HN World History Study Guide

Imperialism

domination by one country of the political, economic or cultural life of another region

Motivation for Imperialism

Economic: industrialized nations needed to get natural resources to fuel their industrial production

political/military/balance of power: in order to protect European possessions abroad, it was important that strategic areas were controlled

Nationalism: sense of national pride was associated with conquering lands abroad, which led to competition of European powers to further expansion

Social Darwinism: westerners viewed Europeans as superior and they felt they had to conquer and ‘civilize’ other places

humanitarian: spreading Christianity, Western education systems, legal systems, and medicine

“White Man’s Burden”

poem published in 1899 by English writer Rudyard Kipling; about ‘bringing the blessings of civilization and progress to non-Western, non-Christian, non-white peoples”; sums up imperialist attitude

Scramble for Africa

by the mid-1870s many European countries were looking to expand their control in Africa; at the Berlin Conference, the African continent was divided up between European powers; European countries wanted to acquire territory on the continent of Africa, extend western civilization, and Africa had an abundance of natural resources

Berlin Conference

called by Otto von Bismarck of Germany; 14 European powers attended the conference; agreed that any European country could calim land in Africa as long as it notified the other nations and demonstrated that it could control the area; no African ruler invited to attend; by 1914, only Liberia and Ethiopia were free from European control

Causes of WWI→ Militarism

by 1914 most European countries had large standing armies, reserves, and some compulsory service for young men

Causes of WWI→ Alliances

to maintain a balance of power and to ensure security, countries formed alliances

Causes of WWI→ Nationalism

Russian loyalty to Slavic people in the Balkans; pride in one’s country and negative feelings towards other countries

Causes of WWI→ Imperialism

competition for territory overseas led to increased rivalries

Causes of WWI→ Assassination

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Schlieffen Plan

German military strategy for the invasion of France anticipating a two-front war; Germany was going to invade France through neutral Belgium; Germany wanted to defeat France first on the Western front and then mobilize to defeat Russia on the Eastern front

Trench warefare

400 mile-long line of trenches dug on the Western Front; Trenches surrounded by barbed wire and '“no man’s land”; All day, every day, artillery would pound the enemy’s trenches with hundreds of shells

February Revolution 1917

Tsarist governemnt not equipped to handle the war; People took to the streets demanding bread, an end to the war, and an end to tsarist rule; army abandoned Tsar; Feb 1917 Duma asks tsar Nicholas II to abdicate

October Revolution

Bolsheviks seized power from the Provisional Government; Petrograd Soviet storming the Winter Palace

Tsar Nicholas II

Tsar of Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution; viewed as god on earth; didn’t possess strong leadership qualities

Tsarina Alexandra

German princess; wife of tsar Nicholas; unpopular with the Russian people, especially during WWI and for her association with Rasputin

Hemophilia

a disease in which the blood does not properly clot and leads to excessive bleeding

Rasputin

born in Siberia to a peasant family in 1869; unwashed, uncouth, mystic ‘healer;’ introduced to the tsar and tsarina as healer for Alexei’s hemophilia; close relationship with the Tsarina

Vladimir Lenin

LENIN= legendary pseudonym adopted in 1901; after committing political crimes he was exiled to Siberia for 3 years; committed Marxist who worked his whole life to overthrow the tsarist system and establish a Marxist dictatorship in Russia

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

3 December 1917: Bolsheviks and Germans begin to negotiate the Treaty to get Russia out of the war; signed 3 March 1918- got Russia out of WWI; Germany’s biggest success in the war; Russia lost territory+population

Zimmerman Telegram

January 1917; Zimmermann: the German State Secretary for Foreign Affairs; sent the Mexican gov a telegram asking them to join Germany in WWI; promised Mexico territory lost during Mexican-American war; telegram intercepted by British and Americans find out

