mussolini opposed Italy’s entry into the war.
Yet, it was not long before Mussolini changed his mind and began urging Italy
to declare war on Austria. “The defeat of France would be a deathblow to liberty in
Europe!” he wrote. Karl Marx had said the great proletarian revolution would follow
a devastating war, and so Italy must go to war, he declared in the pages of Avanti!
But Mussolini’s fellow socialists did not agree. He resigned as editor and was ousted
from the party.
Mussolini did not remain long without work. In a new newspaper, Il Popolo
d’Italia (“The People of Italy”), Mussolini called strongly for war. Moreover, he had
now become an ardent nationalist. In September 1915, he joined the Italian army;
in early 1917, he was injured on the Isonzo Front. He then returned to Milan, where
he again took up the editorship of Il Popolo d’Italia, a post he held until the end of
the war.
The Blackshirts
The end of the Great War proved a disappointment to Italian nationalists. Though
Italy had gained those parts of “unredeemed Italy” she had demanded in the
Treaty of London, the nationalists had wanted even more lands. The nationalists
had hoped the war would make Italy a great power in the eastern Mediterranean;
but, instead, the war’s end brought only hardship. The cost of food, rent, and other
necessities of life had risen greatly. Many soldiers returning from the war were
without jobs. King Vittorio Emanuele III’s prime minister and the Chamber of
Deputies seemed incapable of solving the country’s problems. Having lost trust
in the Liberal parties that had been running the country, large numbers of discharged soldiers and workers turned to the socialists, who thus won a great many
seats in the Chamber of Deputies in the election of November 1919.
PROOF
1 2 3 4 5 6
536
general strike: refusal by workers in all or many industries to
work in order to bring employers around to giving in to their
demands
Mussolini, center, with his blackshirted Fascist followers at the
time of the march on Rome, 1922
But the Italian socialists were not content with winning elections. Both Bolsheviks
(with encouragement and aid from Moscow) and anarchists began urging revolution. The Bolsheviks called for a general strike and urged workers to establish a
“dictatorship of the proletariat.” And, even before the August 1919 elections, the
countryside responded. Jobless, former soldiers seized land; tenant peasant farmers
refused to pay rent to landlords; and rural laborers demanded an eight-hour workday. Harvests were destroyed, cattle were slaughtered, and men were murdered. It
looked as if Italy might well become the world’s second Bolshevik republic.
In the midst of this crisis, Benito Mussolini called all those who were discontent in Italy to meet with him in Milan. In March 1919, a group of about
200 republicans, socialists, revolutionaries, and discontented soldiers came together
in Milan and, with Mussolini, formed the Fasci di Combattimento (“bands of fighters”). The ancient Roman fasces (a bundle of rods, tied together to a bronze axe
head) was their symbol and the inspiration for their name—the Fascists. Though
they had no clear ideals, the Fascists were extremely nationalistic; they were also
anti-socialist and violent. They were committed to use armed force, if necessary, to
achieve their goals.
Despite their devotion to action, Mussolini and the Fascists did nothing to
oppose the uprisings in Italy; instead, Mussolini ran for a seat in the Chamber of
Deputies. He lost the election. Even in August and September 1920, when about
500,000 Italian factory workers, roused by Bolsheviks and anarchists, went on
strike, Mussolini said nothing. It was only when the strikes collapsed in the fall that
the Fascists began their active campaign against the socialists.
Backed by rich businessmen and local landowners, squads of Fascists, wearing
black shirts and armed with clubs, guns, and castor oil began attacking socialists and
other radicals in the autumn of 1920. The “Blackshirts” burned down union
and Socialist Party headquarters. They broke workers’ strikes, killed hundreds of
radicals, and terrorized local populations. Later the same year, they began attacking
government offices and prevented radical officials from taking office. The violence
continued into 1921, with little or no opposition from the government. By late 1921,
Mussolini and his Fascists had gained control over most of Italy.
Mussolini’s great moment came in the summer
of 1922, when socialists and trade union members
called for another general strike. Mussolini, now
a member of the Chamber of Deputies, declared
that if the government did not stop the strikes, he
and his Blackshirts would. When the government
did not act, Fascists seized control of the government in many of Italy’s provinces, outside of the
large cities. On October 24, 1922, at a gathering of
about 40,000 Fascists in Naples, Mussolini called
on Italy’s prime minister to dissolve the Chamber
of Deputies and place five Fascists in his ministry.
“Either the government will be given to us, or
we will seize it by marching on Rome!” declared
Mussolini. And his Fascists responded with the
cry, Roma! Roma! Roma!
Three days later, Mussolini and thousands of
Blackshirts began their march on Rome. Though
the government urged King Vittorio Emanuele
to declare Rome under siege, he refused. Fearing
a civil war, the king had decided to give in to
537
Mussolini’s demands. He dissolved the ministry and invited Mussolini to form a
new one. By the end of October, Mussolini, in the name of the king, was prime
minister of Italy.
Il Duce
When he took power, Mussolini promised he would allow freedom for all political
parties. But it was not long before the Fascist party became the only legal party
in Italy.
Tired of strikes and unrest, many Italians (especially middle-class Italians) supported Mussolini. They thought he was the leader who could bring peace, prosperity, and glory to Italy. Following the election of 1924, in which the Fascists won
60 percent of the vote (by intimidating voters, it has been said), Mussolini’s power
as dictator was assured. Though he did not abolish the Chamber of Deputies, it
became just a tool in his hands. The king remained the chief authority in Italy, but
Mussolini controlled all political power. From 1925 to 1926, he abolished all local
governments, replacing them with governors entirely under his control.
Mussolini’s Italy was in many ways like Bolshevik Russia. All opposition political parties were eventually outlawed. Only those people who swore to uphold the
Fascist government could teach in schools or universities. Freedom of speech was
abolished, and a secret police (called the Voluntary Organization for the Repression
of Anti-Fascism) kept the public under close supervision. Mussolini was merciless
to his enemies, but there was actually little opposition to his government. Mussolini
skillfully used propaganda to win support for his policies and was helped by the fact
that, throughout the 1920s, Italy’s economy greatly improved. Even world leaders
hailed Mussolini as a great leader.
Just like the Communist Party in Russia, the Fascist Party was the real power in
Italy. The head of the party was, of course, Mussolini, whom his adoring followers
called Il Duce (“the Leader”). The party had its own armed force—the Blackshirts
(in 1923 renamed the Voluntary Militia for National Security). The party sponsored
three organizations for boys (ages 8 to 21) and one for girls (ages 12 and over) to
indoctrinate them in the ideas of Fascism. Mussolini wanted his party to have complete control of education in Italy. In 1928, his government abolished all non-Fascist
institutions that gave moral, spiritual, and physical training to youth. Il Duce’s goal
was to turn Italy into a nation of Fascists.
Thus, like Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy was a totalitarian state. Yet, there were differences between the two systems. Mussolini did not try to abolish private property,
nor did he confiscate factories. He did not want a one-class society, as did Lenin.
Mussolini said different classes were a natural part of human society.
But Mussolini rejected laissez-faire economic ideas. By the 1930s, he had organized the different industries into “corporations” made up of both employers and
employees. These corporations were to see to it that employers earned profits from
their businesses and employees received a just wage for their work. Beginning in the
19th century, Catholic thinkers had been suggesting such corporations as a way of
bringing justice to the economy. Yet, Mussolini’s corporations differed from those
envisioned by Catholic thinkers, who thought the corporations should be independent of the government. In Fascist Italy, the party and the government maintained
absolute control over the corporations. The president of each corporation was
Il Duce himself, and its directors were Fascists chosen by him.
Unlike Lenin, Mussolini did not begin his revolution with a clear set of ideas.
