Honors World History Final Exam Study Guide

A comprehensive vocabulary study guide covering World War I, the Interwar Years, World War II, and the beginning of the Cold War.

Panslavism

A movement aimed at the unity of all Slavic-speaking peoples, which served as a nationalistic factor leading to World War I.

Triple Alliance

The military alliance formed between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy prior to World War I.

Triple Entente

The alliance linking the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

The Spark of World War I

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip.

Central Powers

The major coalition during World War I consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.

Allied Powers

The major coalition during World War I that included Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and later the USA.

Schlieffen Plan

The German military strategy designed to avoid a two-front war by swiftly invading France through Belgium before turning to face Russia.

Stalemate

A state in warfare where neither side can make progress or achieve victory, often associated with the static nature of the Western Front.

Trench warfare

A form of land warfare using occupied fighting lines consisting largely of military trenches, characterized by attrition and grueling conditions.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

The peace treaty signed between the new Bolshevik government of Russia and the Central Powers that ended Russia's participation in World War I.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

The ruler of Germany who abdicated his throne on $November 9, 1918$, at the end of World War I.

Fallen Empires of World War I

The $4$ empires that collapsed during or after the war: the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires.

Treaty of Versailles Representatives

The "Big Three" leaders: Woodrow Wilson (USA), David Lloyd George (Britain), and Georges Clemenceau (France).

Fascism

A political system characterized by dictatorial power, extreme nationalism, and the forcible suppression of opposition.

Fasces

A bundle of rods containing an axe, which was an ancient Roman symbol of power adopted by the fascist movement.

Il Duce

The title, meaning "The Leader," adopted by the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Black shirts

The paramilitary wing of the National Fascist Party in Italy, known officially as the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale.

Political Polarization

The process by which public opinion divides and goes toward extreme opposites, which occurred in many European nations after World War I.

Corporate State

Mussolini's economic system in which the economy was divided into corporations representing different professional fields, overseen by the state.

Weimar Republic

The name of the German government established after World War I before the rise of the Nazi party.

Nazi Party

The National Socialist German Workers' Party, a far-right political party in Germany active between $1920$ and $1945$.

Brown shirts

The Sturmabteilung (SA), the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.

Beerhall Pusch

A failed coup d'état by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Munich in $1923$.

Mein Kampf

The autobiographical manifesto written by Adolf Hitler while he was imprisoned, outlining his political ideology.

Nuremburg Laws

Antisemitic and racist laws in Nazi Germany enacted in $1935$ to deprive Jews of their rights and citizenship.

Kristallnacht

The "Night of Broken Glass" in $1938$, a series of coordinated attacks against Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and synagogues.

Gestapo

The official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe.

Luftwaffe

The aerial warfare branch of the German Wehrmacht during World War II.

Third Reich

The Nazi designation for the German state between $1933$ and $1945$.

SS

The Schutzstaffel, a major paramilitary organization under Hitler that oversaw the police and the concentration camp system.

Anschluss

The annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in March $1938$.

Sudetenland

A region of Czechoslovakia with a large German-speaking population that Hitler annexed following the Munich Agreement.

Policy of Appeasement

The diplomatic policy of making political or material concessions to an aggressive power to avoid conflict, famously associated with Neville Chamberlain.

Non-Agression Pact

The $1939$ agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in which they agreed not to take military action against each other for $10$ years.

Sun Yat-Sen's Three Principles

The guiding principles of the Chinese government: Nationalism, Democracy, and the Livelihood of the people.

Long March

A military retreat across $6,000$ miles undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China to escape the pursuit of the Kuomintang.

Mao Zedong

The leader of the Communist Party of China and the founder of the People's Republic of China.

blitzkrieg

"Lightning war," a military tactic involving a surprise attack using a rapid, concentrated force of combined air and land assets.

Winter War

The conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland that began in late $1939$ after the Soviet invasion.

Phony War

The early period of World War II characterized by a lack of major military operations on the Western Front.

Vichy France

The common name of the French State headed by Marshall Pétain during World War II that collaborated with the Axis Powers.

Operation Barbarossa

The codename for the massive invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany that began in June $1941$.

Operation Overlord

The codename for the Battle of Normandy, the successful Allied invasion of German-occupied Western Europe launched on D-Day.

Lebensraum

The Nazi ideological concept of providing "living space" for the growth of the Aryan race through territorial expansion in the East.

Maginot Line

A massive system of French fortifications intended to prevent a German invasion, which was ultimately bypassed by the German army.

Atlantic Charter

A pivotal policy statement issued in $1941$ that defined the Allied goals for the post-war world.

Battle of Stalingrad

A major turning point in the European theater where Soviet forces defeated the German sixth army, halting the German advance into the USSR.

Manchukuo

A puppet state in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia, which was established by the Empire of Japan.

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

An imperial concept created by the Japanese government that promoted the cultural and economic unity of East Asians, Southeast Asians, and Oceanians.

Yamato & Musaki

Two of the largest and most powerful battleships ever built, used by the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II.

Island Hopping

The military strategy employed by the Allies in the Pacific War of capturing key islands while bypassing others to move closer to Japan.

Douglas McAurthur

The American general who commanded the Southwest Pacific Theater in World War II and led the subsequent occupation of Japan.

Iron Curtain Speech

A speech delivered by Winston Churchill in $1946$ describing the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of WWII until the end of the Cold War.

DDR

The Deutsche Demokratische Republik, also known as East Germany, a state that existed in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany.

Truman Doctrine

An American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to contain Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War.

Containment Policy

The United States' geopolitical strategic foreign policy to prevent the spread of communism.

Marshall Plan

An American initiative to provide over $13$ billion dollars in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after World War II.

38th Paralel

The circle of latitude used as the focal point for the division of the Korean Peninsula into North and South Korea.