World Wars

c. 1900-Today

Indian troops from Punjab in France, 1917

World Wars, c. 1900-Today:

Objectives
The Mexican Revolution
The Great War
- 1914-1915
- 1916-1918
Imperial Collapse
Soviet Modernization
The Great Depression
Fascism
The Second World War
- 1939-1941
- 1942-1945
Total War and Genocide

Objectives

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Explain how internal and external factors contributed to change in various states after 1900.
Explain the causes and consequences of World War I.
Explain how governments used a variety of methods to conduct war.
Explain how different governments responded to economic crisis after 1900.
Explain the continuities and changes in territorial holdings from 1900 to the present.
Explain the causes and consequences of World War II.
Explain similarities and differences in how governments used a variety of methods to conduct war.
Explain the various causes and consequences of mass atrocities in the period from 1900 to the present.
Explain how different governments responded to economic crisis after 1900.
Explain the continuities and changes in territorial holdings from 1900 to the present.

The Mexican Revolution

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Pancho Villa and followers. An estimated 1.7-2.7 million died during the Mexican Revolution

"I've Had About Enough of This". Uncle Sam leaps across the border to chase Pancho Villa during the Punitive Expedition.

States around the world challenged the existing political and social order, including the Mexican Revolution that arose as a result of political crisis.

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Article: How Mexico City’s mural movement transformed walls into art

Soldaderas conduct firing practice, 1911

The Mexican Revolution.pdf from Dave Phillips

The Mexican Revolution (comprehensive)

The Mexican Revolution (abridged)

The Great War

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World War I was the first total war. Governments used a variety of strategies, including political propaganda, art, media, and intensified forms of nationalism, to mobilize populations (both in the home countries and the colonies) for the purpose of waging war.
New military technology led to increased levels of wartime casualties.

Japanese capture of the German colony of Tsingtao, China, 1914

1914-1915

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British machine gunners

British ship-based air-raid on German naval forces, Christmas Day, 1914

Article: From Wristwatches To Radio, How World War I Ushered In The Modern World

Article: Famous World War I Battleship Discovered at the Bottom of the Atlantic

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Article: Why the World Banned Chemical Weapons

The Bikaner Camel Corps, British Imperial Service Troops from India, during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, 1915

prisoners of war from various Allied nations

Austro-Hungarian troops on the mountainous Italian Front

German East African soliders

Colorized French photos from World War I

The Great War in 1914-1915 (comprehensive)

The Great War in 1914-1915 (abridged)

German Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI giant bomber

British Mark I tank during the battle of the Somme, September 1916

1916-1918

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Vietnamese workers from French Indochina at a train station in Saint-Raphaël, France, in 1916

Australian soldiers at Ypres, France during the Battle of Paschendale.

Germans passing a captured British trench during the Spring 1918 Offensive

Canadian troops resting during the Hundred Days Offensive

Article: So Today I Learned That France Built a Replica of Paris in WWI

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Article: Why was the Zimmermann Telegram so important?

officers of the American 366th Infantry

1919 postcard depicting the battle of Château-Thierry

The Great War, 1914-1918.pdf from Dave Phillips

The Great War in 1916-1918 (comprehensive)

The Great War in 1916-1918 (abridged)

Imperial Collapse

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"The Big Four" - David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the U.S. - made all the major decisions at the Paris Peace Conference.

In January 1919, communists tried to seize power in Germany during the failed Spartacist Uprising.

1919 illustration of the stab-in-the-back myth, a dangerous right-wing conspiracy theory that blamed Germany's defeat in World War I on Jews, liberals, socialists, and communists, and contributed to the rise of the Nazi Party.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey (1923-1938) transformed Turkey into a progressive, secular, industrial nation.

Yuan Shikai (left) and Sun Yat-sen (right) with flags representing the Republic of China

The West dominated the global political order at the beginning of the 20th century, but both land-based and maritime empires gave way to new states by the century’s end.
The older, land-based Ottoman, Russian, and Qing empires collapsed due to a combination of internal and external factors. These changes in Russia eventually led to communist revolution.

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Article: The Chinese Revolution of 1911: Failure or Success?

Article: The War After the War: 7 Revolutions Caused By World War One

Imperial Collapse (comprehensive)

Imperial Collapse (abridged)

Soviet Modernization

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Joseph Stalin (left), Vladimir Lenin (center), and Leon Trotsky (right) led the Bolshevik Revolution and founded the Soviet Union.

Soviet propaganda poster depicting Stalin leading Soviet forces during the Second World War.

The sculpture Worker and Kolkhoz Woman (1937) is one of the most famous art works of Socialist Realism.

In the Soviet Union, the government controlled the national economy through the Five Year Plans, often implementing repressive policies, with negative repercussions for the population.

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Article: Putting history to rest: Will Lenin soon be buried?

Now you see him. Now you don't. Victims of the Great Purge were erased from the Soviet historical record through elaborate document falsification.

