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FASCISM AND HOLOCAUST DISCUSSION How and why did fascism arise, and why did it have such dangerous and violent results? What are the most important things we should learn about the Holocaust, and how should we take that information forward in our present and future? Make sure you avoid a vague answer -- saying that we should never let it happen again is something we all will answer, and so what we are looking for here is something more substantive in terms of what really allowed that to happen and what we now do with that information as people studying the past and living in our own times. China and Russia Audio Lecture The chapters are very important in this module, as are the primary sources on the Soviet Union. We also have a documentary on Stalin. But for some reinforcement of main ideas, please listen to this after having read through the textbook chapters. Transcript follows. Play media comment. Transcript [00:00:00] Your textbook does a very good job with World War I, World WarII, and the communist regimes that develop in the Soviet Union, which was Russia, and China. So I don't need to deliver a lot here. I am also very cognizant of the fact that you're working on a significant paper with a lot of points, and so we don't want to load you down with too much material at this juncture, especially as we also have to contend with that coming Thanksgiving holiday and then studying for our final exam. So this is the point at which I want you to realize we're delivering the material. You are to study this material. Of course, you continue to take your tests online, but you also should be paying a lot of attention to that paper, focusing on it. And then of course you will come back and review this material as you head towards the final exam. [00:00:47] [00:00:50] Now, the few points I want to make about this issue of communism and really socialist revolutions that happen in Russia and China is that they have similarities and differences. And to start I want to go back to some of the points that the book made all the way back in your chapter on the industrial revolution to bring Karl Marx back into the picture. And really quickly, you'll remember that Marx was observing the capitalist world in evolution. And everything that Marx wrote about that would contribute to a socialist ideology was really about capitalism. And ultimately he saw capitalism as something that would evolve and crumble on itself due to the fact that it is so highly exploitative -- that workers end up becoming these pieces of a machine that produces wealth for people who don't actually do the work, and that ultimately those workers are so disaffected from the labor that they essentially don't own anymore -- that they're just kind of being paid to do -- would revolt right and would lead this revolution. And that is very simplistic, and we could have an entire course on the concepts of Marx, but I'm just bringing us back to the idea that Marx was writing about and looking at capitalism, and in order to have a socialist revolution that would lead to a communist country. One would have to go through capitalism first because it is the capitalism that then creates this, this socialist revolution that creates the rising up of the proletariat against what was called the bourgeoisie, you know the business-owning class. [00:02:35] [00:02:37] Now the idea then that you get a socialist revolution out of a very capitalist country would lead us to not think it would happen in China or in Russia because in the 1800s neither of these places was capitalist and neither was really industrialized. Russia attempted a top-down industrialization, and this was also discussed in that chapter on industrialization that you can go back and review, but it never was able to do it to the extent that Europe or the United States could because in fact it was not organic -- it was not being driven by innovators and people who were industrialists and businessmen; it was being driven by those who wanted to compete want to create industrialization. And so it just added another layer of authoritarian exploitation but not a layer of capitalist exploitation. Still, Russian intellectuals would read Marx, and they were educated on everything that was going on in Europe and all the major writings of Europe, and they understood that they were being exploited by the czars rule, authoritarian as it was -- maybe wasn't capitalism, but it was definitely exploitative, and it was definitely a way in which a populace was being punished. The czar ruled with an iron fist and could rule arbitrarily, had a kind of secret police around him, and was in collaboration with the Russian Orthodox Church to essentially control the population. And that was enough, right, for many people to be very dissatisfied. The czar would use scapegoating, often blaming certain minority populations -- you had significant numbers of Muslims and then had significant numbers of Jews in Russia. And those people became a very obvious scapegoat for the czar to use, and with the czar's permission oftentimes outburst of violence would occur against Jews, and this would be to distract from this heavy-handed rule but also from the fact that Russia just started to become miles behind Europe and United States in terms of development and in terms of the rights and liberties that people had. [00:04:58] [00:05:00] In China, you know, there's a similar situation. You have an ailing emperor who starts to have almost no control over the state and over the population. You have a series of unequal treaties in which Europe is just continuously kind of deciding what happens in China. And as you read in the book, as we cross the century line from the 19th century to the 20th century, you have more and more rebellions. And it is in fact Great Britain and other Europeans who have to bail the Chinese state out when they are trying to deal with those rebellions, essentially funding the resistance to those rebellions and squashing them. And then of course Europe asks always to be paid back. So it puts the Chinese empire into great fiscal difficulty and lots and lots of debt to Europe. [00:05:54] [00:05:55] So, you know, you have these two authoritarian states. And it's just something to point out that neither seems like the type that should really go into a socialist regime, if we're reading Marx. But what they do have at their core is this notion of being very exploitative very authoritarian and very repressive towards your average person, who would long for a change. [00:06:19] [00:06:20] So if we fast forward to the time of the change in Russia -- and again I'm not going to go into great detail because your book does a very good job of this -- you know, the major figure in that revolution becomes Lenin. And here's the other really interesting thing about this revolution: again it's not happening in a capitalist context, and also it's not necessarily being 100 percent driven by the people. They're dissatisfied but they don't read Marx, you know, and they may understand that workers are uniting workers and making changes, but they may have lots of diverse ideas as to how to get away out of authoritarian rule, how to assert their independence. Now what Lenin wants is to take the direction of socialism because he believes that the kind of world that Marx describes would be the right one when thinking