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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 alliance
The alliance of Great Britain, France, and Russia prior to and during the First World War.
triple entente
Failed German plan calling for a lightning attack through neutral Belgium and a quick defeat of France before turning on Russia.
schlieffen plan
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.
total war
A type of fighting used in World War I behind rows of trenches, mines, and barbed wire; the cost in lives was staggering and the gains in territory minimal.
trench warfare
Unplanned uprisings accompanied by violent street demonstrations begun in March 1917 (old calendar February) in Petrograd, Russia, that led to the abdication of the tsar and the establishment of a provisional government.
february revolution
A huge, fluctuating mass meeting of two to three thousand workers, soldiers, and socialist intellectuals modeled on the revolutionary soviets of 1905.
petrograd soviet
Lenin's radical, revolutionary arm of the Russian party of Marxist socialism, which successfully installed a dictatorial socialist regime in Russia.
bolsheviks
Peace treaty signed in March 1918 between the Central Powers and Russia that ended Russian participation in World War I and ceded Russian territories containing a third of the Russian empire's population to the Central Powers.
treaty of brest-litovsk
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.
war communism
The 1919 peace settlement that ended war between Germany and the Allied powers.
treaty of versailles
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
fourteen points
A permanent international organization, established during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, designed to protect member states from aggression and avert future wars.
league of nations
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.
national self-determination
An article in the Treaty of Versailles that declared that Germany (with Austria) was solely responsible for the war and had to pay reparations equal to all civilian damages caused by the fighting.
war guilt clause
The plan to allow Britain and France to administer former Ottoman territories, put into place after the end of the First World War.
mandate system
A 1917 British statement that declared British support of a National Home for the Jewish People in Palestine.
balfour declaration
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.
logical positivism
A philosophy that stresses the meaninglessness of existence and the importance of the individual in searching for moral values in an uncertain world.
existentialism
Albert Einstein's theory that time and space are relative to the observer and that only the speed of light remains constant
theory of special relativity
Freudian terms to describe the three parts of the self and the basis of human behavior, which Freud saw as basically irrational
id, ego, superego
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.
modernism
The principle that buildings, like industrial products, should serve as well as possible the purpose for which they were made, without excessive ornamentation.
functionalism
A German interdisciplinary school of fine and applied arts that brought together many leading modern architects, designers, and theatrical innovators.
bauhaus
An artistic movement of the 1920s and 1930s that attacked all accepted standards of art and behavior and delighted in outrageous conduct.
dadaism
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.
stream-of-consciousness technique
Somewhat stereotypical image of the modern and independent working woman popular in the 1920s.
"modern girl"
War reparations agreement that reduced Germany's yearly payments, made payment dependent on economic prosperity, and granted large U.S. loans to promote recovery.
dawes plan
A worldwide economic depression from 1929 through 1939, unique in its severity and duration and with slow and uneven recovery.
great depression
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
popular front
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.
totalitarianism
A movement characterized by extreme, often expansionist nationalism, anti-socialism, a dynamic and violent leader, and glorification of war and the military.
fascism
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.
eugenics
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.
five-year plan
Lenin's 1921 policy to re-establish limited economic freedom in an attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry in the face of economic disintegration
new economic policy (nep)
The forcible consolidation of individual peasant farms into large state-controlled enterprises in the Soviet Union under Stalin.
collectivization of agriculture
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."
kulaks
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.
black shirts
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.
lateran agreement
A movement and political party driven by extreme nationalism and racism, led by Adolf Hitler; its adherents ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945 and forced Europe into World War II.
national socialism
An act pushed through the Reichstag by the Nazis that gave Hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years.
enabling act
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.
appeasement
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."
new order
The systematic effort of the Nazi state to exterminate all European Jews and other groups deemed racially inferior during the Second World War.
holocaust
The rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States that divided much of Europe into a Soviet-aligned Communist bloc and a U.S.-aligned capitalist bloc between 1945 and 1989.
cold war
Postwar refugees, including 13 million Germans, former Nazi prisoners and forced laborers, and orphaned children.
displaced persons
America's policy geared to containing communism to those countries already under Soviet control
truman doctrine
American plan for providing economic aid to western Europe to help it rebuild
marshall plan
An economic organization of Communist states meant to help rebuild East Bloc countries under Soviet auspices.
council for mutual economic assistance (comecon)
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western governments.
nato
Soviet-backed military alliance of East Bloc Communist countries in Europe
warsaw pact
Term contemporaries used to describe rapid economic growth, often based on the consumer sector, in post-World War II western Europe.
