The+West


 * **1. Using Scribble Maps outline the nations that you think are included when we discuss "The West". After embedding the map explain your rationale**
 * The World Between the Wars: Revolutions, Depression, and Authoritarian Response**

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 * 2. Read p. 673- 678 - and 690 - 695 Outline notes**

Pgs: 673-678:

Bouncing Back? MI:
 * Massive War deaths, over 10 million Europeans left dead, combined with the widespread injuries and tremendous blows to morale. Property damage and economic dislocation added to the problems: Wartime governments had printed new money rather than raise taxes, an unprecedented postwar inflation occured, wiping out savings for many groups.
 * A new democratic republic in Germany made some positive strides. Artistic creativity included the cubist movement, led by Pablo Picasso, that rendered familiar objects in geometrical shapes. Writers and composers also challenged stylistic traditions. Modern design in architecture and furnishing gained ground. Important achievements in science included further work on Albert Einsteins groundbreaking theories of relatively in physics. Knowledge of the atomic structure and genetics advanced.
 * New mass consumption items such as the radio were imporved as well.
 * Middle Class women gained new participation in popular culture, some of them going to nightclubs, smoking, and participating in dance crazes that often originated in the United States or Latin America.
 * Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and Turkey headed the list who first gave women the right to vote.
 * This new culture seemed to disturb traditionalists. Key economic sectors like agriculture and coal mining didnot really cover prosperity, and much of the British economy remained sluggish.
 * New communist parties evolved in Europe. The communist parties on the left were matched by right-wing movements often supported by war veterans.

Other Industrial Centers: MI:
 * Canada, Australia, and New Zealand gained rewards for their loyal participation in World War I.
 * Australia had recenlty become independent in 1901 and gained a newly found pride in politics.
 * Several conferences in the 1920's confirmed the independence of the Dominions and their co-equal status with Britain. The British Commonwealth of Nations was a free association of members, as British representation in the three Dominions became purely symbolic. Dominions also registered solid export growth and population gains from immigration. Australia introduced extensive welfare measures responding to a strong labor movement and economic planning.
 * U.S. Economic and popular cultural initiatives advanced rapidly during the 1920's. The economy boomed throughout much of the decade. Corporatioms expanded and innovated. The organization of work systems changed.
 * Henry Ford introduced the assembly line for automoblie production in 1913, using conveyer belts to move parts past semi-skilled workers who did small and repetitious tasks until the automobile was complete.
 * United States also increased its popular and cultural exports. Jazz spread from African American centers in the south to performances in Europe. Hollywood became the global film capital by 1920 and Hollywood stars, many of them who were foreign became international staples.
 * The U.S. senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, refused to enter the League of Nations.
 * The United States pursued an isolationist policy for 2 decades refusing foreign alliances. Fear of communism also ran unusually high in the United States with a "Red Scare" early in the decade raising resistence to outside influences.
 * Politically, tensions between military leaders and the civilian government increased during the 1920's. Military leaders, trained seperately and reporting directly to the emperor, resented political controls that periodically reduced the budgets.
 * Liberal politicians expanded voting rights to all adult males, but there was no full agreement on the appropriate political structure. The military was suspicious of growing consumerism in Japan regarded itself as a guardian of tradition. It also considered independence in diplomacy, particularlyt concerning Japan's new involvement in China.

New Authoritarianism: The Rise of Facism MI:
 * Explicit hostility to liberal and democratic political sytems emerged right on the fringes of western Europe. In 1919 a former socialist Benito Mussolini formed the fascio di combattimento or "union for struggle" in Italy.
 * Italian fascists advocated a corporate state that would replace both capitalism and socialism with a new national unity. They pointed to a need for aggressive, nationalistic foreign policy.
 * Fascism had its roots in the late 19th century with groups disenchanted with liberal, parliamentary systems and with social conflicts. Various intellectuals in many countries began to urge the need for new authoritarian leadership and devotion to nationalist values over capitalist profit-seeking and socialist class struggle.
 * Nationalists resented the fact that Italy had gained so little territory in the New World. Veterans often felt abandoned by civil society and some thirsted for new action.
 * Labor unrest increased which convinced some conservatives that new measures were essential against ineffective liberal leadership.
 * The Italian parliament seemed incapable pf decisive measures as political factions were used for personal advantage. Mussolini fascism's leading exponent could make his mark even with a minority of direct supporters.
 * In 1922 the Italian king called on Mussolini to form a new government. Thought the fascists had only limited popular support they seemed the only hope to limit left wing power
 * The first fascist movement moced with some caution fitting into the briefly hopeful negotiations among European states in the 1920's. Thier principles suggested how far European politics had been unseated from the widespread prewar agreements on parliamentary rule.

