The Twentieth Century: the Era of the Great Wars (PASS: 16.1-16.6)

I. Causes and Effects of World War I

1. Underlying and immediate causes
    
2. Conduct of the War
   1. Opening phases: the failure to achieve victory
   2. Trench warfare
   3. Total war: the mobilization of populations and national resources to fight
   4. New war
   5. Major battles:
      • Marne
      • Tannenberg
      • Verdun
      • Sommes
    
3. Treaty of Versailles
   1. Allied attitudes
   2. Wilson's Fourteen Points, the failure of idealism and a separate peace for the US
   3. Consequences of the harsh peace: reparations and recriminations
    
4. Aftermath of World War I

 
II. The Bolshevik Revolution

1. The tsarist state: cycles of repression and reform amid industrialization
    
2. The effects of the war and Rasputin on Romanov prestige
    
3. Opponents of tsarist absolutism: liberals, socialists and Bolsheviks
    
4. Reasons for the Bolshevik triumph
   1. Strategies of V.I. Lenin
   2. The October Revolution
    
5. International consequences of the Communist revolution

 
III. The World Depression

1. Aftermath of the war (influenza outbreak of 1919)
    
2. The status of Germany
    
3. Interwar diplomacy: the League of Nations, the Dawes Plan, the Kellogg-Briand Pact
    
4. The Great Depression
   1. Proximate and ultimate causes
   2. Effects on industrial and agricultural economies
    
5. The rise of totalitarian states
   1. Stalin's takeover in the USSR
   2. Mussolini's fascist movement in Italy
   3. Hitler's rise to power in Germany
   4. Militarists dominate Japan, invade China
   5. Franco's triumph in the Spanish Civil War

 
IV. Causes and Effects of World War II

1. Causes:
   • Hitler's foreign policy
   • Appeasement policy in Britain and France
   • The Munich Conference
   • The Nonaggression Pact
    
2. Participants in World War II
   • The Allies: US, UK, USSR
   • The Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan
    
3. Conduct of the War:
   1. Blitzkrieg tactics in Poland and Western Europe
   2. Britain stands alone, 1940: Churchill defiant
   3. Lend Lease
   4. Germany invades the USSR
   5. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
   6. The Allies: US, UK, USSR
   7. Victory in Europe and Asia (atomic bomb)
    
4. Major Battles:
   
   • Battle of Britain
   • Operation Barbarossa
   • Pearl Harbor
   • Midway
   • Guadalcanal
   • El Alamein
   • siege of Leningrad
   • Stalingrad
   • Sicily
   • Anzio
   • Normandy
   • The Bulge
   • Leyte Gulf
   • Iwo Jima
   • bombing of Tokyo
   • Okinawa
   
   

   

5. The Holocaust:
   • Holocaust Timeline
   • U.S. Holocaust Museum
   • The Holocaust History Project
   • Historical film footage
    
   
   

   

6. Other atrocities:
   1. Nanking Massacre
   2. Bataan Death March
   3. Bombing of Dresden
    
7. Consequences of the war
   1. The postwar balance of power: US, UK, USSR
   2. The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall
   3. Creation of the United Nations
   4. Division of Europe, Korea

 
V. Communist revolutionary movements in Asia

1. The Chinese Revolution of 1949
   1. Mao Zedong v. Chiang Kai-Shek (Jiang Jieshi)
   2. US involvement
   3. Communist victory
    
2. North Korea and South Korea, North Vietnam (under Ho Chi Minh) and South Vietnam

 
VI. Nationalist independence movements in Africa and Asia

1. The African National Congress and Afrikaner Nationalist Party in South Africa
    
2. The Congress Party, under Mohandas Gandhi, achieves independence in India
    
3. Kwame Nkrumah achieves independence for Ghana as the first black African state