10th Grade
SECOND SEMESTER INTERDISCIPLINARY PROMPT
THEME: There are always conflicts between what individuals need and what the masses dictate.
The years after WWI and leading up to WWII were a complex mix of social and economic disorders and chaos in Europe. This allowed for demagogues to fill voids and assisted in the rise of Totalitarian governments.
You have studied about the lives of people in the years after WWI and leading up to World War II and the vulnerability of the masses to demagogic ideas. Hopefully, your studies have given you a better appreciation of why the people living in these nations would follow individuals who would eventually deprive them of their freedom for their own selfish purposes.
Task: Using the sources given, you will write two (2+:1) chunk paragraphs using the following prompt:
Prompt: What economic and social conditions led so many people to fall prey to demagoguery in the years leading up to World War II?
**Important Note: You must use at least two CD’s for each paragraph.
For each paragraph:
- One CD must be a document.
- The other CD may be a photograph or political cartoon.
Directions / The Process
- Read the information above. Get clarification for any words you may not understand.
- Make sure you understand what is expected from you from reading the task, prompt and rubric on the next page.
- Read Summary of Europe after WWI. Highlight and annotate key ideas in the margins.
- Complete Summary of Europe after WWIweb organizer.
- Read through your sources and complete a FATs organizer for the ones you choose to use as your CD’s in your paragraph.
- Complete a JSWP organizer for each of your paragraphs.
- Begin your writing task.
Photographs
“Women Waiting in Line to Buy Sub-standard Meat” (1923)
Women and children wait in line in Berlin, in hopes of buying sub-standard meat during a period of hyper-inflation in Weimar Germany (1923).
“School Meal in Weimar Germany” (1921)
Hungry boys eating a school lunch in Weimar-era Germany during its years of hyper-inflation and malnutrition (1921).
“Homeless Men's Shelter” (date unknown)
The original caption for this photo, taken in Weimar Germany during the Great Depression, reads: "When night comes! Picture taken in the municipal refuge for the homeless. View of one of the dormitories which can house up to 100 people."
“Children with Stacks of Inflated German Currency” (1923)
German children build a pyramid with stacks of inflated currency, virtually worthless in 1923.
Documents
Under the leadership ofGustav Stresemann, a politician who supported the republic, the government eventually brought inflation under control. But it took time and many people could not forget that the government had allowed it to happen. One German expressed their feelings when he wrote:
Of course all the little people who had small savings were wiped out. But the big factories and banking houses and multimillionaires didn't seem to be affected at all. They went right on piling up their millions. Those big holdings were protected somehow from loss. But the mass of the people were completely broke. And we asked ourselves, "How can that happen? How is it that the government can't control an inflation which wipes out the life savings of the mass of people but the big capitalists can come through the whole thing unscathed?" We who lived through it never got an answer that meant anything. But after that, even those people who used to save didn't trust money anymore, or the government. We decided to have a high-ho time whenever we had any spare money, which wasn't often.
Quoted in Ralph Knight’s,A Very Ordinary Life, 64.
In a letterBertha Pappenheimwrote in 1923, she retells the story of a trip she took in Germany to inspect some foster homes. In this excerpt, she talks about the impact of inflation on German citizens:
We traveled from Isenburg to Frankfurt, where Emmy debarked, then continued by a roundabout way. It was cold; heat did not reach our car. We changed trains in Eberstadt. To understand the conditions in Germany, one only has to look and listen in a fourth-class car; tired, worn, angry faces. And what rags, what talk! How one has to slave to earn nothing at all. All those millions buy nothing. Bread is 600 billions (today, 850 billions). A pale sickly woman sitting next to me seemed not have learned the price yet. She bobbed up, repeating desperately, “600 billions!” The others griped about the young folks who earn money but won’t help, they only smoke cigarettes and wear sheer stockings. And about the peasants who hide potatoes, feed them to the livestock and sell them for dollars only.
Melinda Given Guttman,The Enigma of Anna O.: A Biography of Bertha Pappenheim(Moyer Bell, 2001).
“... As I look back on the great work that has been done during the past four years you will understand quite well that my first feeling is simply one of thankfulness to our Almighty God for having allowed me to bring this work to success. He has blessed our labors and has enabled our people to come through all the obstacles which encompassed them on their way... Today I must humbly thank Providence, whose grace has enabled me, who was once an unknown soldier in the War, to bring to a successful issue the struggle for the restoration of our honor and rights as a nation.”
Speech made by Adolf Hitler before the Reichstag, 30 January 1937.
“Better to live a day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.”
Quote of Benito Mussolini in article called "Duce (1922-42)" in TIME magazine (August, 2, 1943)
Info for the next two documents in the box below:
Hitler returned to the city where about 21 years earlier he and his followers had attempted a coup d’état and failed. He was soon arrested and jailed.
“It was in this very town that I began my struggle, my political struggle against Versailles. You know this, you old members of my party. How often did I speak against Versailles! I probably studied this treaty more than any other man. To this day, I have not forgotten it. The Treaty could not be abolished by humility, by submission. It could only be abolished by reliance upon ourselves, by the strength of the German nation.”
Adolf Hitler:Speech to the Nazi Party in Munich (February 24, 1941)
“When I first entered this hall twenty-one years ago, I was an unknown, nameless soldier. I had nothing behind me but my own conviction. During the twenty-one years since, a new world has been created. The road leading into the future will be easier than the road from February 24, 1920, to the present. I look to I the future with fanatical confidence. The whole nation has answered the call. I know that when the command is given: "Forward march!" Germany will march.”
Adolf Hitler, Speech to the Nazi Party in Munich (February 24, 1941)
During the inflation years, people who had saved their money in banks or were living on pensions or disability checks found themselves bankrupt. Those with jobs found that their salary increases could not possibly keep up with the almost instantaneous rise in prices. ArtistGeorge Groszdescribed what shopping was like in those days.
Lingering at the [shop] window was a luxury because shopping had to be done immediately. Even an additional minute meant an increase in price. One had to buy quickly because a rabbit, for example, might cost two million marks more by the time it took to walk into the store. A few million marks meant nothing, really. It was just that it meant more lugging. The packages of money needed to buy the smallest item had long since become too heavy for trouser pockets. They weighed many pounds. . . . People had to start carting their money around in wagons and knapsacks. I used a knapsack.
George Grosz,A Little Yes and a Big NO, trans. L.S. Dorin (Dial, 1946), 124.
Germany's Hyperinflation Chart, 1923, distressedvolatility.com
Political Cartoons
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