AP®︎ European History: Topic 8.7 Flashcards

The period from the end of World War I in 1918 to the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939

Efforts to revise or overturn the territorial and political settlement established after World War I.

The principle that states should jointly oppose aggression through diplomatic pressure, sanctions, or military force

International organization intended to preserve collective security but weakened by absent powers, no independent army, and members unwilling to enforce its decisions

1925 agreements confirming Germany’s western borders but creating no dependable mechanism for enforcement

1928 agreement formally renouncing war as an instrument of national policy but lacking effective enforcement

The belief that the nation was entitled to unity, power, territory, and expansion despite existing borders and treaties

The Nazi racial “national community,” including those classified as German or Aryan while excluding Jews and other allegedly alien groups

The Nazi doctrine of conquering “living space” in eastern Europe for the German racial nation

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

U.S. laws beginning in 1935 that restricted arms sales, loans, and assistance to belligerents to keep the country out of foreign wars

Hitler’s restoration of German military power in violation of Versailles, including an air force and conscription announced in 1935

1935 agreement allowing a German navy limited in relation to Britain’s, thereby accepting part of German rearmament and weakening cooperation with France

Italy’s 1935–1936 conquest of Ethiopia, which ineffective League sanctions failed to stop and which discredited collective security

Brief 1935 cooperation among Britain, France, and Italy against German treaty violations, undermined by the Ethiopian crisis

The political alignment between Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany identified by that name in 1936

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

Hitler’s March 1939 destruction of the remaining Czechoslovak state, which violated Munich and revealed ambitions beyond ethnic self-determination

The May 1939 agreement formalizing the military alliance between Germany and Italy

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

1936 conflict in which Germany and Italy aided Franco’s Nationalists, the Soviet Union supported the Republic, and Western nonintervention strengthened fascist cooperation and exposed weak resistance to aggression