Lusitania

luxury passenger liner; torpedoed by a German u-boat 7 May 1915; sunk in less than 20 minutes; caused outrage internationally; Wilson threatened Germany; after the sinking Germany called off unrestricted submarine warfare

Treaty of Versailles

signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles on 28 June 1919; Exactly 5 years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Fourteen Points

Wilson made a speech to Congress on 8 January 1918 to introduce his 14 points; principles for peace to be used for peace negotiations to end WWI

big 3

Woodrow Wilson (USA), David Lloyd George (GB), Georges Clemenceau (France)

Totalitarianism

government controls every aspect of life; political system dominates religion, family life, economy, education; all powerful leader

Fascism

comes from Italian word fasces; anti-liberal, anti-communist, anti-individual; any centralized authoritarian government system that is not communist, whose policies glorify the state over the individual and are destructive to basic human rights

Communism

political ideology that envisions a society where the means of production, distribution, and exchange are collectively owned

propaganda

encouraged soldiers, propaganda films, told people that living conditions would improve, spread fear that Russia would be taken over by foreign powers

Joseph Stalin

born in Georgia, changed his last name to Stalin “man of steel”; born into poverty; 1905 joined Bolshevik party; came to power in the USSR after the death of Lenin

Holodomor 1932-33

3-6 million die of starvation or related diseases; Holodomor is Ukrainian for “killing by hunger”

Five Year Plan

economic plan by Joseph Stalin to rapidly increase industry in USSR; heavy industry, big engineering projects with forced labor, targets set for every industry, workers fined if targets were not met

Benito Mussolini 1883-1945

founder of fascism; leader of Italy from 1922-43; allied with Japan and Nazi Germany during WWII; founded the Fascist Party in March 1919

Weimar Germany

Defeat in 1918= Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated, a republic was formed and a new constitution was written; Germany became a republic; their first democracy

Rise of Hitler

Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; joined the German Workers Party (DAP) in 1919

Beer Hall Putsch

9 November 1923; A coup by NSDAP; the SA surrounded a Beer Hall in Munich; Hitler involved and was almost shot during the chaos of it; Hitler sentenced to five years of prison for high treason

Mein Kampf

book outlining Hitler’s political worldview

Hyperinflation

printing money resulted in hyperinflation; middle class people or anyone with savings were hit the hardest

Great Depression

29 October 1929, NYC stock market crashed; kicked off a worldwide depression; the Dawes Plan ended; by 1932 there were 6.2 million unemployed Germans

League of Nations

established as part of the peace settlement post-WWI; Goal: create a peaceful future based on international cooperation; Members of the League agreed to pursue disarmament and to take collective action against belligerent nations; non members: USSR(until 1934), Germany (until 1926), USA

Kemal Ataturk

Turkish nationalist leader and first president of the Turkish Republic; modernized and westernized Turkey: introduced Western dress, legal codes, calendar, alphabet, customs, gave rights to women, ended slavery

Sykes-Picot Agreement

European pact for partition of the Middle East

Spanish Civil War

July 1936 nationalist army officers in Spain staged a coup against the country’s Republican government starting a civil war; fascist Italy and Nazi Germany sent military forces to support the nationalists; seem as a fight between fascism and its enemies; bombing of Guernica

Invasion of Ethiopia

Italians under Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935; Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie appealed to the League of Nations for help

causes of WWII

legacy of WWI and the Treaty of Versailles; Mussolini and Hitler→ rise of dictators and political extremism; Japan invades China; Hitler anneees Austria and demands Sudetenland; Hitler invades Poland 1939

Lebensraum

German word meaning “living space," core concept of Nazi ideology

Appeasement

the policy of appeasement= making concessions to an aggressor in order to avoid conflict

Neville Chamberlain

Prime minister of GB associated with the appeasement policy

Anschluss

12 March 1936: German troops occupied Austria without resistance; Act of German aggression and a breach of the Treaty of Versailles; France and Britain wanted to avoid war with Germany— appeasement

