Economy in the Interwar Period and Causes of World War II

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the interwar economic crisis, revolutions in Russia and Mexico, anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa, and the specific causes leading to World War II.

Inflation

A general rise in prices which results in the drastic decrease of a currency's value, as seen in Germany during the 1920s.

Great Depression

A global economic downturn of the 1930s characterized by high unemployment, hunger, and homelessness, sparked by factors like agricultural overproduction and the 1929 stock market crash.

John Maynard Keynes

A British economist who rejected laissez-faire economics and advocated for government intervention and deficit spending to stimulate the economy.

Deficit spending

The government practice of spending more money than it takes in through revenue to spur economic activity.

New Deal

A group of policies and programs created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt with the goals of providing relief, recovery, and reform for the United States during the Great Depression.

New Economic Plan (NEP)

A temporary retreat from communist economic policies instituted by Lenin in 1921 that reintroduced private trade and allowed farmers to sell products on a small scale.

Five-Year Plans

Economic goals instituted by Joseph Stalin meant to transform the USSR into an industrial power through production quotas.

Collectivized agriculture

A process in the Soviet Union where farmland was taken from private owners and given to state-managed collectives known as kolkhoz.

Gulag

Labor camps in the Soviet Union where Joseph Stalin sent political opponents to be imprisoned or executed.

Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)

A strong political party that dominated Mexican politics for most of the 20th century and utilized a corporatist system.

Fascism

A political system characterized by extreme nationalism, glorification of the military, the suppression of political parties, and the use of violence to achieve goals.

Corporatism

A theory, notably used in Fascist Italy, where sectors of the economy such as employers and trade unions are viewed as separate organs of the same state body.

Totalitarian state

A state in which the government controls all aspects of society.

Spanish Civil War

A conflict from 1936 to 1939 between the elected Popular Front (Republicans) and the insurgent Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco.

Guernica

A town in Spain's Basque region that was the target of an aerial bombing by Germany and Italy, later immortalized in a painting by Pablo Picasso.

Hypernationalism

The belief in the superiority of one's nation over all others and the single-minded promotion of national interests.

Mandate System

A system established by the League of Nations allowing Allied countries to rule former German colonies and Ottoman territories under the premise of "tutelage."

Pan-Arabism

An ideology calling for the unification of all lands in North Africa and the Middle East.

Balfour Declaration

A 1917 British government statement declaring that Palestine should become a permanent home for the Jews of Europe.

Zionists

Individuals who supported the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Amritsar massacre

A 1919 event where armed British colonial forces fired into a peaceful crowd of Indian nationalists, killing an estimated 379 people.

Satyagraha

Mohandas Gandhi's "devotion-to-truth" movement that utilized campaigns of civil disobedience to expose the injustice of British rule.

March First Movement

A series of massive protests in 1919 by Koreans demonstrating the power of Korean nationalism against Japanese occupation.

May Fourth Movement

Anti-Japanese demonstrations in China in 1919 that symbolized a growing demand for democracy and a rejection of Western-style government.

Long March

A 6,000-mile retreat by Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party forces in 1934 to escape the Nationalist Kuomintang army.

Manchukuo

A puppet state set up by Japan in 1932 after the invasion of Manchuria in northern China.

Weimar Republic

The democratically elected German government that replaced the kaiser after World War I, eventually appearing weak due to economic instability.

Scientific racism

A pseudoscientific theory claiming that certain races were genetically superior to others, promoted by Adolf Hitler.

Nuremberg Laws

A set of laws passed in 1935 that disenfranchised German Jews, stripped them of citizenship, and forbade marriage with non-Jews.

Lebensraum

The German word for "living space" which Hitler sought to acquire for the new German empire.

Axis Powers

The military alliance formed between Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Kristallnacht

Known as the "Night of the Broken Glass," it was a series of Nazi-engineered anti-Jewish riots in November 1938 that led to deaths and the destruction of Jewish property.

Appeasement

The policy followed by Britain of giving in to Germany's demands in the hopes of maintaining international peace.

Anschluss

The political union of Austria and Germany achieved in March 1938.

Munich Agreement

An 1938 agreement that allowed Hitler to annex the Sudetenland in exchange for a promise that Germany would not take more Czech territory.

German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact

A 1939 agreement where Germany and the Soviet Union pledged not to attack each other and secretly planned the division of Poland.