The New Nations of East Central Europe: MI;
 * New nations in the region began with Western style parliaments, but most could nt maintain them amid economic difficulties.
 * Most of the new nations from the Baltic states were consumed by nationalist excitement at independence bu also harbored grievances about territories that thye had not yet aquired. There were bitter rivalries among the small European states.Political pattern resulted from social tensions.
 * Most European societies remained primarily agricultural, heavily dependent on sales to western Europe
 * There was a hard hit by the collapse of agricultural prices in the 1920's and then further damaged by the Great Depression.
 * Aristocratic estate owners sought desperately to repress peasant movements which brought them to support the authoritarianism movements which were usually compsed of various fascist trappings.
 * Peasant land hunger and continued problems of poverty and illiteracy were simply not addressed in many cases.

A Balance Sheet: MI:
 * Democratic and parliamentary politifcal forms took further root in Germany and in places such as Canada and Japan.
 * The United States tried to isolate itself from the world politics of the time.
 * Challenges to the democracy arose in Italy.
 * In the 1920's the economy of western Europe was newly challenged by the greater vigor of the United States and Japan.

Pgs 690-695

The Global Great Depression MI: The Great Depression began after the crash of the New York Stock Market in 1929 in many parts of the world. The Depression resulted from new problems in Europe and the United States new industrial economies. The result was a worldwide collapse that spared only a few economies and brought political as well as economic pressures on virtually every society.

Causation: MI:
 * Farmers throughout much of the Western world and the United States faced the most chronic overproduction of food which resulted in the lowest prices ever seen. Food production had soared in response to wartime needs; during the postwar inflation, many farmers borrowed havily to buy new equipment overconfident that their good markets would be sustained. However the remaining farmers were hard pressed and unable to sustain high demand for agricultural goods.
 * Economies in France and Germany seemed to have recovered by 1925. However, some problems did remain. For example, the fears of massive postwar inflation had generated liminted capacity of governments to respond to other problems.
 * Most of the dependent areas in th world economy were suffering. Pronounced tendencies toward overproductin developed in the smaller nations of eastern Europe, which sent agricultural goods but on one condition that addition to all loans pour in to halp pay off the reultant debts.
 * Continued efforts to win export revenue pressed local estate owners to drive up output in coffee sugar, and rubber.
 * While European governments and businesses organized their African colonies for more profitable explotation they set up large estates devoted to goods of this type. In turn, many colonies and dependent economies were unable to buy many industrial exports which weakened the demand for western products.
 * Several food exporting regions fell into a depression in terms of earnings and employment,
 * Governments of leading industrial nations provided leadership during the emerging crisis. Knowledge of economics were often feeble to Western leadership.
 * By the late 1920's employment in key Western industrial sectors: coal, iron, and textiles began to decline which led to an even larger collapse.

