Why authoritarian rule emerged
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Question
What is authoritarian rule?
Answer
The concentration of political power in a small group or one individual, sitting at one end of a spectrum with democratic processes at the other.
Question
Name the four factors that let authoritarian regimes seize power (the lines of inquiry for 8.1).
Answer
Role of ideas, social factors, role of conflict, economic factors — usually working together, not alone.
Question
How did the Great Depression help Hitler rise to power in Germany (Europe)?
Answer
Mass unemployment after 1929 destroyed faith in the Weimar Republic; Nazi vote share jumped from 2.6% (1928) to 37.3% (July 1932).
Question
What role did the Treaty of Versailles (1919) play in Nazi ideas?
Answer
Its 'war guilt' clause and reparations let the Nazis blame national humiliation on the Weimar government, fuelling ultranationalism.
Question
What social group gave the Nazis a mass base, and why were they fearful?
Answer
The middle class (Mittelstand) — small shopkeepers, farmers, clerks — feared losing status to Depression bankruptcy and to communism.
Question
How did conflict open the door for Mao Zedong's rise in China (Asia)?
Answer
Japan's invasion (1937–45) weakened the Nationalist government, and the Chinese Civil War (1927–49, resumed 1946) let the Communists build territorial power.
Question
What was the Communist Party's mass base in China, and why?
Answer
The peasantry — over 80% of the population — won over through land redistribution during the Jiangxi and Yan'an base-area years.
Question
What ideology justified Communist rule in China?
Answer
Marxism-Leninism adapted by Mao (later called Mao Zedong Thought) — a peasant-based revolutionary path to socialism.
Question
Compare Germany and China: what caused each rise, in one line each?
Answer
Germany: economic collapse + national humiliation + a fearful middle class mobilised by ultranationalist ideology. China: prolonged war + peasant hardship mobilised by Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology.
Question
What do Germany 1933 and China 1949 have in common as causes of authoritarian rule?
Answer
Both combined a genuine crisis (economic or military) with an ideology that offered a clear enemy and a mobilised social base.
Question
How does Castro's Cuba (1959, Americas) add a third example of conflict opening the door to authoritarian rule?
Answer
Guerrilla war against Batista's corrupt, US-backed regime let Castro's 26th of July Movement seize power amid widespread poverty and resentment.
Question
Which IB concept asks 'why did this happen, and what followed'?
Answer
Cause and consequence — central to explaining why authoritarian regimes emerged.
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Topic 8.1 hub
Why did authoritarian rule emerge?
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