Unit 7: Global Conflict

Industrialization (c. 1900–1914)

The rapid growth of mechanized production that increased states’ economic output and enabled larger armies, bigger navies, and mass weapons stockpiles—raising tensions and the scale of warfare.

Imperial rivalry

Competition among empires for colonies, raw materials, markets, and strategic ports; it fueled distrust and repeated diplomatic clashes before WWI.

Nationalism

The belief that a people with a shared identity (language, culture, history) should have political self-rule and primary loyalty to the nation; it could unify states or destabilize multiethnic empires.

Militarism

The belief that military strength is essential to national success and that military solutions are acceptable tools of policy; it encouraged arms buildups and rigid war planning.

M.A.I.N.

A common framework for WWI long-term causes: Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, and Nationalism—best used to explain how these pressures interacted to make escalation more likely.

Triple Alliance

A major pre-WWI alignment (1880s) linking Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, partly aimed at protecting against France.

Triple Entente

A major pre-WWI alignment linking Britain, France, and Russia (with Japan later joining the Entente/Allied side during WWI).

Alliance escalation

The process by which alliance expectations turned a regional crisis into a wider war, because states felt obligated to support partners and mobilize quickly.

Assassination at Sarajevo

The June 1914 killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo; it acted as the spark that triggered the July Crisis and rapid alliance-based escalation.

July Crisis

The chain of ultimatums, mobilizations, and alliance commitments after Sarajevo that quickly transformed a Balkan crisis into a major European war.

Schlieffen Plan

German war plan to defeat France by attacking through neutral Belgium, a step that widened the war and contributed to Britain’s entry.

Central Powers

The WWI coalition centered on Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire (with other states joining later).

Isolationism (United States)

A tendency toward neutrality and focus on internal affairs rather than European alliances; it shaped U.S. policy before entering WWI.

Sinking of the Lusitania

A 1915 German submarine attack on the Lusitania that helped shift U.S. public opinion; it included over 100 American passengers among the dead.

Zimmermann Telegram

A 1917 German diplomatic message encouraging Mexico to join Germany and suggesting Mexico could regain territory lost to the U.S.; it pushed the U.S. toward entering WWI.

Trench warfare

A Western Front combat system in WWI where armies dug into trenches due to overwhelming defensive firepower, producing stalemate and massive casualties.

Total war

Warfare requiring the mobilization of an entire society for victory, expanding state power through rationing, propaganda, censorship, and the redirection of civilian labor and industry to war production.

U-boats (submarine warfare)

German submarines used to target shipping; they disrupted trade routes and helped draw additional states into WWI by threatening civilian and neutral commerce.

Colonial troops

Soldiers recruited from European empires’ colonies (e.g., India and North Africa) who fought in multiple theaters; their service deepened colonial sacrifice and raised postwar expectations for reform or autonomy.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

The 1918 peace/armistice agreement by which Russia exited WWI, ceding parts of western Russia to Germany.

Bolsheviks

A revolutionary group led by Vladimir Lenin that seized power in 1917, promising peace, land, and “power to the soviets,” helping create the state that became the Soviet Union.

April Theses

Lenin’s 1917 program calling for peace, land for peasants, and power to the soviets, which helped the Bolsheviks gain popular support.

Great Depression

A global economic collapse beginning with the 1929 stock market crash that spread through financial interdependence; it weakened faith in liberal democracy and made authoritarian promises of order more attractive.

New Deal

U.S. Depression-era reforms that expanded government involvement in relief and regulation, increasing state management while keeping democratic institutions.

New Economic Policy (NEP)

Lenin’s 1920s policy that allowed farmers to sell portions of their grain for profit, partially reintroducing market incentives after the Russian Revolution.

Five-Year Plans

Stalin’s top-down economic programs emphasizing rapid, state-directed industrialization with production targets and a focus on heavy industry.

Collectivization

Stalin’s policy of bringing agriculture under state control by reorganizing rural life to meet state goals, often enforced through coercion.

Fascism

An ultranationalist, authoritarian ideology emphasizing unity under a strong leader and the subordination of the individual to the state, typically using propaganda and repression while generally not abolishing private property.

Blackshirts

Italian fascist paramilitary squads that attacked socialist and communist groups and helped Benito Mussolini consolidate power.

Weimar Republic

Germany’s post-WWI conservative democratic republic with an elected legislature (the Reichstag); economic crisis and instability undermined it and aided the Nazi rise.

Third Reich

The Nazi regime in Germany after Hitler became chancellor in 1933 and dismantled democratic constraints, promoting extreme nationalism and racist ideology.

Invasion of Manchuria (1931)

Japan’s seizure of Manchuria, a major act of 1930s expansionism that exposed the weakness of collective security and helped set conditions for WWII in Asia.

Manchukuo

A state established by Japan in Manchuria after the 1931 invasion, used to legitimize Japanese control.

League of Nations

An international organization created after WWI to prevent future wars through diplomacy and collective security; it struggled because enforcement required major powers to accept costs and act together.

Collective security

The idea that states will act jointly to deter or punish aggression; it failed in the interwar years when major powers hesitated, encouraging further expansion by aggressors.

Appeasement

A policy of making concessions to aggressive powers to avoid war, influenced by WWI trauma and limited readiness; it failed when concessions signaled aggression would be rewarded.

Munich Conference (1938)

A meeting (including Hitler, Mussolini, and Neville Chamberlain) that granted Germany the Sudetenland in hopes of avoiding war; it became a key example of appeasement’s failure.

Rhineland remilitarization

Hitler’s move to place German forces back in the Rhineland, violating the Versailles settlement and escalating German expansion step-by-step.

Nazi–Soviet Pact

A non-aggression agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union that included dividing spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, clearing the way for Germany’s invasion of Poland.

Invasion of Poland (1939)

Germany’s attack on Poland that prompted Britain and France to declare war, marking the start of WWII in Europe.

Blitzkrieg

Germany’s early WWII strategy of fast, coordinated attacks using infantry, armor, and air power to achieve rapid breakthroughs.

Battle of Britain

A major air campaign in which Britain, led by Winston Churchill, resisted German attacks and refused to surrender even under heavy bombing.

Tripartite Pact

An agreement linking Japan with Rome and Berlin (the Axis), deepening alliances as tensions with the United States rose.

Pearl Harbor

Japan’s 1941 attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii that brought the United States fully into WWII.

Manhattan Project

The U.S. program to develop the atomic bomb during WWII.

Genocide

The deliberate attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group (distinct from mass death without intent to eliminate a group).

Holocaust

Nazi Germany’s systematic, state-driven genocide of six million Jews, also targeting other groups; it relied on dehumanizing ideology, bureaucracy, and an infrastructure of confinement and killing.

Nanjing Massacre

A major atrocity in 1937 during Japan’s war in China, often explained through militarized imperial ideology, dehumanization, and brutal occupation policies.

United Nations (UN)

An international organization founded in 1945 to prevent another major war by mediating and intervening in international disputes; it later issued the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Marshall Plan

A U.S. program to rebuild European economies after WWII, accepted primarily by Western European nations and helping recovery in less than a decade.