about what a socialist regime would look like. But what's interesting about Lenin is he doesn't think that you have to have this revolution come from the people. In fact, as an intellectual, somebody who has you know studied in and read the works of Europe, he kind of sees regular Russian peasants, who are essentially living in a feudal world, as backwards, as superstitious, as way overly religious, and as incapable of really driving a revolution. For Lenin, he thinks it is the group of intellectuals who create the Communist Party, essentially, who should lead the revolution and tell people what is in their best interest. So it is interesting because the revolution happens in a top-down manner in many ways, led by this intellectual and his and his cohort, and whereas it does get the support of a lot of people because they have had it with the czar and with that type of rule, it is not crafted by them nor is it guided by them. It is guided by Lenin, who firmly believed that he was in a much better position to decide what should happen to Russian people than Russian people were. [00:08:24] [00:08:26] Now I also should point out that Lenin wasn't the only person talking about this. Russia had a lot of intellectuals talking about socialism and like how to move in that direction. And there were two different trains of thought. One train of thought was the Lenin train of thought that was like, look, I realize I've read Marx and we're not a capitalist country and our people are peasants, not workers, but since we read it and we know the end result, let's just go to the end result, like let's create a socialist society -- we can skip all those stages that Marx describes in what you have to be capitalism you have to be exploited and that people have to have enough -- we can skip all of that and go to the end result because we know what it's supposed to look like and because we're educated people who can guide the massive population in this. But there were others who said, no, honestly, you know the way you get to socialism is through capitalism, and we are going to have to just create a capitalist society, and then basically that capitalist society will make certain people wealthy and a lot of people not wealthy and those workers will get exploited and after several generations they'll revolt. But like who's going to buy that? You know if you sell that to the Russian people as hey let's do capitalism so that you know some of you all do find alive you guys will just basically be poor workers instead of poor peasants and then one day maybe your great grandchildren will revolt. Like no one's going to go for that. So it's pretty easy to see why even if Lenin thought that Russians can really do the revolution themselves, they would go for his brand. [00:09:57] [00:09:59] So the Russian Revolution then takes place in that manner and it has an aggravating factor which was World War I. You know, the czar got Russia into the war because it kept him relevant and it made him a player and he had to think about his territory on the western front of Russia. But it was a war nobody else wanted to be in in Russia, and it cost a lot of money and it cost a lot of lives and people start starving and soldiers were deserting, they didn't have the proper clothing. They were just getting beat by Germany. And so the war is a really good window for people to have enough and for Lenin people to be able to eventually take control. And it leads to the downfall of the czar and the downfall of imperial rule by czars which had basically been in place since the 1400s, so some 500 years. That wasn't really just you know the clean end. There was a civil war that ensued, and people who supported the monarchy-- wealthy people, people who had land -- fought vehemently against this new Communist Party that was taking control of Russia. And that that civil war lasted three years, so Russia was in World War I, then exited that war to have its revolution and then immediately drove into a civil war that finally ends. By about, you know, 1921 or so Russia has basically completed its revolution and is firmly in the hands of Lenin and his Communist Party. And your book goes over this and then gets you into the transition to Stalin's rule and we also have a documentary on Stalin. [00:11:42] [00:11:44] So let's compare that for a second to China. So China as we know also has an emperor who is highly exploitative, lots of authoritarian rule, we've talked about it at length. When the Chinese dynasty falls, unlike in Russia, China doesn't just go into communist rule. China goes through a generation of trying to do nationalist rule, trying to do a form of like Westernized republican rule in which they're going to try to emulate forms of Western government. It makes sense because China has been getting assaulted by the West now for basically, you know, 80 years straight, and they've seen that Japan has been able to defend itself by adopting a lot of Western norms. And so at this point it makes sense that if the dynasty falls, which it does at the beginning of the century, that the next step to take is to institute some sort of a westernized government and allow people a voice and try to work with that model. And it is by far and away not really perfect. And it is something that is very fitful in its evolution, goes through two major leaders as they try to craft this National Party. But, you know, it is a phase in Chinese history that we have to remember is there, that the Chinese people go through this interim phase between being ruled by the emperor and then turning to communism -- which is an attempt to look at a kind of Western style government. [00:13:26] [00:13:26] Now the problem is, you know, if you are Chinese there's millions and millions and millions and millions of Chinese people. The likelihood that you understand Western government and that you understand a republican nationalist party if you don't live in one of those major cities where Europeans have kind of been trading and then throwing their weight around is very low. A lot of Chinese people don't really think the same way as or identify with these leaders who are educated and who understand the West, whereas a regular Chinese peasant does not. So in trying to make this new revolution towards a western government these new leaders in China, they really get more support from urban people for people who are educated from people that exposure to the west. But the regular peasantry, which is the vast majority of Chinese people, they're alienated from these ideas, and they don't necessarily see the benefits of them right away. You know, you may see some participation amongst people who know how to participate. But just spreading a new nationalist government out in the countryside which has been feudal for thousands of years is very difficult. So what this does is it leaves room -- it leaves room for people with alternate ideas to come up. And that's where you get Mao. Now interestingly China also has a war in its story that acts as the window. But rather than it being World War I, for China it's World War II. So. During World War II, China is attacked by Japan, which has been actually attacking Russia and China for many years now starting in 1905 as it started to kind of create this new empire around the Pacific. But in earnest, there were invasions of rather great significance during World War II, and it was up