[APUSH 2] Rise of Dictators Vocabulary

Washington Naval Conference (1921)

1921 disarmament conference that tries to avoid another world war

• WWI starts due to M.A.I.N. (Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, Nationalism)

• 9 Power Treaty, 5 Power Treaty, Kellogg-Briand Pact are a culmination of this conference

9 Power Treaty

treaty where the major world powers agree to give China independence

• Goes after I (imperialism) in MAIN

• China goes to civil war due to Nationalists & Communists going against each other in order to take control of the country’s government now that it’s a free country

• Japan takes control of China due to its weakened state from Civil War

5 Power Treaty (1922)

naval disarmament treaty limiting the amount of warships each country can have

• Goes after M (militarism) in MAIN

• Ratios of Battleships

  • United States = 5

  • Britain = 5

  • Japan = 3

  • France = 1.67

  • Italy = 1.67

• Japan got a guarantee that the US and Britain would stop fortifying their Far East territories

• Loophole: there were no restrictions on small warships

• Also known as the 5-5-3 Treaty

• Japan agrees to this because this means Japan gets to double the size of their military as the US and Britain decrease the size of their navy (compared to what they had before)

• Japan breaks this treaty, but the US doesn’t do anything about it due to the Depression

• Japan becomes the Asian superpower because there was none before them

Kellogg-Briand Pact

international treaty that outlaws war

• Goes after A (alliances) in MAIN

• By making war illegal, you could prosecute countries that break the war law

• If a country declares war, you could take them to “court” if they’re a part of this pact

Isolationism

the idea that the United States should stay out of foreign affairs and mind its own business

• US foreign policy changed after WWII because turning a blind eye to Hitler’s advancements led to Pearl Harbor

Fascism

military style of government with ranks and one leader

• No equality; one is in charge

• In theory, Communism is the complete opposite of Fascism (everyone is equal). However, in practice, Communism and Fascism end up with extremely similar governments because people are unwilling to give up their possessions for the pursuit of total equality, which leads to the government needing to take it from them by force.

Benito Mussolini

Fascist dictator of Italy during WWII

• Mussolini is essentially Hitler’s “sidekick”

• Fascists v.s. Communists fight in Italy

• King of Italy meets Mussolini and tells him to take control of Italy as long as the Italian royal family is left alone and is able to live his life in peace with them

Black Shirts

paramilitary group that helped Mussolini control Italy

• Black Shirts = WWI Veterans from Italy that make up the Fascists fighting in Italy

• Felt that the government abandoned them

• Estimated that Mussolini had several hundred children

• Mussolini doesn’t give Hitler Jews because he would prefer to have his “people” under his own control

Joseph Stalin

Communist dictator of the Soviet Union from the 20s to the 50s, and was responsible for two genocides (the Purge and the Holodomor)

• “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?” -Joseph Stalin

• Stalin was an extremely paranoid person, and had a food taster

• Only figure in World History that intentionally had his wife & son murdered because of his paranoia that they were plotting his death

• The Purge (1920s-1930s): Stalin kills everyone he deems as “disloyal”

• Stalin had an estimated death toll of 7 million people (didn’t count them like Hitler did)

Holodomor

refers to the murder of between 2 and 10 million Ukranians by Russia in the winter of 1932-1933 using famine

• Ukraine speaks in Ukrainian and wants to educate the youth about Ukrainian culture and history, which Stalin didn’t like because of his paranoia

• Ukraine = “breadbasket” of Soviet Union

• As Ukraine is harvesting the grain, it was requisitioned (taken) by the Soviet Army

• If you took any of this food, you were shot dead

• Families stopped letting their kids out due to cannibalism taking root

• Stalin took all of the excess food that he got from Ukraine and sold it to the rest of the world, showing how the Soviets had an abundance of food

• People’s stomachs bloat when they’re so starved because the stomach is literally falling apart from the body. If a person is fed when in this state, they could die.

Adolf Hitler

Fascist dictator of Germany during WWII

• Hitler was never intending on being captured by the Allies, and he would rather commit suicide (either he came out victorious, or he lost and killed himself)

• Had 8 body doubles and murdered them all, scattering them throughout Germany

• Hitler and his wife get married, and commit suicide later the same day

• Hitler is poisoned, shot, burned, buried, and bombed (his body was reduced to mere fragments)

  • Poisoned himself, asked his people to shoot him in the face, asked for his body to be brought to the surface and get burned, and bury it

NAZI Party

National Socialist German Workers Party; Hitler’s political party

• Hitler didn’t create it, but their message is everything he believed in

• Hitler took over this party through his natural talent and charisma

• Swastika is tilted in the Nazi party logo to rebrand it, and wanted a red flag

• Swastika used to be a peace symbol, but Hitler ruined its image

SS (Storm Troopers)

Hitler’s special elite soldiers that ran the death camps

• SS enforces everything (Hitler never killed anyone in WWII, but the SS did it for him)

• You qualified to be part of the SS (best of the best)

• You had to prove 200 years of non-Jewish blood to be a part of the SS

• Hitler stationed the SS in camps, showing that he prioritized the execution of Jews

• SS wore boots with metal heels, so that you could hear them when they walked

• Dual lightning bolts symbolized the SS because they couldn’t

• Hitler Youth: kids were encouraged to join this, and this organization brainwashed the kids into thinking that the highest honor of any German’s life was to join the SS

• You had to pledge to Hitler that you would grant him 2 children that would be brought up

• SS weren’t allowed to rape people, because the Nazis viewed it as “polluting the bloodline”

Totalitarianism

when the government has total and complete control over its people’s lives

• The government would make you go to a certain college and give you limited career options with a guaranteed salary based on how smart you were. If you wanted to change your job, you had to go to the government and ask them.

• “Get The Evil Jew Out”: board game invented by the Nazis that was directed towards children in order to influence them to be anti-Semitic and promote those views against Jews

Francisco Franco

Fascist dictator of Spain from the 1930s to the 1970s

• “I am responsible only to God and history” - Francisco Franco

• Franco did help supply the Nazis, but Spain never joined WWII

• Spain also has a geographical advantage because it's a bit isolated from the rest of Europe, so it was allowed to be more neutral

Eduard Daladier

president of France at the start of WWII

• Didn’t want war

Neville Chamberlain

prime minister of England at the start of WWII

• “In war there are no winners, only losers” -Neville Chamberlain (he’s scared of war, unlike Hitler who wanted war)

Sudetenland

Northern part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million Germans live

• Broken up from Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, with its border being made by a mountain range

• Hitler wanted to take it back since it had a lot of German people, and he didn’t think it was right that German people weren’t represented in Germany

• President of Czechoslovakia refuses to give back the Sudetenland to Germany, because Czechoslovakia is allied with France (France & Germany have long-term beef)

• Chamberlain is willing to negotiate, so Hitler makes him come to Germany to talk

Appeasement

giving in to avoid a fight

• Hitler continuously broke the terms in the Treaty of Versailles, but no one did anything to retaliate against his actions

Munich Conference (1938)

1938 conference where Chamberlain gave Hitler the Sudetenland in exchange for a promise by Hitler to not touch Poland

• Hitler wouldn’t let the Czechoslovakian President step foot in Germany

• Hitler screamed at Chamberlain, although this was all done through translators because Hitler only spoke German

• Chamberlain gave Hitler the Sudetenland in fear of war, and to protect Poland

• If Hitler touched Poland, war was guaranteed to break out

• Chamberlain returns to England, saying “I believe it is peace in our time”

• Winston Churchill was yelling at Chamberlain from the crowd, as he had read Hitler’s book

Emperor Hirohito

emperor of Japan during WWII

• About 19 years old, was very smart, and did everything right

• Japanese custom stated that if you were in the presence of the emperor, you needed to bow to him and not look at him, as the Japanese saw the emperor as “God on Earth”

Hideki Tojo

top Japanese admiral in WWII and controlled the government

• Told Hirohito that they could be the most powerful in Asia and take down their rival, China. All Hirohito had to do was say yes to whatever Tojo said, and he did.

Manchuria

Eastern part of China invaded by Japan in 1931

• Japanese shot everyone, tortured people, and took every resource they could get

• Torture was illegal, and you get bad intelligence from torture

• The Japanese used to take a sack with rats, tie it around someone's head, heat up the bag, and let the rats burrow into the person’s head

• Japanese Rape Policy: to breed out the Chinese, they kidnapped girls and took them into a “Rape Room” where they became known as “Comfort Girls”

• All Hoover did to combat this wickedness was issue a statement condemning the Japanese

• The US sold oil & steel to Japan, and placed a tariff which made Japan pay for a lot of US goods, allowing these extra funds to go towards the RFC and New Deal program

America First

group led by Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford that tried to keep America out of WWII

• Produced a lot of posters

• Underlying motivations are the effects of WWI (since America gained nothing from its participation in WWI) and belief in American isolationism

• America First consists of a little bit of anti-Semitism