Period 4 Study Guide

World War I (1914-1918)

Causes

• Nationalism: hyper patriotism (Germany, Russia, France); desire for nation hood: Poles, Czechs, Serbs

• Imperialism: the desire by Germany for more colonies and global presence

• Militarism: the investment in new weapons (dreadnoughts) and crating detailed warplanes

• Alliances: actions by one alliance partner could drag to others into a war

War Plans/ Mobilization

War Plans:

The German Schlieffen Plan:

• War with France and Russia

• Massive offensive into France through Belgium

• Knock out France before Russia can fight

French Plan XVII:

• Attacks across Franco/ German borders as s00n as possible

• District Germany to give Russia time to fight back

Stalemate: By the end of 1914, the was turned into a stalemate on both fronts

• stalemate: neither country was making significant advancements or accomplishments; had the same technologies/tactics; no new innovations to push a country/side ahead

New Technologies:

• Airplanes

• Zeppelins

• Effective machine guns

• Poison gas: mustard, chlorine

• Tanks

Armistice

Wilson's Fourteen Points:

• Calls for a "general association of nations"

  • this becomes the League & Nations

• Freedom of the seas

• Self Determination for colonies of the central powers

Peace Treaties

Treaty of Versailles 1919:

• Germany took responsibility for the entire was.

• agreed to reparations ($440 billion)

• surrounded their entire navy to the Allies

• army no bigger than 100K; prohibited from building dreadnoughts, U-boats, zeppelins, and warplanes

• gave up some German territory (10%) to Poland, Czechoslovakia (new), and France; gave up all territory they won in Russia

WWI: The End (1917-1918)

Russia exits the war, the U.S. enters, and the Armistice

Russia

• In 1916-1917, the Russian military and economy were worn out.

• Too many trains had been diverted to transporting troops and military supplies, and not enough were available for food.

• Cities ran short of bread.

• Tsar Nicholas II was personally in charge of the Russian armies and had left the government of Russia to his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra

  • Alexandra was emotionally prone to hysteria, depression, and anger because of her son’s hemophilia and her separation from her husband.

  • She relied on a Siberian monk, Rasputin, for political advice and spiritual comfort.

  • The army, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie of Russia were suspicious of Rasputin.

• Rasputin was eventually assassinated in 1916 by members of the Romanov family (imperial family)

• On International Women’s Day, February 1917, a protest over the shortage of food in St. Petersburg turned into a revolution.

• The Tsar abdicated (gave up his throne), and a Provisional Government was declared.

• The military and workers’ soviets in St. Petersburg also claimed to be the true government of Russia

• In 1917, the German government helped Lenin and the Bolsheviks enter Russia even though the Provisional Government had exiled them.

• In October 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, organized the soviets to overthrow the Provisional Government.

• Lenin and Trotsky promised to peace, land, and bread to the Russian people.

• Lenin negotiated a peace treaty with the German government.

• Treaty of Brest Litovsk

  • 25% of Russia’s population was now under German control

  • 90% of Russian coal mines were in German hands

USA, Germany, and the Zimmermann Telegram

• Despite the collapse of Russia, Germany was desperate, and made plans to renew unrestricted submarine warfare.

• The Germany strategy for 1917-1918 was:

  • renewal of unrestricted warfare

  • a final attempt at capturing Paris

• When Germany declared a renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917, reelected U.S. President Wilson was outraged.

• Germany broke their pledge to stop unrestricted warfare after the Lusitania sinking

• The German government was now worried that the U.S. would join in the war on the side of the Allies before its grand strategy could be completed.

• Foreign Minister Zimmerman hatched a plan to create an alliance with Mexico.

• In the event of the U.S. declaring war on Germany in 1917, Mexico would declare war on the U.S.

• Germany would then help Mexico recover Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, territory Mexico lost to the U.S. in the Mexican War of 1846-1847.

• Zimmerman’s secret telegram to Mexico City was intercepted by the British and sent to the U.S. government

• Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war in April 1917.

• Because the British decided to escort merchant ships in large fleets with using smaller warships to protect them, the new U-boat offensive came up short.

