Arts & Culture
Hitler
Arts & culture
Mao
- Hated the modernist styles & preferred traditional art forms
- Used traditional culture as a propagandist tool
Themes:
- ‘Blood and soil’: pure Aryan blood of German people and their struggles with the soil
- Anti-feminism
- Anti-Semitism
- Sense of dominance
- Fuhrerpinzip
Ian Kershaw: “The Hitler cult became the pivot of the propaganda effort;…The final ‘goal’ (of Nazism)…could only be reached by blindly following the Fuhrer”
- Ordered writers and artists to educate the mass
- Traditional Chinese art had to follow more modern Soviet-inspired art
- Literary works were censored
- News media was centralised
The Little Red Book:
- Quotations from Mao: class struggle and ‘correcting mistaken ideas’
- By 1970: China was an artistic wasteland.
Arts& cultural life-Similarities
Education
Hitler
Aim: control the youth of Germany
Hitler Youth:
- Train boys for war
- Train girls for motherhood
- Encouraged children to spy on their parents
- Changed the curriculum of German
- Eugenics--> achieving goal of ensuring ‘1000years old German Reich’
Result:
- successful--->literary rate was increased
Education
Mao
- Based on: liberal ideas
- Only 1 in 10 Chinese could read
Method:
- Schools were set up
- Chinese characters were simplified
Results:
- School became centres for indoctrination,
- Deng XiaoPing: “hardly any Chinese could read or write”
Education-Similarities
Germany:
- Hitler Youth
- The league of German Maidens
China:
- Youth League: age 14-28
- Youth Pioneers: age 6-14
Economic Policy
Economic Policies Similarities
Hitler
Aim:
- Reduce unemployment
- Expand German military
- Regain territorial losses as a result of Treaty of Versailles
Social Policy
Method:
- Started a state-run public program
- Conscription
- Four-Year Plan 1936
- The New Plan 1934
Women
Mao
Result:
- Government income: 10billion Reichsmark in 1928---->15billion Reichsmark in 1939
Attitude towards Capitalism
Richard Overy: "This was based on Hitler’s desire to turn Germany into an economic and military superpower before the rest of the world caught up."
Hitler
- “Women hold up half the sky”.
Changes:
- Marriage Law 1950
- Election Law 1953
Negative results:
- Double burden: mother and workers
- 13% of the party membership in 1954-75
Mao:“It is a very good thing, and a significant one too, to exterminate the bourgeoisie and capitalism in China.”
Minorities
Mao
Religion
Hitler
Mao
Political Policy
- Large-scale firms remained independent of Nazi control
- Private capitalist individuals owned their production, controlled by the Nazi party
- Capitalism over Marxism
Mao
Political Policy
- Religion: Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity
- Closure of churches, temples, shrines, monasteries
- Expelled foreign priests and missionaries
- Failed to retain stable relation with Vatican
Minorities:
- Tibetans
- Uighurs
- Hui Muslims
- Mongols
Treatment:
- During revolution (1940s): shifted to "autonomy"
-The Cultural Revolution:
- 6,000 monasteries were destroyed in Tibet
- 790,000 people persecuted in Inner Mongolia
- schools were destroyed and books were burned
Ideology: Nazism
- Nationalism
- Fuhrerprinzip: one dictatorship
- Volksmeinschaft: People's community
- Social Darwinism
- Lebensraum: living space
Ideology: peasantry revolution + communism
- Patriotic Health Movement:
- Labour camps ‘Laogal’:
- 10million people were in these camps each year
- Over 25million prisoners died
- 100 Flowers Campaign
- Anti-rightist campaign 1957:
- 1/2 million were labeled as ‘rightist’ --> persecution.
- Cultural Revolution
- Anti-Semitism
- Anti-democracy
- Anti-feminism
- Anti-communism
Aim:
- Abolish terms of the treaty of Versailles
- Condemn Weimar republic
- Conquer land in Europe
Women
Hitler
Economic policy
Religion-Similarities
Mao
- Role: a mother--- bear further Aryans
- 3Ks: Kinder, Kuche, Kirche – (Children, kitchen and church)
Encourage motherhood:
- Birth control centers were closed
- Abortion was illegal
- Maternity benefits:
- birth grants
- family allowances
- interest free loans
- Honour Cross of German Motherhood
- Lebensborn (Spring of life project)
Uve Frevert: “The vast majority did not perceive the Third Reich as a women’s hell. Much of what it introduced was doubtless appealing, the rest one learned to accept”.
Hitler
Minorities
Hitler
- Failed to fit the criteria for Volksgenossen-->‘non-Germans’
Religion
Aim:
- Decentralize economy---“Collective ownership of the means of production”
- Transform China into a great world power
- Increase standard of living
- Protestants & Catholics
- Cooperated during the consolidation of power (1933-34):
- E.g. A Concordat between Roman Catholic Church & Nazi
- Maintained stable relations between Vatican and Nazi
- Undermine religion:
- E.g. Protestant churches were merged --> Reich Church
"The people communes are good"
Method:
- Land Reform 1950
- Collectivization 1958
- Great Leap Forward 1958
- Five-Year plan 1953-57
- Social Darwinism
- Aryan 'master race': ‘blue-eyed, white-skinned, fair-haired people’.
Actions:
- Kristallnacht: 1938
- boycott of Jewish shops: April 1933
- Jew Excluded from professions
- Removed Jews from public life
- Holocaust in WW2: extermination of 11-12million people
- Euthanasia Programme 1939-41
“When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”---Mao
Women-Similarities
Domestic Policy