AP®︎ European History: Unit 8 Flashcards

The elevation of military values, armed strength, and preparedness in politics and culture, encouraging arms races and rapid mobilization

National prestige, territorial ambitions, and separatist movements intensified rivalries among great powers and destabilized multinational empires, especially in the Balkans

Colonial, naval, and global rivalries increased distrust, linked prestige to military power, and reinforced Europe's hostile blocs

Europe's rival alliances enlarged local crises by encouraging states to support partners and mobilize against perceived threats

The alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed in 1882; Italy remained neutral in 1914 and joined the Allies in 1915

The strategic alignment of Britain, France, and Russia that opposed the Triple Alliance before World War I.

The June 28, 1914 killing in Sarajevo of Austria-Hungary's heir by Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip, triggering the July Crisis

Germany's promise of unconditional support to Austria-Hungary against Serbia, even if Austro-Hungarian action caused war with Russia

The 1914 crisis in which Austria-Hungary's ultimatum and attack on Serbia, followed by Russian mobilization and German declarations of war, turned a Balkan dispute into World War I.

Germany's plan to avoid a two-front war by rapidly defeating France through neutral Belgium before turning against Russia

The Central Powers centered on Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria; the Allies centered on France, Russia, and Britain and later included Italy and the United States

The Western Front became a nearly fixed trench line, while the larger distances and lower troop density of the Eastern Front allowed more mobile warfare

The September 1914 battle in which French and British forces stopped Germany near Paris, helping produce stalemate on the Western Front

Defensive warfare from interconnected trenches in which machine guns, artillery, and barbed wire made attacks across no man's land extremely costly

Germany's 1916 attack on a symbolically important French position, which France held despite immense losses on both sides

The 1916 British and French offensive that caused devastating casualties while achieving no decisive breakthrough

Rapid-fire defensive weapons that allowed small forces to inflict severe losses on infantry advancing across open ground

Chemical weapons such as chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas that caused choking, burns, blindness, and lasting injury but did not break the stalemate

Armored vehicles designed to cross trenches and crush wire; unreliable at first, they aided coordinated Allied offensives by 1918

German submarines used to attack Allied shipping and threaten Britain's dependence on overseas supplies

Germany's policy of sinking ships without warning, resumed in 1917 in an attempt to defeat Britain before U.S. forces could intervene

War in which governments mobilize armies, economies, labor, public opinion, and imperial resources while weakening the distinction between battlefield and home front

The civilian population and domestic economy mobilized to supply the war through industrial production, rationing, labor controls, taxation, propaganda, and sacrifice

Government-controlled messages that promoted patriotism, demonized enemies, encouraged enlistment and sacrifice, and maintained civilian support for the war

The Ottoman state's deportations, massacres, starvation, and forced marches that killed approximately 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians beginning in 1915

The April 6, 1917 U.S. declaration of war on Germany after unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram; American credit, industry, naval aid, and troops strengthened the Allies

Wilson’s 1918 program for open diplomacy, freer trade and seas, arms reduction, self-determination, and a general association of nations

The agreement that ended fighting between Germany and the Allies but did not constitute the final peace settlement

Russia’s last tsar, whose resistance to constitutional rule and association with World War I failures led to his abdication in March 1917 and the collapse of the Romanov monarchy

Uprising of workers, peasants, and soldiers that forced Nicholas II to promise civil liberties and a Duma but failed to end tsarist autocracy

Councils claiming to represent workers, soldiers, or peasants directly, first formed in 1905 and revived as centers of revolutionary power in 1917

The March 1917 worker and soldier uprising in Petrograd that began over bread shortages, caused Nicholas II’s abdication, and created the Provisional Government

Temporary government formed by Duma leaders after the tsar’s abdication; continuing World War I and postponing land reform eroded its support and aided the Bolsheviks

The unstable sharing of authority in 1917 between the formally legal Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet’s practical influence over workers and soldiers

Lenin’s disciplined revolutionary Marxist faction, which used support in key soviets to seize power in October 1917 and establish a communist state

Bolshevik leader who adapted Marxism to Russian conditions, directed the October Revolution, founded the communist state, and introduced the NEP.

