Test Study Guide For Tuesday

Final Modern European History Test (1920s-1960s)

• FOREIGN POLICY. We began this unit with the 1920s.  Governments had to confront the postwar devastation.  Reparations and war guilt clause imposed upon Germany.  A series of international agreements aimed at restoring stability to Europe (Dawes Plan, Spirit of Locarno, and Kellogg Briand Pact). The League of Nations was born of this decade. U.S. did not join. See McKay handout. 

• GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IN ECONOMY. The Great Depression resulted from the stock market crash of 1929. It did not end until nation-states began mobilizing for World War II.  In class, we discussed a variety of measures taken by different countries over the 1930s including the United States, Scandinavia, France, etc. such as austerity, currency adjustments, Keynesian spending, public works agencies, and social welfare measures. Compare to the actions of fascist Italy and Germany to the Depression.  See McKay handouts.  Remember your economic theories from capitalism, socialism, communism, and fascism. 

• DOMESTIC POLICY. We examined the nature of fascism both as it served as a reaction to the loss of World War I in the 1920s in Italy and in Germany in the 1930s and as it broadened its appeal in the terrible economic conditions of the Great Depression.  See Perry handout. How can fascism serve as an example of the proper scope of government with respect to domestic and foreign policy?  

• INFRINGEMENT OF CIVIL RIGHTS.  We examined the trajectory of the infringement of the civil rights of Jewish citizens within Germany, the confiscation of businesses and real estate and other property, and the creation of the ghettos and the deportation to Jewish citizens to labor camps, concentration camps, and death camps. You may also examine Hitler's racial policies as they impacted Poland and Russia as well.  See Perry handout on the rise of Hitler and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum field trip exhibition. 

• FOREIGN POLICY. Consider Gopnik's argument that World War II teaches that searching for an accommodation with tyranny by selling out small nations only encourages the tyrant, that refusing to fight now leads to a worse fight later on, and that only the steadfast rejection of compromise can prevent the natural tendency to rush to a bad peace with worse men?" See Perry handout on the the policy of appeasement and the invasion of Poland in 1939, during which Hitler pushed for nothing short of the extermination of the Poles, from the Rape of Europa documentary. When should countries intervene militarily?  

• WAR AIMS. Consider the ethical conflicts in Rape of Europa documentary from the preservation of monuments at the cost of soldiers' lives to widespread bombing campaigns that destroyed cities from 1940 to 1945. What limits should government impose upon its military strategies during wartime? Consider the casualty figures in Perry.  Consider the debate between the United States, Great Britain, and Russia on where and when to open different "fronts" of the war.  

• FOREIGN POLICY AND PEACE TREATIES.  Consider the competing policies of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. at the end of World War II, including the Marshall Plan, the dispute over whether to reunify Germany, the Truman Doctrine, and the U.S.S.R.'s policy to seize the industrial and military equipment as well as the arts works from Germany as well as create a "buffer zone" between Germany and Russia in the form of the Iron Curtain.  Consider the Perry handout and the Introduction to Cold War clip, not to mention the "Europe" that Winston Churchill foresaw in the absence of US' aid. 

• SUPRANATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS.  Consider the growth of supranational organizations which combine the powers of several nation-states such as the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), the United Nations, and the Warsaw Pact.  How do governments reconcile these institutions with their national traditions developed over hundreds of years? How does the development of the atomic and hydrogen bomb technology change the course of history?  Consider the Perry handout, the Nuremberg War Crime trials held under the auspices of the United Nations, and the Churchill Zurich speech. 

• LEGACY OF IMPERIALISM. Consider how European nation-states responded to the cries for independence that issued from the imperialized zone in 1947: Freedom Now documentary.  Is it understandable that the U.S. mistook independence movements for armed communist minorities backed by the Soviets, which they viewed as a totalitarian threat akin to Nazism, in the period 1947-1967?  What duties, if any, did European nation-states owe their former colonies in terms of preparing for peaceful, stable transitions?  What duties, if any, does the Western world continue to owe today, such as with the refugee crisis, which features many fleeing war and poverty in North Africa, in addition those fleeing Syria and Iraq?