His ideas developed over time; but by 1931, there was a set of doctrines that all
Fascists were to embrace. Fascism, said Mussolini, was both anti-Liberal and antisocialist. It rejected the Liberal idea that the most important good was the right of
indoctrinate: to instruct,
especially in the fundamental
ideas of a philosophical system,
political party, religion, and
so on
PROOF
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538
Benito Mussolini, photograph
by G. G. Bain
individuals to follow their own desires in their social, religious, and economic
life. Mussolini did not think governments are founded to protect human liberty. Governments and everything in society existed solely to advance the
glory of the nation.
For Mussolini, nothing was greater or more important than the
nation, nor was there any institution (not even the family) the state
should not control. Mussolini thought that no one has rights unless
the state grants them. In Fascism, all individuals exist simply to
make the nation great. A person who does not dedicate himself
entirely to the glory of the nation is utterly useless, and, if necessary,
can be eliminated.
Thus, unlike Communism, which was internationalist, Fascism
was nationalist. Italians were to work only for the glory of Italy.
They were not to care for people of other nations, unless they were
useful to the Italian nation. Fascists did not want a worldwide revolution, like Communists did. Fascists were imperialistic, believing
wars of conquest were necessary to make a nation great. Mussolini’s
dream was to make Italy the center of a new Roman Empire.
Such ideas naturally brought Mussolini into conflict with the Catholic
Church. The Church could not submit herself to the dictatorship of Mussolini
any more than she could to the empire of Napoleon. The Church could not be
the servant of the Italian nation, for the Church is universal, embracing all nations
all over the world. For the Church, too, the human person is sacred, and his greatest
glory does not lie in belonging to a nation but in being a child of God. Individuals,
said the Church, owe loyalty not just to the state, but to their families, their neighbors, and to other authorities that make up the nation. Finally, each person, said the
Church, is called to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God, which on earth is found in
the worldwide Church of Christ, whose head is the pope. A Christian’s first loyalty
belongs to God’s Church, the Mystical Body of Christ—for, as Jesus said, we are to
obey God rather than man.
Though baptized Catholic, Mussolini had been an atheist from his youth and
mocked the Christian faith. In the first years of his reign, he had persecuted not only
socialists and Liberals, but Catholics as well. But Mussolini was shrewd. He knew
that since most Italians were Catholic, they would not remain loyal to his government if he did not make peace with the Church—especially the pope. Mussolini
knew he had to appear to be not just the Church’s friend, but her defender as well.
So it was that, in 1925, he made his first moves toward reconciliation between his
government and the Church.
The Pope and Il Duce
“Gladly do We offer Our life for the Peace of the World!” These words were among
the last spoken by Pope Benedict XV. The day after he uttered them, January 22,
1922, at 6 o’clock in the morning, the pope of peace “with great holiness fell asleep
in the Lord.” Once again, in perilous times, the Church—and the world—was left
without a shepherd.
The conclave to elect the new pope opened February 3, 1922; three days later, the
cardinals had made their choice—Cardinal Achille Ratti, the archbishop of Milan,
a close friend of Benedict XV. A theologian and scholar, Ratti had served as head
of the Vatican Library and as the pope’s nuncio to the new nation of Poland. He took
the name Pius XI and announced that he would guide his reign by the motto, pax
Christi in regno Christi—“The Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.”
The new pope explained this motto in his first encyclical, Ubi Arcano Dei
Consilio, issued December 23, 1922. “Since the close of the Great War, individuals, the different classes of society, the nations of the earth have not yet found true
peace,” wrote Pius. Nations were still rivals; public life was clouded “by the dense fog
of mutual hatreds”; the war between the rich and poor classes continued, because
each class seeks “to rule the other and to assume control of the other’s possessions.”
Even family members were at odds with one another, said the pope, for the war
had torn fathers and sons away “from the family fireside” and had weakened the
sense of morality. The people of his day, said the pope, refused obedience to rightful
authority and were failing to live up to their obligations. “In the face of our much
praised progress,” wrote the pope, “we behold with sorrow society lapsing
back slowly but surely into a state of barbarism.”
The treaties that had ended the war, said the pope, did not bring
peace; for, “this peace . . . was only written into treaties. It was not
received into the hearts of men, who still cherish the desire to
fight one another and to continue to menace in a most serious
manner the quiet and stability of civil society.” Because of
human weakness, no human institution by itself can bring
peace. True peace, said Pius, can only come through justice
and love, which are the fruits of the grace of Christ, communicated through his Church. “It is therefore,” wrote Pius,
“that the true peace of Christ can only exist in the Kingdom
of Christ—pax Christi in regno Christi.”
Pope Pius XI made it his task “to bring about the reestablishment of Christ’s kingdom,” not only in individual hearts,
but in society and the state as well. In Italy, he had taken steps
to bring about a reconciliation between the anticlerical Liberal
government and the Church. Such a reconciliation had to
include settling what was called the “Roman Question”—what
to do about the Italian government’s theft of the Papal States in
1870. Like his predecessors, Pius XI demanded that the government
restore his sovereignty over at least some of the territory taken from
him; only thus could the Church be truly independent of the state.
After October 1922, though, the pope had to deal with the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, which, at first, was more anti-Catholic than the
previous Liberal government had been. Yet, beginning in 1924, Mussolini began
to speak as if he respected the Church and the Catholic faith of the Italian people.
To prove his respect, he restored control of primary schools to the Church; he
made religious instruction (given by priests and religious) mandatory in all Italian
schools; and he abolished several anticlerical laws. Though in 1925 the pope condemned certain Fascist acts of oppression against the Church, it was clear that
Mussolini was seeking some sort of reconciliation with the pope.
Though he had his doubts about Il Duce’s goodwill, the pope believed he had to
act as if Mussolini sincerely wanted reconciliation. Thus, in 1926, when Mussolini
expressed a desire to settle the Roman Question, Pius XI agreed to talks with the
government. They were an opportunity, he thought, to restore both the Church’s
independence and her influence over Italy. The talks resulted in a treaty between
the Holy See and the kingdom of Italy, signed at the Lateran Palace in Rome on
February 11, 1929.
The Lateran Treaty did not restore the Papal States or even the entire city of
Rome to the pope, but it did create a small, independent state of about 100 square
539
Pope Pius XI
PROOF
1 2 3 4 5 6
540
RO M E
Piazza del Risorgimento
VATICAN
Pigna
Courtyard
Art Gallery
Barracks
of Papal
Gendarmes
RO M E
Museums
Old
Gardens
Villa of
Pius IV
Vatican Radio
Administration
Lourdes
Grotto
St. Martin’s
Chapel
Heliport
St.
Damaso
Courtyard
Monument
to St. Peter
New
Gardens
Belvedere
Courtyard
Sistine
Chapel
Palace
St. Peter’s
Basilica
St. Peter’s
Square
Church of
St. Stephen
Palace
Railroad of Justice
Station
St. Charles’
Palace
Church
of
St. Anne
Barracks
of Swiss
Guards
Teutonic
College
Petine
Museum
Palace
of Holy
Office
0
0
International boundary
(city wall)
500 feet
100 meters
Vatican City State as it is today
acres, centered on M18_04.ai
St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The pope would be the independent
sovereign of this “Vatican City” state, which would have its own currency, postage
system, radio transmission, and railroad station. As the head of a sovereign state,
the pope could make treaties with other nations, even if Italy were at war with them.
The Italian government also paid an indemnity to the pope for the seizure of the
Papal States in 1870. In return, the pope for the first time recognized the Italian
kingdom as a legitimate state.
Along with the Lateran Treaty, the pope concluded a concordat with the Italian
state. According to this agreement, Italy declared the “Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and
Roman Religion” to be the only state-recognized religion and pledged that all future
laws would be guided by Catholic moral teachings. Moreover, under the concordat,
Italy recognized marriage as a sacrament and agreed to make religious instruction
compulsory in elementary and secondary schools. Religion teachers were to be chosen by the bishops and supported by the state. The concordat recognized the right of
Catholic organizations, including the one known as Catholic Action, to act without
any hindrance from the state. Catholic Action was the name given to groups of
laymen who, under the direction of their bishops, sought to influence society with
Catholic ideals.