Sudetenland

Czechoslovakia was created in 1918 by Czech nationalists post-WWI; Hitler threatened to annex the Sudetenland; International conference held in Munich to discuss— France and GB had promised to protect Czechoslovakia

Munich Conference

September 1938, GB, Italy, France, and Germany meet; agree that Hitler can take the Sudetenland; Czechoslovakia not invited to participate

Rhineland

7 March 1936; Hitler sent 3,000 troops to occupy the Rhineland; not allowed according to the Treaty of Versailles; this region was to be a demilitarized buffer zone between Germany and France; Hitler gambled on Britain and France doing nothing to stop Germany

Axis Powers

Germany, Italy, Japan

Allied Powers

United Kingdom, Soviet Union, United States

Blitzkrieg

lightning war — warfare with a total coordination of airpower, tanks, and infantry; used by Germany

invasion of Poland

1 September 1939; Polish troops were not mobilized and were quickly defeated; the USSR invaded Poland from the east 17 September; GB sent an ultimatum to Germany to leave Poland or they would declare war→ no answer from Germany

Nazi Soviet Pact

August 1939; Germany and the USSR sign a non-aggression pact and agree how they will divide Eastern Europe up between the two of them— Poland first on the list

Dunkirk Evacuation

26 May 1940 GB launches Operation Dynamo; evacuation of encircled allied soldiers at the French port of Dunkirk; by June 3rd when the Germans reached Dunkirk and captured it, 200,000 British troops and 140,000 French troops had been rescued

Battle of Britain

16 July 1940: Hitler ordered preparations for invasion of Britain; Luftwaffe outnumbered RAF

Winston Churchill

10 May Churchill became the PM of Britain, replacing Chamberlain; inspired the war effort in Britain

Antisemitism

central to Nazi ideology; prejudice or hatred of Jews; from 1933-39, the Nazis objective was to isolate Jews from the community and force them to leave Germany

Nuremberg Laws

a series of racial laws that redefined citizenship in the Third Reich and became the basis for racist anti-Jewish policy in Germany; no marriages allowed between Jews and Germans; Jews and Roma lost their citizenship

Kristallnacht (“the Night of Broken Glass”)

violent pogrom from 9-10 November; Nazi stormtroopers, registered Nazis, and regular Germans raided and destroyed synagogues, Jewish businesses and Jewish homes; estimated 91 Jews died

Japanese expansion and militarism

wanted to seize SE Asian territories because of their natural resources

genocide

the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group

D Day

6 June 1944; In a surprise invasion, 150,000 Americans, British, and Canadian forces land on five beaches in Normandy, France; sustained many casualties but the invasion is a success and the liberation of France and Western Europe began (10,250 casualties)

Bombing of Pearl Harbor

7 December 1941; hundreds of Japanese naval aircraft bombed US fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in a surprise attack; “sneak attack” without a declaration of war on the US outraged Americans

Iwo Jima

US Marines invaded the island in February 1945 after months of naval and air bombardment; 36 days of fighting; took the island March 1945; bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history

Nuremberg Trials

November 1945 in the German city of Nuremberg, the victors of WWII began the first international war crimes trial; held in Nuremberg because that was a significant city to the Nazis; Hermann Goering found guilty and sentenced to death but committed suicide in his jail cell the night before the scheduled execution

Yalta Conference

Big Three- FDR, Churchill, Stalin

met to discuss the future of Europe when Germany eventually surendered

Potdam Conference

July 1945; Churchill (replaced by Clement Attlee [GB], Truman (USA), and Stalin (USSR); In Potsdam, Germany; Germany had surrendered, but Japan was still fighting

Manhatten Project

USA’s top secret project for developing nuclear weapons; bomb first tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico 16 July 1945

result: “Little Boy → Hiroshima Aug 6 1945

“Fat Man”→ Nagasaki Aug 9 1945

containment

US foreign policy during the Cold War; goal=prevent the spread of communism; ex. Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, Berlin Airlift, Korean War, Vietnam War

