Lesson video

Hello everybody, and welcome back to your history lesson at Oak National Academy with me, Miss Porter.

In today's lesson is our second lesson of our inquiry, looking at why the fascists gain support during the 1920s and 1930s.

But today's lesson, please make sure you've got a pen or a pencil to write with and some paper to write on, and just to make sure that you've made yourself away from any distractions so you can fake some content of today's lesson.

Once you've done that you'll be ready to get started and you can do so by writing down today's title, which is fascist support in the 1920s.

To start our lesson, I'd like you to take a look at this image and to write down what you can see.

So you can pause the video here, write down what you can see, and then resume once you're finished.

Okay, welcome back everybody.

So, some of the things you may have written down are, that you could see soldiers in this picture and six of them in title.

You might have written that some of these soldiers are sat down as if they're hiding or in a dugout.

You might have written that three of them are holding guns and pointing them upwards towards the top left hand of the image.

One man in the back left corner, sunken down, possibly as if afraid or tired.

Two of these men are not wearing their helmets, whereas the others are.

Well done if you've got any of those points, or if you wrote down anything extra that I haven't mentioned.

This, in fact, is a photo of Italian soldiers following the Battle of Caporetto during World War I, where 700 thousands of Italians retreated, following a surprise Austria-German attack in 1917.

This was a disastrous battle for Italians, around 300,000 Italian soldiers were taken prisoners.

You can see some of them pictured here by the Austria-German army.

The Italian Commander-in-Chief Cadorna, blamed this military defeat on the suppose of cowardice of the troops and executed several thousand of his own soldiers as punishment.

The war was extremely difficult for the Italian army.

He will often fall in terrible conditions for little food or pay.

They could fight for weeks to gain a small amount of territory, only to lose it again.

Despite this and against the odds, the Italians were victorious and together with Britain, France and Russia defeated the German and Austro-Hungarian armies.

And the images here you can see celebrations in Rome on the left, and then land on the right at the end of the war.

As the Italians were victorious, they believe they would be rewarded for their efforts.

As you can see from a timeline, World War I one ended in 1918.

A year after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The rise of fascism occurred in the 1920s following the end of the war.

In today's lesson, we are going to see how World War I contributed to the growth of fascist support during this period.

And we're going to take a look back to the start of the first World War in 1914.

In Europe, two alliances existed.

The Triple Entente consisted of Britain, France and Russia, and the Triple Alliance consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and in 1914 Italy.

However, the government in Rome, the Italian capital city, claimed the Austria-Hungary had broken an earlier agreement so the Italian government said they would not willing to join the war and support the Triple Alliance.

The Italians then entered negotiations with Britain and France, and agree to support them in return for territorial gains if they won the war.

Italy believed they would be given the areas of Trentino, Trieste in return for their support.

You can see the marked on this map of Italy.

These territories were important as they were Italian speaking areas.

The Italians also believed that they would receive the area of Dalmatia, which is highlighted on this map in pink.

It's just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy.

Italy had ambitions to become a great power and having control in the Adriatic alongside the Mediterranean, would help them secure this.

In the Treaty of London, 1915, they will also offer the promise of further colonies in Africa, or the Eastern Mediterranean, but these went unspecified.

Therefore, the Italian signed the Treaty of London and entered the First World War in May 1915 in support of The Triple Entente.

To check your understanding of the lesson so far, I'd like you to complete the following multiple choice questions.

Say, firstly, which Alliance did the Italians fight with from 1915? Pause the video, choose your answer from the options on the screen, and then resume when you're ready.

Hey, welcome back.

Hopefully you've got option A, The Triple Entente.

Well done if you got this question correct.

Your second question is why did Italy decide to join the war and support of The Triple Entente? I'd like you to identify two reasons why from these options.

So again, pause the video, choose your answers and resume when you're ready.

Okay, welcome back.

Say the answers are options A and D.

Italy joined the ball in support of The Triple Entente, as it wanted to become a great power.

And because it had been promised territorial gains such as Dalmatia.

Excellent work, if you got those correct.

Now, as you saw at the start the lesson, the Italians were victorious in the war and believe they would be rewarded with the territories promised land in the Treaty of London, when they entered the war.

However, not all of the land they were promised materialised.

Although the Italians did gain areas of South Tyrol and Trentino highlighted in blue, the British and French refused to hand over Dalmatia highlighted in pink and did not give the Italians any of the German colonies in Africa.

As a result, the outcome of the war was referred to as a mutilated victory.

After this, the First World War also caused large economic problems in Italy.

The cost of the war had been huge, and as a result, the government's debt increased.

To resolve this problem, the government started printing money, which caused inflation.

This meant prices rose rapidly.

People with savings, such as the middle classes, lost a lots of their wealth as a result.

Although some industries had done really well during the war, their profits now decreased after the war, as fewer people wanted to buy their goods.

Mussolini pictured on the right here, was angry that Italy had been humiliated following the war and not treated as a great power.

He was also angry that the economy had been destroyed and that demobilised soldiers continued to suffer following the end of the war.

And the problems caused by the war led to political divisions in Italy, as people that for the new beginning.

The government that had been empowered during the war were Liberal.

You can see liberalism on the political spectrum below.

The Liberal government had become extremely unpopular.

They were criticised for mishandling the war and the problems they caused.