The Debacle: MI:
 * Formal advent of the Depression occured in October 1929, when the New York Stock Market collapsed. Stock values tumbled as investors quicly lost confidence in prices that had been pushed rediculously high. Banks, which has depended heavily on their stock investments were echoed by the financial crisis and many investments failed, dragginf their depositors along with them.
 * In Europe and the United States many commercial enterprises existed on the basis not of real production power but of the continued speculation. When one piece of the speculative spitral was withdrawn the whole edifice quicly collapsed. Key bank failures in Austria and Germany followed the U.S. crisis.
 * Production rates quicly began to fall. Levels frropped by as much as one-third by 1932 which meant a further withdraw fro the economy which meant more losses and hardships.
 * The Depression itself, grew steadily worse from 1929-1933. Countries that were initially less hit, such as France and Italy were now being drawn into the vortex of the Great Depression.
 * The intensity of the Great Depression had no precedent in the period of industrial societies.
 * The Depression didnt only affect the economy. It reached countless lives. Loss of earnings, loss of work, or simply the fear of losing work devastated people at all of the social levels. Ruined investors began an increase in the suicide rate. Up to one0third of blue collar workeres lost their jobs for prolonged periods. White collar unemployment even though it was not as severe reached higher levels. Graduating students could not find work or had to resort to jobs they regarded as insecure or demanding.
 * Six million overall unemployed in Germany and 22 percent of the labor force were statistics of misery and despair.
 * Families were disrupted; men felt emasculated at their inability to provide and women and children were disgusted wutg authority figures was now hollow.
 * In some cases, wives and mothers found it easier to gain jobs in low-wage economy than their husbads did, and although this development had some promise in terms of new oppurtunities for women but it could also be confusing for the standard family roles.
 * Hollymood movies put up a cheerful front and in 1938 a new American comic book figure Superman, provided an alternative to the constraints of normal life. However modest alternatives were best.
 * Between 1929 and 1931 the value of Japanese exports plummeted by 50%. Workers' real income dropped by almost one-third, and more than 3 million people were unemployed.
 * Depression was compounded by poor harvests in several regions leading to rural begging and near starvation. The Great Depression was truly an international collapse.

Responses to the Depression in Western Europe MI:
 * Most governments tried to cut spending, reflecting in the decline in revenues that accompanied foreign production. They were concerned about avoiding renewed inflation.
 * Confidance in the normal political process deteriorated. In man countries the Depression heightened political polarization. People sought on the left and on the right.
 * Support for Communist parties increased in many countries and in important cases, the authoritarian movement on the right gained increased attention. Even in relatively stable countries such as Britain, battles betwee the Conservative party and the labor movement made decisive policy difficult. Class conflict rose to new levels in and out of politics.
 * The Great Depression led to one of two effects: either a parliamentary system that became increasingly incapacitated unable to come to grips with the new economic dilemma and too divided to take vigorous actions even in the foreign policy or the outright overturning of the parliamentary system.
 * The liberal, socialist, and communist parties formed the Popular Front in 1936 to ein the election. They were unable to take strong measures of social reforms because of the ongoing strength of conservativfe republicans housing the lower classes.
 * Front leaders were initially eager to support their new liberal regime in Spain. The Popular Front fell in 1938.
 * The world's first television industry for example took shape in southern England in the late 1930's thoough it was to small to break to hold of the depression.

The New Deal: MI:
 * The United States sought to accelerate war debt payments from Europe, which also made matters worse internationally. In 1933 a new administration took over, under Franklin Roosevelt offering a "new deal" to the American people.
 * New Deal policies as they unfolded during the 1930's offered more direct aid to Americans at risk through increased unedmployment measures. Many unemployed people were given jobs on public works projects.
 * Innovations were made to the Social Security System.
 * New Deal also undertook some economic planning and stimulus for both industry anf agriculture while installing new regulations on banking.
 * New Deal ushered a period of rapid government. Did not solve the Depression.

The Rise of Nazism: MI:
 * Fascism in Germany was a product of the war. The movements advocates attacked the weakness of parlaimentary democracy and the corruption and class conflict of Western capitalism. The proposed a strong state rule by a powerful ruler who would revive the nations forces through vigorous foreign and military policy.
 * While fascists vaguealy promised social reforms to alleviate class antagonisms their attacks in trade unions as well as on socialist and communist parties pleased landlords and business groups.
 * Under the control of Adolf Hitler new political movements meant a commitment to liberal, democratic political forms were challenged and reversed.
 * When elected into power, Hitler set about constructing a totalitarian state- a new kind of government that would exercise massive direct control over virtually all the activities of the activities of their subjects.
 * His secret police the Gestapo arrested hundreds of thoudands of political opponents.
 * Trade unions were replaced by government sponsored bodies that tried to appease to low-paid workers by offering full employment and various welfare benefits.
 * Hitlers hatred of Jew ran deep. He blamed them for a lot of his misfortunes and also for socialism and excessive capitalism- movements which he believed had weakened the German spirit.
 * Anti-Semitism also played into Hitlers hands by providing a scapegoat that could rouse national passions and distract the population from other problems. Measures against Jews became more and more severe; they were forced to wear special emblems, their property aws attackted and seized, and increasing numbers were sent to concentration camps.
 * After 1940 Hitler's policy insanely turned to literal elimination of European Jewry, as the Holocaust raged in the concentration camps of Germany and conquered territories.