Lenin’s 1917 program rejecting the Provisional Government and demanding peace, land for peasants, soviet power, and movement toward socialist revolution

The Bolsheviks’ planned November 1917 seizure of strategic points in Petrograd and overthrow of the Provisional Government

March 1918 treaty withdrawing Russia from World War I at the cost of extensive western territories, population, farmland, and industry

The mainly 1918–1921 conflict between the Bolshevik government and its opponents, ending in Red victory, communist consolidation, and enormous destruction

The disciplined Bolshevik Red Army held Russia’s central regions and defeated the divided White opponents operating from poorly coordinated peripheral fronts

Civil War emergency system of nationalization, grain requisitioning, restricted trade, rationing, and militarized labor that supplied the Red Army but intensified economic collapse and unrest

Lenin’s 1921 mixed economy restoring limited private trade and small enterprise while retaining state control of major industries, helping revive production after War Communism

Union formed in 1922 by Soviet Russia and other Soviet republics under the Communist Party’s centralized one-party rule

1919 meeting at which the victorious Allies negotiated the post–World War I treaties while excluding the defeated powers and Bolshevik Russia

The principal Allied negotiators at Paris: Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George, and Vittorio Orlando

The principle that national groups should govern themselves, applied selectively and imperfectly in the postwar settlement

The 1919 treaty with Germany that imposed territorial losses, military restrictions, war liability, reparations, and the League Covenant

Versailles provision assigning Germany and its allies responsibility for Allied war losses, providing the legal basis for reparations

Payments imposed for Allied war damage, fixed in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks and linked to German economic and political instability

International organization created to prevent war through collective security, but weakened by major-power absences, unanimity rules, and reliance on members for enforcement

League system placing former German and Ottoman territories under victorious powers, especially Britain and France, while presenting imperial rule as preparation for self-government

States formed or enlarged after the collapse of Europe’s empires; many began as democracies but faced minority disputes, weak economies, contested borders, and authoritarian challenges

Germany’s postwar democratic government, weakened by association with defeat, Versailles, reparations, economic crises, and political extremism

Collapse of the German mark caused by postwar fiscal breakdown and money printing during the Ruhr crisis; it destroyed savings, weakened confidence in Weimar, and ended with the Rentenmark

1924 plan that reorganized German reparations, reduced immediate payments, and promoted American loans to Germany, producing temporary but credit-dependent stability

October 1929 collapse in American stock prices that destroyed wealth and confidence and triggered the withdrawal of American capital from Europe

Worldwide economic collapse beginning in 1929 that caused bank failures, falling production and trade, deflation, mass unemployment, and growing political extremism

Tariffs and import restrictions intended to protect domestic producers but which provoked retaliation, reduced world trade, and obstructed international debt repayment

Keynes’s theory that insufficient aggregate demand can prolong unemployment and that governments should borrow and spend during downturns to support demand and employment

Revolutionary extreme nationalism that rejected liberal democracy and communism, exalted a charismatic leader, glorified struggle and war, and subordinated individuals to the nation

A system aspiring to control politics, economics, culture, communication, and private belief through one-party rule, ideology, propaganda, mobilization, and terror

Italian Fascist leader who became prime minister in 1922 and gradually created a dictatorship centered on nationalism, violence, and the corporate state

Italian Fascist paramilitaries who violently attacked socialist parties, unions, cooperatives, and local governments

Fascist armed demonstration in October 1922 that pressured King Victor Emmanuel III to appoint Mussolini prime minister

Fascist system organizing employers and workers into state-supervised economic corporations intended to replace class conflict with national cooperation

Nazi leader appointed German chancellor in 1933 who used emergency powers, terror, and legal manipulation to create a racial totalitarian dictatorship

Hitler’s mass party, which combined electoral politics, propaganda, paramilitary violence, extreme nationalism, racism, and anticommunism

Hitler’s failed 1923 attempt to seize power in Munich, after which he pursued power through elections combined with propaganda and violence

Hitler’s autobiographical political manifesto outlining extreme nationalism, antisemitism, racial hierarchy, dictatorship, and the conquest of Lebensraum in eastern Europe

The February 1933 burning of Germany’s parliament building that Hitler exploited to blame communists, suspend civil liberties, and arrest political opponents

March 1933 law allowing Hitler’s government to enact laws without normal parliamentary approval

The SS, an elite Nazi organization led by Heinrich Himmler that enforced racial policy, operated the camp system, and became a principal instrument of terror and genocide

Nazi Germany’s secret state police, which investigated and suppressed political, racial, and social opponents through surveillance, arrest, torture, and detention

Soviet dictator who gained supremacy after Lenin’s death and imposed forced industrialization, collectivization, purges, and totalitarian rule

Stalin’s centralized economic programs beginning in 1928 that prioritized rapid growth in heavy industry, transportation, electricity, and armaments

Forced consolidation of individual peasant farms into state-controlled collective farms beginning on a mass scale in 1929

Supposedly prosperous peasants whom Stalin increasingly defined as anyone resisting collectivization or possessing property targeted for confiscation

Catastrophic Ukrainian famine of 1932–1933 caused and worsened by collectivization, grain requisitions, movement restrictions, and state repression

Stalin’s mass arrests, executions, deportations, and political removals, reaching their height in 1936–1938

Soviet system of prisons, penal colonies, and forced-labor camps used for political repression and major economic projects

Conflict from 1936 to 1939 in which Franco’s German- and Italian-backed Nationalists defeated the Spanish Republic and established dictatorship

Nationalist general who won the Spanish Civil War with German and Italian assistance and ruled Spain as a dictator until 1975

