18 The Rise of Totalitarian Regimes · 521 PROOF 1 2 3 4 5 6 18 The Rise of Totalitarian Regimes A t about midnight of July 16–17, 1918, Nikolai Romanov, the deposed tsar of Russia,

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18 The Rise of Totalitarian Regimes

At 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 RedsMany 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 expe-dient 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

522 LIGHT TO THE NATIONS II: The Making of the Modern World

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White propaganda poster, depict-ing 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 cap-tured 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 TerrorIt 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 politi-cal 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.

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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 sup-porters of the old tsarist government and executed them. Similar killings were car-ried 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 govern-ment 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 slaugh-ter 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 govern-ments claim absolute power and authority over the total life of society and indi-viduals. 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 gov-ernment 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

totalitarian: referring to a government that claims abso-lute power and authority over all individuals and groups in society


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The Big Four at Versailles. Left to right, David Lloyd George, Vittorio Orlando, Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson

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 ParisOn 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, glis-tening 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

German Reich: a name refer-ring to both the imperial German government under the Hohenzollerns and the German republic after the war


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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 crip-pling 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 responsibil-ity 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,

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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 EmpireEmperor 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 indepen-dent 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 pub-lished 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

It was a cold day in late October 1921 when a small air-plane from Switzerland landed in western Hungary. The

airplane carried Karl, the emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, and his wife, the Empress Zita. Loyal troops of the Hungarian army greeted the royal couple and swore allegiance to them. After hearing an open-air Mass, King Karl, Queen Zita, their generals and troops boarded a train that would take them to Budapest, where Karl hoped to take up once again the gov-ernment of Hungary.

Karl knew this would be no easy task. This was his second journey to Hungary since the end of the war. In March 1921, he, with his loyal followers, had entered Budapest, where he met with Hungary’s regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy. But though he claimed to rule in the name of King Karl, Horthy was unwilling to give over the govern-ment to him. Karl, who had fallen sick, was forced to leave Hungary—but he promised he would return.

Thousands of Hungarians joyfully greeted the return of the king in October 1921. But though he had an army faithful to him, Karl faced tremendous difficulties. Since Horthy controlled the greater part of the army, he was very powerful. The regent also had the support of the British government, which did not want to see a Habsburg return to power anywhere in Europe. Finally, many of Karl’s military leaders—men who had sworn allegiance to him—proved unfaithful. At last Horthy’s army overran the troops faith-ful to Karl; and he, to avoid further bloodshed, withdrew from Budapest.

Karl and Zita were detained at Tihany Abbey in west-ern Hungary until the Allies decided what to do with

them. At Tihany, Karl received a visit from Hungary’s primate archbishop, Cardinal Czernoch. Czernoch later wrote that at Tihany he had expected to find “a broken, fearful, suffering king,” but instead, he discovered that Karl needed no comfort. “I have done my duty, as I came here to do,” he told the cardinal. “As crowned king, I not only have a right, I also have a duty. I must uphold the right and the dignity of the crown.” The king said “Our

Lord and Savior had led me” to try to regain the throne.

On October 30, Allied authorities removed Karl and Zita from Tihany to

a port on the Danube River, where they were placed on a British ship. They did not know their destina-tion, but they would soon learn that it was Madeira, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic, 535 miles off the coast of Portugal. This would be the place of exile for the

royal couple and their children. But Karl’s sojourn on Madeira was short.

In March, he caught a cold that soon turned to pneumonia. On April 1, 1922,

Karl, the last reigning Habsburg emperor, died, while gazing on a crucifix Zita held for him in her hands. The emperor’s last words were, “Thy will be done. Yes, yes. As you

will it. Jesus!”Karl’s title of emperor passed to his eldest son,

Otto—who, as a man, later dedicated himself to work for the good of the peoples over whom his family once had ruled. Yet, though Karl and Zita’s family lost the imperial title, a greater honor awaited them. On October 3, 2004, Pope John Paul II declared Karl “blessed”—the last step before being proclaimed a saint of the Catholic Church.

