Great Depression

Question 1

The Postwar World

Answer 1

a. Technical improvements.
b. 1920s = happy time.
c. people disillusioned by war.
~people began to question the traditional beliefs and no longer believed that progress would continue or reason would prevail (win).
d. Kellogg-Briand Pact: peace agreement among most of world’s countries.
~weak because it couldn’t be enforced.

Question 2

Postwar Europe

Answer 2

Almost every country was bankrupt.
~rise of new democracies: resulted in weak governments and made people want strong leadership.
-people had no experience with democracies.
-coalition governments (no single party is the majority so many different parties must come together) ended with frequent changes in government.

Question 3

The Great Depression

Answer 3

a. Only US and Japan were more rich than they were before the war.
b. World depended on the US economy - the American Great Depression led to worldwide depression.
c. Dawes Act (1924): US gave money to Germany. Germany used the money to pay reparations to Britain/France. Britain/France purchased goods from US to repay their loans.
d. US economy fell apart in October 1929 because:
i. wealth gap: rich were really rich & poor were really poor (poor people couldn’t buy goods America was making).
ii. farmers over-produced which lowered prices of crops - many lost their farms when they couldn’t pay their mortages.
iii. stock
~people making more money buying stocks and make them worth more, but were not paying full price for them.
~October 1929 (Black Tuesday): Stock prices dropped suddently and people lost a lot of money.
iv. Businesses failed and banks closed - people lost their savings when banks ran out of money, people lost their jobs.
e. US started to recover with the help of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal policies: government programs and reforms - welfare, large public works provided jobs.
EX: people built roads and dams, worked in construction, artists paid to paint, farmers were paid not to farm.

Question 4

Japanese Agression

Answer 4

a. though Japan experienced Taisho democracy during the 1920s, it was soon ruled by its military with Emperor Hirohito as the head of state and symbol of power.
b. extremely nationalistic (felt others were inferior) and wanted to expand its borders (for economic reasons).
c. Japan invades Manchuria in 1931 and set up a puppet government - attack was the first challenge to the League of Nations but Japan ignored them and left the League.
i. (Second) Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
~Japan clashed with Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge (outside of Beijing) in 1937 - some historians consider this the beginning of WWII.
-Japan used the Bridge incident as an excuse to invade China.
~1938: Japan controlled most of China’s major industrial centers, major cities and most fertile (productive) farmland.
~difficult for the Chinese to fight the Japanese because the Nationalists (led by Chiang Kai Shek) and the Communists (Mao Zedong) was busy fighting each other (later united temporarily).
-Shek saw the Communists, not Japanese, as his priorities.
ii. Rape of Nanjing (1938)
~Japan invaded Nanjing on December 13 and started a 7 week occupation after the Chinese army retreated from the city.
~Japanese soldiers commited systematic violence against Chinese civilians, including the torture and rape of innocent people.
~killed about 369,366 people during the Rape of Nanjing.
iii. The Unsung Heroes: those who worked to save innocent Chinese lives.
~The foreigners who chose to remain in the city formed the Nanjing Safety Zone, a 3.4 mile refuge zone for Chinese civilians.
~used their status as foreigners to save more than 200,000 lives.
~wrote letters and sent pics about the Rape of Nanjing in hopes of getting international attention to stop the atrocites (shocking cruel actions and crimes).
~John Rabe: German official, used his status to save people, wrote letters to German government to stop.
~Minnie Vautrin: missionary from America, found college for school, barricaded school and saved 10,000 women and children.
~John Magee: American worker from the Red Cross.
iv. In Japan, students don’t learn about Japan’s crimes. If they do, they claimed that they gloriously fought the war. Comfort women = women that were forced to be prostitues. Japan denies their crimes.

Question 5

What were the goals of the Treaty of Versailles?

Answer 5

i. War-guilt clause
ii. Reparations
iii. Loss of territory (land)
iv. Military restrictions
v. League of Nations

Question 6

Weimar Republic

Answer 6

i. Germany’s post WWI government
ii. couldn’t handle economic depression and disorder
iii. Weimar Republic blamed for WWI
iv. German army not forced to admit defeat
~led to “stabbed in the back” theory: army had not been defeated on battlefield and could have won if they had not been betrayed by their political leaders: (“November criminals”)

Question 7

Founding of the Nazi Party (1919)

Answer 7

i. Hitler became fuhrer (leader) in 1921

Question 8

Beer Hall Putsch (1923)

Answer 8

i. Hitler’s failed attempt at seizure of power in 1923

Question 9

Mein Kampf (1925)

Answer 9

i. Mein Kampf means “My Struggle”
~belief in Aryan Race
~anti-Semitism
~lebensraum (living space)

Question 10

Hitler becomes Chancellor (1932)

Answer 10

i. election of July 1932: Nazi Party won 37% of the Reichstag seats
ii. January 30, 1933: President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor

Question 11

Reichstag Burns (1933)

Answer 11

i. February 27, 1933: the Reichstag building went up in flames and Hitler blamed it on the communists

Question 12

Emergency Decree for the Protection of People and State (1933)

Answer 12

i. took away freedom of speech, press, assembly
ii. mail, phones, telegraph could be tapped
iii. houses were searched and things confiscated without warrant

Question 13

Enabling Act (1933)

Answer 13

i. government to issue laws without the Reichstag

Question 14

Book Burnings (1933)

Answer 14

i. May 10, 1933: Nazis raided libraries and bookstores and burned 25000+ books
~Jewish writers
~most were by authors who expressed idea the Nazi viewed as different from their own (ex: All Quiet on the Western Front)
~Heinrich Heine: “where one burns books, one will soon burn people”

Question 15

Night of the Long Knives (1934)

Answer 15

i. SA: brown-shirted Nazi storm troopers
ii. Germans hated the SA
iii. SA was the violent part of the army
iv. Hitler got rid of SA to gain support of the regular army
v. Hitler ordered murder of SA leaders in 1954

Question 16

Nuremberg Laws (1935)

Answer 16

i. Jews were no longer citizens
ii. Jews were a separate race defined by someone:
~having 3+ Jewish grandparents
~having 2+ Jewish grandparents if they belonged to a Jewish religious community
~they were married to a Jew
iii. no intermarriage between Jews and Aryans

Question 17

Rome-Berlin Axis (1936)

Answer 17

i. Hitler and Mussolini formed an alliance
ii. 1936 Olympics: Berlin
iii. Germany hosted 1936 Summer Olympics - “propaganda” event to show off Germany’s power and recovery post-WWI
iv. Jesse Owens (African-American athlete) hero of the games
v. signaled the world’s re-acceptance of Germany

Question 18

Hitler’s Aggression (1936)

Answer 18

i. Hitler increased the size of Germany’s army and sent troops into the Rhineland in 1936
~when the allies didn’t stop him, their reaction encouraged Hitler to be braver and more aggressive
ii. began to take over territories where there was a large population of ethnic Germans in 1938
~Austria - Germany sent his army and annexed it as a part of Auschluss (unification of Germany and Austria)
~Sudeteland (western Czechoslovakia): Germany demanded land from Czechoslovakia

Question 19

Munich Conference (1938)

Answer 19

i. Britain, France, Italy and Germany (Czechoslovakia not invited) met for the Munich Conference in 1938
~Nevile Chamberlain believed in appeasement (giving in to demands to avoid a war) and gave the Sudetenland to Germany, Germany promised not to expand anymore
~Chamberlain believed that he had achieved “peace for our time”
ii. In 1939, Hitler took over the rest of Czechoslovakia because he didn’t think Allies would stop him.

Question 20

Kristallnacht (1938)

Answer 20

i. Night of Broken Glass on 11/9/1938.
ii. 1,000 synagogues were set on fire and 76 were destroyed.
iii. Jews forced to transfer their businesses to Aryan hands in the days following event and expelled all Jewish students from public schools.
iv. Jews forced to pay for the damages of Kristallnacht.

Question 21

Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (1938)

Answer 21

i. Stalin and Hitler signed a nonaggression pact: agreement between nations not to fight Akron each other, also agreed to divide Poland.

Question 22

Invasion of Poland (1939)

Answer 22

i. Hitler invaded Poland from the west on 9/1/1939 and started WWII.

Question 23

What is fascism?

Answer 23

Fascism is totalitarianism, nationalism and militarianism together.