mcq unit 7

World War 1: 1914-1918

Rise of the Nazis: 1930-1939

World War 2: 1939-1945

Atomic Bombs dropped on Japan: 1945

Great Depression: 1929-1940

The Ottomans were once one of the great “gunpowder empires” (1300-1700).  But starting in the 1800s, they began to lose a substantial amount of land, not just because of nationalistic independence movements (ex. Serbia in 1815, Greece in 1832) but also due to European imperialist expansion (ex. France in Algeria-1847, England in Egypt-1882).  The Ottomans were bitter about this.  Unfortunately for the Ottomans, they fought against the British during WWI and lost, thus ending their empire (1918).  The Arabs who fought alongside the British in the Middle East, did so with the promise that they would get their own Arab state that would go from the Arabian Peninsula all the way up through modern day Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.  This promise was not fulfilled once the war was over.  Instead, the mandate system was put in place by the League of Nations.  Under this system, France controlled modern-day Syria and Lebanon while England controlled modern-day Israel/Palestine, Iraq, and Jordan. 

The Qing Dynasty came to an end because of external factors (foreign spheres of influence), but there were also internal conflicts with ethnic and religious minorities that significantly damaged Qing power and stability.  Some examples included the Taiping Rebellion (Christianity vs. Buddhism/Confucianism) and tension between the Manchus (who controlled the Qing Dynasty) and the Han Chinese themselves.  Han Chinese = Ethnically Chinese.  Similar conflicts occurred in the Ottoman Empire bringing about their demise.

 The 3 main causes of WWI:

Total war is a conflict in which a country mobilizes all of its resources, including military, economic, and civilian efforts (everybody works toward the war effort), to achieve complete victory.  States made full use of their populations and material resources to fight total wars.  This included using colonial subjects as soldiers (ex. Indian soldiers fighting for England).  Speaking of Indian soldiers, many were hoping that fighting in WWI for the British would lead to Britain thanking them by giving them independence.  The British felt racially superior to the Indians, and as such could not bring themselves to part with India.  Anti-imperial opposition in India and elsewhere began to grow in earnest as a result of this after WWI (1918).  India would not gain their independence until after WWII.

Nazis blamed Germany’s loss in WWI on socialists, communists, and Jews within their country.

The main reason why countries like Germany were willing to be ruled by authoritarian rulers was because they had endured such severe economic hardship in the 1920s and early 30s, they were willing to put up with a dictator, so long as the economy improved; and Hitler did in fact improve the German economy.

The Great Depression of the 1930s forced governments to take a more active role in directing and regulating their economies to stimulate growth.  In the U.S. there was FDR’s “New Deal,” and in Germany, the Nazi Party put everybody to work mostly in factories that created guns, tanks, and other military items.  This is why the Nazis were so effective when WWII started.  They had spent the 1930s arming themselves “to the teeth” as they say.

The rise of the Soviet Union was as a result of, among other things, the collapse of the Russian Empire under the stress of the First World War.  Growing discontent among the Russian people with their traditional czarist government also inspired the change.  When the Soviets came to power, their control of the country was pretty absolute.  Stalin (ruled from 1922-1952) instituted 5 year economic plans whose aim was to modernize the Soviet Union.  These economic plans were fraught with human tragedy (starvation in Ukraine) but ultimately they achieved their aim of industrializing the Soviet Union.  

Russia and then the Soviet Union suffered the most casualties in WWI and WWII respectively.  

Similar to western industrialized powers, Japan’s main motivation for wanting to colonize all of Asia was so that they could exploit Asia’s natural resources.  Japan was kind of lacking in important natural resources (rubber, oil, etc.).  The Japanese successfully conquered all of northeastern China (1931-1945) and all of Southeast Asia (1940-1945).  They used some of the same ideology Western nations used to imperialize, which is to say, a sense of racial superiority over their Asiatic neighbors, and a sense of duty to “civilize” the rest of Asia.  Ironically, when the Japanese pushed the Europeans out of Southeast Asia during WWII, it cleared the pathway for all of those nations to gain independence once the war was over (ex. Indonesia-1945, Philippines-1946).  As we have learned, the end of WWII spawned a new war called the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.  It was cold because the two sides never fought each other directly, but rather had proxy wars in places like Korea and Vietnam.  Both countries were split in half because of the Cold War (1950s).  Korea is still split in half (North Korea and South Korea), while Vietnam is today a whole country.  More on that later.      

Unlike with the previous genocide we studied (The Armenian Genocide) the Nazis industrialized the killing process (gas chambers, ovens, railroads, barracks), allowing them to commit murder on a massive scale (The Holocaust).  The Holocaust was made possible due to local populations' willingness to collaborate with the regime either out of racial prejudice, fear, or in hopes for material gain.  Most concentration camps were in Poland not Germany.

By 1945, the United States had two choices as it related to Japan: either they could attempt a land invasion on mainland Japan and suffer hundreds of thousands of American casualties in the process, or they could drop an atomic bomb on a Japanese city and force the Japanese to surrender.  As we know, they went with plan B.   American logic went like this: the Japanese would never surrender unless they saw there was no way they could win.  The atomic bomb made the Japanese leadership see they could not win.  The first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, immediately killing 70-80,000 Japanese citizens.  The U.S. warned the Japanese they had more bombs and encouraged them to surrender.  When the Japanese did not, the second bomb was dropped three days after the first on the city of Nagasaki, immediately killing 50-75,000 Japanese citizens.  The Japanese surrendered after this.  By the end of 1945, over 200,000 Japanese citizens would be dead because of the bombs.  Most died immediately upon the bombs detonating, and the rest died from radiation poisoning in the months that followed.  

Japan signed a peace treaty after WWII where Japan had to promise they would not rearm themselves militarily. 

The end of WWII led to a new rivalry between the victorious states: the U.S. and the Soviet Union.  This conflict would come to be known as the Cold War.

The League of Nations was founded after WWI.  The purpose of the league was to try to discuss among nations problems that arise from time to time in international affairs.  The United Nations replaced the League of Nations with the same purpose in mind after WWII.