question

Which countries made up the Allied Powers at the outbreak of World War I?

answer

France, Great Britain, and Russia

question

Which country initially sided with the Central Powers but ended up joining the Allies in 1915 in hopes of postwar gain?

answer

Italy

question

What was the major tactical strategy at the heart of the German military's Schlieffen Plan?

answer

To aim a concentrated blow against France that was expected to achieve that nation's defeat in six weeks, accompanied by a light holding action against Russia to the east

question

Why was World War I called a "total war"?

answer

The entire industrial capacity of participating states, along with all civilian and military personnel, was mobilized to fight the war.

question

How did women's participation in the war effort on the home front affect debates over gender roles?

answer

The press praised women's patriotism, but many objected to women in the workplace, fearing they would lose their femininity, steal men's jobs, and cause social disorder.

question

What was the single most significant aspect of German military policy in terms of its provocative effect on the United States and subsequent U.S. involvement in the war?

answer

Unrestricted submarine warfare.

question

Which of the following was a major source of discontent in the cities across Europe in the spring of 1917?

answer

Food shortages and deteriorating living conditions

question

The abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917 and the collapse of the Romanov dynasty in Russia led to

answer

the creation of the Provisional Government, made up of aristocratic and middle-class politicians from the old Duma.

question

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed by Germany and Russia early in 1918

answer

pulled Russia out of the war and changed the balance of World War I.

question

The Russian Civil War pitted which two groups against each other?

answer

The pro-Bolshevik "Reds" against the "Whites," who were made up of an array of forces (including the tsarist military leadership) that wanted to turn back the revolution

question

The Peace of Paris, which was composed of a cluster of individual treaties negotiated between 1919 and 1920, redrew the map of Europe in which of the following ways?

answer

The treaties broke up the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, separating Austria and Hungary and creating several weak, independent states in central Europe, such as Czechoslovakia and a reconstructed Poland.

question

Why was the League of Nations weakened at the outset?

answer

The United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany did not or could not participate.

question

Of all the penalties imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, the one that generated the most outrage in Germany was the

answer

so-called war guilt clause.

question

What did the Dawes Plan (1924), the Treaty of Locarno (1925), and the Young Plan (1929) attempt to accomplish?

answer

The correction of some of the more punitive provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.

question

The inflation in 1923 that made German currency worthless occurred when the German government printed trillions of marks in an effort to

answer

ensure that workers were paid and keep up with reparations payments, even though the government knew the currency was valueless.

question

Which of the following best describes the new republics of eastern Europe during the 1920s?

answer

They struggled to accommodate the arrival of hundreds of thousands of postwar refugees, most of whom had neither land nor jobs.

question

Future German leader Adolf Hitler first gained attention in Germany for what political event?

answer

The Beer Hall Putsch in Munich

question

Why did right-wing parties have less influence in France and Britain than elsewhere in Europe?

answer

Parliamentary institutions were better established in France and Britain, and their upper classes were not plotting to restore authoritarian monarchies.

question

Which of the following was true of post-World War I European economies?

answer

Although the European economies were weakened, the war forced them to modernize, pushing industry to become more productive and efficient.

question

What does the artwork of George Grosz and other members of the Dada movement reflect?

answer

Postwar rage and revulsion at the apparent failure of civilization

question

How did Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) break with his war communism policy?

answer

It reversed the policy of absolute nationalization and allowed some free-market activity.

question

Why did the U.S. stock market crash lead to a global economic depression?

answer

American lenders called in their international debts, which undermined banks and industry abroad.

question

Which of the following accurately describes one of the major sources of social tension during the Great Depression?

answer

Gender roles seemed to be reversed, as women often supported their families while their unemployed husbands remained at home

question

How did Mustafa Kemal dramatically change Turkish society in the 1920s?

answer

He modernized Turkish society by adopting elements of Western economics and culture.

question

The term totalitarianism, as it is applied to the Fascist, Nazi, and Communist regimes of the 1930s, refers to

answer

A highly centralized system of government that attempts to control society and ensure obedience through a single party and police terror.

question

In 1929, Joseph Stalin implemented what ambitious industrial expansion program intended to end the Soviet Union's backwardness?

answer

The First Five-Year Plan

question

Who was Stalin referring to when he called for the "liquidation of the kulaks"?

answer

Prosperous peasants and anyone who opposed his plans to end independent farming

question

Which of the following resulted from Stalin's use of terror tactics to assure fulfillment of production quotas in the 1930s?

answer

Lying, such as the falsification of production figures, and corruption became permanent features of the Soviet Communist system.