to the Chinese government to defend China against Japan, which remember had modernized and now had a large military and, you know, more advanced weaponry than China. So no longer being ruled by an emperor, it was up to the new Chinese Nationalist government to defend China. And the way to do that is to mobilize people to defend. [00:15:48] [00:15:50] But the people who needed to be mobilized are all these peasants, right. So why did these peasants rise up to help defend China? Not because the Nationalists called on them but in fact because someone else did, and it was Mao over the course of the time preceding World War II in the twenties and in the thirties, Mao began to voice a new type of idea for the future of China, and he did it in the countryside, out in the areas where people farmed. And he was voicing communism. He was talking about the benefits of moving towards a socialist regime. And he was criticizing this government for just being Westernized. When was the last time something Westernized did anything good for China, right? It's done nothing but bad. Because these nationalists were not really very good at being in contact with rural people, you know, Mao had a lot of influence over those peasants. In addition, the Nationalist government really didn't like Mao at all and persecuted Mao and the Communist Party that had been created in the 1920s, basically chasing them out of major cities and chasing them out of the eastern seaboard of China. And so the way for the Communists to survive was to go out into the more western and southern areas of China and make contact with peasants, and, you know, this was a period in which Mao literally went around on a donkey and did thousands of miles on foot with other you know members of the new Communist Party and just started to get support. And he knew how to talk to peasants, you know. He knew how to talk to people who didn't think about or speak the language of westernisation but really wanted something better in their lives. [00:17:39] [00:17:41] So when we bring Japan's invasion into this story in World War II, what we get is a national government that needs the peasants to get into the military right now and start to mount a great defense, but they can't get people to do it on their own. They have to ask Mao to mobilize those people, and it is Mao and the Communist Party who basically come to the rescue and who mobilize many, many people to fight off Japan. And that is the entry point for communists into rule of China because essentially now we've shown that the people who have the power to mobilize the population are the communists, not the nationalists. And so by the time World War II has ended, the Nationalist Party is very, very weekend, and their struggle with the Communists is turning against them. And it is the Communist Party that becomes the de facto ruling party and ultimately by 1949 is able to put itself in charge of China and declare China a communist -- the People's Republic of China -- a communist state that year under the rulership of Mao. [00:19:00] [00:19:01] So the parallels between China and Russia are really interesting. The critical role that a war plays on the fact that there are these two factions that kind of struggle, the fact you have this one charismatic leader Lenin on one side and then Mao on the other side. At the center and the fact that you have a large peasant population rather than an industrialized working populace. These are things that they have in common but they have some differences right. You know there are differences in terms of the timing of it. Russia transitions earlier and it goes through a much shorter, in fact kind of nonexistent, experimentation with any sort of representational government, whereas China goes into this later because it spends a whole generation trying to dabble in in a western-style republican government. They have different understandings of socialism, you know: whereas Lenin thought peasants were backwards and needed to be educated, Mao loved peasants and thought they were like the best form of support. He's going to speak their language and talk to them directly had no inkling of the urge to turn them into urban people. And you know Russia was doing this just kind of as a first country to do this, whereas China was doing it while being able to look at what was happening in Russia and see how the experimentation with communism was working. [00:20:31] [00:20:32] So I will let the book handle the rest of this. You also have a documentary on Stalin. You have primary sources. It's more than enough. But I do just like to always point to these kind of little nuances so that we can understand a little bit better what was happening but also put China and Russia into relationship with one another in the story.[00:20:32] PreviousNext Communist Russia Primary Sources Source 21.1 Stalin on Stalinism In January 1933, Stalin appeared before a group of high-ranking party officials to give a report on the achievements of the country’s first five-year plan for overall development. The years encompassed by that plan, roughly 1928–1932, coincided with Stalin’s rise to the position of supreme leader within the governing Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Questions to consider as you examine the source: What larger goals for the country underlay Stalin’s report? Why did he believe these goals had to be achieved so rapidly? To what indications of success did Stalin point? Which of these claims do you find most and least credible? What do you think Stalin meant when he referred to the “world-wide historic significance” of the Soviet Union’s achievement? Keep in mind what was happening in the capitalist world at the time. Joseph Stalin The Results of the First Five-Year Plan, 1933 The fundamental task of the five-year plan was to convert the U.S.S.R. . . . into an industrial and powerful country, fully self-reliant and independent of the caprices of world capitalism, . . . to completely oust the capitalist elements, to widen the front of socialist forms of economy, and to create the economic basis for the abolition of classes in the U.S.S.R., for the building of a socialist society. . . . Let us pass now to the results of the fulfillment of the five-year plan. . . . We did not have an iron and steel industry, the basis for the industrialization of the country. Now we have one. [Stalin follows with a long list of new industries developed during the first five-year plan: tractors, automobiles, machine tools, chemicals, agricultural machinery, electric power, oil and coal, metals.] And we have not only created these new great industries, but have created them on a scale and in dimensions that eclipse . . . European industry. And as a result of all this the capitalist elements have been completely and irrevocably ousted from industry, and socialist industry has become the sole form of industry in the U.S.S.R. . . . Finally, as a result of all this the Soviet Union has been converted from a weak country, unprepared for defense, into a country mighty in defense . . . , a country capable of producing on a mass scale all modern means of defense and of equipping its army with them in the event of an attack from abroad. We are told: This is all very well; many new factories have been built, and the foundations for industrialization have been laid; but it would have been far better . . . to produce more cotton