Hello, students, welcome to one of the most interesting chapters of your X standard History textbook ‘Dictatorship in Europe’. In this particular module we will be talking about the period after the First World War and also we will be studying the reasons for the rise of dictatorship in Europe.

So without wasting any further time let’s start this very interesting chapter, one of my personal favourites, ‘Dictatorship in Europe’.

Now first and foremost let us understand what is dictatorship. Dictatorship is nothing but a centralized rule or a one man rule. One man decides to rule the whole country as per his whims and fancies, no rules, no regulations, no constitutions, his wish is the final command for everybody in the country and that is what dictatorship is all about.

In this chapter we will be talking about dictators from four countries. First one Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy. Second one, Kemal Pasha, dictator of Turkey. Third, the most famous or should I say the most notorious one, Adolf Hitler, of Germany. And although the chapter’s name is Dictatorship in Europe, the textbook mentions about an Asian dictator as well, his name was General Hideki Tojo from Japan. So we are going to be talking in detail about these four people in this particular chapter. And as I told you they were ruling their countries singlehandedly and making decisions for everybody in the respective countries.

So come on, let’s proceed further with this interesting chapter.

First and foremost, let us understand what was the scenario in the world after the First World War. What was the biggest change that came about? We had studied these when we were doing the effects of World War I. The biggest change was that democratic countries came into existence. In many countries the royal rule, the royal reigns came to an end and they were replaced by representative democracies. Apart from democratic governments, my dear friends, the European continent underwent a lot of changes between 1920 to 1930. This was the map of Europe. Let us see what Europe was divided into. Europe was basically divided into two groups after the First World War. First one were the victorious nations, the allied powers, and second one were the defeated nations, the central powers. Which were the European nations a part of the victorious nations, they were France, Italy and England. These were the three nations in Europe that had won the war on account of being in the allied powers. But, my dear friends, winning the war did not help them much because all the money of the country they had put in fighting the war and unfortunately after the First World War, these three countries had become bankrupt. Imagine if the victorious nations were bankrupt what would be the conditions of the defeated nations. They had no resources whatsoever.

First and foremost let us see which were the defeated nations. As you can see the list in front of you, Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, Germany and Turkey were the nations which were defeated, my dear friends. They were not only bankrupt but, unfortunately, they were made to sign a lot of peace treaties and as we have studied in the previous chapters, these peace treaties absolutely humiliated the defeated nations, laid down certain conditions on them because of which they felt insulted, and these peace treaties were something that they wanted to absolutely get rid of. So this is what the condition of Europe was, be it the victorious nations or be it the defeated nations nobody in Europe was happy after the First World War. And that is where rise of dictatorship happened. A new form of government came into the world, dictators took charge.

A very important answer we are going to do now, a four mark question, ‘explain the reasons for rise of dictatorship in Europe’ where we are going to write about the eight points which are given to us in the textbook.

Come on, let’s start, after the First World War the first and the most important thing, the international situation had become absolutely unstable and very alarming. People were worried, countries were worried that their condition is very bad, they have no money to run the country. Imagine everybody was in a lot of stress, everybody was in a lot of tension, my dear friends.

Not only that, the financial depression gave rise to dissatisfaction among the common people, absolutely poor condition, no food to eat, no clothes to wear, no houses to live, people were absolutely miserable and this is what helped dictatorship as well.

The third point that we will see here was growing tension among the defeated nations which were imposed upon increasing sanctions. What are sanctions? Sanctions are nothing but punishment like reducing the strength of the navy, taking war reparations from them, reducing their military, a lot of unjust conditions were laid upon. But do you think the victorious nations were happy, absolutely not. The conquerors too were desirous of more power, they wanted more power, more land, more money so that their status can increase in the world. So be it victorious, be it defeated, conditions were equally bad everywhere, my dear friends.

The fourth point, the hope of getting security, we have done in the previous chapter, League of Nations was established to maintain peace in the world, security in the world. But these hopes were absolutely shattered, there was no peace, no security, and as the first point says, things were unstable, things were alarming. People never knew that when another war might break out.

The fifth point says that democratic government in many nations started to collapse one after the other. Imagine we just studied that the biggest change was advent of democracy, coming of democracies in many countries, but unfortunately these democratic governments were not able to solve anybody’s problems and that is why they started to collapse one after the other. Many countries stopped having democratic governments.

Next point, because democratic governments started to collapse people started losing faith in democracy. People said that democratic governments just cannot solve our problems, we want a centralized rule.

And that is what the seventh point says that a centralized rule, one man should take the bull by the horns and get rid of our problems absolutely. So the faith in solving problems through centralized military power began gaining ground and democracy started losing its roots.

And this condition was, my dear friends, favourable for the dictators to rise in Europe. That is how dictatorship started in Europe because of these eight points.