Though King Vittorio Emanuele III sincerely wanted to keep all the terms of
the concordat, he was not the real power in Italy. That power was Mussolini, and
Mussolini had made peace with the Church to increase his popularity with the
Italian people. But Mussolini was not about to let the Catholic Church interfere with
his power. Thus, within a year after the signing of the Lateran Treaty and the concordat, the Fascist government began restricting the Church’s freedom in Italy.
The Fascists first targeted Italy’s youth by requiring every young Italian
to join a Fascist youth organization. Next, they forbade Catholic Action
groups to hold any public meetings. Catholic Action was very dear to
Pius XI, and he took special care that it remain a purely religious
organization and take no part in party politics. The Fascists,
however, began to claim that Catholic Action was indeed a
political group, and in 1931 the government ordered every
Catholic Action group in Italy to disband. The government
also suppressed groups that engaged in religious education of
youth and banned societies that encouraged pious practices
among the young. Throughout 1930 and 1931, Blackshirt
gangs attacked Catholics, murdering in all about three thousand people.
Pope Pius XI faced a difficult decision. If he remained
quiet in the face of such assaults on Catholics, he would be
abandoning his flock to its enemies. If, however, he spoke
out against the Fascists, Mussolini might decide to break
the Lateran Treaty and overthrow the Holy See’s newly won
independence. But Pius did not hesitate. He decided he would
act as a shepherd. He would not abandon his sheep, whatever the
consequences.
The pope responded to the Fascist persecution by issuing the encyclical, Non Abbiamo Bisogno, on June 29, 1931—the feast of the Apostles Peter
and Paul. In this encyclical, written in Italian, the pope did not mention Mussolini
or the Fascists by name, but he was very clear about whom he spoke. In attacking
Catholic Action, said the pope, the government’s purpose was “to tear the young—
all the young—away from the Church.” The Fascists wanted complete control over
the minds of youth, “from their tenderest years up to manhood and womanhood”
in order, said the pope, to establish “a real pagan worship of the State.”
Pope Pius said he did not want to condemn “the party” itself; but, he said, its
totalitarian actions violated “the natural rights of the family” as well as the “supernatural rights of the Church.” The Fascist government was fighting against “all truth
and justice” and, if necessary, Catholics must disobey it. The Church, said the pope,
could never allow herself to be used as a tool of the state. The Church had rights she
had received from God, and no one, not even the head of state, might violate them.
The Church, said the pope, was ready to cooperate with the Italian government but
would resist any action that violated the law of God. If the government continued
its assault on the Church, said the pope, it might find it was only hurting itself—
for the government needed the friendship of the Church more than the Church
needed the friendship of the government.
Non Abbiamo Bisogno was a daring strike against Mussolini and the Fascists.
But Mussolini did not strike back. He saw that the pope was right—the Fascist government needed to keep peace with the Church. Mussolini thus pulled back on his
attacks against the Church, and Catholic Action again began functioning in Italy.
The pope had won this battle, at least, against the government. It would not be his
541
Vittore Emanuele III
PROOF
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542
last fight with Mussolini, but the pope’s defense of the rights of the Church in Non
Abbiamo Bisogno showed the Fascist dictator that he had a formidable opponent in
the person of Pope Pius XI.
An Unstable Republic
The republican government of the German Reich had faced many challenges during the first nine months of its existence. Defeated in war, the German people
could find little joy in the prospect of future peace. The British had not lifted their
blockade; the signs of hunger, sickness, poverty, and despair were everywhere to be
seen. In December 1918, Communists stirred up a revolt among sailors in Berlin,
and in January 1919 they tried to overthrow the provisional government. They were
defeated, however, after 10 days of bloody street fighting with veteran troops. This
was but the first of the revolts the new government would have to face.
The same month as the Berlin riots, the Reich held its first election in which all
adult men and women voted. These elected a constituent assembly in which members of the Social Democrats (a moderate socialist party)
held the most seats but had to share power with members of the Democrats (a Liberal party) and the Catholic
The Government of the Weimar
Center Party. This government had to face the threefold
Republic
task of concluding peace with the Allies, forming a
Federal Government
new constitution for Germany, and feeding a starving
population. But the government was powerless in April to
President
stop Communists from establishing a soviet republic in
Bavaria. The Communist government was overthrown
Chancellor
in May 1919 by 9,000 German army troops and 30,000
members of the independent militias called Freikorps
(“Free
Corps”)—but not by the government.
National Assembly
But the new government survived these challenges and,
after signing the Versailles treaty in June 1919, approved
Reichsrat
Reichstag
a new constitution for Germany in July. The new constitution, worked out and signed in Weimar, a city 300
miles southwest of Berlin, created a democratic republic
State Governments
in which authority was shared by the central government
and the various state governments. The central governCitizens
ment had a two-house National Assembly, made up of a
Reichstag (representing the people) and a Reichsrat (representing the states). Executive power was shared by a
president, elected every seven years, and a ministry, headed by a chancellor. Though
appointed by the president, the chancellor had to have the approval of the popularly
elected Reichstag to remain in power. The chancellor exercised most of the executive
power in the government, while the Reichstag held more power than the Reichsrat
did in making laws. These characteristics of the government, along with the fact
that all adult citizens, male and female, could vote, made the Weimar Republic (as
it came to be called) one of the most democratic governments in Europe.
But, democratic or not, the Weimar Republic faced serious challenges. Most
Germans thought the Treaty of Versailles very unjust. That Germany had to admit
guilt for the war, was forced to pay untold billions in reparations, and had to suffer
occupation by Allied forces (and pay for the occupation, as well) was too much for
the proud German spirit. Monarchists blamed the weak republican government
for Germany’s humiliation and plotted to overthrow it. In 1920, Baron von Lüttwitz,
commander in chief of the forces in Berlin, seized control of the capital, forcing the chancellor and his government to flee to Stuttgart. The Lüttwitz Putsch, however,
came to nothing. Within a week, it was overthrown.
A more serious challenge was Germany’s collapsed
economy. For various reasons connected with her
defeat in the war, Germany’s currency, the mark, was
suffering from inflation—a decrease in the value of
money, which leads to a rise in prices for goods. Despite
everything the government did to stop the inflation,
it continued. By 1923, the mark had become basically
worthless. The inflation of the mark had devastating
effects on the German people. The savings and investments of the middle class were utterly wiped out. Even
when the economy began to improve after 1924, the
middle class did not recover its former wealth and position in society.
Because Germany’s money was losing value and the
German government could get no loans from foreign
countries, it soon became clear that Germany could
not make her reparations payments to the Allies. On April 28, 1921, the Allies’
Reparations Committee had decided that Germany would have to pay more than
$33 billion in reparations over a set number of years. Every year, Germany would
have to pay an installment of $500 million. By the end of 1921, the German government announced that, without foreign loans, it could not make its yearly payments.
The Germans asked for a temporary moratorium on payments, which the Allies
granted. In July 1922, Germany asked for another moratorium; but this time the
Allies were not so willing to grant it.
Great Britain was willing to grant Germany another moratorium, for the British
government thought Germany should first be allowed to build up her economy
before being required to pay reparations. (The British were suffering from hard economic times as well and wanted a prosperous Germany to buy British goods.) The
French, however, disagreed. France wanted reparations money to pay for the $7.5
billion dollars the French government had spent in rebuilding the war-torn parts
of the country. Belgium joined with France, and in December 1922 the Reparations
Committee declared Germany in default and warned that, unless reparations payments were made, French and Belgian troops would occupy the highly industrialized Ruhr district in northwestern Germany. The German government again said it
could not make the payments; thus, in early 1923, French and Belgian troops moved
in and occupied the Ruhr district.