fabrics, shoes, clothing, and other goods for mass consumption. . . . Then we would now have more cotton fabrics, shoes, and clothing. But we would not have a tractor industry or an automobile industry; we would not have anything like a big iron and steel industry; we would not have metal for the manufacture of machinery — and we would remain unarmed while encircled by capitalist countries armed with modern technique. . . . It was necessary to urge forward a country which was a hundred years behindhand and which was faced with mortal danger because of its backwardness. . . . The five-year plan in the sphere of agriculture was a five-year plan of collectivization. . . . [I]t was necessary in addition to industrialization, to pass from small, individual peasant farming to . . . large collective farms, equipped with all the modern implements of highly developed agriculture, and to cover unoccupied land with model state farms. . . . The Party has succeeded in routing the kulaks [relatively well-off peasants] as a class, although they have not yet been dealt the final blow; the laboring peasants have been emancipated from kulak bondage and exploitation, and the Soviet regime has been given a firm economic basis in the countryside, the basis of collective farming. In our country, the workers have long forgotten unemployment. . . . Look at the capitalist countries: what horrors result there from unemployment! There are now no less than 30–40 million unemployed in those countries. . . . The same thing must be said of the peasants. . . . It has brought them into the collective farms and placed them in a secure position. It has thus eliminated the possibility of the differentiation of the peasantry into exploiters — kulaks — and exploited — poor peasants — and abolished destitution in the countryside. . . . Now the peasant is in a position of security, a member of a collective farm which has at its disposal tractors, agricultural machinery, seed funds, reserve funds. . . . [W]e have achieved such important successes as to evoke admiration among the working class all over the world; we have achieved a victory that is truly of world-wide historic significance. Source: Joseph Stalin, “The Results of the First Five-Year Plan,” Pravda, January 10, 1933. Source 21.3 Living through Collectivization The reality of collectivization was often quite different from the perspective of those undergoing the process, as the following set of sources illustrates. Source 21.3A details one of the most painful aspects of collectivization — the expulsion of kulaks, or rich peasants, believed by communist authorities to bear the germs of rural capitalism and to be unalterably opposed to socialism. Many of those who remained on the collective farms deeply resented the regimentation, often branding their role as slavery or even a “second serfdom.” Furthermore the government’s persistent demand for more grain from the collective farms, which was needed to support the industrialization drive, contributed to a terrible famine in the early 1930s that led to millions of deaths. Source 21.3B comes from a report by a Communist Party official on the desperate conditions in the collective farms near Novosibirsk in Siberia during that time. Even after the famine had passed, life on the collective farms remained intolerable for many, as reflected in Source 21.3C, a letter written by a peasant to a Russian official in 1937. Questions to consider as you examine the sources: In what ways did the realities of collectivization contradict Stalin’s high hopes for the movement? Construct an imaginary debate between an activist supporter of the collective farms and a peasant opponent. Why were Stalin and the Communist Party so insistent on destroying the kulaks? Source 21.3A Anna Akimovna Dubova “Branded Kulaks and Dispossessed,” 1928–1929 [E]veryone was opposed to joining the kolkhoz, but people were forced to join. If someone resisted, he was punished and everything was taken from him — his land, his animals, everything he had. People were literally herded onto the kolkhoz. . . . We were branded kulaks and dispossessed. They took away our vote because we had this shop and engaged in trade. Then in 1929 forced requisitioning of grain began and they started imposing taxes in kind, procurement quotas, and who did they impose them on? On lishentsy [“deprived ones,” peasants accused of being kulaks], of course. . . . So my father was put in prison for not meeting [quotas]. . . . They wanted to deport us. But then I guess some chairman must have taken pity on us. . . . Now the poor peasants, or bednota, immediately went after our possessions. They were filled with such hatred. “Why should they have lived so well?” But others were deported in our place [to meet government quotas for dispossession of kulaks in various regions]. . . . We were told that we could settle wherever we wanted, to get going, and everything was taken from us, everything. I remember so well how Mama sat and cried when they took away the cow. Then they took away the horse. . . . They took down the mirror, took away the bed . . . and then said “get out of here.”. . . No one would take us in any longer. Everybody was afraid that they would be accused of harboring kulaks, that people would say, “Aha, so you’re sympathetic to kulaks. That’s it for you; you’ll be deported too.” I remember how Mother went to her brother, to her own father and mother, to the very spot where she had been married, and even they couldn’t keep her. Source: Barbara Alpern Engel and Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck, A Revolution of Their Own(Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 26–28. Reproduced with permission of WESTVIEW PRESS in the format Republish in a book via Copyright Clearance Center. Source 21.3B Letter from Feigin to Ordzhonikidze, April 9, 1932 I was in various kolkhozes . . . , but everywhere there was only one sight — that of a huge shortage of seed, famine, and extreme emaciation of livestock. In the kolkhozes which I observed I attempted to learn how much the livestock had diminished in comparison with the years 1927–28. It turns out that kolkhoz Ziuzia has 507 milch cows at present while there were 2000 in 1928. . . . The situation of the kolkhoz livestock farms is a bad one, primarily because of lack of feed. Milk production has reached extremely low levels of 1, 2 or 3 liters per day instead of the 5–7 liters normal for this region in a high-yield year. . . . The main issue is the fact that almost all of the kolkhozniks’ [residents of the collective farms] livestock is contracted [by the state] and removed. . . . In addition, when this livestock is contracted, the kolkhoznik and individual farmers slaughter off the rest. The second item concerns the sowing campaign. The situation is such that there is not enough seed in the kolkhozes. There is no way that we will be able to fulfill the plan for grain production. . . . Besides this, horses are quite emaciated, a significant number of them have already died, and in addition, the people do not have provisions. Third issue — the peasant's attitude. Their attitude is utterly bad in light of the famine and the fact that they are losing their last cows through contracting — as a result the kolkhoznik has neither bread nor milk. I saw all this with my own eyes and am not exaggerating. People are starving, living on food substitutes, they