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Around the 20th century, the end of the First World War cleared the
way for the formation of democratic regimes. Why they had not been
successful, why the people didn’t use the opportunity to establish a
democratic political system and why did the dictatorships appear, is
still unclear, but it is a very discussible subject. The decisive role
in these processes was the human being. It was the object of the cause,
but on the other hand he was also the subject - executor of all the
problems as well.
The First World War was expected to be short, with a quick triumph
on either side. On the contrary, the war caused a giant massacre to all
the countries involved, and lasted for four years. Also against the
expectations of political leaders and military commanders new
techniques of fighting were used, as well as new weapons (for example
the chloric gas, tanks and aircrafts). Due to all this, 13 million
people were killed, of which 2 million were Germans, 1.75 million
Russians, 1.5 million Frenchmen, 1 million British and 0.5 million
Italians. But death was just one of the worst consequences of the First
World War. Just military failures on the fronts, along with other
problems directly affected internal politics in a great way. This
horrible catastrophe also left most of the countries in huge debts,
especially Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, and many others. This led
to poverty and chaos, and the people were suffering. That is why they
started to revolt, but the political system was so exhausted after the
war that it didn’t do anything to solve this.
The effects of the war sped up the changes. It is an arguable fact,
whether the war also had a liberating effect. If it did, it was greatly
affected by the downfall of three empires, the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
Tsarist Russia and Keiser’s Germany. In Russia the tsar abdicated and
was replaced by the Provisional Government, but it only took 8 months
and Russia moved from autocracy to communism.
It is true that this downfall separated and freed different ethnic
groups like Czechs and Slovaks, Serbs, etc. who had been a part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, because these ethnic groups did get their
independent states with democratic constitutions. Land was taken from
the aristocrats and distributed to the peasants. The workmen got better
conditions to work in, for example bigger salaries, less working time,
social securities and so on. Women received the same rights as men,
like freedom of speech and the right to vote.
One of the reasons why the democratic development was not very
stable was the disagreement of the countries that lost the war, like
Germany, Hungary and Austria, because the conditions they were given by
the triumphant states were very harsh.
A problem that emerged after the First World War was, that the
victorious countries took advantage of the peace treaties. The Treaty
of Versailles, which was signed on the 28th of June 1919, confirmed
that Germany was responsible for the World War. By signing this Germany
had to give up a lot of territory won during the war, had to
demilitarise and pay for all the damage caused by the war. Altogether
Germany lost 13% of her area, 12% of her population, 16% of her coal,
48% of her iron, 15% of her agricultural land and 10% of her
manufactures. The coal and iron lost was because the treaty also gave
France the right to coal-mine in the Saar region.
The Secret Treaty of London, signed in 1915, in which Italy was
promised land for joining the Entente Powers, though Italy never
received it. The Treaty of St.Germain and Trianon dealt with
Austria-Hungary, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Russia and
Germany, which promised Russia back the land lost during the war. This
treaty was cancelled though, and no other effort was put into making up
for that treaty somehow. The whole settling of these treaties involved
the greatest territorial transformation in the whole European history.
All these treaties led to problems, but the main one was, that no
one was satisfied with the compromises that had been made. The
Versailles Treaty was impossible to fulfil, Italy never got the land it
was promised, and neither did Russia. Therefore the Peace Treaties
didn’t solve anything, just increased the resentment toward democracy
in some countries, which was also one of the reasons why democracy
failed.
Democracy is a system of government, thought of as allowing freedom
of speech, religion and political opinion. It is also a fair and equal
treatment of each other by citizens, without social class divisions.
That is what was meant by a democratic state, and many countries used
this system, until it was affected by the economic crisis, but also
with racial and social crises.
The economic crisis involved the inflation in 1920 in Germany, which
developed into a universal depression within 9 years. Ethnic groups
were in conflict, different social groups argued within themselves and
all this greatly affected the political parties. The democracies didn’t
know how to cope with all this, but neither would have any other
regime, except no one realized this and the democracy was blamed.
