Fascism And Communism History Assignment Paper

The following broad essay will appear as written on the exam. Its purpose is to allow you to think about the course as a whole and formulate your own conclusions about the larger interpretive issues at stake. There are no right or wrong answers to this question, only strong or weak answers, depending on the coherence of the framework and the effectiveness of the examples and evidence presented. Try to avoid both vague opinion pieces and narrow factual narratives and reach for a balance of creative thinking and rigorous documentation.
1. This course has focused on how fascism, communism and liberal democracy competed for the hearts and minds of Europeans during the tumultuous inter-war period. In explaining both the genesis and outcome of the struggle, the course has sought to strike a balance between a broader European perspective of pervasive crisis (the war, gender crisis, the Depression and the difficult transition to “mass politics”) and the acknowledgment that individual countries pursued paths that were rooted at least partly in particular national histories.
In your essay, construct an interpretation of the political struggle of the inter-war period that places emphasis on either parallel national crises or a general European crisis. In other words, strike your own balance between the particular and the general in explaining the crisis of liberalism and the appeal and success of alternative ideological systems before 1945. In constructing your essay, draw on at least three national case studies to provide evidence for your argument. Finally, in your conclusion, sum up what you see as the most important lessons to be learned about when democratic systems become vulnerable to challenge and collapse, what makes alternative systems viable, and whether these lessons were specific to the interwar period or still apply today.
In order to focus your essay, consider one of the following strategies:
a) focus on the communist and fascist alternatives to liberal democratic regimes. How did the communist and fascist regimes develop alternative strategies of governing peoples in the age of mass politics? Were fascist and communist regimes more a response to the weaknesses of liberal democracy in the transition to mass politics or a response to specific conditions in their countries?
b) Or, focus on the key factors that led to the collapse of democratic regimes in both the 1920s and 1930s. Was the collapse of democratic regimes and their replacement by other political regimes related to a common set of factors, or rooted in long term national issues?
c) Finally, you could focus your interpretation on the importance of long-term, structural causes, whether national or European, or conversely, short- term causes such as traumatic events or the decisions of political actors.