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29 Cards in this Set
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Russo-Japanese War
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was fought between 1904 and 1905 over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The Japanese victory over Russia astonished the world, proving that an Asian nation could defeat a western nation in modern warfare. Russia’s defeat and France’s refusal to back Russia in the war led to skepticism in their alliance from both sides. France would then promise to back Russia in any future conflict. Despite their victory, Japan would be granted no indemnities which would begin growing Japanese distrust in western nations.
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Bolsheviks
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were the leading faction of the Marxist Social Democratic Party. Later, led by Lenin, the group would overthrow the Russian provisional government during the October Revolution in 1917. The Bolsheviks would become the chief leaders in forming the Soviet Union and establishing communism in Russia.
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Nicholas II
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was the tsar of Russia during the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War. He would sanction the persecution of Jews that culminated in a series of pogroms and pushed more than two-million Jews to flee to the west. During WWI, he would go to the front lines to command the army himself. After the army was defeated and revolution sparked in Russia, Nicholas would abdicate and leave Russia to a provisional government that fell to the revolution. His family and he would later be imprisoned and executed by the Bolsheviks.
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Soviets
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were elected representatives of a conglomerated alliance of worker’s unions in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century. These bodies were designed to hold the provisional government together until an election of a constituent assembly could take place. As the Bolsheviks began to grow in support, they promised the workers a government run by the workers’ councils to overthrow the provisional government, which ultimately gave all the power to the soviets.
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Franz Ferdinand
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was the Austro-Hungarian archduke and heir to the throne. He was assassinated in Sarajevo by the Serbian terrorist organization called The Black Hand who was seeking Slavic independence from Austro-Hungarian rule. This precipitated Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia in 1914. Among other geo-political tensions, his assassination was the spark that ultimately led to the Central Powers and Allies to declare war on one another, staring World War I.
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Lusitania
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was a British ocean liner that was sunk by German a U-boat in 1915 because it was said to be smuggling munitions from neutral United States to Great Britain. The sinking resulted in the deaths of British and American civilians. This incident would be used for propaganda by Britain and France to help persuade the United States to enter the war against Germany. Although it not cause the Unites States to enter the war, it did help to sway American public opinion against Germany.
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Schlieffen Plan
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was Germany’s military plan to fight a two-front war. In case of war with, both, France and Russian, the plan intended to swiftly knock out France from the war before Russia could mobilize its troops. The German troops would then swing east to handle Russia. Consequently the plan was leaked which led to more tension in European affairs. When the plan was put to use at the outbreak of World War I, Brittan would be drawn into the war early due to the plan’s route through Belgium and the French proved much more difficult to conquer. Russia mobilized more quickly than expected, resulting in the two-front war the plan intended to overt.
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League of Nations
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was an intergovernmental organization founded in 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ending World War I. It was the first international organization whose principle mission was to maintain world peace, which represented a fundamental shift in diplomatic philosophy from the preceding one hundred years. Despite Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to help establish and promote the League, the United States never joined. The League ultimately proved incapable of its primary purpose because it could not prevent aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930’s, which led to the Second World War.
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Virginia Woolf
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was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the Bloomsbury group of intellectuals during the inter-war period between 1918 and 1939. Her work and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, economics, and modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality.
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Weimar Republic
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was a model of liberal democracy that was set up in Germany after World War I. Many of the leading figures were the same people that held these positions before the war’s end. The republic faced numerous problems including hyperinflation, political extremists, and contentious relations with the WWI victors. It did, however, reform the currency, unify tax policies and railway systems, and eliminated most requirements of the Versailles Treaty.
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Joseph Stalin
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became leader of the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin in 1924 by suppressing Lenin’s criticisms, expanding the function of his current role, and eliminating opposition. He replaced the New Economic Policy with a centralized command economy, launching a period of industrialization and collectivization in order to rapidly transform the Soviet Union from an agrarian society into an industrial power. This transformation and upheaval in agriculture resulted in a mass famine.