The Church remembers Blessed Karl on October 21, the day he and Zita were married in 1911.

Karl I in Chernivtzi, Ukraine, July 6, 1917


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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 mov-ing 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 EuropeIn 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”

communal: shared, or used in common by those who belong to a group or community


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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 “broth-ers” in the German Reich, while Slovaks and Ruthenians objected that the Czechs dominated the government and economic life of the country.

The uniting of Croatians, Slovenians, and Bosnians with Serbs in the King-dom of Yugoslavia seemed reasonable to Wilson and the map drawers at Paris —for, after all, were not they all Yugoslavs? They were indeed, but his-tory had created important differences between them. There were religious dif-ferences. The Serbs were Orthodox in religion, while the Croats and Slovenes were Catholic; and in Bosnia lived over one million Muslims. The Serbs were more numerous than any other single group, but they were less prosperous than the Croats and Slovenes. There were political differences as well. The Croats and Slovenes favored a federal system under the Serbian king (like Emperor Karl had proposed for Austria-Hungary), while the Serbs wanted their king and the

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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 mon-arch. This lack of unity in the new countries of Central Europe made them weak and unstable.

The New Nations of Northeastern EuropeFollowing 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 demo-cratic 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 minori-ties 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 RussiaIn 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.

homogenous: the same throughout; not diverse


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Lenin in 1920

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 fac-tories, 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 territo-ries 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 PartyIn 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 demo-cratic 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 gov-ernment 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

transcaucasus: referring to the region on the other side of the Caucasus Mountains in Asia


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this government was under the complete control of the Bolshevik party, which in 1919 had begun to be called the Communist Party. Since the Communist Party was the only legal party in the USSR, its members controlled all higher political offices both in the republics and the union. Directing the Communist Party was a Central Committee, called the Politburo (short for Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). The Politburo was controlled by its chairman, Vladimir Lenin, who held the power of a dictator over both the party and the government.

Lenin insisted on strict discipline in the Communist Party. To be a party member, one had to go through a probation period in which he learned to abandon his mind, will, and body to the control of the party leadership. Lenin demanded such discipline because party members were to lead all workers (by force, if nec-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 all property and wealth. But, in the meantime, since society had not yet been “revolutionized,” a dictatorship was needed—Karl Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Lenin and the Communist Party used every means at their 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 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 reli-gion the “opiate of the people.” By promising a future life after death, religion, the Communists said, made people willing to bear injustices in this life.

Communist persecution of the Church began as soon as the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917. Lenin’s government immediately passed laws separating church and 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, how-ever, 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 vic-tory over the reactionary clergy is guaranteed,” he told his fellow Communists.

disseminate: to spread abroad, as if one were sowing seedopiate: something (such as the drug, opium) that causes a person to feel sleepy, dull, or inactive

United Council of Commissars(executive authority)

Central Government of the USSR

Government of a Soviet Republic

Union Congress of SovietsGovernment of a Soviet Socialist Republic

Provincial Congress

Union Central Executive Committee(bicameral, legislative authority)

Central Government

District Congress

Village Soviet City Soviet

Voters in the Villages Voters in the Cities

The Soviet Government


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Josif Stalin in 1917

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 vio-lent 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 uni-versalist; it rejects nationalism and the kind of imperialism whereby one nation or race dominates another. Communists want neither class, religion, nor race to sepa-rate 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 com-munal 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, say-ing 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 par-ticular nations. The Catholic Church is universalist.


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Stalin and Lenin in 1919

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 com-rades 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 govern-ment 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.

collectivize: to organize prop-erty (for instance, land, facto-ries, tools, farms) so that they are not owned privately but in common or by the governmentliquidation: the act of killing or getting rid of (from liquidate)


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Fascism in ItalyEven 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 black-smith, was a socialist who spent much of his time arguing about politics in the tav-ern 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 BlackshirtsThe 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 dis-charged 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.


