Pact of steel
Germany, Italy, and later Japan formed an alliance and became known as the Axis Powers. Western democracies viewed this as an existential threat
Tzar Nicholas
Upset at all the chaos from the February revolution while he was busy in world war I, ordered his troops to put down the protests. Instead, his troops joined them and the tzar lost control of the Military.
February revolution
Factory workers, many of whom were women, protested the cost of food like bread.
Black/Brown shirts
Mussolini & Hitler's secret police that made dissent a fearful prospect
Russian revolution
In Russia, world war I exacerbated long-term problems of political stagnation, social inequality, incomplete industrialization, and food and land distribution, which altogether had the effect of engendering widespread support for revolutionary change.
The aristocracy wasn't happy about a peasant revolution. Collaborated with western countries to fight the bolsheviks with a massive army. Communists organized the army and used nationalistic sentiment to drive the western countries out. Russia becomes the Soviet Union.
April theses
Assasination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914
As he and his wife were being paraded around Bosnia, a Serbian nationalist shot him. Austria gave the serbian government an ultimatum, which would require taking responsibility for the assassination. Since they refused to do that, austria declares war on Serbia
Spanish popular front
Spanish civil war
The spanish army opposed the popular front. A general named Francisco Franco led a violent uprising against the popular front. Which led to a civil war. Represented a kind of testing ground for WWII, while Hitler and Mussolini supported Franco, western democracies did little to help the popular front.
World war one spreads
Russia, in defense of it's slavic ally, mobilized its forces against Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary, seeing an opportunity to weaken Bosnian influence in the Balkans decided to intervene. They called on Germany to assist them. This drags the rest of the alliance system into the conflict.
Trench warfare
Miles of trenches were dug and fortified with barbed wire, and when one side decided to launch an offensive, they would charge out of their trenche, get mowed down by machine gun fire, and then retreat. Led to stalemates
Appeasement
Treaty of versailles
It stopped the fighting, but didn't address the tensions that started the war in the first place. Reparations from Germany, War guilt clause: blamed the entire war on germany. Demilitarization: Crushed Germanys national identity
Bolshevik troops storm the winter palace
They stormed the provisional government's headquarters and now the communists are now in control of Russia
A system of government characterized by extreme paternalistic, militaristic nationalism in which the interests of the people are subordinated to the interests of the state and its leader. Was appealing because of all the post-war crisis
When all of the resources of a state, from the state level to the average people are leveraged to fight a war.
Fascism grows in eastern europe
The treaty of Versailles established many new parliamentary democracies like Poland and yugoslavia, which struggled during the problems of the inter-war period. Fascist leaders gained power because people wanted a strong leader to solve all their problems.
Benito Mussolini
Pan-Slavism
A coalition of left-wing parties whose main objective was preventing the rise of communism or fascism in france
Machine guns, Chemical weapons, and other brutal new technologies led to trench warfare.
Soviet union new economic policy
Peasant farmers were no longer required to send their produce to the state and could sell it on the open market. Lenin permitted private ownership of small businesses. Lenin cut corners and didn't follow the original plan for the communist government.
Great depression causes
War debt: European countries had no money and were forced to borrow from the United States.
Nationalistic tariff policies
Overproduction: When the war ended, demand for military goods dropped significantly
Financial speculation
U.S stock market collapsed.
Five year plan
Militarism: armies were growing quickly thanks to mass conscription
Aliances: Triple alliance and triple entente. Both sides are becoming suspisous and antagonistic of one another
Imperialism: New tension over who gets which colonies
Nationalism: Military leaders began to think that war was an acceptable way of bringing glory to their state
Mandate system
Entente alliance promised the middle east independence after the war. However "they thought they weren't ready for independence" and they wanted oil, so they kept running them anyway
Women joined the military and supported the war effort, this directly led to women gaining the right to vote about 30 years later.
The U.S enters the war and it's massive industrial capacity and the british invention of tanks tipped the balance of power against germany and the triple alliance.
Age of anxiety
2 world wars, nuclear bombs, and scientific advancements that shattered accepted beliefs made everyone nervous.