grow weaker, and naturally, under such circumstances, their mood is hostile. Source: Letter from Feigin to Ordzhonikidze, April 9, 1932, “Revelations from the Russian Archives: Collectivization of Livestock,” Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/aa2feign.html. Source 21.3C Leaving the Collective Farms, 1937 I read . . . about the achievements of the collective farms, but that’s all window-dressing. If you look inside the collective farms, then it will surely be the opposite. . . . What really shows how things are is the way the kolkhozniks are leaving the collective farms. . . . If you count the old population that used to be in the [villages], only 50 percent is still there. That fact demonstrates that people are unwilling to live in kolkhoz. . . . But what explains the kolkhozniks’ departure from the collective farms? I think it is that the kolkhozy and the kolkhozniks are insulted by the government. And this is why: If you compare workers in factories, they live better than kolkhozniks. If you want to prove that — there are kolkhozniks who left the collective farms two years ago and got jobs at factories and enterprises, and they write that now it has become better to live at the mills and factories than in the kolkhozy. There you know how much you earn every day, they write; you can make 15 rubles and more at the factory; you can buy cloth and other goods too, as much as you want; and they write “I live much better here than in the kolkhoz.” But just let the kolkhoznik try to buy something where he lives — you can’t buy cloth here and the kolkhoznik goes around badly dressed. . . . Now what we have is a pecking order in real life in which the kolkhozniks have missed the boat and you can’t get any lower than the village. Source: Quoted in Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 102. Source 21.6 Living through the Stalinist Terror More than anything else, it was the Terror — sometimes called the Great Purges — that came to define Stalinism as a distinctive phenomenon in the history of Soviet communism. Millions of people were caught up in this vast process of identifying and eliminating so-called “enemies of the people,” many of them loyal communist citizens. Source 21.6A provides an excerpt from the memoirs of Irina Kakhovskaya, an ardent revolutionary, though not a party member, who was arrested in 1937 and spent seventeen years either in prison or in a labor camp. Here she describes her arrest and interrogation. Source 21.6B comes from the experience of Eugenia Ginsberg, a woman who survived many years in perhaps the most notorious of the gulag camps — Kolyma in the frigid northeastern corner of the Soviet Union. In this selection, Ginsberg recounts an ordinary day in the camps. Beyond those arrested, killed, or imprisoned during Stalin’s terror were those left behind, fearful of their own arrest, anxiously awaiting news of their missing loved ones,

Peer 1 Aoxiang Following World War I, some difficulties led to the rise of fascism. It responded to the expansion of liberal democracy and socialism/communism. Under fascism, people were forced to submit to the state, and the needs and desires of the state were prioritized over individuals (Petrocelli, Fascism in the 1930s, slide 2). People supported fascism because they felt that the government had failed to address the economic and social problems they were facing at the time. Leaders such as Mussolini took advantage of people's desperation to gain support and turn against the socialists whom they had initially supported (Petrocelli, Fascism in the 1930s, slide 5). Fascism was primarily defined by a commitment to a strong leader who would issue demands that people would comply with and that the state would be revered. Ethnocentrism, militarism, and ultranationalism were also prevalent components of fascism, as explained by (Petrocelli, Fascism in the 1930s, slide 3). Fascism's constituent parts produced extremely harmful outcomes since many people died during its rise to power. The results of fascism are detrimental in the sense that it is mapped with a lot of injustices to the citizens and persecution of opponents. As illustrated by Allosso & Williford (350-351), Mussolini, the mai, the center of command, disbanded all political parties in Mussolini's case. Restricted press freedom so the state would not be afraid to conduct more civil offenses, and the press would never expose his nefarious acts. Because labor unions were suppressed, employees had no voice to advocate for themselves and were forced to accept the government's choice. Jews were excluded from government jobs and branded as disloyal, which led to widespread discrimination. Jews were excluded from government jobs and branded as disloyal (Petrocelli, Fascism in the 1930s), which led to widespread discrimination and hatred. The holocaust in Germany by the Nazi government is as a result of fascism. Hitler's opponents and the Jews in Germany would not have been persecuted if there had been a democratic government at that time. Communists, socialists, and other political opponents of the Nazi government faced imprisonment and persecution because the Nazis wanted to be in complete control (Petrocelli, Holocaust by National Holocaust, slide 9). A great lesson we can learn from the holocaust is never to disregard the significance of democracy, which might look insignificant until it is lost. Poor leadership creates disunity among individuals, and it is such that divide and rule and rule and rule that fascists employ in exercising their power and authority. We also learn the importance of advocating for leaders who have the interest of all the citizens at heart. People need to be educated about leadership and the benefits of advocating for the right leaders to avoid such happenings in the future. Freedom and human rights are something that people should not take for granted; people have to stand up for themselves and ensure that they do away with individuals or groups that want to popularize selfish ambitions that may harm the people. Going forward, people should learn to support democracy and learn to respect each other. When democracy and respect are withheld, it is impossible for fascists to win.. (523 words) Peer 2 Fuyu The rise of fascist ideologies across the world was significantly correlated with the growing disillusionment over liberal democratic and socialist ideologies. In nations such as Germany and Italy where undesirable aspects of the social system such as unemployment and poverty were rife despite embracing parliamentary systems of governance, fascism offered a radical choice of a system of governance concentrated mostly on one leading figure, who essentially acted as an anchor of hope for the people. The potent danger of fascist ideologies can be identified from the common elements that embody its beliefs and practices. Notably, fascism was commonly associated with the veneration of the state, devotion to a strong and central leader, ethnocentrism, ultra-nationalism, and militarism (Petrocelli, “Fascism in 1930s,” Slide 3). The extreme power of the military and pervasive or xenophobic hatred of other nations together with the potential for a totalitarian leader to become too ambitious meant that the states were essentially volatile and without an efficient state control mechanism such as a working parliamentary system, the fascist state had very few to no avenues