question

How did Stalin respond to economic failures such as the drop in grain harvest that resulted from the failure of the collectivization of agriculture?

answer

He blamed failure on "wreckers" who deliberately plotted against communism and instituted violent purges to rid society of these imagined "villains."

question

What was the name given to the extensive system of Soviet prison camps that stretched from Moscow to Siberia and housed millions of political prisoners in harsh conditions?

answer

The Gulag

question

What let Benito Mussolini, the leader of the Italian Fascists, become prime minister in 1922?

answer

The Fascists marched on Rome, intimidating the king into making Mussolini prime minister.

question

Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany was slowed by

answer

the steady success of the Weimar regime.

question

Which of the following factors helped the Nazi Party gain public support among Germans in the early 1930s?

answer

The economic depression paralyzed the parliamentary government, which discredited democracy and made Hitler look like a bold leader who was unafraid of confronting Germany's enemies.

question

Although every age group and class of people supported Hitler, what demographic did the Nazi Party especially attract?

answer

Young people under forty, the majority of whom were from the industrial working class or the lower-middle class.

question

Hitler came to power in 1933 after

answer

The military took over the government and chose Hitler as chancellor because he had long called for rearmament.

question

Hitler used which of the following events as an excuse to suspend civil liberties and launch a brutal crackdown on his political opponents?

answer

The burning of the Reichstag

question

Hitler's order for the assassination of Ernst Roehm, which also resulted in the deaths of hundreds of SA leaders and innocent civilians, is known as the

answer

Night of the Long Knives.

question

What economic policy did the Nazi Party pursue that centered on stimulating the economy through government spending on tanks and airplanes and on public works programs such as the building of the Autobahn?

answer

Pump priming

question

What name was given to the 1935 legislation that deprived German Jews of citizenship, defined Jewishness according to ancestry rather than religious belief, and prohibited marriages between Jews and other Germans?

answer

The Nuremberg Laws

question

Which of the following was a 1938 event in which the Nazis publicly persecuted Jews in Germany by burning synagogues, destroying Jewish property, and imprisoning Jews in retaliation for the murder of a German official by a Jewish teenager?

answer

Kristallnacht

question

What was U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal"?

answer

A program of economic legislation designed to provide relief and recovery from the Great Depression

question

Why would an antifascist coalition government such as the French Popular Front have been impossible in democratic countries before 1936?

answer

Before 1936, Stalin had banned international Communists from participating in coalition governments.

question

In his 1931 social encyclical, Pope Pius XI

answer

condemned the failure of modern societies to provide their citizens with the moral and material conditions necessary for a decent life.

question

How did Western leaders respond to Japanese aggression in China in 1931-1937?

answer

The League of Nations condemned Japan's actions but imposed no sanctions, while the United States drastically cut the flow of materials to Japanese industry.

question

In 1936, how did both France and Britain lead Mussolini to believe that they would do little to stop fascist aggression?

answer

They thwarted an attempt by some members of the League of Nations to impose a rigorous embargo on Italy following Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia.

question

Why did the republican forces lose the Spanish Civil War despite the popular outpouring of support for the cause of democracy from around the globe?

answer

As their appeals for material aid went unheeded by European democracies, republican troops floundered in the face of Franco's army, which was supported by Hitler and Mussolini.

question

What term was used for Hitler's annexation of (or merger with) Austria?

answer

The Anschluss

question

How did Nazi propaganda justify the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938?

answer

The Nazis accused Czechoslovakia of persecuting its German minority and warned the Czechs that they would have to grant autonomy to the German-populated Sudetenland or face invasion.

question

Why have many historians criticized the Munich Pact of 1938?

answer

It gave Germany more time to build its military and gave Hitler the idea that western European nations would not try to stop further aggression.

question

Why did the Nazi-Soviet Pact signed on August 23, 1939, stun the Western world?

answer

It created a nonaggression agreement between fascist Germany and the Communist Soviet Union, despite their ideological hatred of each other.

question

What did the Germans call their strategy of capturing Poland by launching an overpowering, concentrated attack using airplanes, tanks, and motorized infantry?

answer

Blitzkrieg

question

The relentless German bombing of British cities in the summer of 1940 is known as the

answer

Battle of Britain

question

Hitler tried to justify his 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union by calling that country the

answer

"center of judeobolshevism."

question

What event persuaded the previously isolationist United States to enter the war on the side of the Allies?

answer

The Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines in December 1941

question

What advantages did the Allied powers have over the Axis powers that allowed them to win the war?

answer

Greater manpower and resources and access to goods from their global empires

question

Why were literate civilians in the conquered areas of eastern Europe the most vulnerable?