543
Pro-Lüttwitz soldiers in Berlin
Putsch: a German word for a
secretly plotted and sudden
attempt to overthrow a
government
inflation: a decrease in the
value of money, which leads to
a rise in prices for goods
moratorium: a waiting period,
a delay
default: failure to fulfill an
obligation. To be in default
means to fail to keep an
obligation.
Occupation, Resistance, and Recovery
The Ruhr district was the source of most of Germany’s industrial wealth. By occupying it, the French and Belgians took the region’s wealth and used it for their own
purposes. Without this source of wealth, Germany would become even poorer. The
German chancellor thus responded to the Reparations Committee’s ruling by calling for peaceful resistance to the French occupation. Germans in the Ruhr district
were ordered not to cooperate with the occupiers or to pay taxes. The German government promised to pay wages to workers who lost their jobs because they resisted
the occupation.
The French and Belgians responded to German resistance by fines and imprisonment and by blocking all exports of goods from the Ruhr region. They censored
PROOF
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544
newspapers in the region, seized private property, and in the first 11 months of the
occupation, expelled 147,000 German citizens. Thousands of Ruhr workers found
themselves without jobs. The resistance had bad effects in the rest of Germany as
well. At first, Germans cheered the government’s actions; but when it began to
appear that the resistance was having no effect and was hurting the country, citizens
began turning against the government.
In Bavaria, a group of monarchists and right-wing groups hatched a plot to
overthrow the Weimar Republic itself. They planned to seize control of Bavaria’s
capital, Munich, and then march on Berlin. Joining in the plot was General Erich
Ludendorff, along with the 34-year-old Führer (“leader”) of the National Socialist
German Workers’ Party—a man named Adolf Hitler.
On November 8, 1923, Hitler and armed members of his party stormed a beer
hall in Munich, where a public meeting was being held. Declaring he would set
up a new government under Ludendorff, Hitler then led his followers against
Bavarian government offices. But this “Beer Hall Putsch” came to nothing. Bavarian
police dispersed Hitler’s forces, and both Hitler and Ludendorff were arrested.
Ludendorff was released, but Hitler was convicted of treason and sentenced to five
years in prison.
Meanwhile, Germany’s newly appointed chancellor, Gustav Stresemann, ordered
an end to the resistance in the Ruhr district. In October 1923, Stresemann
announced Germany would again begin making reparations payments. But at
Stresemann’s request, a new Allied committee, headed by a representative of
the United States (Charles C. Dawes), met to discover how Germany could make the
payments.
In August 1924, the Dawes Committee came up with a payment plan that
included a $200 million loan to Germany. More important for Germany, the committee significantly lowered the amount Germany would have to pay in reparations.
The Dawes Committee report was approved by both the German and Allied governments, and in late 1924, Germany began making reparations payments. By August
1925, the last French and Belgian troops withdrew from the Ruhr.
Thus, beginning in 1924, the German economy began to recover. German industrialists were able to receive loans from foreign banks, and they used the money
to modernize German industry. By 1929, German factories were producing more
goods per year than they had been in 1913. In 1929, another Allied commission
further reduced the amount Germany had to pay in reparations, and in September
of that year, it appeared that Germany would eventually regain her place as one of
the great powers of Europe.
But the German recovery was not as strong as it may have seemed. Much of it
was based on loans—and if it happened that German industrialists could no longer
take out loans, their industries could collapse. The German middle class, too, had
not fully recovered; and because the new machines and methods industrialists used
in their factories meant fewer workers were needed, many German workers lost
their jobs. Germany was like someone recovering from a disease; she was growing
stronger year by year, but she needed only one serious setback to plunge her again
into sickness. And that setback came—the worldwide economic crash of 1929.
The Rise of the “Third Reich”
When he was released from jail in December 1924, Adolf Hitler discovered that his
political ideas might not be as popular as they had been in 1923. The Allies had lowered the amount Germany had to pay in reparations. The mark had been replaced by
a new coin, the Reichsmark, and inflation was a thing of the past. Germans
seemed to be digging themselves out of
poverty. Good times are generally not so
good for revolutionaries, and Germany
was beginning to enjoy good times after
six years of hard struggle.
Hitler, however, was not one to fear a
struggle. His life, he said, had been
a struggle. While growing up in Linz,
Austria, he had lived in fear of his father,
Alois Hitler, who was a violent man.
But Adolf had been close to his mother,
and he had been her favorite. Her death
in 1907 (Alois had died four years earlier), was bitter for Adolf, for he had
the sensitive soul of an artist. Indeed, the
young Adolf Hitler wanted nothing
less than to be an artist, a painter,
and thought himself a rather good one.
But after being rejected twice by the
Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he saw he had to pursue a different career. After
his mother’s death he journeyed to Vienna, determined to become an architect.
Hitler later said that it was in Vienna, where he earned a meager living as a picture painter and day laborer, that he first understood that the Marxists and the Jews
were Germany’s primary enemies. Because so many races and languages met in
Vienna, Hitler called the city a “racial Babylon.” Because he despised the multiracial
Habsburg empire, Hitler moved to Bavaria in 1913. In Munich, he found employment as a painter. When Germany entered the war, Hitler joined the 16th Bavarian
Reserve Infantry and saw action on the Western Front in some of the greatest battles
of the war. Though never rising above the rank of corporal, Hitler was twice decorated for bravery. In 1918, he received the Iron Cross, First Class—an honor rarely
granted to soldiers of his rank.
Following the war, Hitler returned to Munich where he became involved in
political work. He joined the German Workers’ Party and took over the party’s
propaganda efforts. He soon became an important party member, for many found
Hitler a powerful speaker, and he was a skilled fund-raiser. When he spoke, Hitler
seemed to be carried away by a frenzy; those listening to him were stirred by the
fierce eloquence by which he attacked capitalists, Jews, the French, republicans, and
the Treaty of Versailles. By 1921, Hitler had overcome all opposition and become the
party’s Führer, with unlimited power over the members of what had been renamed
the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—the “Nazis.”
In structuring his Nazi party, Hitler imitated the Communists and Italy’s
Fascists, forming local groups or party “cells” and youth organizations. These were
united in regional groups under the supreme power of the Führer. The party had
its own armed protective force, called the Schutzstaffeln (or SS), as well as its own
private army, the Sturmarbeilung (“storm troopers,” or SA), whose members wore
brown shirts and a red armband with the Nazi symbol—a black swastika in a white
circle against a red background.
Despite its name, the National Socialist Party was anything but socialist. Hitler
despised socialism, especially Marxist socialism, because it rejected private property and claimed that all working men and races are equal. As he explained in Mein
545
A painting by the young Adolf
Hilter
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546
Cover of Mein Kampf
Kampf (“My Struggle”), a book he had written in prison, Hitler thought
all mankind was divided into races (Völker), but not every race or Volk
was equal. The supreme race was the Aryan or white, European race.
The Aryan race, according to Hitler, was the most creative of races
and thus had the right to conquer and rule all others. Of all races, the
worst, said Hitler, was the Jewish race. He called it the “destroyer of
culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.” Hitler did not
hate Jews for religious reasons; indeed, though he had been baptized
a Catholic, Hitler rejected the Christian faith because he thought it
too Jewish. Hitler hated Jews because he thought they belonged to a
degraded race and were the enemies of the German Volk.
For Hitler, nothing was greater or more sacred than the Volk.
Actions were good or bad depending on whether they helped or hurt
the Volk. Thus, even murder could be justified if the Volk benefited
from it. Hitler rejected parliamentary government, for he thought it
could never speak for the Volk. Hitler thought the Volk could only
express itself through a Führer who held absolute power over everyone
and everything in the state.
Hitler’s Nazi party appealed to many on the political right because
it wanted to restore Germany to greatness—to form what Hitler called
the Third Reich. The First Reich had been the Holy Roman Empire; the
Second Reich, Bismarck’s empire. The Third Reich, said Hitler,
would be like those other Reichs but far surpass them in greatness.
