CT255 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Benito Mussolini, Working Poor, Totalitarianism
Document Summary
Democracy"s march was not easy, without pause, or without set-back, and this is seen in. The first world war and aftermath shaped the face of the world significantly. The united states emerged as a world power. The vast numbers of working poor found solidity by fighting alongside their fellow nationalists of all classes; something lost after the war. As we saw in the last lecture, many of these people came to believe that capitalism and democracy itself were the reasons for their problems. While some rejected them by embracing russian communism, others went another way. After wwi, germany became a republic under a new constitution and new parliament. Right from the start, however, the new republic had intense division between two different forms of socialism - the marxist version and the nationalist version. Since constitutional governments were rather new, and weak, the republic saw challenges to the idea of rights and freedoms from both left and right.