answer

Hitler and Stalin saw them as leading members of the civil society they were trying to destroy.

question

When did the "Final Solution"— the Nazis' plan to systematically murder all the Jews of Europe—begin?

answer

In 1941, although it was formalized at a meeting in Wannsee in January 1942

question

Civilian resistance to Nazism and fascism in Europe

answer

was widespread and involved both men and women who fought back in both dramatic and subtle ways.

question

In the face of total military defeat by late 1944, Hitler continued to beseech the Germans to fight on believing that

answer

the Germans, having failed to secure victory, deserved to die.

question

What was the purpose of the Manhattan Project?

answer

To develop the atomic bomb

question

Why did the results of Churchill's meeting with Stalin in October 1944 on the postwar distribution of territories disturb Roosevelt?

answer

Their agreements violated the U.S. government's promotion of collective security, self-determination, and free trade.

question

When it was coined, the term second world referred to which group of countries?

answer

The Soviet Union and its socialist allies

question

Why was World War II more destructive in Europe than World War I?

answer

Armies in World War II had fought a war of movement on the ground and in the air, and massive bombing campaigns leveled thousands of square miles of territory.

question

Many Jewish concentration camp survivors returned to their countries in Europe to find that

answer

anti-Semitism was still present in popular attitudes, and very little help was offered them in returning to postwar life.

question

The demands of total war in the Soviet Union had encouraged independent initiative and led to relaxed Communist oversight, a development that Stalin

answer

ruthlessly reversed through increased repression, aggressive production goals, and a still more radical collectivization of agriculture.

question

Why do the origins of the cold war remain a matter of historical debate?

answer

No peace treaty officially ended World War II to document what went wrong in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.

question

Which of the following characterized U.S. president Harry Truman's policies toward the Soviet Union?

answer

He was tougher then Roosevelt, cutting off aid as soon as the war ended.

question

The U.S. strategy of using military and economic aid to block the expansion of communism became known as

answer

The Truman Doctrine

question

What was the Marshall Plan designed to provide?

answer

Food, equipment, and services to war-devastated Europe

question

An exception to the rule in eastern Europe, the Communist ruler Josip Broz Tito established a fairly independent, non-Soviet Communist state in

answer

Yugoslavia.

question

How did the agreements reached at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences in 1945 shape the future of postwar Germany?

answer

The Allies divided Germany into four zones, each of which was controlled by one of the four principal victors in the war and occupied by troops from those nations.

question

How did Stalin violate the agreement among the members of the Grand Alliance regarding postwar Germany?

answer

He dismantled and sent a significant percentage of the German industrial infrastructure in the Soviet zone of occupation to the Soviet Union.

question

How did the United States respond when, in 1948, the Soviets blockaded Berlin, which was situated more than one hundred miles inside the Soviet zone?

answer

It staged Operation Vittles, an ongoing airlift that supplied the residents of Berlin with food and fuel into the spring of 1949.

question

How did Stalin retaliate after the United States forced Britain and France to invite West Germany to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1955?

answer

He formed a parallel military organization with Soviet satellite countries, commonly called the Warsaw Pact.

question

What was the Voice of America?

answer

A radio station that used culture as a weapon in the cold war

question

The Cuban missile crisis began in 1962 after

answer

the CIA reported the installation of silos to house Soviet medium-range missiles in Cuba.

question

The post-World War II process through which colonized peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East began achieving their independence from European powers was called what?

answer

Decolonization

question

In 1947, what two independent countries emerged out of a former British colony as the result of a political and religious conflict incited by the British?

answer

India and Pakistan

question

In 1950, the UN Security Council approved a "police action" that deployed troops in

answer

Korea.

question

Ho Chi Minh and his peasant guerrilla forces finally forced the French to withdraw from Indochina in 1954 after the savage battle of

answer

Dien Bien Phu.

question

In 1947, Britain ceded its control of Palestine to

answer

the United Nations.

question

What 1956 event in Egypt sparked an international crisis that inspired colonized peoples around the world in their fight for independence from their colonizers?

answer

Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the British-owned Suez Canal.

question

Whereas France's Third Republic collapsed with the German invasion in 1940, the Fourth Republic fell in 1958 as a result of what event?

answer

The brutal war to retain French control of Algeria

question

What notable change ensured the United Nations a greater chance of success than its predecessor, the League of Nations?

answer

The finances, working space, and bureaucracy of the UN were entirely independent from any member nation, having been underwritten by endowments from many wealthy families and organizations.

question

Starting relatively soon after World War II, western European countries received a large number of immigrant workers from their former

answer

colonies.

question

In 1955, the Indonesian president Sukarno sponsored the Bandung Convention, which

answer

Set a common policy among nonaligned African and Asian nations for achieving modernization and facing the superpowers.

question

The West German foreign minister Willy Brandt's anti-cold war policy of opening up trade with Communist East Germany in the late 1960s was known as what?

answer

Ostpolitik

question

Which of the following measures did French president Charles de Gaulle undertake in an effort to assert French independence in a world increasingly dominated by superpower rivalry?

answer

He withdrew French forces from NATO and increased the nation's investment in nuclear development.

question

Which of the following was a system through which government-banned literature was secretly published and distributed in the Soviet Union?

answer

Samizdat

question

The 1968 student protests in France attracted workers as well as students, as both were demanding

answer

a greater voice in official decision making, whether on campus or in the factory.

question

What was distinctive about the 1968 revolt in Czechoslovakia, also known as the Prague Spring?

answer

It began within the Czechoslovak Communist Party as an attempt at reform based on the idea of "socialism with a human face."

question

What was the Brezhnev Doctrine, which the Soviets announced in November 1968?

answer

A policy that stated that reform movements, as a "common problem" of all socialist countries, would face swift repression

question

What was the title of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book that detailed life in Soviet forced-labor camps and brought about his expulsion from the USSR?

answer

The Gulag Archipelago

question

In the 1975 Helsinki accords, Western countries agreed to officially recognize Soviet territorial acquisitions in World War II in exchange for which of the following?

answer

The Soviet bloc's guarantee of basic human rights

question

Why did the Arab nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) impose an oil embargo on the United States and its allies in the 1970s?

answer

They were angry that the United States had offered support to Israel in its conflicts with Egypt, Syria, and Jordan during the 1960s and 1970s.

question

The combination of economic conditions—rising prices, interest rates, and high unemployment—that hit the oil-dependent Western nations as a result of the OPEC oil embargo became known as what?

answer

Stagflation

question

The wave of terrorism that hit Europe and the Middle East in the 1970s

answer

began in the West, as young people in Europe responded to the suppression of activism and poor economic conditions with kidnappings, bank robberies, bombings, and assassinations.

question

In what country did British troops fire on nationalists and civil rights demonstrators in a 1972 event known as "Bloody Sunday"? (See 970-976.)

answer

Northern Ireland

question

Which Western leader, in power between 1979 and 1990, did more than anyone else to reshape the West's political and economic ideas by demolishing the welfare state and supporting business leaders?

answer

Margaret Thatcher

question

Margaret Thatcher's economic policies, which were based on monetarist, or supply-side, economic theory (see 970-976), came to be known as

answer

Neoliberalism

question

As neoliberalism took hold in the 1980s and 1990s and European governments began cutting the welfare state, which country maintained a full array of social programs?

answer

Sweden

question

Mikhail Gorbachev's program of economic "restructuring," intended to increase productivity and gradually introduce market-based incentives, was called

answer

Perestroika.

question

What event convinced Mikhail Gorbachev and others within the Soviet leadership that reform had become imperative?

answer

The 1986 meltdown and explosion of a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, in Ukraine

question

Which of the following was Mikhail Gorbachev's new policy of increasing "openness" and allowing greater degrees of freedom of speech?

answer

Glasnost

question

What Polish labor movement led by Lech Wałęsa and Anna Walentynowicz, workers at the shipyards of Gdańsk, Poland, helped bring down Soviet Communism?

answer

Solidarity

question

Which event symbolized for the world the fall of Soviet Communism in 1989?

answer

When East and West German citizens tore down the Berlin Wall with sledgehammers in November 1989

question

In the period after 1989, some observers predicted a huge clash between

answer

Western civilizations and non-Western cultures.

question

In 1991, a group of antireform hard-liners that included the head of the Soviet secret police attempted a coup in the USSR in response to what event?

answer

The Russian parliament's election of Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian Republic

question

What name was given to the new class of superwealthy Russians who, as allies of President Boris Yeltsin, benefited from the collapse of the Soviet Union?

answer

Oligarchs

question

Which of the following Russian leaders declared himself committed to legality by announcing that "democracy is the dictatorship of law"?

answer

Vladimir Putin

question

Briefly describe the difference between agency, structure, and contingency.

answer

Agency refers to an individuals role in a historical event. Structure in history refers to a particular event that causes history to advance by causing political action to be taken.Contingency in history refers to the requirement of an event to be preceeded by another event that plays a part in causing the event. This idea suggests that a historical event cannot happen unless it is caused by another event, directly or indirectly.

question

Briefly describe the difference between primary and secondary sources.

answer

A primary source is any document that was created at the time of a historical event that played a part in, or made reference to the issue at hand. A secondary source is an analytical document written about an event in history, and aims to broaden the public understanding of the event or take a position on the issues being referenced.

question

Which of the following occurred in 1990, after Slobodan Milosevic won the presidency of Serbia and began to claim Serb ascendancy over the Yugoslav federation as a whole?

answer

Slovenia and Croatia seceded from the federation, leading to wars in Croatia and Bosnia that were marked by widespread ethnic cleansing, especially by Serb forces.

question

What did the term ethnic cleansing come to mean in the Balkan wars of the 1990s?

answer

A policy of genocide against ethnic minorities in the pursuit of an "ethnically pure" state in a region where an ethnic mix was the norm

question

The global response to the atrocities of the Balkan wars, particularly massacres such as the one at Srebrenica, was generally thought to be

answer

far too little and too late, as intervention came far too late to stop most of the violence, and even the peacekeepers on the ground turned their backs on the atrocities.

question

The demise of the Soviet Union in the 1990s led to both the establishment of new democratic republics in formerly Soviet-controlled territories and

answer

an increase in ethnic conflicts in many of the newly independent states as different ethnic groups struggled for land and power.

question

How did Russian citizens experience the initial transition to a market economy in the 1990s?

answer

Nearly all Russians experienced deprivation and misery as inflation soared, the food supply disintegrated, and nearly all salaries went unpaid.

question

Why did Poland and Hungary emerge from the transition to a market economy with less strain than other nations in the former Soviet bloc?

answer

Both countries had adopted some free-market practices early on and had hired advisers to speed the transformation of their economies.

question

Which of the following was a reason for the brain drain that occurred after the fall of the Soviet empire?

answer

Many migrants fled increasing anti-Semitism, as post-Communist politicians promoted hatred of Jews to build a following in the same way that Hitler and others had.

question

The war in Chechnya began when Chechens

answer

declared their independence from Russia.

question

Which of the following was NOT emblematic of human rights abuses in post-Communist Europe?

answer

The massacre of 300 Ukrainian separatists by the Polish army

question

In 1994, by the terms of the Maastricht Treaty, the European Community

answer

became the European Union.

question

Between 2004 and 2007, many of the countries of eastern Europe

answer

joined the European Union and experienced economic growth and increased purchasing power, allowing their citizens to finally begin enjoying modern consumer goods.

question

Which political party was founded in Europe in the late 1970s in response to concerns about the environment and unchecked urban growth?

answer

The Green Party

question

Although many nations signed the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty designed to reduce the level of emissions and other pollutants around the world, the promise of cooperation on this issue was dashed when

answer

the United States, the world's top polluter, refused to sign the treaty.

question

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a new threat to the world economy emerged in the form of

answer

deadly new contagious diseases, particularly the Ebola virus and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

question

Large-scale conflict and genocide brought on by ideological factionalism and ethnic antagonisms were particularly devastating to which of the following countries?

answer

Somalia, Rwanda, and Sudan

question

Why did the revolutionary Islamic program of leaders like the ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden have a wide appeal?

answer

It claimed that a strict theocracy would restore the pride and Islamic identity that imperialism had stripped from Middle Eastern men.

question

Which of the following was a major cause of unrest in the countries of the Middle East for many years, even though Muslims were numerous and constituted the majority of the population in many regions?

answer

Shi'ite Muslims had long been ruled by Sunni Muslims.

question

When Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, the USSR joined the United States and other members of the United Nations to stop the invasion, thus signaling

answer

a post-cold war shift, whereby smaller powers could no longer exploit superpower rivalry to further their own agendas.

question

The last twenty years of the twentieth century witnessed a momentous shift in economic power and commercial activity from

answer

The Atlantic to the Pacific region, making Japan the second-largest national economy in the world.

question

In general, the lives of foreign workers who migrated to Europe in search of jobs

answer

were extremely difficult, as they often lived on the margins of society and were scapegoats for native peoples suffering from economic woes such as unemployment.

question

In the 1990s, the spread of the Internet and other communications technology

answer

promoted the globalization of service industries.

question

What unique challenges did artists and writers in the former Soviet bloc face after the collapse of the Soviet Union?

answer

No one wanted to hire artists or writers in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union because they were seen to have no skills that would be useful to the modern world.

question

Beginning in the 1960s, how did the French government attempt to slow the tide of an English-speaking international culture?

answer

It banned the use of non-French words such as computer in official documents.

question

Which of the following concepts, which can be defined as an intense stylistic mixing in the arts without following an elite set of standards, is often applied to the global culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries?

answer

Postmodernism

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