Lesson video

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

Today is the final lesson of our inquiry, looking at why the fascists gained support during the 1920's and 1930's.

For today's lesson, please make sure you have a pen or pencil to write with, some paper to write on, and just to make sure that you've moved yourself away from any distractions so that you can focus on the content of today's lesson.

Once you've done that, you can begin by writing today's title, which is, Fear of Communism.

In Spain during the 1930's, a left wing government was elected that was supported by communists.

This angered many nationalists and conservatives as they feared the spread of communism.

As a result, some of these nationalists and conservatives started to behave like the fascists in Italy, and used violence to fight against the left wing government.

As a result, a civil war broke out between the left wing government and forces inspired by fascism.

The fascists won the Spanish Civil War, and their General, Francisco Franco, became the leader of Spain.

He ruled Spain as a dictator until 1975.

Although not a typical fascist, Franco established a dictatorship in Spain.

His supporters were also united by their nationalism and their anti-communist and anti-democracy beliefs.

Having previously looked at Italy and Germany, we will also be focusing on a rise of fascism in Spain, during this lesson.

To check your understanding of our lessons so far, I'd like you to see if you can put the events on the left, in the correct order.

As a challenge, see if you can add the year, or years, that each event took place.

Pause the video here, complete the task, and resume once you're finished to check your answers.

Welcome back everybody, and well done.

So, the events in the correct order are as follows.

Firstly, the beginning of World War 1, started in 1914.

The Russian Revolution was the next event, occurring in 1917.

The rise of fascism in Italy occurred during the 1920s, following the end of World War 1 in 1918.

And lastly, the Wall Street Crash, which caused the Great Depression, occurred in 1929.

Excellent work if you got those correct, and excellent work too, if you managed to guess which years each of those occurred in.

So today we are going to look at how the fear of communism caused fascist support to grow.

In your previous lessons, I've referred to different classes, referencing working class, middle class, and upper class groups.

An understanding of class is really important to help you during today's lesson.

So we'll use this very simplified diagram as a starting point.

Firstly, class refers to the system of dividing people into groups in a society, with the same social and economic position.

When looking at the rise of fascism, we can roughly refer to three groups.

So working class people were the group of people who were employed for wages, especially in manual or industrial work such as factory workers or farm labourers.

The middle class included skilled workers, professionals, and business people.

There tended to be less of them, but they were more wealthy than the working class.

And at top would be the upper class.

This would be a term for the economic elite, people with extreme wealth or social status.

And you can see that these were the smallest group.

Now, when looking at the rise of fascism, we can see that many people supported the fascists as they were fearful of the spread of communism.

The threat of communism became more serious as the working classes became more desperate and their lives became harder.

Because this was when they began to vote for communist parties.

So this occurred at the end of World War 1, and during the Great Depression.

World War 1 had worsened conflict between the different classes within society.

The Russian Revolution had brought communists to power and the idea of a society where everybody was equal.

Although this didn't cause working class soldiers to turn their weapons on their leaders, it did highlight a divide between the wealthier, powerful elites, and the working classes in Italy and Germany.

The Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression made life harder for working people who now that towards the communists to overcome their problems. As a result of these events, many people were afraid that the communists would gain power.

The middle and upper classes were particularly concerned that this would affect their wealth and status.

As a result, these classes looked to anti-communist, extremist groups, such as the fascists.

Following our previous lesson, you should hopefully be aware that following the Great Depression, support for the German communist party grew in the late 1920's and early 1930's.

In fact, 15% of voters supported the German communist party in 1932.

This made the German communist party the largest communist party in the world, outside of the Soviet union.

The threat the communists posed to fascist groups, such as the Nazis, is apparent through the use of the S.

A, the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party, to disrupt the communist party.

You can see members of the S.

A pictured here.

The S.

A tore down communist posters, intimidated their candidates, and used violence against them.

Increasingly, the middle classes were afraid of the strength of the communist party.

Farmers and landowners in Germany were also threatened by communism and feared that private ownership of land would be abolished if the German communist party came to power.

The Nazi party on the other hand, promised to protect these groups of people from the communists, and therefore began to gain their support.

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

Firstly, who was the leader of the Nazi party? Pause the video, choose your answer from the options on the screen, and resume the video to check to answer when you're ready.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got Option C as your answer.

Adolf Hitler was a leader of the Nazi party.

Secondly, which two social groups tended to support the Nazis in the 1930's? Pause the video here, choose your answer and continue when you're ready.

Okay, well done everybody.

The correct answers are Option's B and C.

The middle class, and leaders of big businesses.

Well done if you got those correct as well.

You're now going to go back and look at the rise of fascism in the 1920's, in Italy.

As the fear of left-wing parties contributed to the rise of Mussolini and the fascist party.

Fascism in Italy grew partly out the reaction to the rapid rise of socialism in Italy.

We can see socialism pictured here on the left wing of our political spectrum.

Socialism is an economic and political ideology based on public ownership of property and industry, and it is often closely related to communism.

So we're going to include it in our fear of communism lesson.

During the 1920's, socialists encouraged Italian workers to go on strike.

By September 1920, roughly 400,000 workers were involved in the factory strikes, and armed workers even took control of some factories in Northern Italy.

In the picture, you can see a factory in Milan, that workers had taken control of.

The middle classes and industrialists were terrified.

And the government did little to crush the worker occupation of factories.

As a result, Italians with more conservative views now looked to extremist parties for support, despite their anti-democratic views.