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Benito Mussolini
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was an Italian politician, journalist, and leader of the National Fascist Party. He would rule Italy as Prime Minister from 1922 to 1943. He initially ruled constitutionally but would then drop all pretenses to democracy and set up a legal dictatorship under the fascism movement in which he founded in response to communism.
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Mein Kampf
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was an autobiographical manifesto written by Adolf Hilter while imprisoned after his involvement in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Its purpose was to outline his political ideologies, plans, and goals for Germany and the Nazi Party. Its main thesis posits a Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership. The book foreshadowed Hitler’s destruction of a parliament system in Germany, his invasion of counties to the east, and the holocaust.
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Gandhi
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was the preeminent leader of the Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. He employed nonviolent civil disobedient to combat oppression by refusing to cooperate with oppressors. In 1930 he led fifty-thousand Indians two hundred miles to collect salt from the seaside salt flats to boycott a heavy British salt tax. He succeeded in converting Indian nationalism from an aim of the elite into a movement of the masses and inspired movements for civil rights across the world.
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D-Day
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refers the any day in which an amphibious military operation by the allied forces was to be initiated during WWII. It generally refers to Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944 when the combined forces of British, American, and Canadian troops launched a massive invasion on the shores of Normandy, France. This landing would mark the opening of a second major front against Germany to help release pressure on Russia and would ultimately lead to the defeat of Germany.
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Holocaust
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was an act of genocide in which approximately two thirds of Europe’s Jewish population was killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945. The Nazis also targeted Gypsies, Poles, communists, homosexuals, Soviet POWs, and the mentally and physically disabled. The killings took place throughout Nazi Germany and its occupied territory. Nazis blamed the Jews for the loss of World War I and economic crisis so they enacted the Final Solution to rid the world of these threats to allow the Aryan race to thrive as superior to all other races.
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Iron Curtain
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In 1946 Winston Churchill gave a speech at Westminster College in Missouri labeling the Soviet Union as an enemy and referring to the countries of the Eastern bloc as the Iron Curtain dividing Europe between capitalist west and communism east. Consequently Russia took this as a threat, leading to heightened hostilities that defined the Cold War.
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Containment
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was the major United States initiative in 1947 to counter the spread of Communism in response to Soviet pressures against Turkey. The concept asserted that by long-term, patient but firm, and vigilant containment of communism would eventually lead to its collapse. America would provide political, economic and military support to any regime resisting Soviet influence, while Soviets similarly aided forces resisting western domination.
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NATO
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is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization founded in 1949. It is an alliance formed of the United States, Canada, Iceland, and nine European nations designed to protect Western Europe against Soviet expansion. This alliance was in response to the Berlin Blockade, to counter the military power of the USSR, and to prevent the revival of nationalist militarism.
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Berlin Airlift
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in 1948 France merged its German occupation zones with the British-American sector to unite western Germany and establish unified currency. Stalin feared the West was moving to reunite and rebuild Germany, and hoping to gain concessions, he blockaded all road and rail routes from western Germany to Berlin. Because Berlin was inside Soviet occupied eastern Germany, the British, French, and American sectors of Berlin depended on supplies delivered from western Germany. Truman opted with British support to supply Berlin by cargo plane drops flown around the clock. The Soviets chose not to forcibly interrupt the airlift to avoid all-out war with the United States.
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Vietnam War
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was a Cold War-era proxy war that lasted twenty years between the United States and North Vietnam supported by communist countries such as China and Russia. The United States intended to stop the spread of communism as a part of the Containment policy. The attempt at halting communism in Vietnam was ultimately a failure as Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all fell to communism. The war became largely unpopular in the United States, drew harsh criticism throughout the west, and came at a huge cost of life.
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Glasnost
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was initiated by Gorbachev after he took power in 1985. Glasnost curtailed censorship, encouraged freer discussion of everything from culture to politics, and opened the doors to the partial democratization of the communist party and soviet political system. This, with other policies of Gorbachev led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the communist party of Russia.
