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  • America
    • I: Early America
      • Course Info
      • 1492-1763
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      • 1783-1789
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      • 1815-1849
      • 1850-1865
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    • II: Modern America
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The Second World War,
​c. 1929-1945

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During this second great war, the combatants engaged in wholesale destruction of cities, deliberate attacks on civilians, and the systematic destruction of their enemies’ industrial complexes.

The Second World War,
c. 1929-1945

The newly established, postwar democracies in central and eastern Europe were too weak to provide stability either internally or in the European state system, especially during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The League of Nations, established after the war to employ collective security in the interests of peace, could not manage the international tensions unleashed by World War I. The breakdown of the settlement led to World War II, a conflict even more violent than World War I.
 
In Italy and Germany, charismatic leaders led fascist movements to power, seizing control of the post–World War I governments. Fascism promised to solve economic problems through state direction, although not ownership, of production. The movements also promised to counteract the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles by rearming the military and by territorial expansion. The efforts of fascist governments to revise the Treaty of Versailles led to the most violent and destructive war in human history, World War II—a conflict between democracies, temporarily allied with communist Russia, and fascist states. 
 
During this second great war, the combatants engaged in wholesale destruction of cities, deliberate attacks on civilians, and the systematic destruction of their enemies’ industrial complexes. The Nazi government in Germany undertook the annihilation of Jews from the whole continent (the Holocaust), as well as the murder of other targeted groups of Europeans.

At the end of this conflict, fascist forces had been defeated, Europe was devastated, and the international diplomatic situation developed into a conflict between the capitalistic democracies and the centrally directed communist states. The economic and political devastation left a
power vacuum that facilitated the Cold War division of Europe.


Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-european-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf

The Machine Age

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Started in 1918, the Aéropostale Co. connected France to Africa and South America.
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The Graf Zeppelin traveled more than a million miles during 590 flights around the world during the 1920s and 1930s.
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In 1929 a Dornier Do X flying boat carried 169 persons, a record that stood unbeaten for 20 years.
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In 1939 the Heinkel He 178 became the world's first jet aircraft.
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In 1944 the German V-2 became the first long-range ballistic missile.
  • transatlantic radio
  • television
  • John Baird
  • Kálmán Tihanyi
  • Vladimir Zworykin
  • Rudolf Hell - Hellschreiber
  • computer
  • Alan Turing - Turing machine
  • Konrad Zuse
  • transatlantic cable
  • flight
  • Aéropostale Co.
  • nonstop transatlantic flight
  • Graf Zeppelin
  • Dornier Do X flying boat
  • Hamburg to Berlin high-speed rail
  • Heinkel He 178
  • Wernher von Braun
  • V-2 ballistic missiles

Fascist Italy

  • Two Red Years, 1919–1920
  • Benito Mussolini
  • Fascist Party
  • Blackshirts
  • Victor Emmanuel III
  • March on Rome
  • Il Duce
  • Lateran Accord
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Above: Reacting against the looming communist threat during the Two Red Years, Blackshirts conducted the March on Rome in 1922 to install Benito Mussolini as the new Italian prime minister.

Below: Fascist Party Headquarters in Rome in 1934
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International Economics

  • John Maynard Keynes - Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) and General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935–1936)
  • Keynesian economics
  • ​Dawes Plan
  • Young Plan
  • U.S. stock market crash
  • ​Austrian economics
  • Friedrich von Hayek - Road to Serfdom (1944)
  • Ludwig von Mises - Human Action (1949) 
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The American Dawes Plan and Young Plan stabilized the failing German economy and ushered in a brief period of prosperity during the Weimar Golden Age until the U.S. stock market crash in 1929.  The Nazis, of course, were opposed to Dawes Plan and any foreign influence in Germany.

Failures of Democratic States

POLAND:
  • Józef Piłsudski
  • Polish-Soviet War
  • 1926 May Coup
  • 1935 April Constitution
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Józef Piłsudski overthrew the infant Polish Republic in the 1926 May Coup and ruled as a behind-the-scenes dictator until his death in 1935.
HUNGARY:
  • Béla Kun
  • 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic
  • Miklós Horthy
  • White Terror
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Béla Kun led a communist revolution that established the short-lived 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic which collapsed when Romania invaded Hungary. Miklós Horthy oversaw a right-wing White Terror and collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.
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Ion Antonescu (left) allied himself with the far-right Iron Guard party and allied Romania with Nazi Germany during World War II.
ROMANIA:
  • Ion Antonescu
  • Iron Guard party
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GERMANY:
  • Weimar Republic
  • Ruhr Crisis
  • hyperinflation
  • Beer Hall Putsch
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source: https://commodity.com/blog/hyperinflation/?off
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During the Ruhr Crisis, Weimar Republic suffered extreme hyperinflation which crippled the German economy.
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During the chaos of the Ruhr Crisis, Adolf Hitler tried to spark a far-right revolution to install Germany's wartime leader General Erich Ludendorff as dictator during the failed Beer Hall Putsch. While in prison afterward, Hitler wrote his political treatise Mein Kampf.
BRITAIN:
  • British National Government
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The British National Government was a coalition of  Conservative, Liberal, Liberal National and National Labour politicians who worked together to pull Britain through the Great Depression.
Picture
FRANCE:
  • Popular Front
  • Léon Blum
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.