• The German army launched an all out assault on the Allied trenches in France in the spring of 1918 to capture Paris, came close, but they failed.

• By the summer of 1918, 100,000 U.S. soldiers were arriving in France each month.

• Allied advancements

  • More soldiers

  • 1,000’s of tanks

  • 10,000’s more airplanes, machine guns, and artillery than the Germans

Armistice

• With the German civilian population facing starvation and German workers embracing radical socialist and Marxist ideas, a revolution broke out in October 1918.

• Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated after it was clear he no longer had any military or civilian authority.

• The German military, which had lied to civilian political leaders throughout the war about the real situation on the western front, told them they had to negotiate with the Allies as Germany could no longer fight.

• Germany’s new government requested an armistice (temporary peace) and negotiations based on President Wilson’s Fourteen Points.

  • The fighting stopped at 11:00 AM, November 11, 1918

• Wilson’s Fourteen Points

  • Calls for a “general association of nations”

    • This becomes the League of Nations

  • Freedom of the seas

  • Self determination

• Peace Treaties

  • Treaty of Versailles 1919

    • Germany accepted responsibility for the entire war

    • agreed to reparations ($440 billion)

    • surrendered their entire navy (especially the dreadnoughts and uboats) to the Allies

    • army no bigger than 100K; prohibited from building dreadnoughts, uboats, zeppelins, and warplanes

    • gave up some German territory (10%) to Poland (new), Czechoslovakia (new), and France; gave up all it won in Russia

    • Disbanded its empire and gave up all its colonies to the Allies

  • Treaty of Sevres 1920—Ottoman Empire is dissolved, but Turkey’s defeat is not as severe as Germany’s.

1920s: Age of Anxiety

• Eyewitness: the Birth of a Monster Adolf Hitler as the personification of European post war anxiety

  • rapid cultural, scientific, and economic changes

  • Capitalist Democracies

  • Communist societies

  • Fascism

Post War pessimism

• “You are all a lost generation”

• Artistic and literary works in the 1920’s reflected the pessimism and cynicism in Western Europe and North America after WWI

  • Ernest Hemingway—A Farewell to Arms

  • Virginia Woolf—Mrs. Dalloway

  • Erich Maria Remarque—All Quiet on the Western Front

  • Oswald Spengler (1922)—Decline of the West

• All societies rise and fall, and western society was on the point of decline.

Attacks on Progress

• The “weakness” of liberal democracies

• Many war veterans, especially from Germany, embraced right wing politics and were bored with bourgeois, democratic society.

• Ernst Junger—Storm of Steel (1922), celebrates the life of the frontsoldaten, or frontline soldier; gritty, violent, exciting, glorifying; little moralizing.

Revolution in Physics and Psychology

• Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory (c.1900)

  • Repressed memories explain problematic human behavior; dreams are gateways to understanding repressed memory; role of sex in the subconscious

  • Inspires artist and writers. Ex. Salvador Dali

• Werner Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle” (1927)

  • Observation and measurement interferes with the scientific methods

  • Called into question the concept of truth and objectivity

• Art and Architecture

  • Architecture

    • Bauhaus—modernism, minimal ornamentation, use of stainless steel (new alloy); primary colors

  • Art deco—streamlining, curves, simulation of speed in inanimate or animate objects

• Art (c.1910-1930)

  • Use of non western influences

  • Degas

    • Japanese influence

• Gauguin

  • Polynesian

• Picasso

  • African influence

Roaring Twenties : Rise of consumer Culture in the west /Mass Production = mass consumption

• While wages were stagnant for the working classes throughout the 1920’s, the middle class enjoyed access to easy consumer credit

• Allowed the purchase of

  • automobiles

  • appliances—toasters, electric ovens, refrigerators, laundry machines, and radios

  • Stocks and real estate on speculation

• Experimentation, synthesis, and appropriation of African American music forms by Europeans and North Americans led to jazz music (c. 1910)

• Film and sports become a popular pastime for working class and upperclass westerners

• This decade was called

  • Roaring Twenties—U.S.

