CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. The Peace of Paris, 1919–20

III. Economic Recovery and the Reconstruction of

Europe in the 1920s

IV. The Conservative Reaction of the 1920s

V. The Changing Conditions of Life in Europe

VI. European Culture after the Deluge

VII. European Democracy after World War I

A. German Democracy in the 1920s: The

Weimar Republic

B. Postwar Recovery in Britain and France

VIII. The Great Depression of the 1930s
A. Léon Blum and the Popular Front in France

IX. The Spanish Second Republic and the Spanish

Civil War

X. The Global Struggle for Freedom from Europe

XI. Mussolini and Fascist Italy, 1919–39

XII. Hitler and Nazi Germany, 1928–39

XIII. Stalin and Soviet Communism, 1924–39

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CHAPTER 28

EUROPE IN AN AGE OF DICTATORSHIP,

1919–39

A

n old Europe lay in ruins in 1919. Five years

of world war had swept away four empires:

the Russian, German, Habsburg, and Ot-

toman. A dozen new states appeared, chiefly

in central and eastern Europe, stretching from Finland

in the north to Turkey in the south. The war also de-

stroyed monarchy as the dominant form of European

government, and it burdened the new democratic gov-

ernments with great problems.

Chapter 28 looks at Europe in the generation after

World War I. It begins with the peace settlement

reached at Paris in 1919 and the problems that this

peace bequeathed to the next generation. Next, it ex-

amines postwar problems (such as the reconstruction

of devastated areas) and attitudes (such as conservative

desires to preserve the old Europe) that derived from

the war. Subsequent sections discuss the problems of

postwar democracies, such as the Great Depression of

the 1930s, and the controversial governments (such as

the Popular Fronts in France and Spain) that tried to

address them. The chapter then examines the rise of

dictatorships as the typical form of European govern-

ment. Separate sections focus on the forms of dictator-

ship in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Communist

Russia.

The Peace of Paris, 1919–20

The fighting in World War I ended with the Com-

piègne armistice of November 1918, which disarmed

Germany to make further combat impossible. Similarly,

the Paris Peace Conference, which assembled in Janu-

ary 1919, disarmed German diplomacy; a German dele-

gation was allowed to come to Versailles but not to

negotiate. (The Allies held separate conferences for

each of the defeated powers at palaces around Paris;

peace with Germany was planned at the royal palace

in suburban Versailles.) The German republic, founded

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