of controlling against crises. This was the case for Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini who, after attaining control over the country, would go on to impose total control over Italian social and economic life, outlaw all the other oppositional parties, and subsequently crown himself as the supreme leader, “Il Duce,” of Italy (Allosso and Williford Chapter 8). Following such sweeping control over a nation, fascist leaders such as Mussolini and Adolf Hitler sought to expand their ambitions to international politics through strategies such as violent expansionism to neighboring nations, and with little in terms of opposition, the leaders would get what they wanted and thus become a catalyst to the disruption of the existing world order. Although the story of the persecution of European Jews began very early during the Crusades, the Holocaust was one of the darkest stages in the history of the Jews’ occupation of Europe. Before the Holocaust, a mounting anti-Jewish sentiment flourished uncontrollably across Europe and mostly in the fascist nation of Germany where the leader, Adolf Hitler, together with other members of the NAZI party expressed public disdain for the Jewish population (“Lectures Slides on the Holocaust by National Holocaust Museum,” Slide 11). This eventually led to a systematic belief that considered Jews unworthy of German citizenship and later even unworthy of life, a trend that made German collaborators of the Nazi party all too willing to take part in the Holocaust. An important lesson here is the power of sustained injustice and xenophobia where people end up blindly supporting murderous ideologies. Looking back into the past, we can learn that failure to amend historical injustice and hatred toward other communities eventually leads to a culmination of hate that can be extremely dangerous if the entire population is, over time and frequently, exposed to the idea that a particular community is bad and deserves to be despised with no reason whatsoever.

Write a 2.5-3 page paper on one of the prompt questions below. Your paper must include at least six specific examples with page number citations. Papers should be double-spaced in 12 point font. Option 1: Near the end of the memoir Fest writes that while his mother “held the same views as my father in political matters, [she] had a much more difficult time dealing with day-to-day life. For her, family came before principles....” How did the mother survive the years of the Nazi dictatorship, the war, and the aftermath? What price did she pay for the family’s anti-Nazi principles? Option 2: What were the core values and beliefs that led Joachim Fest to maintain his integrity during the Nazi years? Provide examples from his childhood, teen years, and his military service.

Paper Requirements: Your paper must meet minimum standards for a college paper. The highest score for a paper that does not meet minimum standards is a 55. Minimum standards are: • Proper formatting with your name and course in the upper left-hand corner. • A title centered. Do not put “quotes” around the title. • The paper must be double spaced with 12 point font. • The paper must have a structure with an introduction, at least three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Paragraphs must be indented. • The paper must include cited examples with citations (see below). • The paper must be at least 2.5 pages long. Research and Paper Topic For this writing assignment you will connect current events to themes of modern world history. You will visit the site for the radio program The World where you will choose at least 4 stories. The website for The World includes a useful section on categories to help you group stories together. The link is also provided in the Depot for Exams and Assignments module. Listen carefully to the stories (usually you can read the transcript as well) and take notes. The stories you choose must be from 2024! You must choose stories that are linked by a topic or theme. You can focus on one country or multiple countries. There are many interesting topics you could choose! Here are just a few examples: Environmental issues Sport and society Women’s issues Energy Migration issues Native/indigenous communities Music and culture War and Peace How to structure your paper: 1. Write an introduction where you introduce the topic and explain why you chose it. 2. Write at least three organized paragraphs. Your paragraphs could cover your stories or they could follow some other pattern of organization. 3. Write a concluding paragraph where you bring everything together and explain the main things you learned in from your research. How does your topic relate to a theme of world history we have covered (or will cover) in class? 4. Works cited: List the titles of the stories you used and the date of broadcast. For example: “’Former chief of staff in Israeli air force says there is no endgame in Gaza,” by Marco Werman, The World, April 11, 2024. 5. Remember only to use sources from the radio program The World.

Write a paper on one of the prompt questions below. Your paper must include at point font. Option 1: Near the end of the memoir Fest writes that while his mother “held the same views as my father in political matters, [she] had a much more difficult time dealing with day-to-day life. For her, family came before principles....” How did the mother survive the years of the Nazi dictatorship, the war, and the aftermath? What price did she pay for the family’s anti-Nazi principles? Option 2: What were the core values and beliefs that led Joachim Fest to maintain his integrity during the Nazi years? Provide examples from his childhood, teen years, and his military service. Joachim Fest,Not I: Memoirs of a German Childhood.Other Press. ISBN 978- 159051610-2

This is an essay for my History class. It is an analysis/close reading of a primary document that will relate to my final project for the class. The topic of the final project is "The effects of the Armenian genocide today and how it is still an ongoing issue." You will need to pick out a primary source (from the internet) to talk about in the essay and make sure it can relate to this topic. You will have to make sure to talk about the primary source and then further explain how it connects to my topic which is the effects of the Armenian genocide to this day and how it is still an ongoing issue. Here are further instructions for the essay: Please submit a analysis and close reading of a primary document of your choice that you will be using in your portion of the final project. The student can use any of the primary documents on the syllabus, or choose one that is relevant to the course material and to the topic of their chosen final project. Identify the primary source you are using, and explain what type of source it is: example a petition to the Sultan, A letter to from a merchant, an excerpt from a memoir… etc, and place it in historical context. If possible Identify the writer. Give a short summary of what the document is about, or what the purpose of the document is. Do a close reading of the document, taking into consideration bias, tone, voice , audience, author, and give your analysis. Conclude your paper. The paper does not necessarily have to be in the above order, but needs to include all points. Be sure to refer to the text in your analysis, and back up any claims you make.