  • Les Année Folles—France

  • Gluckliche Zwanziger Jahr—Germany

Rise of Fascism in Europe: Mussolini and Hitler

Revisionist Powers 1925-1935: Germany Italy, Japan the revisionist powers wanted an adjustment in the borders of their countries or empires.

These nations were upset with the post WWI settlements

• Italy — wanted colonies in East Africa; expansion in the Mediterranean Adriatic Sea

• Japan— wanted more concessions from China

• Germany— wanted territory that was taken from them after WWI; disagreed with reparations

Italy and Germany: Fascism

Fascism: the state is at the center of society

• the individual is subordinate to the state

• emphasized:

  • fear of foreigners (xenophobia)

  • nationalism

  • militarism

  • anti Marxism / Communism

    • abolition of political parties

  • modernism/ technology

    • aviation/ transportation

    • automotive

Italy and WWI

• Italy wanted Austrian territory and German colonies but very little was given to Italy at the Versailles peace conference.

• Many Italians felt embittered and betrayed, and referred to the end of the war as the mutilated victory ("victoria mutiliata")

• In 1919, former socialist newspapers editor and war veteran Benito Mussolini created the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, or Italian combat squad.

  • The group was made up of followers who wished to see a strong dictator rule Italy and and the political chaos

March on Rome (1922)

The wing of Italy agreed to appoint a new prime minister and invited Mussolini to form a government

• This was the beginning of Mussolini's dictatorship

Italian fascist goals and decisions:

• Nationalism - Italy should be the supreme nation in the Mediterranean; create a new Italian empire in Africa

• Spazio vitale- Italy's borders should be extended to provide more living space for Italians (similes to lebensraum)

• The social classes in Italy should collaborate for Italian goals and not fight each other

• Tradition

• Modernization

The Great Depression (1929-1939)

After WWI, Germany and Austria depended on US loans to help pay reparations to the Entente powers

Entente powers used reparations money to pay debts to the US

Global decline in:

• rubber consumption: production of trucks no longer needed (hurts empires and colonial powers)

• coal: warships are scrapped or transitioned to oil burning instead of coal burning (hurts British economy)

• agricultural prices (over supply of wheat): Europeans countries recover agricultural production; new sources of wheat from Argentina and Australia (hurts US economy)

October 1929 — Stock Market Crash "Black Thursday / Tuesday”

Causes:

Speculative Investment:

• investing on the margin— taking out loans in order to purchase questionable stock.

  • Real estate (Florida); scams and hurricanes

  • Lack of government regulations on banks and investment companies; result of laissez faire capitalism.

Early Consumer Credit:

• Installment buying/ layaway plans—pay a percentage now, and a smaller percentage each month of the purchase

• Those who cant afford use the credit to purchase "big ticket," items such as cars and appliances

Slowing economy:

• Low agricultural prices

• Failing consumption/over production - there are only so many people who can afford a car, a radio, a toaster, etc.

  • railroad companies report fewer uses for shipment

Reaction to the crash

• Governments abandoned laissez faire practices and took greater control of their economies through regulations and large scale construction projects.

• Economic nationalism:

  • tariffs- taxes on imported products from other countries

  • import quotas- limits the amount of goods that a person or company can buy from another country

  • reciprocal trade deals- barters between countries

• These reactions by the US and European government slow global trade in an already interconnected word and worsen the crisis.

• Unemployment in the US rose to 25% in 1932

The New Deal: How the US responded

Franklin D. Roosevelt: elected in 1932 promising a "new deal"

• Goal was to preserve and reform capitalism in the US

• "One Hundred Days" of Roosevelt's first administration

  • increased government spending/national debt

  • created programs that would employ Americans

  • More government regulation of the economy

  • Commercial banks cannot make loans to customers to speculate on Wall Street (Glass Steagall Act)

  • Bank deposits need to be insured so that if banks failed, customers savings would not be wiped out

    (FDIC—Federal Depository Insurance Corporations)

  • Stricter rules on how companies sell their stock on Wall Street.