Picasso’s 1937 black, white, and gray painting using fractured figures to express civilian terror after the German and Italian bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War

Meeting some demands of an aggressive state through negotiation and concessions in hopes of preserving peace

The policy of avoiding sustained political and military commitments abroad, leaving the United States outside European collective security

Germany’s March 1936 deployment of troops into the demilitarized Rhineland, strengthening Hitler after Britain and France failed to resist

Germany’s coerced political union with and annexation of Austria in March 1938

September 1938 settlement allowing Germany to take the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia without Czechoslovak or Soviet participation

August 1939 agreement pledging German-Soviet nonaggression, with a secret protocol dividing parts of eastern Europe and planning Poland’s partition

Germany’s attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, followed by British and French declarations of war on September 3

Germany, Italy, and Japan, whose offensives brought rapid early victories but whose resources could not sustain a prolonged global war

Coalition led by Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China that defeated the Axis through cooperation and superior resources

“Lightning war” coordinating tanks, motorized infantry, aircraft, artillery, and radio to penetrate, encircle, and rapidly defeat enemy forces

Germany’s rapid 1940 defeat of France through the Low Countries and Ardennes, bypassing major French defenses and encircling Allied armies

Authoritarian French regime based at Vichy under Marshal Philippe Pétain that governed southern France and collaborated with Nazi Germany after France’s 1940 defeat

Britain’s successful 1940 air defense against the Luftwaffe, aided by radar, integrated command systems, fighter aircraft, and civilian endurance

Germany’s June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, whose early Blitzkrieg gains ended in logistical overextension and sustained Soviet resistance

1942–1943 battle in which Soviet forces encircled and destroyed Germany’s Sixth Army, decisively shifting strategic momentum in the east

Japan’s December 7, 1941 surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet, bringing the United States directly into World War II.

June 6, 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy, enabled by multinational planning, landing craft, air superiority, engineering, intelligence, and deception

Opposition to Axis occupation through intelligence, sabotage, illegal publications, sheltering fugitives, and armed partisan warfare

American-led scientific and industrial program that combined nuclear physics, state investment, and enormous facilities to create the atomic bomb

August 1945 U.S. nuclear attacks that released unprecedented destructive power from single weapons, killing civilians through blast, fire, and radiation before Japan’s surrender

Nazi project to reorganize Europe by a supposed biological hierarchy, with “Aryan” Germans dominant and designated inferior populations excluded, exploited, displaced, or murdered

Nazi racial laws of 1935 that stripped Jews of citizenship rights, prohibited relations with “German blood,” and classified Jewish identity by ancestry

Regime-organized pogrom of November 9–10, 1938, that destroyed Jewish property and synagogues, killed about 100 Jews, and sent about 30,000 Jewish men to camps

Sealed, segregated urban district in which German authorities confined Jews under lethal conditions before deportation or death

Mobile German killing units that followed the army into Soviet territory and, with other forces and collaborators, shot entire Jewish communities

January 1942 meeting where German officials coordinated government agencies’ roles in deporting Europe’s Jews and implementing the already-underway Final Solution

Nazi euphemism for the coordinated program to annihilate Europe’s Jews through deportation, shootings, forced labor, starvation, and extermination centers

German Nazi facilities in occupied Poland created primarily for mass murder, unlike concentration camps, which principally imprisoned and exploited inmates

Largest Nazi killing center, combining selection, forced labor, and mass murder with Zyklon B; about one million of its at least 1.1 million victims were Jews

Groups racially classified and persecuted by the Nazis through registration, confinement, forced labor, deportation, shootings, and camp murder; roughly 220,000–500,000 were killed

Einstein’s special and general theories that made measurements of space and time relative to motion, linked mass with energy, and explained gravity as the curvature of space-time

Modern physics describing matter and energy at atomic scales through quantized and often probabilistic relationships rather than complete classical predictability

The 1927 principle that properties such as a particle’s position and momentum cannot both be known with unlimited precision

Freud’s theory and method holding that unconscious desires and conflicts shape behavior, investigated through dream interpretation and free association

A broad cultural movement that rejected or radically revised inherited conventions through fragmentation, abstraction, shifting perspective, and experimentation

World War I-era anti-art movement that used absurdity, chance, collage, and provocation to reject a supposedly rational culture that had produced mechanized slaughter

Postwar movement influenced by Freud that used dreams, unconscious desires, and irrational combinations of images to bypass conscious logic

The generation traumatized or disillusioned by World War I, especially writers who portrayed postwar alienation, cynicism, and purposelessness

Women entered war production, administration, nursing, civil defense, resistance, and auxiliary service, challenging traditional gender roles and strengthening demands for political rights without achieving full equality

The movement for women’s voting rights, advanced when women’s wartime service strengthened demands for citizenship and helped produce major suffrage gains during and after World War I