It would last for a thousand years, he declared.
The Third Reich would also be supremely just, said Hitler. It would
fight against the power of the rich capitalists and speculators. It
would assure a decent living to workers and protection to small businessmen,
farmers, and shopkeepers. This message of social justice appealed to workers and
the lower middle class. Since Hitler knew what it was to struggle to make a living,
they thought they had found in him a friend who could understand their troubles
and distress.
By promises, propaganda, speeches—and by violence and terror—the Nazis
spread their Führer’s ideas. Still, between 1924 and 1929, the party grew only slowly.
The Social Democrats, the Center Party, and the Democrats still controlled the government. To most Germans, the Weimar Republic was doing a good enough job.
Though humiliated, Germany was recovering. Most Germans, thus, did not think
they needed radical solutions like those offered by the Nazis to solve their problems.
Triumph of the Führer
But then came the great financial crash of 1929. All over the world, stock markets
collapsed, banks closed, industry ground to a halt. Millions of workers lost their
jobs. Even prosperous countries with strong economies, like the United States of
America, suffered greatly in what has been called the Great Depression. With a
weak economy that depended in part on foreign loans to keep it going, Germany
was hit very hard. When, in 1929, loans were no longer available, Germany’s economy collapsed.
Even before the Depression, Germany had had a large number of unemployed
men. But in 1930, the number of unemployed nearly doubled, and by 1932, it almost
doubled again. In their distress, millions of Germans turned to extremist parties on
the right and the left. The Communist Party (controlled from Moscow) dramatically
grew in numbers. On the right, nationalist parties spoke of Germany’s past glory
and decried her humiliation by the Allies. German armies had not been defeated
547
in the war, said the nationalists; it had been betrayed, “stabbed in the back,” by
German socialists, international Jews, and Catholics.
Hitler’s Nazi party benefited greatly from Germany’s misfortunes. In the election of 1930, the party won 18 percent of the vote, a dramatic change from the
2.6 percent it had won in 1928. In 1932, Hitler ran for president against the 85-yearold General Paul von Hindenburg, the war hero who had held the office of president
since 1925. Hitler lost the race, but his National Socialist Party did so well that it was
quickly becoming the largest party in the Reichstag.
With his Nazi Reichstag members behind him,
Hitler demanded that Hindenburg make him chancellor; but the old general refused. Instead, he
dissolved the Reichstag; but in the new elections,
the Nazis won 230 seats—more than any other
party had ever won in the history of the Weimar
Republic. Once again, Hitler demanded the chancellorship, and again Hindenburg refused.
But in another election, held in November
1932, the Nazis lost 5 percent of the vote, while
the Communists increased their number in the
Reichstag. Fearing that socialists might take control of the government or that Communists would
overthrow it, Hindenburg’s friends threw their
support to Hitler. He, if anyone, could deal with the
Communists, they thought. Several of Hindenburg’s
allies, including his own son, tried to convince him
that he had little to fear from Hitler. Worn out by all
the fights in the Reichstag, Hindenburg at last gave
in. On January 30, 1933, he appointed Adolf Hitler
chancellor of the German republic.
Dictatorship
With the power of the chancellor in his hands,
Hitler began purging the government of his opponents. Most of the Reichstag was not Nazi, so he
dissolved it. New elections were called. The Nazi
party’s brown-shirted storm troopers terrorized
Communists, Social Democrats, and Center Party
members. The government shut down newspapers
belonging to opposition parties and forbade or
broke up their meetings. The Nazi party seized control of radio stations so that only the Nazi message
could be broadcast to German voters.
Then, on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building in Berlin caught fire and
nearly burned to the ground. The Nazis blamed the Communists, and hundreds
of Communist leaders were arrested. The upper and middle classes were seized
with the fear of Bolshevism. The Nazis appeared to be the only bulwark against
Communist revolution. To “protect” the public, the government suspended the
constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and other
personal liberties.
In the election held March 5, 1933, three parties (Social Democrats, Communists,
and Centrists) won 17.3 million votes, while the Nazis garnered 17 million votes and
their allies, the Nationalists, 3 million. This meant that the Nazis and Nationalists
Adolf Hitler giving the Nazi
salute from his car while passing
the Frauenkirche in Nuremberg
at the annual Nazi party rally,
September 5, 1934
PROOF
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548
Hitler giving a speech, 1940
concentration camp: a camp
where prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or others are confined
would hold 341 out of 648 seats in the new Reichstag—or
52 percent of the seats, enough to control the Reichstag.
On April 1, 1933, Hitler, clad in his Nazi uniform, stood
before the newly elected Reichstag and demanded the powers of a dictator for a period of four years. Though Nazis and
Nationalists dominated the Reichstag, Hitler still needed
the support of the Center Party to get the two-thirds vote
he needed. After receiving guarantees that the Nazi government would not violate the freedom of the Church and would
allow their party to continue, Center Party members gave
Hitler their support. They would soon regret it. The Führer
thus came to hold absolute power in Germany.
Hitler’s regime was very similar to Mussolini’s, except that
it was perhaps even more thoroughly centralized and brutal.
Like Mussolini, Hitler forbade freedom of speech and of
the press. Like Mussolini, he decreed that all political parties were illegal, except for his own. Like Mussolini, Hitler
outlawed labor unions and forbade strikes; only the Nazicontrolled German Labor Front could represent workers in
Hitler’s Germany. Like Mussolini, Hitler, through his propaganda minister, Joseph
Goebbels, used newspapers, the radio, and the cinema to spread party propaganda.
And, finally, like Mussolini, Hitler established a secret police, the Gestapo, which,
under the direction of Hermann Göring, arrested Hitler’s political enemies, placing
thousands of them in concentration camps.
Hitler and the Nazis’ power over Germany was greatly increased when on
January 30, 1934, the Reichstag transferred all the powers held by the individual
German states to the central government of the Third Reich. Even local governments
came under the direct control of the Berlin government. In August 1934, President
Hindenburg died and Hitler became president as well as chancellor. By the end of
1934 Hitler could confidently say, “The National Socialist Party is the state.”
With all the power of the state in his hands, Hitler turned his attention to his
enemies—Communists, members of opposition parties, and the Jews. Each of these
groups suffered under the Nazi regime, but none more than the Jews. Shortly after
the March 5, 1933, election, Nazi storm troopers committed violent acts against Jews
and their property. When it was pointed out that the police provided no defense to
the Jews, Hermann Göring said, “The police are not a defense squad for Jewish
stores or there to protect rogues, vagabonds, swindlers, profiteers, and traitors.”
The government claimed that it was not responsible for such violence. It was, however, responsible for the laws it subsequently passed. Under Hitler, Jews (including
those of Jewish blood who had become Christian) could not hold government jobs.
They could be banned from practicing law. Jewish professors and teachers were dismissed from schools and universities. Germans were forbidden to marry Jews, even
those of mixed Jewish and German blood (whom the government called hybrids).
As the months and years passed, Jews were treated less and less as full members of
German society. In 1935, Hitler’s government deprived Jews of citizenship.
Such were the measures Hitler took to drive what he called the Jewish “menace”
from Germany. More horrible measures were yet to come.
Hitler and the Church
Though Catholics made up only about one-third of the German population, the
Catholic Church was a powerful force in postwar Germany. The Church’s youth
organizations numbered about 1.5 million members, Catholic newspapers and
periodicals were numerous, and the ranks of the clergy were well filled and active.
The Church staffed schools and universities, ran hospitals as well as charitable and
cultural organizations, and oversaw Catholic associations for workingmen. In the
Center Party and the Bavarian People’s Party, Catholics had powerful advocates in
the national and state governments.
Hitler saw that he could not ignore the Catholic Church if he hoped keep power
in Germany. His goal was to make the Catholic Church (as well as Germany’s
Lutheran or “Evangelical” Church) tame servants of his National Socialist state.