The socialist threat also existed in the countryside, and landowners complained as farm workers occupied the farmer's land.

In local elections in the early 1920's, socialists gained control of 26 of the country's 69 provinces.

The landowners felt that they had been abandoned by the government, and feared being taxed more heavily if the socialists got into power.

Therefore, by the early 1920's, many people had turned to the fascists for support.

People also came to the fascists to restore law and order, to protect that interests.

Local fascist squads used violence to restore order in Central and Northern Italy.

The violence used by the fascist spread from the countryside to the cities, generating more support for the fascists.

To check your understanding of the rise of fascism in Italy, I'd like you to answer the following question.

Why did the Italian fascists gain support from the middle classes during the 1920's? Pause the video here to write your answer, and resume when you're ready.

Welcome back everybody, and great work for completing the task.

I have written an example answer for you here.

Remember my work may be a little different to yours, which is absolutely fine.

What you're looking for is to have some of the same examples or key words that I've used in your answer, but don't worry if yours is phrased a little differently.

So I've written, one reason why the middle classes began to support the fascists during the 1920's was because they feared the rise of the socialists.

Many workers had taken control of factories and seized land in the countryside.

Therefore, people look to the fascists to overcome these problems. In a minute or so, you'll complete today's reading to answer these questions here.

So firstly, describe one reason why fascism gained support following World War 1.

Second is, who became the leader of Spain following the Spanish Civil War? The third asks, how successful was the communist party in Germany? And the forth question asks you, why did the Nazi party gain support from the middle classes? Your challenge question today will be, why did the socialist threat in Italy cause people to support the fascists? So you can now pause the video, open a worksheet and complete today's questions.

There is a glossary to provide you with some definitions of the keywords, 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 those questions.

So we will now go through these answers together.

Remember that my answers may look a little different to yours, which is okay.

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

So the first question asks you to describe one reason why fascism gained support following World War 1.

An acceptable answer could be, as people feared communism.

A good answer could be that, one reason why fascism gained support following World War 1 was the fear of communism following the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Fascists, were anti-communists, so people voted for them to prevent the communists from gaining power.

Second question.

Who became the leader of Spain following the Spanish Civil War? An acceptable answer is Francisco Franco.

A good answer's going to get this into a full sentence, such as, Francisco Franco became the leader of Spain following the Spanish civil war.

The third question asks, how successful was the communist party in Germany? So you could have said that they were successful as they gained lots of votes, or quite successful because we know they didn't come to power but they still did gain a large following.

So your good answer is going to put this into full sentences and give a couple of examples.

Such as, the communist party was quite successful in Germany during the 1920's and early 1930's.

Outside of the Soviet Union, the communist party in Germany was the largest communist party in the world, and had gained 15% of the votes to the German parliament in 1932.

The forth question asks you, why did the Nazi party gain support from the middle classes? So amongst your acceptable answers you could have had, because the party was anti-communist.

A good answer is going to explain this in more detail, such as, the Nazi party gained support from the middle classes because the middle classes were particularly concerned that if the communist party came to power, it would affect their wealth and status.

As a result, these classes looked to anti-communist, extremist groups, such as the Nazi party, to prevent the communists from coming to power.

Your challenge question today asked, why did the socialist threat in Italy cause people to support the fascists? So you could have had amongst your acceptable answers, that people were afraid of social strikes, or land seizures.

A good answer, will again, put these into full sentences, such as, the socialist threat in Italy terrified the middle classes and industrialists, and the government did little to prevent the socialists from taking control of factories and seizing land.

Therefore, Italians with more conservative views now looked to extremist parties for support, despite their anti-democratic views.

So you may want to spend a few minutes now, adding some extra details to your answers.

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

You should now be able to understand the reasons why, despite a long campaign for democracy, fascist groups gained support in European countries in the 1920's and 1930's.

The main three areas we have looked at during this inquiry are, firstly, World War 1.

For example, we saw how fascists in Italy were angered by the mutilated victory and were determined to strengthen Italy following the end of the war.

We've also looked at the Great Depression.

We saw how the economic problems caused by the Wall Street Crash in 1929, and the failure of the German government to overcome these problems during the Great Depression caused people in Germany to look to extremist parties for support.

Lastly, in today's lesson, we've seen how the fear of communism caused some people support fascists in Italy, Spain, and Germany, throughout the 1920's and 1930's.

Hopefully you will also be able to see how, although fascism took different forms in different countries, the fascist leaders we have looked at were heavily influenced by each other.

For example, Mussolini took power first in 1922, in Italy, and inspired Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in the 1930's, Franco, the leader of the fascist forces, was supported by both Hitler and Mussolini.

Therefore, although these leaders often acted independently, you can see how they each influence each other's ideology and the spread of fascism in Europe.

And your final task of this inquiry.

I'd like you to bring together all of the knowledge you've gained over the last four lessons to answer this question.

What was the most important reason why fascists gained support? The table below has been created to support you when writing a paragraph in response to this question.

On the left-hand column, you can see some sentence starters to help you structure your answer.

On the right-hand column, I've given you some key words I'd like you to try and use in your paragraphs.

The aim is to use your knowledge to state which reason you think is the most important when explaining why fascists gained support.

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

Okay, well done everybody for competing your paragraphs.

You have now completed today's lesson and this inquiry looking at why fascists gained support in the 1920's and 1930's.

Thank you so much for your hard work.

And really well done for completing all of the tasks over these last few lessons.

I've been really impressed.

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

And I look forward to hopefully teaching you in another inquiry in the future.