Interwar Period in Europe: Fascism, Nazism, and the Roaring Twenties
Treaty of Versailles: Germany Pays for the War
Fascism is an ideology and a political movement that arose in Europe between the wars (1918-1939).
The political project of fascism is corporatism, to establish a totalitarian state and a dirigiste economy. Its intellectual basis raises a submission to will and action, a strongly nationalist victim of identity with components that leads to violence against those defined as enemies by an effective propaganda machine, an interclass social component, and a refusal to locate on the political spectrum (left or right). This usually does not prevent historiography and political science from equating fascism to the extreme right. It relates it to plutocracy, sometimes identified as a capitalist state, or chauvinism, identifiable as a variant of state socialism.[4]
It is presented as a “third way” or “third position”[5] that is radically opposed to both liberal democracy in crisis (the form of government representing the values of the victors in World War I, such as England, France, or the United States, which were considered “decadent”) and the traditional labor movement on the rise (Marxist or anarchist, the latter in turn split between social democracy and communism, which since 1917 had a project for a socialist state that was developed in the Soviet Union).
The Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic was the political regime and, by extension, the historical period that took place in Germany after its defeat in World War I. The term extends between the years 1919 and 1933. The name of the Weimar Republic is a term imposed by subsequent historiography. At the time, the country retained its name of Deutsches Reich. The designation comes from the name of the town, Weimar, where the meeting of the National Assembly was held. The constituent proclaimed the new Constitution, which was approved on July 31 and entered into force on August 11, 1919.
Nazism
Nazism or National Socialism (German Nationalsozialismus) is the ideology and practices of the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler and the policies adopted by the government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, a period also known as the Third Reich. The official name of the party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) – “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.” National Socialism was related to fascism, though some authors have considered it a more radical and violent version of this, especially for racist considerations,[9] especially anti-Semitic. Some other defining elements of this ideology are anti-parliamentarism, ethnic nationalism, opposition to social, political, and economic liberalism, anti-communism, and the eugenics of “life not worthy of life” that culminated in the Holocaust.
The term Nazi was first coined by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who used it to refer to members of his party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), during one of his speeches. By extension, the word Nazi began to be used with everything that is related to the National Socialist regime and ideology. The Nazi discourse promulgated the conquest of Lebensraum (“living space”) for the Aryan race while the disappearance of all individuals, groups, and ethnicities considered undesirable in the Third Reich, culminating in large-scale genocide, the creation of concentration camps and extermination camps.
The Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties or Happy Twenties refers to the period of economic prosperity that took place in the United States from 1922 to 1929, as part of an expansive cycle. Prosperity benefited the whole of society, and the economy continued growing at a pace that had not been registered before, generating a speculative bubble. But this prosperity would last for a short period, ending on October 24, 1929, known as Black Thursday, and with the arrival of the Crash of 1929, which finally culminated with the advent of the Great Depression.