This, he saw, would be a difficult task. Many of Germany’s Catholic bishops had
publicly opposed National Socialism. One of these was Cardinal Adolf Bertram,
the archbishop of Breslau, who in 1930 had condemned the race ideas of National
Socialism and its attempt to establish a new Christianity apart from the Church.
The Bavarian bishops had forbidden Catholics to join the Nazi party.
Despite this opposition, Hitler had reason to hope that he could bring the
Catholic Church under his sway. In the July 1933 election, the Catholic parts of
Germany, along with Berlin, were among the most hostile to Hitler; nevertheless,
millions of Catholics had ended up voting for the Nazi party. Some bishops thought
the best tactic was to develop a friendship with the Nazi government in the hopes
of converting it to Catholic ideas. A few Catholic theologians thought National
Socialism could be a powerful force to combat Communism and Liberalism. These
theologians thought that if Catholics only got involved in the Nazi movement, they
could bring it into line with Catholic ideas and moral principles. Such ideas may
have influenced the German bishops’ conference. Though in February 1933 the
bishops had forbidden Catholics to vote for anyone except a Christian candidate, on
March 28 of the same year the conference lifted the ban on Catholic membership
in the Nazi party.
But, despite the hopes of optimistic Catholics, Hitler could not be converted to
Catholic principles, for he had utterly rejected the Catholic Faith. From the moment
he took power, his intent was to establish a new, pagan religion of “race, blood, and
soil”—the worship of the German Volk. Thus, though he pledged that he would
protect both the Catholic and Evangelical (Protestant) religions, he would not let
them have any part in the life of the state or society. This policy led to the arrest of
Center Party members in April 1933 and the imprisonment of all members of the
Catholic-dominated Bavarian People’s Party in June.
To lure more of his Catholic subjects to his cause, Hitler in April 1933 sent a
representative to Rome to propose a concordat between Germany and the Church.
Pope Pius XI’s secretary of state, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, did not trust Hitler,
but he thought a concordat with the Führer would
provide at least some protection for the Church in
Germany. Pope Pius himself had misgivings; but,
in the end, he followed Pacelli’s advice. After weeks
of negotiations, Cardinal Pacelli, representing
the pope, signed a concordat with Germany on
July 20, 1933.
The concordat recognized the right of Catholics
to practice their religion freely. Bishops were to be
allowed to correspond freely with the Holy See and
to write pastoral letters to their flocks, issue decrees
and ordinances, and publish newspapers and periodicals. The government promised not to force
priests to reveal secrets told them in confession or
during counseling. In return for other guarantees of
549
The signing of the concordat.
Cardinal Pacelli sits at the head
of the table
PROOF
1 2 3 4 5 6
550
A German Nazi poster, “The
German Student fights for the
Führer and the People,” 1930s
freedom, the Church pledged that all new bishops were to “swear and promise to
honor the legally constituted government and to cause the clergy in my diocese
to honor it.”
Some people at the time criticized the concordat with Germany because it
recognized Hitler’s government as legitimate. But in signing the concordat, the
Church was not voicing her agreement with Nazi ideas or even saying that Hitler’s
government was a particularly good one. The Church was recognizing the simple
fact that Hitler held power in Germany and was, indeed, the government. Others
complained that the concordat could not keep Hitler from violating the rights of
the Church if he wanted to. Cardinal Pacelli admitted this was true but pointed out
that since Hitler probably would not violate the whole concordat at once, it provided
some protection for the Church in Germany.
Hitler began violating the concordat almost immediately after it was signed.
In August 1933, his government closed down a number of Catholic newspapers. In
December, the government ruled that every youth movement in Germany had to
become part of the Nazi youth movement, called Hitler Youth. This meant Catholic
and Evangelical youth movements would have to join in a movement that not only
promoted pagan ideas but attacked the Christian Faith.
In 1934 it became clearer that the German government was trying to force a
pagan “soil, blood, and race” religion on Germany. The Nazis still allowed Catholics
and Protestants to practice their religion, but if they attempted to argue against the
new paganism in public, they were suppressed. In June, the government forbade the German bishops to publish a pastoral letter that
criticized the new paganism; police seized Catholic newspapers
that attempted to print the bishops’ letter. In November, the government further restricted the publication of Church news in Church
journals and newspapers.
The Nazi government used every means it safely could to draw the
faithful from the Church. Those, for instance, who belonged to religious associations were forbidden to enter the Nazi’s German Labor
Front—which meant they would not be considered for the best-paying
jobs or have regular employment. Youth who joined religious youth
organizations risked losing educational opportunities. Young people
who remained true to their faith were often ostracized and even suffered physical violence. It was not long before the government began
shutting down Christian youth movements or, at least, forbidding
them from doing such things as playing sports, hiking, or holding
social gatherings.
“All youth belongs to us,” said Baldur von Schirach, the leader of
Hitler Youth. Every young man and woman was to be turned into a
good Nazi, and this meant that the government had to take control
of every educational institution in Germany. “The whole function of
all education is to create a Nazi,” said Hitler’s minister of education,
Bernhard Rust. Using threats and intimidation, the government “convinced” parents to turn Catholic or Evangelical schools into secular,
government schools. By false accusations and rigged trials, the government drove Catholic religious brothers and sisters from schools, replacing them
with teachers acceptable to the party. Nor did the Nazis leave the family alone;
schoolchildren were encouraged to report not only their teachers, but even their
parents, if they so much as criticized Hitler or the party.
Yet, despite this persecution, millions of Catholics and Protestants refused to
bow down to Hitler. As late as 1937, large numbers of young people were members
551
of Catholic youth organizations, despite the hardships such membership involved.
Adult Catholics remained faithful to their religious associations, even though it
meant giving up good jobs and higher pay. Further, people had to watch what they
said very carefully, for fear of being reported by neighbors to the secret police for
crimes against the Volk.
But if Catholic laymen suffered for their faith, the clergy and religious suffered
even more. For speaking out against Nazi paganism, thousands of priests (as well as
Evangelical ministers) were arrested and imprisoned, both in jails and concentration camps, during the years Adolf Hitler held power in Germany.
The Pope against the Führer
For Adolf Hitler, the Catholic Church was the greatest obstacle to the triumph of
National Socialism in Germany. It was for this reason that, even while he was violating the concordat, Hitler was careful not to cast it aside. Hitler did not want to
annoy Catholics too much; at the same time, he wanted to pressure them to give up
their opposition to him and accept National Socialism as the religion of Germany.
But from 1933 to 1937, Hitler faced steady opposition from bishops, priests,
and laymen, both inside and outside of Germany. Standing with them were stout
Evangelical Christians who refused to worship Hitler instead of Christ or abandon
the Bible for Mein Kampf. One result of the Nazi persecution was that Catholics
and Protestants learned to respect one another. Though neither side abandoned its
beliefs, both sides forgot the animosity they had for each other. They were joined in
a common front against a common “antichrist,” Adolf Hitler.
Catholics fought Hitler’s racial theories and anti-Semitism as well as his antiChristian measures. For instance, in 1933, the Austrian bishops issued a pastoral
letter condemning “extreme nationalism” and “rational anti-Semitism based on
race.” Pope Pius XI himself condemned racism in his Christmas message of 1930,
saying no race is superior to another, for all are united “in the heritage of sin.”
Racism was condemned, too, in the Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica (published in the
Vatican with the approval of the pope); and beginning in the mid 1930s, the Holy
See’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, began publishing criticisms of the Nazi
theory of race, soil, and blood. In 1936, Vatican Radio began exhorting Catholics
worldwide to pray for Jews persecuted by the Nazis.
In 1937, Pope Pius XI issued his great condemnation of National Socialism in
the encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge (“With Burning Anxiety”). Written in German
instead of the customary Latin, Pius’s encyclical had to be smuggled into Germany,
where it was secretly printed. Throughout the night of March 13 and into the early
morning of March 14, 1937, the encyclical was delivered by hand to priests, who
read it during Masses on Passion Sunday, March 14, 1937. By evening of the same
day, police had confiscated almost every copy of the encyclical in Germany.
