The rise of Dictatorships

The First World War created many difficult problems for the years that came after it. During the war ordinary trade and industry did not prosper. When the war was over, millions of soldiers returned to their homes expecting to take their old work. This would have been difficult an any case to arrange immediately, but the problem was made more difficult because many towns, villages, mines and factories had been destroyed during the fighting. Other factories had been turned over to the production of war materials instead of peacetime goods. The creation of new state by the peace treaties made further difficulties; trade across national frontiers was made difficulty by tariffs, and the new frontier cut off many industrial regions frothier markets. Then, too, people in other continents who had formerly bought goods from Europeans countries were forced during the war to buy them from United States or to make themselves. Thus Europeans manufactures found it harder to sell their goods after the war. All this caused very great suffering in Europe, especially in Central Europe. Millions of people had little to eat and many thousand actually died of hunger.

Even when conditions were not as bad as this, as in France, Britain, and some neutral countries, people suffered a great deal, and looked to their government to help them. The problem, however, was too big for any one government to solve quickly. Failure led to dissatisfaction and strikes in nearly every European country, and in some to the belief that democratic government was after all weak and unsatisfactory.

 Where this belief was strong, revolution and raising took place, government were overthrown, and new types rested in the hands of one man. In other words, after 1919 some European countries returned to autocratic government, the modern name for which is dictatorship. The most important of the dictators were Stalin in Russia, Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany. The most important remaining democracies were Britain, France, and in America, the United States