Suppose you have a market for gelato which is currently in equilibrium. Thinking of the supply and demand graph for this market, what would have to happen to cause both the equilibrium quantity of gelato in this market to fall and the equilibrium price of gelato in this market to fall? Is this even something that could happen? provide an incorrect response In your answer, please pay attention to and describe what would have to happen to the supply and demand. (You may of course elaborate with any hypothetical "real life" reasons for any changes in the graph too.

Unit VII Discussion Welcome to the final week of the semester! This last discussion has two parts, both of which are designed to get you to be thinking about the course as a whole - which might just come in handy on the comprehensive final exam First of all, remember the earlier discussion about the historical debate over the "Fall of Rome"? Now that you have learned about the next 1000-odd years after Gibbon dated the "Fall of Rome", please reassess (a) whether you believe that Rome "fell" and - if it did, what do you now believe is the proper date/event that actually marks the "Fall" of Rome - when "Rome" became something "different" and, if it didn't, where is it/how did it continue? This assessment should be based on criteria that you establish and support within your discussion and should address your analysis from the earlier discussion - has you opinion changed? If so, why? If not, why not? Then, for the second part of the discussion, please assess the impacts of the global exploration of Western Europeans in the late 15th-mid-17th centuries (remember, the class "ends" in 1660) and its ongoing impacts on western civilization both then and today - and whether it has been a mainly positive or mainly negative thing and why - note, this is asking for an evaluation, just like the final exam question will...

You have been divided into two groups. For this discussion, Group A (Last name A-H) will assume the role of an individual opposed to Imperialism, while Group B (Last name I-Z) will argue in support. In response to Kipling's poem, each of you should post a statement in support, or in opposition to the idea of Imperialism. You do not need to restrict yourself to the moral justification. The arguments for, and against, expansion took many avenues. Try not to make assumptions. Instead, assume the historical role of someone who lived in the United States near the turn of the century. You could be a manufacturer, a pastor, or a politician. Conversely, you can be a laborer, a pacifist, or a housewife. Be creative. When we examine the past, we must place ourselves in the right frame of mind. It is impossible to adequately understand an historical event using a 21st century mind-set. As an example, when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, they discovered a vacated village. The land "hath been planted with corn three or four years ago, and there is a very sweet brook runs under the hillside."[1]Bolstered by their religious conviction, these early settlers firmly believed that God had set them here, and cleared the land for their taking. We know today, that Native-Americans did not have the necessary immunities to fight-off European diseases, and died in great numbers. In Europe, these same diseases had existed for centuries, and had become endemic. Fishermen, and traders, had long plied the waters of the New England coast, and passed these diseases to the local inhabitants. Now take a moment, and place yourself in the mind of the local people. If you were a Native-American, you saw your people dying in great numbers, yet Europeans remained healthy. There are a number of scenarios that could have developed here, but in most cases, what do you think Native-Americans must have thought of this situation? If you placed yourself in their situation, does it not stand to reason that you would begin to think that your "spirits" had failed you, and perhaps the God of the settlers protected them? Based on our assumptions, we would think that as a result, Native-Americans, then, converted in large numbers. What is necessary is a clear understanding of early-contact Native-American culture. For indigenous Americans, it centered on spiritual power. Power could be increased through addition, not subtraction. Instead of giving-up their ancient spiritual practices, they instead, simply added the Christian God. What we gain, by examining the past through a lens focused on that point in history, is a deeper understanding of the dynamics at play, and empathy for all participants. Today, some things are just unacceptable. We cringe at the thought of slavery, child labor, no rights for women, and segregation, to name a few, but they all existed at one point in time. More remarkably, a strong justification existed for each of these that prevailed to the point where they proved to be generally accepted. In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain. Generally speaking, Americans cringed at the thought of Imperialism because of their earlier relationship with Britain that resulted in the American Revolution. By the end of the 19th century, industrial overproduction increasingly required new sources of raw materials, and more importantly, external markets to sell American goods. While this need softened America's disdain for Imperialism, the nation still sought the moral high-ground by passing the Teller Amendment that restricted the US from annexing Cuba. Following the Spanish-American War, the Treaty of Paris granted Cuban independence, but ceded Puerto Rico and Guam, and sold the Philippines to the US for $20 million. Congress also annexed Hawaii. Numerous reasons for Imperialism soon surfaced, but none validated the subjugation of foreign peoples more than the moral justification as expressed in Rudyard Kipling's "A White Man's Burden." Take up the White Man's burden-- Send forth the best ye breed-- Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child. Take up the White Man's burden-- In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another's profit, And work another's gain. Take up the White Man's burden-- The savage wars of peace-- Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought. Take up the White Man's burden-- No tawdry rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper-- The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go mark them with your living, And mark them with your dead. Take up the White Man's burden-- And reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard-- The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--" Take up the White Man's burden-- Ye dare not stoop to less-- Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness; By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you. Take up the White Man's burden-- Have done with childish days-- The lightly proffered laurel, The easy, ungrudged praise. Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers![2] [1] William Bradford in Mourt's Relation: A journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, London, 1622. [2] http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_burden.htm

