The Great Depression and Treaty of Versailles Essay Example

The Great Depression and Treaty of Versailles led to the rise of dictators. The Great Depression was the world’s biggest stock market crash. The stock market crash caused a high unemployment rate, and affected the whole world. At the time Germany and Italy had a very weak and dependent economy. Due to the Treaty of Versailles it made Germany pay back a high war reparation fee, and de-militarized the Rhineland, which is a strip of German land that borders France, and Belgium. Italy joined under the pretext of gaining the lands of Savoy, Dalmatia, and Croatia, from the Austro-Hungarian empire. The Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression caused the rise of dictators.

The Great Depression spread fear and uncertainty. Citizens wanted strong leaders to fix their problems, and these leaders often became dictators. Dictators formed totalitarian states, which means that political leaders try to control the way people live and think. In the 1930s people used: print, radio, and film to show their views. People that disagreed were punished.

In 1918 the treaty of Versailles was signed, this promised Italy a lot of land that they never got. There were also a lot of economic issues at the time from WWI. This led to Mussolini taking over in 1922. He promised to restore order and quickly ended democracy and made Italy a fascist government. He decided to ban all political parties except his, this caused people to lose their freedoms. 

The Treaty of Versailles is a major reason Hitler became the chancellor of Germany in 1933. People decided that Capitalism wasn’t working for them, and wanted a change in the government because of the Great Depression. Hitler passed a law that gave him total power because the parliament building was burnt down, the government blamed the communists for the fire, and shut down all political parties. This gave him a legal way to become a dictator. Hitler had the government set up a police force secretly, and he banned other political parties and labor unions. The Nazis set up concentration camps for Jews and people that disagreed with their ideas. The government issued a law that stated Jews were no longer citizens, these laws were called the Nuremberg Laws. Hitler and his Nazis were able to rise to power by saying that they were going to fix the economy and restore order.

The Great Depression was able to successfully solidify the Italian facist and German Nazi regimes. The economic problems coming out of the Great Depression caused people to look for totalitarian governments to fix the economic issues. This caused the solidification of facist governments.