Though it never mentioned the Nazis or Hitler by name, Mit Brennender Sorge
was a stern condemnation of National Socialism. The encyclical called on Germany’s
bishops to preserve faith in God against the government’s attempts to restore paganism and turn the state into God. “None but superficial minds could stumble into
concepts of a national God or a national religion,” said Pius.
Pure faith in God, said Mit Brennender Sorge, cannot long endure without faith
in Christ. Any man who would place “a mortal, were he the greatest of all times,
by the side of, or over, or against, Christ, he would deserve to be called prophet of
nothingness, to whom the terrifying words of Scripture would be applicable: ‘He
that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them’ (Psalm 2:4).” Faith in Christ, said the
pope, could not long remain pure “without the support of faith in the Church,
‘the pillar and ground of the truth’ (I Tim. 3:15).” And, finally, said Pius, “faith in
racism: the belief that some
races are essentially inferior to
one race or to other races
PROOF
1 2 3 4 5 6
552
divinize: to treat something as
if it were God
apostasy: an abandonment of
religious faith
livid: very angry; enraged
the Church cannot stand pure and true without the support of faith in the primacy
of the Bishop of Rome.” It is the bishops’ task, said the pope, to preserve and defend
these articles of the Faith.
Throughout the encyclical, Pope Pius attacked Nazi racism. “Whoever exalts
race,” said the encyclical, “or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State . . .
or any other fundamental value of the human community . . . above their standard
value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of
the world planned and created by God.” God’s commandments are for all men, said
Pius; and the Church “is the same for all races and all nations. Beneath her dome, as
beneath the vault of heaven, there is but one country for all nations and tongues.”
In Mit Brennender Sorge, the pope condemned the Nazi state for violating the
right of parents to educate their children. He defended the rights of a believer to
“profess his Faith and live according to its dictates.” The German government must
not violate these rights, either by arresting those who exercise them or depriving
them of the privileges given to all other citizens. The pope expressed his “wholehearted paternal sympathy” with German Catholics for their sufferings for Christ
and the Church. There is, said the pope, only one just option for those who are faced
with a choice between Christ and the world—and that is heroism. “If the oppressor
offers one the Judas bargain of apostasy he can only, at the cost of every worldly
sacrifice, answer with Our Lord: ‘Be gone, Satan! For it is written: The Lord thy God
shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve.’”
Hitler and the Nazis saw the pope’s encyclical for what it was—a strong blow
against National Socialism. For the Nazis, it was a “call to battle against the Church.”
It is said that Hitler himself was livid when he learned of the encyclical. He swore
revenge on Pius and the Catholic Church. Though he hesitated to make open war
on the Catholic Church in Germany, he was preparing for the time when he could,
once and for all, rid Germany of any religion that dared oppose National Socialism.
And chief among these enemy religions, for Hitler, was the Catholic Church.
Chapter 18 Review
Summary
• On the night of July 16–17, 1918, Russia’s Bolsheviks
assassinated Tsar Nikolai II and his family at
Yekaterinburg in Siberia. Following the end of
World War I, the new Bolshevik government was
confronted by invading Allied armies that supported the White counterrevolutionaries. Though
it at first appeared that the Whites might triumph
over the Bolshevik Reds, by 1920, the Reds had
destroyed the White armies or driven them
from Russia.
• To overcome opposition to their rule in Russia,
Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks instituted the
Red Terror. All those who opposed the Bolsheviks
were labeled bourgeois and counterrevolutionary.
By 1921, the Red Terror had killed about 140,000
people in Russia.
• The Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919,
was very harsh toward Germany. It called on
Germany to pay high reparations, severely reduced
the size of the German military, and forced the
Reich to abandon 25,000 square miles of territory
and 6 million of its population. Germany had to
abandon all her overseas colonies and was deprived
of much of her wealth in coal, iron ore, and other
metals used in industry.
• Following the war, the Allies divided
Austria-Hungary into the nations of Austria,
Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. The newly restored
independent nation of Poland took Austrian
Galicia, Italy seized Trentino and Austrian territories on the Adriatic, and Bosnia, and Herzegovina
went to the kingdom of Yugoslavia. Hungary lost
Transylvania to Romania.
553
Chapter 18 Review (continued)
• The new nation of Austria adopted a republican
form of government after Emperor Karl stepped
down from power. Austria, though, was unstable,
and the Allies opposed her union with Germany.
Hungary fell into anarchy at the end of the war.
In March 1919, Béla Kun established a short-lived
Bolshevik government in Budapest. In November
1919, counterrevolutionary forces under Admiral
Miklós Horthy seized control of the government. In
March 1920, Horthy was elected regent of Hungary.
• The new nations of Central Europe established after
the war were unstable. Though they were formed
along national lines, they each contained sizable
populations of minority groups or were divided into
religious groups. Nationalism posed as much of a
problem for these new nations as it had for AustriaHungary. New nations were formed in northeastern
Europe as well—Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,
and Poland. These nations had more homogenous
populations and so did not suffer from fights
between national groups. Poland carried on a war
of conquest against Russia and suffered from divisions among political groups. In 1926, it became a
kind of military dictatorship. Lithuania, Latvia, and
Estonia were small, weak nations that could easily
be gobbled up by larger neighbors.
• Russia’s great sufferings after the war, coupled with
the refusal of Russian peasant farmers to cooperate with the revolution, convinced Lenin in 1921
to adopt a compromise called the New Economic
Policy (NEP) that allowed for private ownership of
land and of some industry. In gaining back much
territory it had lost, the Bolshevik government was
more successful.
• In December 1922, Russia, Georgia and Armenia,
Ukraine, and Byelorussia were formed into the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The
Soviet constitution formed for this union was (at
least on paper) democratic and federal. In reality, all
levels of government were controlled by the Central
Committee of the Communist Party (the Politburo)
and its chairman, Vladimir Lenin.
• Lenin and the Communist Party (as the Bolsheviks
now were called) used every means to disseminate
their ideas and crush all opposition. In particular,
they carried on a brutal persecution of religion,
especially against the Russian Orthodox Church.
Yet, despite the persecution, the Communists could
not destroy Orthodoxy in Russia.
• After Lenin’s death on January 21, 1924, factions
fought for control of the Communist Party. In the
end, Josif Stalin, the secretary of the Politburo, and
his faction won the power struggle. Though at first
he espoused Lenin’s NEP, in 1929 Stalin ordered the
collectivization of all farms. When wealthy peasant
farmers resisted, Stalin ordered them to be liquidated. Stalin intensified the persecution of religion
in the Soviet Union.
• Originally a socialist and an opponent of Italy’s
entrance into the First World War, Benito Mussolini
eventually turned against both positions. In 1919 he
formed the Fascist Party to combat socialists and
Bolsheviks in Italy. Backed by rich businessmen
and landowners, the Fascists used violence against
socialists and other radicals. By late 1921, Mussolini
and the Fascists had gained control of most of Italy.
By the end of October 1922, Mussolini had control
of the Italian government.
• Mussolini’s Fascist government adopted many of
the policies and tactics of the Bolsheviks in Russia.
Like Communist Russia, Fascist Italy was totalitarian. Yet, Fascism was nationalist and favored
a corporative organization of business—unlike
Communism, which was internationalist and
favored government ownership of business.
Fascism was also imperialistic.
• Mussolini’s totalitarian policies brought his government into direct conflict with the Catholic Church.
Realizing the importance of making peace with
the Church, Mussolini initiated talks with Pope
Pius XI that ended in the Lateran Treaty of 1929.
