World Wars Flashcards
Summarise 1914-1945 in regards to Change
- A time of huge political, ideological, and technological change - Major implications exist for out world in modern day * Political Change * Ideological Change * Technological change
What was the political change which occurred between 1914-1945?
- The end of an era of empires
- The end of Europe as the centre of
global affairs in the way it had been
since the 15th Century - WWI helped trigger American and
Soviet focus on domestic affairs
while WWII brought both countries
into the heart of Europe - Witnesses consequences of ideas of
Social Darwinism - a racist
distortion of Charles Darwin’s theoty
of natural selection to states and
people - The beginning of Political Science
and International Relations as
disciplines
What was the ideological change which occurred between 1914-1945?
- 1917 bolshevik revolution in Russia
- 1930s US isolationism
- International coordination and
cooperation from the creation of the
League of Nations (1920) and the
Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) to the
United Nations (1945) - The development and use of the
strategy of total war - Consequences of Social Darwinims
- The ideological and physical
dismantling of the European empires
What was the technological change which occurred between 1914-1945?
- Technological change centred on military incentives that had huge civilian implications - Transportation revolution - air, land and water - Air - from the first flight in 1903 to the Red Baron’s successes in WWI to the Boeing B-29 Super-fortress of WWII - Land- tanks, machine guns, super guns in WWI and logistics, communications and intelligence, medicine, and industrial production in WWII - The use of total war - Harnessing of atomic energy
Who were the major European powers in 1914?
- Triple Enetente
* Triple Alliance
What was the Triple Enetente?
- Britain
- Constitutional monarchy
- King George V (1910 - 1936)
- France
- Parliamentary monarchy
- Pres. Raymond Poincaire
- Russia
- Monarchy
- Tsar Nicholas II (1894 - 1917)
What was the Triple Alliance?
- Germany
- Constitutional monarchy
- Kaiser Wilhelm (1888 - 1918)
- Austria-Hungary
- Constitutional monarchy
- Kaiser Franz Joseph (1848 - 1916)
- Italy
- Constitutional monarchy
- King Victor Emmanuel III (1900 -
1946)
What are the Individual level explanations for WWI?
- Anachronistic leaders (e.g. Kaiser
Wilhelm) or the death of stabilising
leaders (Otto von Bismarck) - Bosnian Serb assassin Gavrilo Princip
What are the unit/state level explanations for WWI?
- Aggressive and militarising states
- Nationalism
- Domestic politics
- German Realpolitik
- Germany’s unification and economic
growth
What are the global/system level explanations for WWI?
- Changing distribution of European power - Tech change - Shifting alliances - Relative peace but diplomatic challenges in previous decades
What initiated WWI?
28 June 1914 - Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo
What happened between 1918 and 1919?
* January 1918 - Woodrow Wilson outlines his 14 points as moral aims for US fighting in WWI - 14th point led to League of Nations being founded - November 1918 - Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated * January 1919 - Paris Peace Conference, which leads to the Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919)
What was the Treaty of Versailles?
- (28 June 1919)
- French and British population wanted
hard settlement - wanted to punish - Germany, Austraia and Turkey lost all
of their colonies - German army limited to 100,000
- Austria-Hungary broken up into 6
countries- Creation of Czechoslovakia and
Yugoslavia
- Creation of Czechoslovakia and
- Harsh reparations
- War guilt clause
What is the current consensus about the Treaty of Versailles?
Current consensus was that the peace failed to address longterm problems of European security and created new grievances
What important events happened in the Interwar period?
- A time of both high hopes and dashed expectations - A time of protectionism, autarky and eventual appeasement (Chamberlin) - 1929-1939 - Great Depression - 1931 - Japan invades Manchuria - 1933 (January) - Hitler appointed German Chancellor - 1935 - Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 - 1936-1939 Substantial German involvement in Spanish Civil War