Countervailing Power

• Working class:

  • the US recognized the rights of unions to organize and negotiate with owners

• Middle-class consumers:

  • the average consumer had laws protecting them from high tariffs, poor products

• Elderly:

  • social security provided a way for the elderly to live comfortably when they could no longer work

• Blacks:

  • received help from the federal government for the hirst time since post Civil War era. Shifted black urban support from the Republican pasty to the Democratic party by the late 1930's.

Japan, China, and War in East Asia

Japan in WWI

• Japan was the country that benefitted the most from WWI.

  • fewest casualties of the Allies at less than 5,000 killed, wounded, or captured

• Declined to send a large force to trance to fight in the trenches against the Germans.

• In exchange for these losses, Japan extended its empire by capturing German navel bases in China

• During WWI, Japanese went from being a debtor nation ( country that owes other countries for loans) to a creditor nation (country that loaned money to others)

Washington Naval Conference 1921

• Japan, Great Britain, and the US began building navel warships and it became a "friendly" competition

• In 1921, the US invited its former allies

  • Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy signed a naval treaty

• The ratio of British, US, and Japanese navies was established at 5:5:3 (as the tonnage of ships in each of the fleets)

• The Japanese economy was spared the expenses but Japanese militaries were not pleased.

  • Felt slighted and excluded from great power status

Japanese economy 1920's

• Japan lucked a central bank 50 it could not manage the amount of money that flowed into the country

• inflation became a problem dragging down the есоnоmу

• As European economy recovered, they needed fewer manufactured goods from Japan

• High US Tariffs slowed trade between the two countries

• Meanwhile, Japan had already spent an enormous amount on its now cancelled naval building program

• While the Japanese economy slammed down, Japanese politicians sought ways to expand its economy

• few resources of coal and raw materials

China

China 1911 - 1930's: Sun Yat-sen

• In October 1911, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, ending a dynastic cycle that had lasted for over two thousand years.

• In 1912, a republic under the leader of political philosopher Sun Yat-sen was established.

  • rounded the Kuomintang (KMT) Chinese Nationalist Party

  • Sun's foundation for the new government was the Three Principles of the People:

    • nationalism independence from foreign control)

    • democracy

    • economic welfare

• Sun and the Nationalists abandoned Confucianism as a governing philosophy

China 1911- 1930's: Chiung Kai Shen (Jien Jieshi)

Chiang Kai Shen:

• Leader of the Kuomintang from 1925 until his death in 1975

• visited the soviet Union in the early 1920's and decided that communism would not work in China

• tried to destroy the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1927

  • by arresting and executing the party leadership in Shanghai (Shanghai Massacre) in which thousands were shot or beheaded

• Waged a scorched earth war against the Japanese throughout the Second Sino Japanese War and WWII

China 1911- 1930's = CCP

• Mao Zedong: prominent Chinese communist who rose up the ranks to lead the CCP by 1934 after the Long March:

  • believed that the future of communism in China was not with the Chinese working class but with the peasants (popular mass/ "village paver")

  • this was called Maoism

• Mao directed the civil war until the formation of the United Front (1937-1945) with Chiang against Japan:

  • communist forces were success against the Japanese

Shanghai 1931

• Chinese nationalism was a threat to Japan's growing influences and bases in China.

• China also provided Japan with resources such as coal and iron ore.

• In 1931, Japanese and Chinese forces dashed in Shanghai after riots killed and injured Japanese nationalist Buddhists.

Army vs. Civilian Government

• Army began to lead themselves disregarding the government

Mukden Incident: Invasion of Manchuria 1931

• In 1931, Japanese army officers staged a Chinese sabotage attack on a Japanese railway line in China

• By 1932, Japan occupied all of Manchuria

  • Manchukuo formed

  • created a puppet government, or client state, with the last Qing emperor as leader (Puyi came back)

• In protest of the international protests over this aggression, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933.

