Nazi Totalitarianism and World War II
Nazi Totalitarianism
In 1933, the National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler won the elections. Supported by right-wing parties, he formed a government, imposed a dictatorship, liquidated the Weimar Republic, and founded the German Third Reich. Hitler combined a desire for revenge against the victors of World War I with measures for economic recovery, imbued with racist antisemitism and an exalted pan-Germanism.
Hitler’s Nazi Totalitarian Regime
Hitler’s Nazi totalitarian regime was characterized by:
- In domestic politics: He won control of the Nazi party, whose instruments were an implacable political police (Gestapo) and various paramilitary forces, such as the SA.
- In foreign policy: A central point was to denounce the Treaty of Versailles. At the same time, there were land claims, resulting in clashes with neighbors and threatening international peace.
- In economic policy: Self-sufficiency was pursued through investment in public works. Industrial production was operated and oriented to military needs. The consequences of this policy were the elimination of unemployment and the achievement of full employment by 1938.
- In society: A fatalistic policy was fostered to increase the pool of soldiers, and militarized workers were offered stability in work.
The Reasons for the Outbreak of WWII
During the 1930s, a series of events occurred that explain the outbreak of World War II:
- Territorial expansion of totalitarian states: Germany, Italy, and Japan led to the disruption of international peace. Germany claimed and annexed the Sudetenland and ended up occupying almost all of Czechoslovakia and Austria. Italy occupied Abyssinia (Africa) and later Albania. In the East, Japan, which had occupied Korea, invaded Manchuria and other territories in China.
- The democratic nations (Britain and France) implemented a policy of appeasement that did not stop the expansionism of the totalitarian powers.
- The formation of the Axis Berlin-Rome-Tokyo: Germany and Italy signed a cooperation agreement in 1936, to which Japan later joined.
Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany and abandon the policy of appeasement.
The War
About 110 million fighters were mobilized, and every means was employed to fight the enemy, such as economic warfare and the war economy. Weapons were perfected, more sophisticated weapons were used, and technical innovations such as the jet and radar were employed. New tactics of war were resorted to, such as:
- Blitzkrieg: Used by the Germans, it was based on surprise attacks and the concentration of forces at a point where tanks, backed by aircraft, broke the enemy’s defenses.
- Scorched earth: Used by the Soviets, it involved destroying everything in their flight that might be exploited by the enemy, such as crops, animals, and implements.
First Phase (1939-1942)
- The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 sparked the war.
- In 1940, Germany occupied Denmark and Norway and defeated the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, using the tactics of blitzkrieg.
- Hitler failed in the Battle of Britain, where British aviation beat Germany.
- Germany undertook to adhere Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria to the Axis, and in 1941, invaded Yugoslavia and Greece, gaining control of the Balkans.
- Later, Hitler confronted the Soviet Union, whose army, although it fell back, resisted using scorched earth tactics. The USSR allied with the British.
- From Europe, the war spread to the colonies of the contending countries.
- During Japanese expansion in Asia, the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Japan.
- The Japanese bombing of the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in 1941 caused the entry of the U.S. into the war, with all its industrial potential, on the Allied side.