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Mussolini, center, with his black-shirted 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 revolu-tion. 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 work-day. 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 dis-content 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 fight-ers”). 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 govern-ment 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

general strike: refusal by work-ers in all or many industries to work in order to bring employ-ers around to giving in to their demands


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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 DuceWhen 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) sup-ported Mussolini. They thought he was the leader who could bring peace, prosper-ity, 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 politi-cal 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 com-plete 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 dif-ferences 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 orga-nized 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 indepen-dent 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 anti-socialist. 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


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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 lib-

erty. 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 revo-

lution, 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 neigh-bors, 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 govern-ment 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.”


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Pope Pius XI

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, individu-als, 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, com-municated 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 reestab-lishment 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 gov-ernment 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 con-demned 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


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acres, centered on 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 cho-sen 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.

International boundary(city wall)

100 meters

500 feet0

0

RO M E

R O M E

VATICAN

BelvedereCourtyard

PignaCourtyard

Museums

Barracksof Papal

Gendarmes

Piazza del Risorgimento

Barracksof SwissGuardsSt.

DamasoCourtyard

Palace

Palaceof HolyOffice

TeutonicCollege

PetineMuseum

St. Charles’Palace

Palaceof Justice

OldGardens

Heliport

Villa ofPius IV

Monumentto St. Peter

St. Peter’sBasilica

SistineChapel

St. Peter’sSquare

Art Gallery

NewGardensLourdes

Grotto

Vatican RadioAdministration

Church ofSt. Stephen

St. Martin’sChapel

RailroadStation

Churchof

St. Anne

M18_04.aiVatican City State as it is today


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Vittore Emanuele III

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 con-cordat, 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 thou-sand 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 encycli-cal, 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 “super-natural 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 gov-ernment 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


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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 RepublicThe republican government of the German Reich had faced many challenges dur-ing 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 mem-

bers of the Social Democrats (a moderate socialist party) held the most seats but had to share power with mem-bers of the Democrats (a Liberal party) and the Catholic Center Party. This government had to face the threefold task of concluding peace with the Allies, forming a new constitution for Germany, and feeding a starving population. But the government was powerless in April to stop Communists from establishing a soviet republic in Bavaria. The Communist government was overthrown 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.

But the new government survived these challenges and, after signing the Versailles treaty in June 1919, approved a new constitution for Germany in July. The new con-stitution, worked out and signed in Weimar, a city 300 miles southwest of Berlin, created a democratic republic in which authority was shared by the central government and the various state governments. The central govern-ment had a two-house National Assembly, made up of a Reichstag (representing the people) and a Reichsrat (rep-resenting 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,

The Government of the Weimar Republic

Federal Government

President

Chancellor

National Assembly

Reichsrat Reichstag

State Governments

Citizens


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Pro-Lüttwitz soldiers in Berlin

commander in chief of the forces in Berlin, seized con-trol of the capital, forcing the chancellor and his govern-ment 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 invest-ments 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 posi-tion 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 govern-ment 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 eco-nomic 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 pay-ments were made, French and Belgian troops would occupy the highly industrial-ized 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.

Occupation, Resistance, and RecoveryThe Ruhr district was the source of most of Germany’s industrial wealth. By occu-pying 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 call-ing 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 gov-ernment 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 impris-onment and by blocking all exports of goods from the Ruhr region. They censored

Putsch: a German word for a secretly plotted and sudden attempt to overthrow a governmentinflation: a decrease in the value of money, which leads to a rise in prices for goodsmoratorium: a waiting period, a delaydefault: failure to fulfill an obligation. To be in default means to fail to keep an obligation.