Korean War

Korean peninsula divided into two countries: North Korea and South Korea along the 38th parallel; 3-4 million Korean casualties; North Korea fell into poverty and South Korea became affluent; 50,000 US soldiers died, first war US did not outright “win”

Marshall Plan

1947: General George Marshall recommended that $12-17 billion be spent to help the economics of Europe recover after WWII; raised living standards and to reduce appeal of communism

38th Parallel

dividing line between North and South Korea

Berlin Airlift

lasted 15 months until blockade lifted May 1949; at the height of the airlift a plane landed at Berlin’s airport every minute

Berlin Wall

13 August 1961 Soviet authorities sealed off East Berlin by constructing a barbed wire barrier which was later replaced with a concrete wall; f families divided; border guards patrolled the wall and had orders to shoot anyone trying to cross

East Berlin refugees

between 2.7 million East Germans were leaving East Germany and never returning between 1945-1960

Vietnam War

journalists had access to combat zones; footage of the war aired nightly on American news programs; 1973 ceasefire

Eastern Europe post-WWII

MIkhail Gorbachez came to power March 1985; wanted to improve living conditions in USSR; introduced perestroika and glasnost

Cuban Missile Crisis

Kennedy imposed a naval blockade around Cuba; 13 days of anticipating nuclear warfare; Khrushchev removed the missiles and the US agreed to move missiles from Turkey and recognize communist Cuba

Bay of Pigs invasion

April 1961; CIA landed 1,400 Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in Southern Cuba w the objective to provoke an anti-communist uprising; rebels were defeated when they were met w 20,000 armed Cuban troops; invasion failure; JFK looked weak + aggressive

Nikita Khrushchev

became the leader after Stalin’s death; joined the Red Army during the Civil War; pro-Stalin, involved in 1930s repressions

Fidel Castro

leader of Cuba from 1959-2008, served as PM from 1959-1976, president 1976-2008

Mao Zedong

1893-1976; born into a peasant family in central China; 1921: founding member of the Chinese communist party; Oct 1949: est the People’s Republic of China; policies responsible for 55-80 million deaths in China

Great Leap Forward

1958; Mao’s economic plan; forced collective farms into even larger communes with thousands of peasants living on them; 30-32 million people starved to death as a result of this

Little Red Book

During the Cultural Revolution, the Ministry of Culture printed and distributed copies of this book; it became mandatory to have a copy; collection of 267 quoted by Mao

Tiananmen Square

June 1989: students protested in Tiananmen Square in Beijing; wanted the government to be more accountable, free speech, free press, fair legal processes; Chinese government sent in the armed soldiers and tanks to shoot at the protestors, around 10,000 killed

Warsaw Pact

military alliance established 14 May 1955 by the Soviet Union and 7 other Eastern European Countries

NATO

during the Berlin Blockade, war between the US and USSR seemed like a real possibility; At the height of the crisis, the Western powers met and formed an organization in April 1949 called NATO

Cold War

tension between two world superpowers: the USSR and USA that grew from ideological differences between the two. A war of words, propaganda, proxy wars, ideological struggle, and threat but no actual confrontation between the two superpowers

United Nations

a worldwide organization that brings together countries to talk about, and try to agree on, world issues; established in 1945 after WWII as a way of bringing people together and to avoid war

Iron Curtain

5 March 1946 former PM Winston Churchill condemned Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe with his Iron Curtain speech; term refers to harsh division between East and West Germany

perestoika

economic restructuring

glasnost

openness and free speech

Mikhail Gorbachev

increased freedom and openness in the USSR

fall of the Berlin Wall

came down in 1989 (end of Cold War)

German reunification

November 1990 West and East Germany reunified

Collapse of the USSR

USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979; by late 1980s the Afghan War was costing too much money + casualties so they withdraw in 1989