Central to the treaty was the establishment of an
independent city-state, Vatican City, with full sovereign powers under the pope. Italy also agreed to a
concordat with the Holy See, granting the Church
certain rights and freedoms in Italy. It was not long,
though, before Mussolini began to violate the concordat, especially by depriving Catholic youth organizations and Catholic Action of their freedom. In
1931, Pope Pius XI struck out at this violation of the
concordat in the encyclical, Non Abbiamo Bisogno.
PROOF
1 2 3 4 5 6
554
Mussolini, in turn, pulled back his attacks on the
Church in Italy.
• After the war, Germany suffered from a collapsed
economy, worthless money, a weak government
(the Weimar Republic), and political factions that
staged periodic insurrections. Unable to pay reparations, Germany obtained a moratorium on
reparations payments in 1921. The Allies, however,
refused to consider a second moratorium in 1922,
and Germany went into default. When Germany
again said it could not make its payments, French
and Belgian troops occupied the industrial Ruhr
district in northwest Germany. Unrest followed
until, in August 1924, the Allies established a new
payment plan for Germany, including a large loan.
• In 1924, the German economy began to recover
until, by 1929, German production was greater than
it had been before the war. This recovery, however,
did not bring prosperity to many in Germany. After
the worldwide economic crash in 1929, Germany’s
recovery collapsed.
• Germany’s sorrows after the war gave rise to
extremist political parties. One such party was the
National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party,
under its Führer, Adolf Hitler. The Nazis called for
justice for workers, a renewal of German glory, and
an unrelenting struggle against socialists and Jews.
Though Nazi membership was small before 1929,
after the economic crash, the party grew dramatically. By 1932, Hitler was strong enough to convince
Germany’s president, Paul von Hindenburg, to
appoint him chancellor of the Reich. In April 1933,
the German Reichstag voted Hitler the powers of a
dictator for four years.
• Hitler centralized the government such that the
powers held by individual states were transferred
to the government in Berlin. With all power in his
hands, he struck out at his enemies—Communists,
members of opposition parties, and Jews. To solidify
his power in Germany, Hitler sought better relations with the Catholic Church and, in July 1933, he
signed a concordat with the Holy See. But no sooner
had Hitler signed the concordat than he began to
violate it. And, even though the Church had signed
a concordat with Germany, Pope Pius XI con-
demned National Socialism in his 1937 encyclical,
Mit Brennender Sorge.
Key Concepts
totalitarian: referring to a government that claims
absolute power and authority over all individuals and
groups in society
Treaty of Versailles: the treaty signed by Germany
and the Allies on June 28, 1919, ending the war and
setting the terms of Germany’s punishment. The
treaty included the Covenant of the League
of Nations.
Politburo: short for Political Bureau of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union. The Politburo directed the Soviet Communist
Party that, through its chairman, held the powers of
a dictator in the USSR.
universalist: that which is universal in scope and
interest; something that has interest in all human
beings, not just particular nations. The Catholic
Church is universalist.
Komintern: the Third International. From its headquarters in Moscow, Komintern directed the activities
of Communist Parties in Italy, France, Germany, and
even the United States
collectivize: to organize property (for instance, land,
factories, tools, farms) so that they are not owned privately but in common or by the government
general strike: refusal by workers in all or many
industries to work in order to bring employers around
to giving in to their demands
Dates to Remember
1918:Assassination of the Russian royal family
(July 16–17)
The beginning of the Red Terror in Russia
(August)
1919: Formation of the Fasci di Combattimento in
Milan, Italy (March)
The signing of the Treaty of Versailles (June 28)
1922: Death of Emperor Karl I (April 1)
Benito Mussolini named prime minister of
Italy (October).
555
1923:Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch ends in failure
(November).
1924: Death of V. I. Lenin (January 21)
1929:The Communist Party confirms Josif Stalin as
its leader.
Italy and the Holy See sign the Lateran Treaty
(February 11).
Economies collapse in a worldwide financial
crash.
1933:Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler chancellor
of Germany (January 30).
The German Reichsrat gives Hitler the power
of dictator for four years (April 1).
Germany signs a concordat with the Holy See
(July 20).
1937:Pope Pius XI condemns National Socialism in
Mit Brennender Sorge.
Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (1876–1958): Pope Pius XI’s
secretary of state who negotiated the concordat with
Germany
Central Characters
6. How are Fascism and Communism alike? How
do they differ?
Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929): the French premier (known as The Tiger) who pushed for harsher
penalties against Germany at the peace conference
following the end of World War I
Béla Kun (1886–1938 or 1939): the Bolshevik
(Communist) leader who established the short-lived
Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919
Admiral Miklós Horthy (1868–1957): the head of
the White counterrevolutionary forces in Hungary.
Though made regent of Hungary in 1920, Horthy
opposed restoring the throne to Karl von Habsburg.
Josif Stalin (1878–1953): chairman of the Communist
Party and head of the Soviet government in the years
following the death of Vladimir Lenin
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945): Il Duce; the founder
and head of the Fascist Party in Italy; later, prime
minister and dictator of Italy
Pius XI (1857–1939): the successor of Pope
Benedict XV, Pius led the Church during the period
when totalitarian regimes dominated Europe.
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945): the Führer (“leader”) of the
National Socialist German Workers Party and later
the chancellor, president, and dictator of Germany’s
Third Reich
Questions for Review
1. By the end of July 1918, it appeared that the
White counterrevolutionaries would be victorious
over the Bolsheviks. Why were the Bolshevik
Reds finally victorious?
2. Why did Lenin and the Bolsheviks begin the Red
Terror? Who were the targets of the terror? About
how many were killed in the terror?
3. What is a totalitarian government?
4. What was the Treaty of Versailles? What did
Germany have to agree to in the treaty?
5. What reason did Emperor Karl give for trying to
regain his throne in Hungary?
7. Why did Fascism and Nazism have youth
movements?
8. Why did Fascism, Nazism, and Communism
attack the Church?
9. Why did Hitler hate the Jews? Why did he reject
the Christian faith?
10. Why did so many Germans come to support the
Nazi Party?
11. What was wrong with Nazism, according to Pope
Pius XI’s encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge?
Ideas in Action
1. By the time the Bolsheviks took power, Russia
had a small Russian Catholic Church—a church
that followed the rituals and traditions of the
Byzantine East but was in union with the pope in
Rome. Research the history of the Russian Catholic
Church and how it fared under the Soviet government. Does it still exist today? If so, where? How
many members does it have?
2. Among the Christians who suffered under the
Soviet Red Terror was Blessed Leonid Ivanovich
Feodorov, the bishop of the Russian Catholic
PROOF
1 2 3 4 5 6
556
Church. Write a report on the life and sufferings
of Blessed Leonid.
3. What happened to Empress Zita and Otto von
Habsburg, the wife and eldest son of Blessed Karl
of Austria, after Karl’s death in 1922? How did they
carry on the Habsburg family’s tradition of service
to the common good? Write a report about either
one or both of their lives.
Highways and Byways
Jesse Owens and the 1936 Berlin Games
Because he came from the Buckeye State (Ohio),
and because he was an astoundingly fast runner,
Jesse Owens was known as the Buckeye Bullet.
Having already broken several world records, this
African American athlete went on to represent the
United States in the 1936 Summer Olympic Games,
held in Berlin, Germany.
Since these were the first Olympic Games to
be held in Germany, Adolf Hitler wanted them
to be a huge propaganda event. He wanted the
games to show the superiority of German “Aryan”
athletes over all other athletes in the world. And, in
the games, Hitler’s athletes did very well. Germany
was the world front-runner with 33 gold medals,
while the United States took second place with
24 gold medals. However, it was not a blonde, blueeyed German who took the spotlight at the games,
but the black man, Jesse Owens. Owens performed
spectacularly in track events and won four gold medals. Even though the crowd of over 110,000 spectators wildly cheered Owens, Hitler refused to shake
Jesse’s brown hand. Instead, the Führer walked out
of the coliseum in a rage.

Chapter 18 - Catholic Textbook Project

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