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Events leading to WWI
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Otto von Bismarck established a series of alliances to maintain peace in Europe. When Wilhelm II came to power, he dismissed Bismarck as chancellor. He would not renew the Reassurance Treaty with Russia because he thought it compromised the Triple Alliance of 1882. Seeing the non-renewal as aggression, Russia would seek alliance with France, who had previously been kept isolated. Wilhelm began to build up his navy which spurred an arms race with Britain, who then sought an alliance with Japan and France to help protect its empire from German belligerence. These moves essentially balanced power evenly across Europe. When Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated, Germany fully backed Austria if they decided to declare war on Serbia, and their protector Russia, thus pulling the rest of Europe into war.
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Events of WWI
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Modern industrial warfare produced huge economic strains on the belligerent nations, high death tolls, and stalemates on the front lines. Russia was unable to keep up with the economic demand of the war. With the allied failure at Gallipoli in 1916, Russia would be force out of the war by the following year. A communist revolution in Russia would then ensue. With the United States entry into the war in 1917, France and Britain would gain a new life line of supplies. The British blockade of Germany would ultimately lead to Germany’s defeat through attrition.
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Treaty of Versailles
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The major accomplishment of the Versailles Peace Treaty was the establishment of the League of Nations; an intergovernmental organization designed to maintain world peace. Although the league proved unsuccessful, it marked a fundamental shift in diplomatic philosophy. The failures of the treaty included humiliating Germany by forcing blame on them and forcing them to pay huge reparations that would bankrupt the country. The treaty had no negotiation between the victors and defeated, but instead, was a settlement imposed by the victors who held much resentment by the war’s end.
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Bolshevik Russia
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The Bolsheviks would prevail in the Russian Revolution by the early 1920’s. Land and factories were promised to be confiscated from the wealthy and divided among the peasantry. In actuality, the land and factories were being owned and managed by the government and production quotas were imposed. When this action failed and led to famine, the New Economic Plan was eatablished in 1921 which granted property back to original owners to manage under government imposition. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin would take over and impose a Five Year Plan to rapidly industrialize Russia at the great expense of the people.
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Rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany
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Fascism was a reaction to communism as many factory, business, and land owners began to fear losing their property and wealth. Fascist leaders in Italy and Germany would, both, take advantage of this “red scare” by promising to protect property and religion. Fascist parties began to win majority seats in their nation’s parliaments. The king of Italy began to fear party’s growing power and decides to ally with them, appointing Mussolini prime minister. Similarly, the German president appointed Hitler as chancellor for fear of the party’s growing power that they gained from taking advantage of the people’s fear and desperation after the Great Depression.
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Events leading to WWII
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Germany was experiencing economic disaster after World War I, the two leading political parties emerged as the Communists and the Nazis. Fearing a Communist takeover, Germany opted to support the Nazis and Hitler would be appointed chancellor by Hindenburg who had feared the party’s growing power. Hitler began to re-militarize with the excuse of defense against communist Russia. Hitler then sought to expand lebensraum into Austria and Czechoslovakia. After France and Great Britain offered appeasement, Hitler was now confident that they would avoid war at all costs. Hitler then signed a non-aggression pact with Russia and invaded Poland. France and England would now declare war.
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Major events of WWII
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Early in the war, Germany had dominated Europe. Hitler would fail to defeat the RAF, preventing his plans to invade England. He would then turn east to invade Russia in 1941. At the end of the same year, Japan would pull the United States into the war by attacking Pearl Harbor. The Russians would finally halt Germany’s advance at Stalingrad in 1942 and began to go on the offensive. The same year, the United States would defeat Japan at Midway which would mark the end of Japan’s offensive in the Pacific. In 1944 the allies opened a major second front in France against Germany, which ultimately lead to their defeat. After Germany surrounded in 1945, the United States would drop two atomic bombs on Japan, resulting in their surrender.
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