AP Euro Unit 8 Terms

Triple Alliance

the alliance of Austria, Germany, and Italy. Italy left the alliance when war broke out in 1914 on the grounds that Austria had launched a war of aggression

Triple Entente

the alliance of great britain, france, and russia prior to and during the first world war

Schlieffen Plan

failed german plan calling for a lightning attack through neutral Belgium and a quick defeat of France before turning on Russia

total war

a war in which distinctions between the soldiers on the battlefield and civilians at home are blurred, and where the government plans and controls economic and social life in order to supply the armies at the front with supplies and weapons

trench warfare

a type of fighting used in world war 1 behind rows of trenches, mines, and barbed wire; the cost in lives was staggering and the gains in territory minimal

February Revolution

unplanned uprisings accompanied by violent demonstrations begun in March 1917 in Petrograd, Russia, that led to the abdication of the tsar and the establishment of a provisional government

Petrograd Soviet

a huge, fluctuating mass meeting of two to three thousand workers, soldiers, and socialist intellectuals modeled on the revolutionary soviets of 1905

Bolsheviks

lenin’s radical revolutionary arm of the russian party of marxist socialism, which successfully installed a dictatorial socialist regime in russia

treaty of brest-litovsk

peace treaty signed in march 1918 between the central powers and russia that ended russian participation in world war 1 and ceded russian territories containing a third of the russian empire’s population to the central powers

war communism

the application of centralized state control during the russian civil war, in which the bolsheviks seized grain from peasants, introduced rationing, nationalized all banks and industry, and required everyone to work

Treaty of Versailles

the 1919 peace settlement that ended war between Germany and the Allied powers

Fourteen Points

Wilson’s 1918 peace proposal calling for open diplomacy, a reduction in armaments, freedom of commerce and trade, the establishment of the League of Nations, and national self-determination

League of Nations

a permanent international organization established during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, designed to protect member states from aggression and avert future wars

national self determination

the notion that peoples should be able to choose their own national governments through democratic majority-rule elections and live free from outside interference in nation-states with clearly defined borders

war guilt clause

an article in the treaty of versailles that declared that germany with austria was solely responsible for the war and had to pay for reparations equal to all civilian damages caused by the fighting

mandate system

the plan to allow britain and france to administer former ottoman territories, put into place after the end of the first world war

balfour declaration

a 1917 british statement that declared british support of a national home for the jewish people in palestine

logical positivism

a philosophy that sees meaning in only those beliefs that can be empirically proven, and that therefore rejects most of the concerns of traditional philosophy, from the existence of God to the meaning of happiness as nonsense

existentialism

a philosophy that stresses the meaninglessness of existence and the importance of the individual in searching for moral values in an uncertain world

theory of special relativity

albert einstein’s theory that time and space are relative to the observer and that only the speed of light remains constant

id, ego, and superego

Freudian terms to describe the three parts of the self and the basis of human behavior, which Freud saw as basically irrational

modernism

a label given to the artistic and cultural movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were typified by radical experimentation that challenged traditional forms of artistic expression

functionalism

the principle that buildings, like industrial products, should serve as well as possible the purpose for which they were made, without excessive ornamentation

Bauhaus

a german interdisciplinary school of fine and applied arts that brought together many leading modern architects, designers, and theatrical innovators

Dadaism

an artistic movement of the 1920s and 1930s that attacked all accepted standards of art and behavior and delighted in outrageous conduct

stream of consciousness technique

a literary technique, found in works by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and others, that uses interior monologue - a character’s thoughts and feelings as they occur - to explore the human psyche

modern girl

somewhat stereotypical image of the modern and independent working woman popular in the 1920s

dawes plan

war reparations agreement that reduced germany’s yearly payments, made payment dependent on economic prosperity, and granted large US loans to promote recovery

Great Depression

a worldwide economic depression from 1929 through 1939, unique in its severity and duration and with slow and uneven recovery

Popular Front

a short-lived New Deal-inspired alliance in France led by Leon Blum that encouraged the union movement and launched a far-reaching program of social reform

totalitarianism

a radical dictatorship that exercises “total claims'“ over the beliefs and behavior of its citizens by taking control of the economic, social, intellectual, and cultural aspects of society

fascism

a movement characterized by extreme, often expansionist nationalism, antisocialism, a dynamic and violent leader, and glorification of war and military

eugenics

a pseudoscientific doctrine that maintains that the selective breeding of human beings can improve the general characteristics of a national population, which helped inspire Nazi ideas about “race and space” and ultimately contributed to the Holocaust

five year plan

a plan launched by Stalin in 1928, and termed the revolution from above, aimed at modernizing the soviet union and creating a new communist society with new attitudes, new loyalties, and a new socialist humanity

new economic policy (NEP)

lenin’s 1921 policy to re-establish limited economic freedom in an attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry in the face of economic disintegration

collectivization of agriculture

the forcible consolidation of individual peasant farms into large state-controlled enterprises in the soviet union under stalin

kulaks

the better off peasants who were stripped of land and livestock under stalin and were generally not permitted to join collective farms; many of them starved or were deported to forced labor camps for re-education

black shirts

mussolini’s private militia that destroyed socialist newspapers, union halls, and socialist party headquarters eventually pushing socialists out of the city governments of northern italy

lateran agreement

a 1929 agreement that recognized the vatican as an independent state, with mussolini agreeing to give the church heavy financial support in return for public support from the pope

national socialism

a movement driven by extreme nationalism and racism; its adherents ruled germany from 1933 to 1945 and forced europe into world war II

enabling act

an act pushed through the riechstag by the nazis that gave hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years

appeasement

the british policy toward germany prior to world war II that aimed at granting Hitler whatever he wanted, including western Czechoslovakia, in order to avoid war

new order

hitler’s program based on racial imperialism, which gave preferential treatment to the nordic peoples; the french, an inferior latin people, occupied a middle position; and slavs and jews were treated harshly as subhumans

holocaust

the systematic effort of the nazi state to exterminate all european jews and other groups deemed racially inferior during the second world war