NANO-ck

Mise-à-jour le 25 March 2024, 8 minutes de lecture

Stalin vs Hitler

Similarities :

• Through persuation, propaganda, and persecution
• Try to achieve control and survival
• Economy
  • Central control (despite the fact Germany has capitalist economy, soviet economy with central planning)

Vision profoundly different

• Germany is a developed industrialised society
  • women education
  • big middle class
  • well developped western society
• Soviet Union
  • Rule is backward

Stalin’s economic policy

Aim

• Stalin’s overall aim is industrialisation
  • He thinks it’s the only way communist society can survive
• The soviet union is under-developped

One aim : Modernization of the USSR

Stalin’s Collectivization

What If substituted State ownership of land for individual peasant-ownership

How It consisted in setting up kolkhozy (collective farms) and sovkhozy (state farms)

Why To serve the needs of industrialization

Aims

• Making soviet agriculture more modern & effective to increase production
• Supply food for sale abroad to finance industrialization
  • Raise capital to invest in factories
• Decrease in the number of rural workers & increase number of factory workers

Impact

• Stalin claimed it was “voluntary”, in reality enforced on very reluctant peasants
• Class enemy : the “Kulaks” = rich peasants (Stalinist myth) deported & executed
  • He creates a fictional ennemy to explain why they need to use force and violence against their own people
  • Those who resist, they kill their own livestock, destroy their plots…because they didn’t want to give it to the state
• Millions resisted, ate seeds & slaughtered livestock = food production declined
• Consequences : land collectivized but Famine killed millions by 1932
• Propaganda to persuade and convince people to collectivize

Propaganda Based on war image, used to force people to work hard

• Industrialisation necessart part of a war economy against
  • Inefficiencies of Russia’s past
  • Class enemies within
  • Preparation for war vs capitalist nations

Need more heavy industry

• Steel, coal, oil, electricity

Stalin’s Industrialization

The Five Year Plans (FYP)

• Industrialisation absed on five separate plans = set of targets of production to be reached
• No real planning
• Emphasis : Heavy industry (iron, steel, oil)

Results

• Statistics : difficult to know, targets constantly reassessed upwards
• First Five Year Plan very successful : achieved extraordinary results
  • 1928-1932 : Most successful one

Nazi Economy

• Nazy Party : no specific economic policy

BUT

• Mixture of three economic approaches :
  • Autarky : Economic self-sufficiency
  • JM KEYNES : Theory of Deficit Financing
  • WEHRWIRTSCHAFT : Defence Economy

Early years

• Nazi economic policy under H. SCHACHT
• 1933-1936 : Keynes’ Economic approach adopted
  • Government money provided for employment schemes :
    • Motorway construction
    • Afforestation
    • Public buildings
    • Result : Impressive achievement as unemployment down to 1.7 in 1935
• Hitler’s Autobahn
  • Drops unemployment rates

Göring’s Four-Year Plan 1936

Stalin doesn't want war, he is scared of war as it could destroy him. Hitler wants a war economy.

• AIM : Make German Army & Economy ready for war in 4 years

• Success : Production of Raw Materials
• 4 autres points

Comparing economic policies

Similarities

• Dictatorial power over the economy
• Government control over trade and currency
• Governement set priorities to …

Nazi Social Policies : Anti-Semitism

Hitler's obsessive hatred of Jews = consistent theme of his political career

Translation of his ideas into policy meant :

• Economic Boycotts (April 1933)
• Racial Laws (Nuremberg Race Laws 1935)
• Government inspired violence & Pogroms
• Other points

Hitler : The Product, not the creator of German anti-semitism Hitler’s anti-semitism OTHER POINTS

Nazi Social Policy : Religion

• Nazism based on anti-Christian philosophy
• Hitler’s half-hearted repression : anti-religious measures implemented vs both Churches
• Thousands of priests and pastors arrested

Policies on religion compared

Similarities

Nazi Education & Youth

Aim

• Education = a propaganda tool for long-term …

A. Traditional structure of education altered

Teachers : under control of Teacher’s league

B. Nazi Youth Movements set up

• DJ (German Young People) : boys 10-14
• HJ Hitler Youth : Boys 14-18

• Youth movements took on responsibility for development of majority of German …

• Very little opposition organised

• Historians can’‘t know how this type of propaganda was effective as we can’t get into youth’s mind

Stalin knows that the best way to endocrinate people is to start with the youth

Stalin’s Youth Policy : KOMSOMOL

• Useful instrument to spread Stalin’s Propaganda

What did they do ?

• Enthousiastic supporters of the Five-Year Plans
• Thousands helped to build new …

Youth Policies Compared

Similarities

Differences

TO COPY FROM SLIDE

Nazi Germany : Women & the Family

Historical Background : Female education & emancipation

Nazi Ideology profoundly anti-feminist

• Women Naturally “different”
• The 3K : Children, Kitchen, Church
• Women = Mothers = Expansion of population

Pro-natalist policies

• 25% reduction on house taxes per child

Nazi Policy towards women meant that :

• Women no longer in Medicine, Law, Civil Service
• Numbers of female teachers & Uni students reduced
• Pressure on employers NOT to employ women

Result : Female employment (initially) fell

Lenin’s Social Policy : Promoting Women’s Emancipation

Lenin has encourage Marxist rejection of Marriage as a “bourgois institution” and promoted women’s emancipation

Result

Soviet divorce rate highest in Europe & millions of abandoned children on the streets of Russian cities

Stalin’s Social Policy : Women & the family

Stalin’s “Great Retreat” of 1936 :

• TO COPY FROM SLIDE

Stalin’s Social Policy : Women & the family

• However, industrializati=

Social policies on Women compared

Similarities

Concluding remarks : Similarities

• A revolutionary social vision : transforming human kind : Master Race / Homo Sovieticus
• The Individual does not matter, only the collective does : Volk / Proletariat
• The individual is reduced to her social function : soldier/mother or factory worker and is entirely devoted to the nation/party
• Blind dediction to charismatic leader : Führer / Vodj
• Method : Persecution and Propaganda

Concluding remarks : Differences

Who belongs ?

Who doesn’t ? Who is the enemy ?