This led people to turn to more extreme political groups, to overcome their problems. In Italy, this led to an increase in support for the socialists on the left, and the fascists on the right.

Now, World War I had involved lots of working class people fighting and suffering.

During the war, Russia in 1917, had to become communist.

As a Liberal government were criticised for their mishandling of the war, some working class people initially began to support communism, or as we saw before socialism, and the belief that everybody in society could be equal.

However, the fascists offered an alternative to the Liberal government and to socialism and communism.

Therefore, those people in Italian society who were afraid of communism following the war, turned to the fascists to overcome their problems. The impact of the wall also led to an increase anti-democracy and anticommunist groups elsewhere in Europe, particularly in Germany.

The Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler, you can see pictured on the far left here, based many of their beliefs on Italian fascism.

They opposed democracy, oppose communism, and we're very nationalistic.

We will focus more on the rise of fascism in Germany and elsewhere in our next lesson.

I'm going to also say, you'll complete today's reading to find out more about the growth of fascist support in the 1920s.

After which, I'd like you to answer the following questions.

So firstly, when did Italy enter the First World War? Second question is what had Britain and France promised the Italian government in return for that support? It's thinking about those territorial gains and seeing if you can be specific about those.

The first question was what impact did the First World War have on Italy's economy? The fourth asked, who began to support the fascists in the 1920s? So maybe which groups of people began to support them.

And your challenge question is why was the outcome of World War I referred to as a mutilated victory? So you can now pause the video, open a worksheet, and complete today's questions.

There's a glossary to provide you some definitions of the key words, if needed.

And once you're finished, you can return to the video to check through your answers.

Okay, welcome back everybody.

And very well done for completing these questions, we will now go through these answers together.

And I just remember that my answers may look different to yours, which is okay.

You may want to pause the video after each question to tick through your work or to make any changes.

So the first question asks, when did Italy enter the First World War? And acceptable answer is 1915.

A good maybe more specific and put that into a full sentence, such as Italy entered the First World War in support of the Triple Entente in May 1915.

The second question asks, what had Britain and France promised the Italian government in return for their support? So you could have had extra land or territorial gains as your acceptable answer.

A good answer may give some more examples.

So in return for Italian support, Britain and France had promise Italy that they would make territorial gains, including areas of Trentino, Trieste and Dalmatia if they won the war.

The third question asks, what impacts did the First Word war have on Italy's economy? So you could have had a few acceptable answers here.

So you could have said that it had a negative impact on Italy's economy, it led to high employment or inflation.

Well done if you've got your four of those.

A good answer is going to put this into full sentences and provide a few more examples, such as the First World War had a negative impact on Italy's economy, as a cost of the war had been huge.

As a result, the government's debt had increased to 85 billion Naira in 1919.

To resolve this problem, the government started printing money, which caused inflation.

This meant prices rose rapidly, and people with savings such as the middle classes lost a lot of their wealth.

The fourth question asked who began to support the fascist in the 1920s? So again, there's a number of acceptable answers here.

You could have had ex soldiers or do you mobilise soldiers, can have the middle class, and even students.

A good answer will put this into a few full sentences such as, during the 1920s the fascist gained the support of students, wealthier peasants, and demobilised soldiers who turned to the fascist to overcome their problems. The fascist also gained the support of some middle class people and smaller farmers who wanted to protect their wealth and land.

There is a fair few people there that began to support the fascist.

Well done if you've got two or three of those written down.

And the challenge question was why was the outcome of World War I referred to as a mutilated victory? So an acceptable answer could be the Italians did not gain all of the land they were promised.

Good answer may say that the outcome of World War I has been referred to as a mutilated victory because some of the new lands the Italians had been promised at the start of the war did not materialise.

The nationalists were angered by this outcome as they felt Italy had been humiliated.

So, you may want to spend a few minutes now adding some extra detail to your answers or just checking through your work.

If so, pause the video here and again, very well done for completing those questions.

We're now going to return to the inquiry and think about why people supported fascism in the 1920s? So I'd like you to write a paragraph answering this question here.

So why did the fascist gain support following World War One? You can use the table below to help you.

So on the left hand column, you can see some sentence starters that I've given to help you structure your answer.

On the right hand column, I've given you some keywords I'd like to see you use in your paragraphs.

I would aim to provide maybe two reasons why the fascist gain support following World War I in your answer, but to challenge yourself it'd be excellent if you could include a third reason too.

So pause the video here, complete your paragraphs and resume when you're ready.

Okay, well done everybody for competing a paragraphs and welcome back to the lesson.

To conclude today's lesson, we're going to quickly look at what you've covered so far in this inquiry.

So in the last two lessons, we have looked at the nature of fascism and why people began to support fascism in the 1920s after World War I.

In your next lesson, we will look at period known as The Great Depression.

To look at why this cause people support fascism, particularly in Germany.

And in the final lesson, you will look at why the fear of communism caused the fascist to gain support in Spain, Italy, and Germany collectively.

You'll also be able to answer our inquiry question, why did the fascist gain support? So, you have now completed today's lesson, thank you for your hard work and really well done for completing your questions and writing those paragraphs.

Please now complete the end of the lesson quiz to check your understanding.

And I look forward to teaching you in the next lesson of this inquiry soon.