The China Incident (1937)

• In 1937, Chinese and Japanese forces again clashed at a key bridge to Beijing

• The Japanese military used this excuse to launch a full scale invasion of China itself

• This was beginning of the Second Sino Japanese War (1937-1945 )

• By the end of WWII:

  • 20 million Chinese civilians would be killed (Asian holocaust)

  • 4 million (mostly) Chinese and Japanese soldiers were killed.

WWII (1939- 1945)

Allied powers: Great Britain and Commonwealth, France (until 1940), Free French (After 1940), the Soviet Union (after 1941), The USA (after 1941), China (after 1941; was fighting Japan alone from 1437- 1441)

Axis power: Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania

Japanese Aggression and Atrocities against China

Twenty One Demands (1415): Japan attempts to get more territorial and economic concessions from China; Chinese boycott Japanese goods; Britain forces Japan to modify the demand for politics and cultural control over china.

Mukden Incident (1931): Japanese successfully invade and take over Manchuria (northern China)

Shanghai incident (1932): further clashes with China along the coast of Shanghai

Second Sino Japanese War (1937-1445): Japanese full scale invasion and war with China. Rape of Nanking (K38)

US embargo of oil and strategic resources (1940)

WWII begins

• In the summer of 1939, Mister begin to mane demands on Poland for territory and control of the city of Gdansk

  • in reality, Hitter wanted to conquer Poland for lebensraum, or living space for the German people

• In August 1934, the Nazi Soviet Pact was signed

  • Germany and the Soviet Union agreed not to go to war with each other

  • Secretly, Germany agreed to provide Germany with raw materials in exchange for German technology

  • Hitler also said he would split Poland with Stalin

• On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland

• The German Luftwaffe (air force) used ground attack aircraft to destroy bridges, railroads, communication, centers, and Polish airfields.

  • The Luftwaffe also continued terror bombing tactics (Guernica)

  • Attacked defenseless cities and towns to cause panic among civilians

• German army tank and motorized units quickly surrounded Polish armies, forcing them to surrender

• This type of fighting was sled blitzkrieg (combined arms welfare, uses motorized troops, ground attack aircraft, and armored units to achieve victory

• By October, all Polish military forces were captured or destroyed.

• the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland and linked up with the German forces dividing the country in two.

• After securing Poland, both Nazi and Soviet security forces arrested executed thousands of:

  • Polish Jewish and non Jewish artists, professors, scientists, politicians, celebrities, priests, and intellectuals who they believed posed a threat to fascism or communism

    • killed intellectuals because they were able to leak military strategy if they escaped and they were perceived as resistance leaders

Battle of Britain

• Churchill (prime minister) vowed to continue the fight against Germany even after the Dunkirk evacuation and France surrendered

• Hitter planned to invade Britain (Operation Sea Lion)

Battle during July- October 1940:

• For four months, just several hundred British pilots (Royal Air Force) defended the British isles from Germany's Luftwaffe (air force)

• Britain had 2 advantages:

  • Radar: a new technology, gave the British advance warning of German bombers

  • RAF pilots, over their own homeland could easily refuel and tune off again; German pilots had to fly over the Channel to French bases to refuel and rearm before attacking again

• By October, Hitter, frustrated, postponed the invasion of Britain

The Blitz

• Hitler ordered the night bombing of London, terror bombing

• Lasted from October 1940 — late 1941

• 40,000+ civilians died

• Britain responded with the night firebombing of major German cities

Hitler turns East: Operation Barbarossa (1941)

• Operation Barbarossa: +4M Axis soldiers invaded the Soviet Union; marched all the way to Moscow

  • planned to defeat the Red Army and capture Moscow

• Goals:

  • seized lebensraum

  • end of communism

  • take Soviet raw materials (oil, grain, coal) to continue war against Britain and dominate Europe

• If Hitler seized the Soviets, Britain would be forced to negotiate terms because they would of been the last European country standing

• Failure:

  • Soviet Union was too large to take over in mere months

  • Harsh winter weather caught the Germans unprepared

  • German soldiers ran out of food and supplies

  • Stalin refused to stand down and his army was brave enough to continue

  • Last minute reserve armies of the Soviets attacked and pushed the Germans back

Cold War (1947-1990s)