Download World War II

World War II
Stearns, Chapter 30
Buildup
• The rise of fascist governments in Italy and
Germany
• Hyper-nationalistic, one party authoritarian
regimes
• Adolf Hitler’s rise to power with designs to
redress the perceived humiliation of Germany at
Versailles and to expand German territory
• The rise of military rule in Japan
Expansionist Policies
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1931: Japan invades Manchuria
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1935: Hitler begins rearmament
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1935: Mussolini invades Ethiopia
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1936-39: Spanish Civil War
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1937: Japan invades China
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1938: Anschluss-German/Austrian ‘unification’
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1938: Hitler annexes the Sudentenland (Western Czechoslovakia)
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1938: Western appeasement at the Munich Conference
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1939: Annexation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia
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1939: Hitler signs a non-aggression pact with the USSR
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9/1/39: Hitler invades Poland
Axis vs. Allies
• Axis Powers: Germany, Italy and Japan
• The Allied Powers: Great Britain, France, and the
USSR-with the US joining in late 1941
Two Theaters of War
• Pacific:
Japan seized Indochina from France and
attacked Malaysia and Burma
• US Embargoes against Japan result in Japan’s
attack of the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.
• Europe:
Early successes of the Axis began to be
rebuffed with Hitler’s unsuccessful invasion of the
USSR. Soviet armies from the East and British
and American troops from the West and South
would end the Axis threat
A ‘new’ kind of war
• Stalemated World War I-style trench warfare lost
out to German ‘Blitzkrieg’ and even greater forceand destruction
• Deliberate targeting of civilians on a massive scale
• The development and use of nuclear weapons
The End of the War
• Allied armies reached Germany in April of 1945
with the European war ending officially in May
• The Pacific war would end after Japan’s
unconditional surrender following the dropping of
two atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Peace
• Peace settlements began before the war had
ended.
• 1943, Tehran Conference:
Allies would focus on
the liberation of France
• 1945, Yalta Conference:
USSR agrees to join the
war against Japan and provides for the division
and occupation of Germany after the war
Following the War
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The US occupies Japan
Korea was divided into US and Soviet occupation zones
China regained most of its territory
The USSR absorbs or occupies much of Eastern Europe
New push for colonial independence
Creation of the United Nations
A two-superpower world: the USA and USSR and the ensuing
Cold War
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Enhanced anti-colonialist and nationalist movements in African
and Asia
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Independence and division of British South Asia into Pakistan
(Muslim) and India (Hindu)
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Widespread African independence movements
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Relatively easy independence in non-settler colonies (Ghana)
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Great violence in settler colonies (Algeria)
UN Sponsored creation of Israel
The Cold War Years
Stearns, Chapter 31
An Iron Curtain Descends
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Winston Churchill dubs the separation between East and West
as an Iron Curtain with Germany as a focal point.
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To the East-Communist, supportive of the USSR, to the
West, Capitalist/Democratic, supportive of the USA
To Halt the further spread of communism, the USA enacts
the Marshall Plan to rebuild war torn Europe
The Truman Doctrine outlined the help the US would offer
according the the policy of containment
Cold War Alliances
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NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Warsaw Pact: The USSR and its satellite nations
Rivalry would intensify with the USSR’s successful
detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949, launching an arms
race, later a space race.
The Cold War gets hot with the invasion of South Korea by
communist North Korea
The policy of containment would spread around the globe:
southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America
Soviet Eastern Europe
• Opposition to Soviet rule was crushed
• Mass education and Soviet-style propaganda
• Industrialization pushed
• The divide best signified by the Berlin Wall, built in
the early 1960’s.
Soviet Domestic Policies
• Stalinist principles continued even after WWII
• Restriction of travel, media censorship, isolation
• Religion restricted
• Lagging in consumer goods, poor agricultural
production
• Nikita Khrushchev signaled a slight thaw following
the death of Stalin, ‘de-Stalinization’
The End of the Cold War
• Ultimately, the economic strength of the United
States would lead to the collapse of Communist
USSR
Comparing East & West
during the Cold War
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Both sides blamed the other for starting the Cold War
Great suspicion between both sides: Cuban Missile Crisis
Both would be sellers of arms on the world market to peddle their
influence in newly decolonized areas.
Both offered new emphasis on science and technology
Some attempts at cooling: Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, detente
Changes in Western
Europe
• Spread of liberal democracies
• Western Europe would become more politically
united than at any other time in history
• The Common Market, and later the European
Union
• A growth in the ‘Welfare State,’ but politics
smoothly transitioning from left to right
Changes in Western
Society
• Social lines blurred by increased social mobility in
the West.
• Increase in the number of married working women.
• Continuation of female enfranchisement.
• Access to divorce and birth control
• Marriage and children came later-falling birthrates.
• Maternal care replaced by day-care centers.
Soviet Society
• Lagging the west in consumer goods.
• Living standards did improve, but only in relation to
earlier Soviet years.
• Great environmental damage.
• A similar plunge in birthrates