chapter 34 Flashcards
an age of anxiety
Where did Adolf Hitler pursue his ambitions as an artist/what school (only to be rejected as an art student in 1907)?
Vienna Academy of Fine Arts
Hitler especially enjoyed the music of whom because his music matched his own imaginative predilections?
Richard Wagner
Where did Hitler’s views towards society, Jews, and Marxists begin to be shaped?
a homeless shelter, where he stayed after running through all of his money (mostly inheritance from his mother who past away)
What did Hitler’s father Alois want his son to pursue?
expected him to follow in his footsteps, study hard and enter the Austrian civil service
- Hitler had no desire to become a bureaucrat
Brewing in the conservations had amongst other inhabitants of the homeless shelter, Hitler came to hate _____ and _______, whom he thought had formed an evil union with the goal of destroying the world.
Jews; Marxists
Hitler also despised _________ and _________, and in cheap cafes he began directing political lectures at anyone who would listen.
liberalism; democracy
How did Hitler get by financially in order for his political and social life to become much more exciting?
his artwork: selling mundane postcards covered with painted replicas of famous works, or his original sketches of Viennese buildings
Why did Hitler leave Vienna in 1913? Where did he go?
wanted to avoid the Austrian military draft, not willing to serve or die for what he believed was a decaying Austria-Hungary empire
- found refuge in Munich, Germany
What did Hitler do in Germany when he found refuge there? How did these experiences shape his views, and ultimately what he viewed would be his mission in life?
volunteered for service in the German army, discovered real talent for military service, remained in army for duration of WWI
- rage coursed through him when he learned of Germany’s defeat, knew that Jews were responsible for this humiliation
It was in the _____ decades following the war that a revolution in science, psychology, art, and architecture attained its fullest development and potency.
two
Who gave the label of “you are all a lost generation” to the group of American intellectuals and literati who congregated in Paris in the postwar years that expressed the malaise and disillusion that characterized the US and European thought after the Great War?
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Who wrote the war novel “A Farewell to Arms” (1929)?
Ernest Hemingway
Who wrote the war novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1929)?
Erich Maria Remarque
Who was a German schoolteacher that published “The Decline of the West” that proposed gloomy predictions of European society entering the final stage of its existence?
Oswald Spengler (1880-1936)
- offered a kind of comfort to those who sought to rationalize their postwar despair
Who was a historian inspired to write a twelve-volume classic that discovered how societies developed through time (“A Study of History”)?
Arnold J. Toynbee
In what work did notable Christian theologian Karl Barth publish a work that attacked the liberal Christian theology that embraced the idea of progress?
“Epistle to the Romans”
Who was a Russian orthodox thinker that said that “Man’s historical experience has been one of steady failure, and there are no grounds for supposing it will ever be anything else”?
Niokolai Berdiaev
Why did the idol of science come under attack during and after the Great War?
scientists had spent the war making poisonous gas and high explosives
- contrasted with their vision to leading humanity to a beneficial conquest of nature
Why was democracy another fallen idol because of the Great War?
Great War encouraged suffrage of women, and increasing numbers of people participated in politics, but democracy viewed as a weak political system that championed the tyranny of the average person
AKA became less about the people having the power to vote, and more about the idea of allowing one AVERAGE person rather than ELITE to be in power, even if this person was elected by the majority
Common people, too, often viewed democracy as a ________ political system because they associated it with _______ and ________ party politics.
decaying; corrupt; ineffective
Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset warned readers about the masses who were destined to destroy the highest achievements of Western society in what essay?
“Revolt of the Masses” (1930)
Who was a physicist whose theory of special relativity showed that there is no single spatial and chronological framework in the universe?
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
According to Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, it no longer made sense to speak of what two things as absolutes, because the measurement of those two categories always varies with the motion of the observer.
space and time
= space and time are relative to the motion of the observer
Following the Great War, and science seeming to reach the limits of what could be known, a commonsense universe had ________, to be replaced by a radically new one in which reality or truth was merely a set of ________ constructs.
vanished; mental
Who published a paper, “About the Quantum-Theoretical Reinterpretation of Kinetic and Mechanical Relationships” which established the uncertainty principle?
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976)
What did Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle say about observing the behavior of electrons objectively?
- impossible to specify simultaneously the position and the velocity of a subatomic particle
- scientists cannot observe the behavior of electrons objectively because the act of observation interferes with them
Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty theory carried broader philosophical ramifications in that it called into question established notions of ______ and violated the fundamental law of _____ and ______.
truth; cause; effect
Why was objectivity no longer a valid concept?
it came to be understood that the observer was always part of the process under observation
Who was a medical doctor from Vienna who embarked on research that focused on psychological rather than physiological explanations for mental disorders?
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
What did Sigmund Freud believe was the key to the deepest recesses of the human psyche?
dreams!!
What was the name of Sigmund Freud’s theory that provided the keys to understanding all human behavior?
psychoanalysis
Between 1916 and 1920, the disillusioned artists of the ______ movement in Zurich, Paris, and New York used any available forum to spit metaphorically on nationalism, materialism, and rationalism, which they felt had contributed to a senseless war.
Dada
What was a distinctive characteristic of Dada artists/what was their view on standards of art?
they consistently rejected prevailing standards of art and declared an all-out assault on the unquestioning conformity of culture and thought
- imagined themselves to be non-artists who created non-art
What German art movement of the 1920s was characterized by a realistic style of painting that reflected a very cynical and highly critical attitude toward war?
Neue Sachlichkeit (no-yuh ZACH-kleekh-kite) (“New Objectivity”)
Who along with George Grosz is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement with his merciless and bitterly realistic depictions of society in the aftermath of war?
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (1891-1969)
Regardless of whether they called themselves dadaists, surrealists, cubists, or abstractionists, artists generally agreed on a program “to abolish the _________ of ________”
sovereignty; appearance
- paintings no longer depicted recognizable objects from everyday world, beauty expressed in pure color or shape
- violent distortion of forms use of explosive colors
- generally accepted standards that distinguished “good” and “bad” art disappeared
How was postwar art influenced by Freudian psychology?
tried to tap the subconscious mind to communicate an inner vision or a dream
The economic recovery and well-being of Europe was tied to a tangled financial system that involved war debts among the [an alliance] , reparations paid by [European nation] and [European nation], and the flow of [nation] funds to Europe.
Allies; Germany; Austria; U.S.
Whom did Austria and Germany rely on loans and investment capital from to finance reparation payments to France and England?
the U.S.
French and British governments depended on reparation payments from what two nations to pay off loans taken out in the United States during the Great War?
Germany and Austria
By the summer of 1928, U.S. lenders and investors started to _______ capital from Europe, placing an intolerable strain on the financial system.
withdraw
What did improvements in industrial processes do to the economies of the Dutch East Indies, Ceylon, and Malaysia/economies that relied on exports of raw materials?
improvements reduced worldwide demand for certain raw materials, causing an increase in supplies and a drop in prices
What are some examples of improvements in industrial processes reducing worldwide demand for certain raw materials?
technological advances in automobile tires permitted use of reclaimed rubber, no longer needed natural rubber
- increased use of oil undermined coal industry, emergence of synthetics hurt the cotton industry, growing adoption of artificial nitrogen ruined nitrate industry of Chile
The global economy in the 1920s saw a depressed state of agriculture which was a result of __________ and _______ prices.
overproduction; falling
The ________ income of farm families contributed to _____ inventories of manufactured goods, which in turn caused businesses to cut back production and to dismiss workers.
reduced; high
What did the United States economy (at least for a while) look like after the Great War?
enjoyed a boom after the Great War: industrial wages were high, production and consumption increased
- many people in the US invested their earnings and savings in speculative ventures = the buying of stock on margin
What happened on Black Thursday (October 24 1929)
a wave of panic selling on the New York Stock Exchange caused stock prices to plummet
- investors who had overextended themselves in a frenzy of speculative stock purchases watched in agony as thousands of people lost their life savings
- by the end of the day 11 financiers had committed suicide–
In the wake of financial chaos from stock exchange and stock prices plummeting unexpectedly, how did the US economy change?
drastic decrease in business activity, wages, and employment
- consumer demand no longer sufficed to purchase all the goods that businesses produced
- businesses realized that they could not sell their inventories = cutbacks in production and additional layoffs = so many people unemployed or underemployed = demand plummeted further = more business failures and soaring unemployment
In 1930 the US’s economic slump deepened, and by 1932 industrial production had fallen to _____ of its 1929 level. National income dropped by approximately _____.
half; half
What percent of US banks went out of business between 1929 and 1932? What was the effect?
44%, deposits of millions of people had disappeared
What was the bigger, more pressing domino effect of the contraction of the US economy?
much of the world’s prosperity depended on the export of US capital and the strength of US import markets = contraction of US economy created ripple effect that encircled the globe
What were two nations that suffered the most in economic contraction because of their reliance on exports of manufactured goods to pay for imported fuel and food?
Germany and Japan
Countries that depended on the export of what, were hardest hit by economic contraction?
few primary products (agricultural goods like coffee, sugar, cotton, and raw materials like minerals, ores, and rubber)
ex.: Latin America, Africa, Asia
Despite losing the Great War, how did Germany remain a leading economic power throughout the postwar years?
no military engagements took place on German soil = national economy (its natural resources, infrastructure, and productive capacity) was spared the physical destruction that seriously disrupted the economies of other lands like France or Russia
- did not escape the ravages of depression
Devastated by the loss of US capital, the German economy experienced a precipitous economic slide that by 1932 resulted in what percent unemployment and decrease in industrial production?
35% unemployment and 50% decrease in industrial production
Unemployment in ______-oriented sectors of the economy skyrocketed as companies cut back on _______.
export; production
How did the economic situation/depression worsen when businesses were desperate to raise capital by exporting goods to the United States?
they found that US markets had virtually disappeared behind tariff walls
What was economic nationalism?
Economic policies pursued by many governments affected by the Great Depression in which the nation tries to become economically self-sufficient by imposing high tariffs on foreign goods. The policy served to exacerbate the damaging effects of the Depression around the world.
What tariff act did US congress pass to raise duties on most manufactured products to prohibitive levels in 1930?
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
What three things did politicians impose in hopes of achieving a high degree of economic self-sufficiency through economic nationalism?
imposing
1. tariff barriers
2. import quotas
3. import prohibitions
Between 1929 and 1932, world production declined by ___ percent and trade dropped by more than ___ percent.
38; 66