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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 com-mittee significantly lowered the amount Germany would have to pay in reparations. The Dawes Committee report was approved by both the German and Allied govern-ments, 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 indus-trialists 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 low-ered the amount Germany had to pay in reparations. The mark had been replaced by


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A painting by the young Adolf Hilter

a new coin, the Reichsmark, and infla-tion 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 ear-lier), 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 pic-ture 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 employ-ment 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 deco-rated 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 prop-erty and claimed that all working men and races are equal. As he explained in Mein


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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 gov-ernment. 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 FührerBut 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 econ-omy 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


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Adolf Hitler giving the Nazi salute from his car while passing the Frauenkirche in Nuremberg at the annual Nazi party rally, September 5, 1934

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 elec-tion 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-year-old 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 chan-cellor; 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 chan-cellorship, 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 con-trol 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.

DictatorshipWith the power of the chancellor in his hands, Hitler began purging the government of his oppo-nents. 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 con-trol 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


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Hitler giving a speech, 1940

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 pow-ers 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 govern-ment 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 par-ties were illegal, except for his own. Like Mussolini, Hitler outlawed labor unions and forbade strikes; only the Nazi-controlled 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, how-ever, 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 dis-missed 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 ChurchThough 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

concentration camp: a camp where prisoners of war, politi-cal prisoners, refugees, or oth-ers are confined


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The signing of the concordat. Cardinal Pacelli sits at the head of the table

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 peri-odicals. The government promised not to force priests to reveal secrets told them in confession or during counseling. In return for other guarantees of


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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 govern-ment 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 govern-ment 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 reli-gious 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 suf-fered 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 “con-vinced” parents to turn Catholic or Evangelical schools into secular, government schools. By false accusations and rigged trials, the gov-

ernment 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


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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 concentra-tion camps, during the years Adolf Hitler held power in Germany.

The Pope against the FührerFor 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 vio-lating 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 anti-Christian 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 pagan-ism 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


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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 “whole-hearted 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.

divinize: to treat something as if it were God

apostasy: an abandonment of religious faith

livid: very angry; enraged

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 sup-ported 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 territo-ries on the Adriatic, and Bosnia, and Herzegovina went to the kingdom of Yugoslavia. Hungary lost Transylvania to Romania.


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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 Austria-Hungary. 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 divi-sions 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 cooper-ate 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 liqui-dated. 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 totali-tarian. 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 govern-•ment 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 sov-ereign 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 con-cordat, especially by depriving Catholic youth orga-nizations 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.

Chapter 18 Review (continued)

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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 rep-arations, 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 dramati-cally. 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 rela-tions 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 societyTreaty 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 head-quarters in Moscow, Komintern directed the activities of Communist Parties in Italy, France, Germany, and even the United Statescollectivize: to organize property (for instance, land, factories, tools, farms) so that they are not owned pri-vately but in common or by the governmentgeneral 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).



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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.

Central Characters

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929): the French pre-mier (known as The Tiger) who pushed for harsher penalties against Germany at the peace conference following the end of World War IBéla Kun (1886–1938 or 1939): the Bolshevik (Communist) leader who established the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919Admiral 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 LeninBenito Mussolini (1883–1945): Il Duce; the founder and head of the Fascist Party in Italy; later, prime minister and dictator of ItalyPius 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

Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (1876–1958): Pope Pius XI’s secretary of state who negotiated the concordat with Germany

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? 6. How are Fascism and Communism alike? How

do they differ? 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 govern-ment. 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


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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 BywaysJesse 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, blue-eyed German who took the spotlight at the games, but the black man, Jesse Owens. Owens performed spectacularly in track events and won four gold med-als. Even though the crowd of over 110,000 specta-tors wildly cheered Owens, Hitler refused to shake Jesse’s brown hand. Instead, the Führer walked out of the coliseum in a rage.

Documents

18 The Rise of Totalitarian Regimes · 521 PROOF 1 2 3 4 5 6 18 The Rise of Totalitarian Regimes A t about midnight of July 16–17, 1918, Nikolai Romanov, the deposed tsar of Russia,