Download New MEH Review 08

1914-1945
I. World War I
1. The four ‘traditional’ causes of the First World War: how did each contribute to the coming of the
conflict?
2. What was trench warfare, as practiced on the Western Front?
3. German strategy focused on the dispute between ‘Easterners’ and ‘Westerners’. Explain.
4. For the Western Allies the biggest issue was keeping Russia in the War. Explain the problems.
5. Why is World War I such a significant turning point for European historians?
II. Treaty of Versailles (1919)
6. Explain the significance of each of the following in the dissatisfaction with the treaty: Germany’s new
borders; German disarmament; reparations; ‘War Guilt’; Creation of the League of Nations
III. Russian Revolution and Civil War (1918-1920)
A. Causes
B. Course
1. February/March Revolution (February 23-27/March 8-12, 1917)
2. October/November Revolution (October 24-25/November 6-7, 1917)
3. Civil War is actually numerous separate wars
C. Consequences
1. Fear of Red Revolution
2. Rise of Leninist-Stalinist State
IV. The Twenties
A. Intellectual trends
1. Dada
2. Expressionism
3. Surrealism
4. The Bauhaus
5. Existentialism
6. [Logical] Positivism
B. Germany
1. Spartacist Uprising
2. Weimar Republic
3. Trapped between Right and Left/Freikorps
4. Rapallo Treaty
5. Gustav Stresemann (1878-1929) and the Treaty of Locarno (1925)
C. Italy
1. Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) and the Rise of Fascism
2. ‘The Corporate State’
3. Concordat of 1929
D. Soviet Union
1. NEP
2. Death of Lenin
3. Struggle for power
4. Rise of Josef Stalin (1879-1953)
5. Collectivisation
6. Industrialisation
7. 5-Year Plan
V. The Great Depression (1929-1939)
A. Causes
1. Stock Market Crash affects the international economy
2. Bank failures in Central Europe
3. War debts
4. Decline in production levels, decline in world demand for European goods
5. Continuously high unemployment throughout the 1920s
6. Protective tariffs
7. Failure to use Keynesian ideas
8. Political hostilities aggravated economic problems
VI. Growth of Nazism in Germany
A. Depression and hyperinflation of the early 1920s
1. Appeal of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) as a national figure
2. Hitler comes to power on January 30, 1933.
B. Centralisation of power in the hands of the Führer
1. Enabling Act
2. Establishment of Dachau
3. Death of President Hindenburg
C. Aggressive foreign policy
1. Rearmament
2. Reoccupation of the Rhineland
3. Anschluss
4. Sudeten Crisis
5. Danzig
6. War begins on September 1, 1939
D. Antisemitism
1. Nuremberg Laws
2. Kristallnacht
3. Emigration/Ghettoization/Annihilation
VII. Other issues
A. Italian attack on Ethiopia
B. Spanish Civil War
VIII. The policy of Appeasement
A. At the beginning of the Nazi period, the French Government was most active in opposing German
aggressiveness
1. Leon Blum (1872-1950) and the Popular Front
B. As the Depression wore on, economic troubles and fears of a new war weakened the resolve of the
Western Allies.
C. By the later Nazi period, Britain had taken the lead and she led first toward appeasement and then
toward resistance with France reluctantly following.
1. Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940)
2. Munich Conference
NOTE: The 1930s saw serious political divisions in France, which in many ways viciously divided Right
and Left. There were constant rumors of military coups.
IX. The Soviet Union under Stalin
A. Forced collectivisation and the destruction of the kulaks
B. Purging the Old Bolsheviks
C. Purging the Army
D. Purging (and assassinating) any who gather too much power (e.g., Kirov)
E. Spanish Civil War
F. Both Germany and the Western Allies sent representatives to Moscow seeking an alliance
1. Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (August 23, 1939)
2. Secret clauses
3. War begins September 1, 1939
X. World War II
A. Causes
1. Expansionism and the aggressive foreign policy of Fascist states
2. The Versailles Treaty and the harshness of the peace
3. Psychological needs in Germany
4. Questions of the balance of power
5. A continuation of World War I?
B. Course
C. Holocaust
XI. Origins of the Cold War
A. Definition
The 45-year political and economic competition between the United States and its Allies, representing
democratic capitalism, and the Soviet Union and its Allies, representing totalitarian communism, for the
hearts and minds of the post-colonial world.
B. Causes
1. The Bomb
2. The end of European colonial Empires
3. Misunderstandings, misperceptions, and mistakes on both sides
4. Stalin’s paranoia, Stalin’s goals (the revolutionary-imperial paradigm)
5. Stalin’s search for buffer states
6. Stalin’s expectation of rewards; Western leaders gratitude and suspicion
C. Berlin, the first flashpoint
1. Division of Germany and Austria
2. Growth of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe