Interwar Europe & World War II

1. Interwar Europe & World War II

2. In my Decline of the West, I prophesied the collapse of Western Civilization • Name of the post-war alliance between France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania • List two reasons why the League of Nations was considered weak and ultimately a failure • Nickname of those “who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war” • Nearly all nations in the post-war era erected memorials dedicated to the burial of whom? • Treaty that guaranteed Germany’s new western border with France and Belgium and was thought to be a hopeful sign of European international cooperation • Treaty, signed by 63 nations, that renounced “war as an instrument of national policy”

3. A state characterized by government control over all aspects of economic, social, political, cultural, and intellectual life, the subordination of the individual to the state, and insistence that the masses be actively involved in the regime's goals • Who wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism? • What were the immediate origins of the emergence of the totalitarian state? • List three characteristics of a totalitarian state • List three more

4. What was the name of Hitler’s failed attempt at overthrowing the Weimar Republic in 1923? What was the historical context of this abortive coup? • What did Hitler learn from this failed coup? What did he do while in prison? • “Living space." The doctrine, adopted by Hitler, that a nation's power depends on the amount of land it occupies thus, a nation must expand to be strong • What was the name of Hitler’s early followers? By what event was this group later purged? In what year was Hitler appointed, legally, chancellor? • Which event helped Hitler target the communists? Which Reichstag law paved the way for Hitler to dispense with constitutional government? • What was Gleichschaltung? List three facets of it. • List three more

5. What is the name of the executive ruling committee of the Soviet Union? Describe some basic differences between Stalin and Trotsky. • A modified version of the old capitalist system introduced in the Soviet Union by Lenin in 1921 to revive the economy after the ravages of the civil war and war communism; which group most benefitted from this policy? • Large farms created in the Soviet Union by Stalin by combining many small holdings into one large farm worked by the peasants under government supervision; explain two reasons why this policy failed • What was the name of Stalin’s attempt at the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union • Stalin’s intense paranoia and desire for sole control of decision making within the Soviet Union led him to pursue this policy • Cult that typified the Soviet labor policy of stressing high levels of achievement; named after a worker who had exceeded his daily coal-mining quota by thirteen-hundred percent

6. An ideology or movement that exalts the nation above the individual and calls for a centralized government with a dictatorial leader, economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition in particular, the ideology of Mussolini's regime in Italy • It occurred on March 30, 1922, and was meant to create the myth that the Fascists had seized power by an armed insurrection after a civil war • Name of Mussolini’s armed followers; what was their name in Italian? • 1923 law that stipulated that any party winning at least 25 percent of the votes in the next Italian national election would automatically be allotted two-thirds of the seats in parliament • “The leader” in Italian; name of the Fascist secret police • Fascist slogan that glorified women in their traditional roles as wives and mothers • Compromise deal struck between the Fascists and RCC in which Mussolini recognized the sovereign independence of Vatican City in return for the RCC recognizing the Italian state

7. An artistic movement in the 1920s and 1930s founded by artists who were revolted by the senseless slaughter of World War I and used their “anti-art” to express contempt for the Western tradition • Movement in modern architecture based on the idea that buildings should be used and fulfill the purpose for which they were intended • Motto of functionalist architecture • Artistic movement that sought reality beyond the material world and explored the unconscious works often portrayed fantasies, dreams and nightmares • This international sports contest, which added to the nationalistic rivalries of the age, was first contested in 1930 • Literary technique employed by writers such as James Joyce and Virginia Wolff in which the writer presented an interior monologue, or a report of the innermost thoughts of each character

8. What was the name of Hitler’s Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda? • What was the Gulag? • The George Washington figure of modern Turkey • “Night of shattered glass”; which infamous Nazi laws led to this event? • Name of the 1923 international commission that reduced German reparations and stabilized Germany’s payments on the basis of its ability to pay • Through which forest did Germany invade France in 1940 (and in so doing, outflanked the Maginot Line)? • What did Roosevelt dub the “soft-underbelly” of Europe?

9. Nazi propaganda documentary shot by Leni Riefenstahl; which event did this documentary portray? • Spanish village infamously bombed by a rearmed Germany during the Spanish Civil War • Germany’s chief industrial and mining center that was “invaded” by the French in 1922; why was it invaded? • In what way did the French expect to be repaid when they invaded the Ruhr? How did the Weimar government and its people respond? What were the consequences? • Famous resistance movement by a small group of German university students and one professor at the University of Munich

10. The policy, followed by the European nations in the 1930s, of accepting Hitler's annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the belief that meeting his demands would assure peace and stability • Agreement signed between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in October 1936 that recognized each nation’s common interests • Agreement signed in November 1936 between Germany and Japan by which both nations would maintain a common front against communism • General name for the Ribbentrop-Molotov treaty signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; what was the significance of this treaty for Hitler • This northwestern Czech region bordered Germany, was home to 3 million ethnic Germans, and contained important frontier defenses and considerable industrial resources; by which agreement was Germany awarded this region? • Hitler reoccupied and militarized this German region in March 1936 with no repercussions

11. “Lightning war.” A war conducted with great speed and force, as in Germany's advance at the beginning of World War II • How did a blitzkrieg typically proceed? • Nickname of the “phony war” between the Axis and Allied powers during the winter of 1939/1940 in which there was no military engagement • The Blitz; name two technological advances that aided the British against the German Luftwaffe • This “turning point of the war” was the bloodiest battle in world history • Leader of the Free French movement • German leader of the Afrika Korps; which battle was a key defeat for him? • German strike force of about three hundred tanks with accompanying forces and supplies; greatest tank battle of the war in which the Soviets stunned and routed the Germans

12. A date which will live in infamy? Which U.S. naval base was attacked that day? • American naval strategy in which they bypassed heavily fortified Japanese positions and instead concentrated the limited Allied resources on strategically important islands that were not well defended but capable of supporting the drive to the main islands of Japan • Japanese suicide missions dubbed the “divine wind” • American research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during the Second World War; who supervised the project, often called the “father of the atomic bomb”? • Cities on which the USA dropped atomic bombs

13. Wartime conference in which the Grand Alliance agreed that the British and Americans would invade the continent of Europe through France and that Germany would be partitioned after the war • What did this agreement mean for Eastern Europe (if successful)? • Wartime conference in which the following was agreed to: the establishment of the United Nations, Germany (and Berlin) would be divided up into four occupation zones, the Soviet Union would help the USA in the war against Japan • The ideological conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States after World War II • Contentious wartime conference that many historians see as a prelude to the emergence of the Cold War; it was here that Truman was informed a successful detonation of an atomic bomb had occurred

14. Philosophy that considers the normative rules of war; idea within this theory that argues civilians ought never be deliberate targets of war • This nation enacted the most thorough mobilization of any belligerent country during the war • The kind of economy most belligerent nations resorted to during the war • This German city, a cultural center, was needlessly (and cruelly) bombed by the Allies in February, 1945; what kind of bombs were used? • The Soviet female pilots who helped defeat the Germans at Stalingrad

15. In Nazi Germany, special strike forces in the SS that played an important role in rounding up and killing Jews; Why was this tactic ultimately abandoned? • At which conference was the Final Solution devised? What was the “solution”? • Head of the SS (Schutzstaffel), which came to control both the regular and secret police forces • The greatest tank battle of WWII, in which the Soviets destroyed 18 of the best German panzer divisions • The German air force • List two names for June 6, 1944 • What was the name of the Nazi-puppet state in occupied France called? Who led it?

16. Policy name for when a country's leader, like Stalin, uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise • What was the immediate cause of the Great Depression in 1929? • List two long-term causes of the Great Depression • List two long-term effects of the Great Depression • The Communist International, a worldwide organization of pro-Soviet Marxist parties originally formed in 1919 by Lenin to foster world revolution • Spanish general that toppled the Popular Front and established a dictatorship that last until 1975 • Finish this phrase: “without motor cars, sound films, and wireless, no victory of _____ _____”; who said it?

17. Perhaps the most important contributor to solving the German unemployment problem (and that was a clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles) • Nickname of Germany, Italy, and Japan; Nickname of the United States and its allies • Nickname of August 15, 1945 • Nickname of May 7, 1945 • Name for the series of concrete and steel fortifications armed with heavy artillery that the French had built (from 1930-1935) on the German border