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Inter-war years
During the period between the First World War and the Second World War (1918-1939), the economies of European countries and of the United States went through various phases. -
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Post-war crisis
During the post-war period, between 1918 and 1923, Europe experienced a significant economic crisis which was characterised by:
High level of debts.
A shortage of products. -
Blackshirts
Benito Mussolini created his unofficial army of fascists. This paramilitary, ultra-nationalist group attacked those they considered enemies of the state: strikers, socialists and communists. -
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Nazi Party
When the Nazi Party was active. -
Recovery in the 1920s
The United States and Japan were the first countries to recover from the crisis, because their industries had not been devastated by war. -
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The roaring twenties
Consumerism grew again and sales of consumer goods such as cars and household
appliances increased. -
National Fascist Party
Mussolini founded it. The party pitted unity against individualism and proposed a single-party system as means to achieving stability. -
Italian Fascism
Fascism was the system of authoritarian government established by Benito Mussolini in
Italy when he became head of the government in 1922.
Although the monarchy was maintained, with Victor Emmanuel III as head of state,
Mussolini, transformed the democratic state into a dictatorship. -
General strike
Mussolini replaced striking workers with party members. This caused the strike to fail and greatly increased the popularity of his party. -
Germany defaulted on a reparations payment
When Germany defaulted on a reparations payment, France occupied a German industrial region called the Ruhr valley. This intensified the economic and political instability in Germany. -
Beer Hall Putsch
Hitler led a failed coup d'etat known as Beer Hall Putsch and he was imprisoned for one year. -
Dawes Plan
The US intervened with the Dawes Plan in order to recover its money. The plan involved dividing German debt into yearly payments and granting it a series of loans. -
Stalinism (Lenin's death)
Stalinism was the system of totalitarian government which was established in the USSR
when, after Lenin’s death in 1924, Joseph Stalin eliminated all possible political rivals
and took control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). -
Germany's economy began to recover
It was able to pay reparations to
the victorious European countries, which in turn, were able to pay back their loans. -
First five-year plan
Stalin introduced it to transform communist Russia into a industrial power on a par with capitalist countries. -
Young Plan
The plan reduced the reparations that Germany owed because everyone involved had realised that Germany was unable to pay the full amount -
The Wall Street crash
In 1929, the Wall Street stock market in New York collapsed. This was the beginning of
a major economic crisis, leading to the Great Depression of the 1930s. -
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The Great Depression
The Great Depression of the 1930s began with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and
continued for a decade. This economic crisis led to a fall in prices (deflation) and put an
end to the prosperity of the roaring twenties.
The crisissoon spread to Europe and other parts of the world because the United States
stopped investing and asked other countries to repay the loans they had received after
the war. It was a really global depression. -
New Deal
In the United States, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt introduced his New Deal in 1933. This was a set of government programmes
which focused on the three Rs: relief for the poor, recovery of the economy (more public
work) and reform of the banking system. -
Fire in the Reichstag
He blamed communist for a fire and used the event to pass a law which strengthened his power. He declared a state of emergency, limited citizens' rights and freedoms, banned all other political parties and set up the Gestapo, which was the Nazi secret police -
Night of the Long Knives
The main targets of this purge were members of the SA and its leader, Ernts Rohm. The reason for this was that the organisation, with its four million members, had started to pose a threat to Hitler's totalitarin vision.. The Gestapo and the SS murdered more than a hundred people and imprisoned thousands more. -
Führer
President Hindenburg died and Hitler immediately unified the positions of president and chancellor under the title of Führer. This marked the beginning of the Third Reich. -
Stalin introduced a constitution
This constitution granted citizens more rights, such as universal suffrage