Another inconvenience in the time was the proportional system that
was used. Even though more parties had a say, and if this system was
used properly it would have been easier to come up with compromises to
solve problems, it confused the people even more. They didn’t know whom
to support and the chaos grew. Because of this, the democratic system
stopped paying attention to real problems and instead tried to put
together a perfect government.
One thing that could have helped democracy was a alluring leader,
who would at least give the people hope, and solutions for all the
problems, which sometimes couldn’t be solved as simply as was said. But
that is precisely what was missing, until Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin,
Pilsudsky etc. took advantage of this and told the people exactly what
they wanted to hear. This led to the support of antidemocratic parties.
Since people didn’t trust the democratic system any more, they
started looking for other alternatives. The ones that seemed most
convenient, especially for the workers was either communism or fascism.
These seemed more hopeful because they were alternatives to capitalism
and had charismatic leaders.
The main idea of communism was to build an equal and classless
society. It was based on the ideas of Marx and Engeles. Their theory
was, that every society has a base-the economy and a superstructure-
the political and social relations. They said that the development of
mankind involves the change of the base, which leads to the change of
the superstructure. Class conflicts arise, and people want change. This
develops into a revolution, which goes through a stage of dictatorship
of proletariat, and during this period superstructures are destroyed,
everything is nationalized and a classless society comes into being.
Lenin applied this theory to real life. He established a
revolutionary party, the Bolsheviks and in 1917 overthrew the
Provisional Government and seized power in Russia. Similar revolutions
happened in Bavaria, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia etc. but all collapsed
till the 1920s.
The other alternative was fascism, based on religion, also known for
strong hatred toward British and French democracy traditions. The first
fascist regime appeared in Italy, and was followed by Germany. Fascism
applied the theory of “Ubermensch”(Social Darwinism), the perfect human
being; it was strongly racist and anti-Semitic.
Fascism was mostly supported by the lumpenproletariat and the rural
population. There were two types of fascism, and almost all of central
Europe was using either type. Czechoslovakia was the only country in
central Europe that was democratic, from 1920s to 1938s. It was immune
to this system because it had very strong democratic traditions, it was
economically strong, had strong institutions and the people had higher
educations. Also the workmen didn’t have to look for different
alternatives from democracy because they worked in good conditions.
Fascism collapsed when Nazi Germany lost the Second World War.
Another aspect, which should be considered in the profound changes,
which led to the emergence of dictatorships, was the economic crisis.
Some of the many reasons it happened were the effects of the First
World War as well as the compromises and peace treaties made after it
ended. Also the downfall of the three empires was an important cause,
because I think that the countries that became independent started to
pursue a very independent and nationalistic policy, which caused a lot
of problems in international politics and trade.
It would be expected, that the economy would develop and flourish
after the war. But the flourish only affected a few countries, and not
for a very long period. It is true that some countries experienced
booms, but other countries like the successor states suffered severely.
Germany was mostly affected, because of the contributions it had to
pay, according to the treaty of Versailles.
All in all, Europe made more products but didn’t sell as many, and
because of that her share in world trade decreased. More modern and
sufficient methods of production were used, which on one hand caused
the fall in agricultural prices, but on the other it contributed to the
increase of unemployment, and economically affected other countries as
well. Europe was also falling into a desperate situation and had to
borrow money from the United States. That meant, that the European
economic development was fully dependant of the American loans.
The situation in America started to deteriorate. Investors were
experiencing a boom therefore they invested their money at home, and
caused the economy to overheat. The result of this was the Wall Street
crash. No more investments were made in Europe, and America started to
experience a crisis of her own. Since the USA discontinued the loans,
Europe’s chance to recovery was also cut off. The production started to
decrease again, and banks began to collapse. Industrial countries were
affected, as well as agricultural countries, because of the drop in
agricultural prices and the failure of trade with agricultural
products.
This partially damaged the Soviet Union as well, even though not as
badly as the other countries, because Russia isolated itself from the
rest of the world, economically and politically.
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