economic miracle
Center-right political parties that rose to power in western Europe after the Second World War.
christian democrats
The European Economic Community, created by six western and central European countries in the West Bloc in 1957 as part of a larger search for European unity.
common market
Artistic movement that followed the dictates of Communist ideals, enforced by state control in the Soviet Union and East Bloc countries in the 1950s and 1960s.
socialist realism
The liberalization of the post-Stalin Soviet Union led by reformer Nikita Khrushchev.
de-stalinization
The postwar reversal of Europe's overseas expansion caused by the rising demand of the colonized peoples themselves, the declining power of European nations, and the freedoms promised by U.S. and Soviet ideals.
decolonization
Policy of postcolonial governments to remain neutral in the Cold War and play both the United States and the Soviet Union for what they could get.
nonalignment
A postcolonial system that perpetuates Western economic exploitation in former colonial territories.
neocolonialism
Government-run programs in western Europe designed to recruit labor for the booming postwar economy.
guest worker programs
The postwar movement of people from former colonies and the developing world into Europe.
postcolonial migration
German for "Eastern policy"; West Germany's attempt in the 1970s to ease diplomatic tensions with East Germany, exemplifying the policies of détente.
ostpolitik
The progressive relaxation of Cold War tensions that emerged in the early 1970s
detente
A meeting of Catholic leaders convened from 1962 to 1965 that initiated a number of reforms, including the replacement of Latin with local languages in church services, designed to democratize the church and renew its appeal.
second vatican council
A 1960s counterculture movement that embraced updated forms of Marxism to challenge both Western capitalism and Soviet-style communism.
new left
Doctrine created by Leonid Brezhnev that held that the Soviet Union had the right to intervene in any East Bloc country when necessary to preserve Communist rule.
brezhnev doctrine
The Arab-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
opec
Term coined in the early 1980s to describe the combination of low growth and high inflation that led to a worldwide recession.
stagflation
A society that relies on high-tech and service-oriented jobs for economic growth rather than heavy industry and manufacturing jobs.
postindustrial society
Philosophy of 1980s conservatives who argued for privatization of state-run industries and decreased government spending on social services.
neoliberalism
the sale of state-managed industries such as transportation and communication networks to private owners, a key policy of neoliberalism meant to control government spending, increase private profits, and foster economic growth, which was implemented in western europe in response to the economic crises of the 1970s.
privatization
A term used by Communist leaders to describe the socialist accomplishments of their societies, such as nationalized industry, collective agriculture, and extensive social welfare programs.
developed socialism
Independent Polish trade union that worked for workers' rights and political reform throughout the 1980s.
solidarity
Economic restructuring and reform implemented by Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in 1985.
perestroika
Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev's popular campaign for openness in government and the media
glasnost
The term given to the relatively peaceful overthrow of communism in Czechoslovakia; the label came to signify the collapse of the East Bloc in general in 1989 to 1990.
velvet revolution
German term referring to nostalgia for the lifestyles and culture of the vanished East Bloc
ostalgie
The attempt to establish ethnically homogeneous territories by intimidation, forced deportation, and killing.
ethnic cleansing
Military organization formed in 1998 by Kosovar militants who sought independence from Serbia
kosovo liberation army (kla)
The emergence of a freer, more technologically connected global economy, accompanied by a worldwide exchange of cultural, political, and religious ideas.
globalization
The economic, cultural, and political alliance of twenty-seven European nations.
european union (eu)
The basis for the formation of the European Union, which set financial and cultural standards for potential member states and defined criteria for membership in the monetary union.
maastricht treaty
A powerful supranational financial institution that sets trade and tariff agreements for over 150 member countries and so helps manage a large percentage of the world's import-export policies. Like the IMF and the World Bank, the WTO promotes neoliberal policies around the world.
world trade organization (wto)
Independent organizations with specific agendas, such as humanitarian aid or environmental protection, that conduct international programs and activities.
nongovernmental organizations (ngos)
Enclaves of ethnic groups settled outside of their homelands.
diasporas
The mixing of ethnic styles in daily life and in cultural works such as film, music, art, and literature.
multiculturalism
American policy under President George W. Bush to fight global terrorism in all its forms.
war on terror
Islamic social and political reform group founded in Egypt in 1928 that called for national liberation from European control and a return to shari'a law (based on Muslim legal codes), and demanded land reform, extensive social welfare programs, and economic independence.
muslim brotherhood
A series of popular revolts in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa that sought an end to authoritarian, often Western-supported regimes.
arab spring
Changes in long-standing weather patterns caused primarily by carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
climate change
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