Article: Death of truth: when propaganda and 'alternative facts' first gripped the world

Soviet Modernization (comprehensive)

Soviet Modernization (abridged)

The Great Depression

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"Bread Line during the Louisville flood, Kentucky, 1937"
photo by Margaret Bourke-White

Art and literature of the 1920s reflected the traumatic experience of World War I and pessimism, angst, and anxiety about the future.

During the Ruhr Crisis, Weimar Republic suffered extreme hyperinflation which crippled the German economy.

Text: "It's the Soviets pulling the strings of the Popular Front." French right-wing critics denounced the Popular Front alliance of Liberals, Socialists, and Communists as puppets of the Soviet Union.

propaganda depicting Brazilian dictator Getúlio Vargas, 1938

Down Argentine Way (1940) introduced Carmen Miranda to American audiences. FDR's Good Neighbor Policy relied on such films to help improve U.S.-Latin American relations.

Following World War I and the onset of the Great Depression, governments began to take a more active role in economic life.

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Article: Why has Germany taken so long to pay off its WWI debt?

Article: Coca-Cola collaborated with the Nazis in the 1930s, and Fanta is the proof

Modernism from Dave Phillips

The Great Depression (comprehensive)

The Great Depression (abridged)

Fascism

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'Piece by Piece': American cartoon on Japan's expansion in Asia

Article: Airbrushing Taiwan’s History: Can Japanese Colonialism Ever Be Justified?

Article: Benito Mussolini’s Rise to Power: From Biennio Rosso to March on Rome

Fascist Party Headquarters in Rome in 1934

Rare color photographs of Nazi Germany by Adolf Hitler's personal photographer. Hitler murdered his Nazi Party rivals and assumed the powers of the presidency to become Germany's Führer in 1934.

Article: Horkheimer on the Eclipse of Reason: How Did The Nazi Regime Happen?

Japanese troops during a chemical attack against Chinese forces in the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937

Between the two world wars, Western and Japanese imperial states predominantly maintained control over colonial holdings; in some cases, they gained additional territories through conquest or treaty settlement and in other cases faced anti-imperial resistance.

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Article: 1930s Shanghai: Why Was it Called the Paris of the East?

Article: The Spanish Civil War: A Trial Run for World War II

Article: Spain’s Parliament Votes to Exhume a Dead Dictator

political cartoons reacting to the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact

Totalitarianism - The Road to the Second World War.pdf from Dave Phillips

Fascism (comprehensive)

Fascism (abridged)

The Second World War

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Japanese propaganda poster depicting a samurai triumphing over Allied navy ships with the Axis Power flags of Germany, Japan, and Italy fluttering in the background.

The causes of World War II included the unsustainable peace settlement after World War I, the global economic crisis engendered by the Great Depression, continued imperialist aspirations, and especially the rise to power of fascist and totalitarian regimes that resulted in the aggressive militarism of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler.
World War II was a total war. Governments used a variety of strategies, including political propaganda, art, media, and intensified forms of nationalism, to mobilize populations (both in the home countries and the colonies or former colonies) for the purpose of waging war. Governments used ideologies, including fascism and communism to mobilize all of their state’s resources for war and, in the case of totalitarian states, to repress basic freedoms and dominate many aspects of daily life during the course of the conflicts and beyond.
New military technology and new tactics, including the atomic bomb, fire-bombing, and the waging of “total war” led to increased levels of wartime casualties.

1939-1941

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German airplanes during the Second World War emblazoned with the Nazi swastika symbol on their tails.

Article: The Maginot Line – 11 Fascinating Facts About France’s Ill-Fated Fortifications

Article: Silent Partners – Five Neutral Nations That Still Took Part In WW2

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Vichy France

World War II, 1939-1941 (comprehensive)

World War II, 1939-1941 (abridged)

1942-1945

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Soviet soldiers fly the flag of the USSR after the Battle of Berlin.

American marines raise the US flag after the Battle of Iwo Jima.

diagram of a German V-2 rocket

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1942-1945

Article: This is the story behind the Red Army's most iconic WWII photo

Article: The nuclear bomb didn't beat Japan — Stalin did

The Second World War.pdf from Dave Phillips

World War II, 1942-1945 (comprehensive)

World War II, 1942-1945 (abridged)

Total War and Genocide

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The Sowers (1942) by Thomas Hart Benton portrays the barbarity of fascism.

Images from the Holocaust

A survivor of a vicious machete attack, the main weapon of murder in the Rwandan Genocide (1994).

At 50 million megatons, the Tsar Bomba thermonuclear device is the most powerful weapon ever developed. It was tested in 1961 during the peak of the Cold War. Reaching 35 miles into the atmosphere, the mushroom cloud was seven times the height of Mount Everest.

The rise of extremist groups in power led to the attempted destruction of specific populations, notably the Nazi killing of the Jews in the Holocaust during World War II, and to other atrocities, acts of genocide, or ethnic violence.

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