Stalinism

  • ​Joseph Stalin
  • national communism, or “Socialism in One Country”
  • Five-Year Plans
  • Socialist Realism
  • Worker and Kolkhoz Woman (1937)
  • Soviet New Man
  • Gulag labor camps
  • Collectivization
  • Holodomor famine
  • The Great Purge
  • totalitarianism
  • NKVD (later KGB)
  • Soviet Cult of Personality 
Altered documents erased individuals killed during the Great Purge from the historical record.
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Millions starved through the process of forced Collectivization. The Holodomor famine in Ukraine was a genocidal, engineered disaster.
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A Soviet Cult of Personality ​celebrated Joseph Stalin, depicted here in the Socialist Realist style.
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The sculpture Worker and Kolkhoz Woman (1937) is one of the most famous art works of Socialist Realism.
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Propaganda posters for the Five-Year Plans

Nazi Germany

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Hitler and Heinrich Himmler murdered rival Nazi Party leaders during the 1934 Night of the Long Knives. Just days later, President Paul von Hindenburg died. With a monopoly on Party and State power, Hitler announced he was Germany's new Führer .
  • Adolf Hitler
  • NSDAP (Nazi) Party
  • Beer Hall Putsch
  • Mein Kampf
  • Reichstag Fire
  • Dachau camp
  • Enabling Act
  • Night of the Long Knives
  • Führer
  • Triumph of the Will
  • Degenerate Art
  • Lebensraum​
Picture

​German and Italian Expansion

  • Treaty of London (1915)
  • Benito Mussolini
  • Libyan independence movement
  • 1935: Second Italian-Ethiopia War
  • ​Adolf Hitler
  • 1935: German rearmament
  • 1936: remilitarization of Rhineland
  • 1936-1937: Spanish Civil War
  • Francisco Franco
  • Pablo Picasso - Guernica
  • appeasement
  • March 1938: Anschluss
  • September 1938: Munich Conference
  • Neville Chamberlain
  • 1939: Italian annexation of Albania
  • Pact of Steel/Rome-Berlin Axis
  • August 1939: Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact 
Picture
The Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, signed in August 1939, caught the world by surprise given the militant rhetoric each power had toward the other.  Just days later, Germany and the USSR invaded Poland and the Second World War began.
Picture

The Spanish Civil War

  • Alfonso XIII of Spain
  • ​Spanish Civil War
  • Nationalists
  • Francisco Franco
  • Popular Front
  • Communist International (Comintern)
  • Pablo Picasso - Guernica (1937)
  • Juan Carlos I of Spain
Picture
Picture
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The ​Spanish Civil War was a proxy war between far-right and far-left forces.  Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy supported the Spanish Nationalists led by Francisco Franco while the USSR gave aid to the Spanish Popular Front.
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Nazi Germany field tested its new high-altitude long-range aerial bombers on a small Basque town.  Spanish artist Pablo Picasso painted his masterpiece Guernica (1937) protesting the horrors of modern, industrial warfare.

The Second World War

Picture
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1939-1940

  • September 1939: German and Soviet invasion of Poland
  • Blitzkrieg
  • Phoney War, or Sitzkrieg
  • November 1939: Soviet invasion of Finland
  • April 1940: German invasion of Denmark
  • April 1940: German invasion of Norway
  • May 1940: German invasion of Netherlands, Belgium, and France
  • June 1940: Fall of France
  • Dunkirk
  • Vichy regime
  • Henri-Philippe Pétain
  • ​Charles de Gaulle
  • Free French Forces
  • June 1940: Soviet invasion of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
  • July–October 1940: Battle of Britain
  • Luftwaffe
  • Blitz
  • Royal Air Force
  • radar​
Picture
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In Spring 1940, Germany did an end-run around the French Maginot Line, a complex network of underground fortresses developed after World War I. British forces fell back across the English Channel at Dunkirk.
Picture
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When France​ fell in June 1940, General Charles de Gaulle rallied Free French Forces to his government-in-exile in London, proclaiming that France had lost the battle but not the war.
Picture
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By July 1940, the United Kingdom stood alone against the Axis Powers. For months, the Royal Air Force fought the Luftwaffe in the skies during the Battle of Britain as London suffered through the Blitz.