Problem With Submission Grader Note: I am returning this touchstone because I want you to succeed on the assignment but it is not yet ready for grading. Please see the instructions for Touchstone 4: Thinking Like a Historian on the US History II course site, including the primary source list. The source chosen for analysis should be a primary source from the approved list. Please revise and resubmit the touchstone file at your earliest convenience, so we can move forward with the grading process. Here is the link to primary sources to choose from for part 2 - https://app.sophia.org/tutorials/us-history-ii-touchstone-primary-sources-list If you have any questions on this information, please submit a request for help using this link: https://sophialearning.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=14758623874715. Thank you, Ashley (Grader) Touchstones are projects that illustrate your comprehension of the course material, help you refine skills, and demonstrate application of knowledge. You can work on a Touchstone anytime, but you must complete this unit’s assessments before you submit it. Once you've submitted a Touchstone, it will be graded and counted toward your final course score. Touchstone 4: Thinking Like a Historian ASSIGNMENT: In this course, you have been introduced to the skills of historical thinking by examining events in modern U.S. history with attention to the Five C’s: change over time, context, causality, contingency, and complexity. Recall each of these historical thinking skills from the Analyzing Primary Sources lesson: Change Over Time: History happens over a period of time. During any given period of time, people, events, and ideas can change. Context: Think about historical events in terms of their greater context. Nothing occurs in a vacuum, isolated from the social, cultural, economic, or political setting of the day. Causality: All historical events have multiple causes and effects. Before the first shot of World War II was fired, a long history of political, economic, and social unrest set the stage. Contingency: Everything is related. Historians think about the ways in which historical trends and events are related to other trends and events, making connections between them. Complexity: We live in a complex world. Historians understand this and create historical narratives that reflect a world of different meanings and perspectives. Historians apply these critical thinking skills when creating accounts of the past. Now, it’s your turn to apply these skills of historical thinking by analyzing topics or events using the same framework. To complete this assignment, download the submission template below. You will return the completed template as your Touchstone submission. Thinking Like a Historian Template Thinking Like a Historian Sample In order to foster learning and growth, all work you submit must be newly written specifically for this course. Any plagiarized or recycled work will result in a Plagiarism Detected alert. Review Touchstones: Academic Integrity Guidelines for more about plagiarism and the Plagiarism Detected alert. For guidance on the use of generative AI technology, review Ethical Standards and Appropriate Use of AI. A. Directions Part 1: Change Over Time Step 1: Choose Topic and Time Period From the chart below, choose a combination of one topic and one time period. Within that topic, you will identify and describe something that changed and something that stayed the same over the course of that time period. EXAMPLE You might choose to write about U.S. foreign policy between 1970-2016, or immigration between 1877-1920, or the U.S. economy between 1890-1945. You may select any combination of topic and time period that interests you.Choose One TopicChoose One Time PeriodWestern Expansion U.S. Foreign Policy National Politics Race Relations U.S. Society and Culture Technology and Innovation Immigration The U.S. Economy1877-1920 1890-1945 1940-1990 1970-2016 Once you’ve selected a topic and time period, prepare to respond to the prompts outlined below. Identify and describe something within your topic that changed over the selected time period, using specific historical evidence to illustrate your point. Identify and describe something within your topic that stayed the same over the selected time period, using specific historical evidence to illustrate your point. HINT If needed, revisit the US History II tutorials. Navigate to the most relevant course units and explore the tutorials related to your selected topic. Step 2: Record Responses Record your responses in Part 1 of the Thinking Like a Historian Template. Responses to each prompt should be roughly 5-6 sentences. Part 2: Context, Causality, and Contingency Step 1: Choose Primary Source Choose one primary source from the U.S. History II Touchstone Primary Sources List. You do not need to choose a source from the same time period as Part 1 or follow those time periods in your response to Part 2. Submissions that discuss a primary source that is not on the provided list will be returned ungraded. Study the source you selected and prepare to respond to the prompts outlined below. DESCRIBE WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE SOURCE YOU SELECTED. Context: Describe two other things happening in the United States during the topic or event depicted by your source that are related to it. Causality: Describe two things that happened in an earlier time period that led to what is depicted in your source. Explain the cause/effect relationship. Contingency: Describe two things that happened in a later time period as a result of what is depicted in your source. Explain the cause/effect relationship. Step 2: Record Responses Record your responses in Part 2 of the Thinking Like a Historian Template. Responses to each prompt should be roughly 5-6 sentences. Part 3: Complexity and Reflection Answer the following reflection questions in Part 3 of the Thinking Like a Historian Template. Responses to each prompt should be roughly 5-6 sentences. Were you able to think of more than two things that led to or resulted from the topic or event depicted in your primary source from Part 2? How did you decide which things to write about? How can you apply these skills of historical thinking to your daily life? Refer to the checklist below throughout the writing process. Do not submit your Touchstone until it meets these guidelines. ? Did you complete all sections of the Thinking Like a Historian template? ? Did you choose a primary source from the provided list for Part 2? ? Did you review the grading rubric and compare it to your responses? ? Did you review the sample submission to see an example of a completed assignment? ? Did you proofread your work for proper grammar, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization?