World History Since 1600 - FINAL

Adolf Hitler

Date: 1889-1945

Location: Germany

Significance:

• German politician and leader of the Nazi Party. He initiated the European theater of World War II by invading Poland in 1939 and oversaw the establishment of death camps that resulted in more than 10 million deaths.

Josef Stalin

Date: 1878-1953

Location: Russia

Significance:

• Soviet revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s to his death, whose policies resulted in the deaths of 20 million people.

Great Purge

Time Frame: 1935-1938

Location: Soviet Union

Significance:

• Stalin removed from posts of authority all persons suspected of opposition including 2/3 of the members of the 1934 Central Committee and more than ½ of the army’s high-ranking officers. The victims faced execution or long-term suffering in labor camps.

Mao Zedong

Date:1893-1976

Location: China

Significance:

• Chinese communist revolutionary who ruled China as the chairman of the Communist Party from 1949, when the communists defeated the nationalist Guomindang Party and forced its leaders to flee to Taiwan, until his death.

Long March

Time Frame: October 1934-1935

Location: China

Significance:

• 6,215 miles, thousands died

• inspired many Chinese to join the communist party

• During the Long March, Mao Zedong emerged as the leader and the principal theoretician of the Chinese communist movement

• Mao Zedong came up with a Chinese form of Marxist-Leinism (maoism) an ideology grounded in the conviction that peasants rather than urban proletarians were the foundation for a successful revolution. (Village power, Mao believed, was critical in a country where most people were peasants)

Blitzkrieg

Date: 1939-1940

Location: Europe

Significance:

• Combined arms warfare (fast, mobile war)

• German style of rapid attack through the use of armor and air power

• Airplanes were used to spy on enemy grounds and bomb enemy territories

• Tanks were used to punch holes into enemy defenses, then military personnel would explore

Pearl Harbor

Date: December 7th, 1941

Location: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

Significance:

• The goal of the attack was to destroy American naval capacity in the Pacific. This would clear the way for the conquest of southeast Asia and the creation of defensive Japanese perimeter that would prevent the Allies’ from striking at Japan’s homeland

Hiroshima

Date: August 6th, 1945

Location: Hiroshima (also Nagasaki)

Significance:

• Bombing of the Japanese city on August 6, 1945, an American bomber, which - along with the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9 - led to Japanese surrender and end World War II

Marshall Plan

Date: Proposed 1947, Funded 1948

Location: Western Europe

Significance:

• US plan that offered financial and other economic aid to all European states that had suffered from World War II, including Soviet bloc states

• Provided more than $13 billion to reconstruct western Europe after WWII, promoted democracy throughout western Europe through aid (showed them what it was like to live in the US/ as a democracy/ capitalism)

Indian National Congress

Date: Founded 1885-Present

Location: India

Significance:

• Founded in 1885 as a forum for educated Indians to communicate their views on public affairs to colonial officials

• Representatives from all parts of the subcontinent aired grievances about Indian poverty, the transfer of wealth from India to Britain, trade and tariff policies that harmed Indian businesses, the inability of colonial officials to provide effective relief for regions stricken by drought or famine, and British racism toward Indians.

• Enlisted the support of many prominent Hindus and Muslims, at first sought collaboration with the British to bring self-rule to India, but after the Great War the congress pursued that goal in opposition to the British

Berlin Wall

Date: August 1961 - November, 1989

Location: Germany

Significance:

• In August 1961 the communists reinforced the border between East and West Germany and also constructed a fortified wall that divided the city of Berlin. The Berlin Wall accomplished its purpose of stemming the flow of refugees, though at the cost of shaming a regime that seemed to be unpopular even among its own people

Cold War

Date: 1947 - 1991

Location: USA and Soviet Union

Significance:

• A confrontation for global influence between US and the Soviets

• The cold war was responsible for the formation of military and political alliances, the creation of client states, and an arms race of unprecedented scope

- It endangered diplomatic crisis, spawned military conflicts, and at times brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Among the first manifestations of the cold war was the division of the European continent into competing political, military, and economic blocs - one dependent on the US and the other subservient to the USSR - separated by what Winston Churchill in 1946 called an “iron curtain”

NATO

Date: 1949-Present

Location: US and Western Europe

Significance:

• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was established by the US in 1949 as a regional military alliance against Soviet expansionism

• Allows Western Europeans to defend themselves (backed by other NATO members)

• Defense alliance, no one is forced to join

• Intent was to maintain peace in postwar Europe through collective security, which implied that Soviet attack on any NATO member was an attack against all of them

Viet Cong

Date: 1960 - 1977

Location: Vietnam

Significance:

• In 1960, Vietnamese nationalists in the south formed the National Liberation front (NLF) to fight for freedom from south Vietnamese rule (the military arm of the NLF became known as Viet Cong)

• It received direction, aid, weapons, and ultimately troops form the north. In turn, the government in the north received economic and military assistance from the Soviet Union and China, and a Cold War stalemate ensued

Thesis

WWII brought to light the unresolved ideological and political wounds of WWI as fascism and communism-built tensions that drew the Axis and Allied powers into a global conflict from 1937 - 1945. The aftermath, shaped by the rise of the Cold War, new geopolitical divisions, and persistent racial and ideological inequalities, left many of the era’s main issues barely resolved

Define the relevant ideologies (-isms) that grew in the interwar period between the two World Wars

Fascism (nazis)

• political ideology and mass movement that was prominent in many parts of Europe and between 1919 and 1945; it sought to regenerate the social, political, and cultural life of societies, especially in contrast to liberal democracy and socialism; fascism began with Mussolini in Italy, and it reached its peak with Hitler in Germany

• Advocated territorial expansion (eg Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935)

• Undermined the League of Nations through open aggression

• Inspired other authoritarian regimes, normalizing militaristic solutions to political and economic problems

Communism (soviets) [Marxism - Leninism/Stalinism]

• A far left ideology advocating the abolition of capitalism and private property, establishment of a classless society, and rule by the proletariat through a single-party and economic problems

• Western democracies and fascist states feared communist revolution

• Stalin’s purges and authoritarian control created distrust in Western diplomatic negotiations

• The Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact (1939) shocked the world and cleared the way for Hitler’s invasion of Poland

Examine how these political, economic, and other systems contributed to the tensions that led the war

The germans (fascists) and the Soviet Union (communists) signed a non-aggression pact, but Hitler was preparing to attack the Soviet Union. Their division forced states to pick a side or choose non-alignment.

Define which nations were included in the Axis and the Allied powers during WWII

Soviets don’t like the fascists, but they are aligned with the US (a democracy) allies of convenience - both hate nazis (fascists)

Axis - Germany, Italy, Japan

Allies - US, Russia, France, Britain

Summarize the major events of the war from 1937-1945

Phase One:

• 1937 - 1941 Germans (start war in Europe) and Japanese start war - they are winning

• The Germans are carving out a large empire in Europe, and they go all the way to Moscow

• In the Pacific, the Japanese are carving out a large empire

Phase Two:

• 1941 - 1945 the US enters the war because of pearl harbor

• Germany starts to lose because the Russians have more and better equipment because they are allied with the US

• Stalingrad in the East/Midway in the Pacific (2 major battles that ended the war)

• The war ends because the soviets get Berlin and the Americans get Berlin with their atomic bombs to show what they have

Stalingrad

• German forces regrouped and inflicted heavy losses on the Red Army during the spring of 1942. The Germans briefly regained the military initiative, and by June German armies raced toward the oil fields of the Caucasus and the city of Stalingrad

Midway

• The battle of Midway was a crucial WWII naval battle between the US and Japan in the Pacific

• After breaking Japanese codes, the US knew Japan planned to attack Midway Atoll

• American carriers ambushed the Japanese fleet

• US dive bombers sank 4 Japanese aircraft carriers

• Midway was the turning point in the Pacific War, halting Japanese expansion and shifting strategic momentum to the US

What implications did the end of the war have on post-war society, especially in light of the Cold War

The nazis are gone and now the Americans and the Soviets are staring at each other in the center of Europe. This is the beginning of the Cold War

• US and USSR became rival superpowers, dividing the world into capitalist and communist blocs

• Their rivalry sparked the Cold War, leading to an arms race, nuclear tension, and proxy wars

• Europe and Japan were rebuilt, with the Marshall Plan strengthening Western Europe against communism

• The war weakened European empires, accelerating decolonization across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East

• Military alliances formed (NATO vs. Warsaw Pact) solidifying the global divide

Were the ideological dilemmas resolved

No, the US was scared because Russia seemed to be getting ready to take more of Europe, and they (USSR) seemed to help the decolonizing countries of Asia and Africa, which would push the image of communism in those regions

What about perceptions of racial superiority? Why?

No, they were not resolved because some countries did not like the westerners who had previously colonized them, such as Nehru. He had strong feelings about non-alignment because he didn’t like that the British were part of the Westerners who had formerly colonized India