​1941-1942

  • April 1941: Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece
  • Josip Tito
  • Yugoslav Partisans
  • June 22, 1941: Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of USSR
  • Battle of Moscow
  • Nazi SS Einsatzgruppen
  • Babi Yar Massacre
  • Siege of Leningrad
  • August 1941: Atlantic Charter
  • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  • Winston Churchill
  • December 7, 1941: Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor
  • strategic bombing
  • January 1942: Declaration of United Nations
  • October 1942: Battle of El Alamein
  • Erwin Rommel
  • German Africa Corps
  • Bernard Montgomery
  • George Patton
  • August 1942–February 1943: Battle of Stalingrad
Picture
Picture
Frustrated by Germany's inability to eliminate Britain, Hitler turned on the USSR with Operation Barbarossa in June 1941.  The Nazi SS Einsatzgruppen swept through Soviet territory executing 1.5 million Jewish and other civilians.
Picture
Picture
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The first great turning point of the war was British General Bernard "Monty" Montgomery's defeat of German General Erwin Rommel's Africa Corps at the Battle of El Alamein, Egypt in October 1942. After driving Axis forces from Africa, Allied forces launched an invasion of Italy in 1943.
Picture
The major turning point of the war was the Soviet defeat of German forces at the Battle of Stalingrad during the winter of 1942-1943.

​1943-1945

  • ​January 1943: Casablanca, Morocco Conference
  • July 1943: Allied invasion of Sicily
  • August 1943: Battle of Kursk
  • November 1943: Tehran, Iran Conference
  • June 6, 1944: D-Day Allied invasion of Normandy, France
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • August 1944: Liberation of Paris
  • ​August 1944: Warsaw Uprising
  • December 1944–January 1945: Battle of the Bulge
  • February 1945: Yalta, Russia Conference
  • April 1945: Battle of Berlin
  • April 1945: Allied meeting at the Elbe River
  • April 1945: First United Nations meeting
  • May 8, 1945: V-E Day
  • July 1945: Potsdam, Germany Conference
  • Harry S. Truman
  • Clement Atlee
  • denazification
  • August 1945: Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Picture
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Soviet forces had the upper hand on the Eastern Front after the massive clash of tanks at the Battle of Kursk in August 1943.
Picture
The Big Three - Churchill, FDR, and Stalin - first met at the Tehran, Iran Conference in November 1943, and again at the Yalta, Russia Conference in February 1945.
Picture
Allied forces liberated Paris shortly after American, British, and Canadian forces invaded Normandy, France on June 6, 1944. Soviet forces captured Berlin by April 1945. Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, V-E (Victory in Europe) Day.
Picture

The Holocaust

Picture
  • Heinrich Himmler
  • Schutzstaffel (SS)
  • Nuremburg Laws
  • Evian Conference
  • Kristallnacht
  • Josef Goebbels
  • ghettos
  • Einsatzgruppen
  • Reinhard Heydrich
  • Wannsee Conference
  • “Final Solution” to the Jewish Question
  • Adolf Eichmann
  • death camps—Auschwitz, Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzec, and Majdanek
  • Zyklon B
  • Holocaust
  • Hermann Göring
  • Nuremburg Trials
Picture
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The 1933 Reichstag Fire allowed Hitler to arrest communist and socialist political opponents and consolidate power under the cover of martial law. Thousands of Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were burned or looted during the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom.

Total War

  • total war
  • scorched earth
  • strategic bombing
  • collateral damage
  • unrestricted submarine warfare
  • collective reprisals
  • mass conscription
  • rationing
  • war socialism
  • war industries
  • propaganda
  • war bond funding
  • nuclear weapons
  • Mutually Assured Destruction
  • proxy wars
Picture
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.
Picture

​Demographic Disasters

Picture
  • World War I military casualties
  • World War I civilian victims
  • Spanish Flu
  • Russian Civil War
  • Stalinist victims
  • World War II military casualties
  • World War II civilian victims
  • Holocaust victims
Picture
Hospital beds during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic
Picture
World War I graves

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  • acc. PHILLIPS
  • America
    • I: Early America
      • Course Info
      • 1492-1763
      • 1763-1783
      • 1783-1789
      • 1789-1815
      • 1815-1849
      • 1850-1865
      • 1865-1877
    • II: Modern America
      • Course Info
      • 1865-1890
        • The Western Frontier
        • The Gilded Age
      • 1890-1920
        • Progressivism
        • Imperialism & the First World War
      • 1920-1941
        • The Roaring Twenties
        • The Great Depression
      • 1941-1962
        • The Second World War
        • The Early Cold War
      • 1950-1975
        • The Great Society
        • The Vietnam War
      • 1968-1991
        • The Late Cold War
        • Pop Culture
      • 1991-Today
        • The Culture Wars
        • The War on Terror
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