The Spread of Fascism MI:
 * Nazi triumph in Germany spurred fascism in other parts of Europe.
 * Hitlers advent galvanized the authoritarian regime of a nearby power, Italy, where a fascist state had been formed in the 1920's led by Benito Mussolini.
 * Mussolini promised an aggressive foreign policy and new nationalist glories.
 * The League of Nations condemned the actions but neither it nor the democratic powers of Europe and North America took action.
 * Consequently after some har fighting, the Italians won there new colony
 * Fascism also spread to Spain leading up to the Spanish Civil War.
 * Forces supportying a parliamentary republic plus social reform had feuded since 1931 with advocates of military backed authoritarianism.
 * Republica forces included various groups with support from peasants and workers in various parts of the country.
 * Communists and large anarchist movement plated a crucial role. They won some support also from volunteers from the United States and the the Soviet Union.
 * The resultant regime of Franco's forces was not fully fascist, bnut it maintained authoritarian controls and catered to landlords, church, and the army for the next 25 year.

pgs. 709-721

Old and New Causes of a Second World War MI:
 * Global militarization of Japan proceeded despite the solid majorities that moderate political parties continued to win until the end of the 1930's.
 * During the 1920's nationalistic forces in China began to get the upper hand over the regional warlords who had dominated Chinese politics since the early 1900's.
 * Guodoming- Nationalist Party.
 * The success of the Guomindang worried Japan's army officers who feared that a united China would move to resist the informal control the Japanese had exerted over Manchiria since the victory at the RussoJapanese War in 1905.
 * Fearful of expansions of their expansionist aims on the mainland and unimpeded by weak civilian governments at home, the Japanese military seized Manchuria in 1931 and proclaimed it the independent state of Manchukuo.
 * In contrast to the gradual shift of power, the militar in Japan, the changes of regimes in Germany was more abrupt and more radical.
 * Parliamentary government in the Weimer era had been under seige from the time its civilian leaders had agreed to the armistice in 1918 even more so afther they signed the Treaty of Versailles..
 * In the midst of the social discontent and political turmoil that followed, Adolf Hitler and the Nationalist Socialist (Nazi) party captured a steadily rising portion of the votes and parliamentary seats in a rapid succession of elections.
 * The Nazi's promised to put the Germany people back to work, restore political stability and set in motion a remilitarization program that would allowe Germany to throw the shackles of what Hitler branded the dikat of Versailles.
 * The threat of the Communists within was linked to that of the Soviet Union to the East.
 * A major part of the Nazis' poltical agenda once in power was a systematic dismantling of the political and diplomatic system created by the Versailles settlement.
 * Hitler and Mussolini also intervened militarily in the Spanish Civil War in the mid-1930's in the hope of establishing am allied regime.
 * Mussolini's mechanized foreces proved effectivev, this time against the overmatched, left-leaning armer forces of the Spanish republiv.
 * Both the Italian and German air forces used the Spanish conflict as a training ground for their air forces; in the absence of enemy planes of pilots. however, their main targets were ground forces and ominously civilians in Spain's cities and villages
 * Excepting volunteer forces recruited in England, France, the United States, and other democracies, only the Soviet Union sought to provide military aid to Spain's republicans. Though valiant these relief attempts proved to be futile in the face of relentless asssounts by Franco's well supplied legion and the Axis forces.

Uncheked Aggression MI:
 * World War II officially began on September 1, 1939 with the German invasion of Poland.
 * World War II was provoked by tje deliberate aggesssions of Nazi Germany and a militarized an imperialist Japan. The failure of the Western democracies and the Soviet Union to respond resoulutely to these challengers simply fed the militarist expansionism of what came to be called the axi powers in reference to the linkages noth real and imagined between Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo.
 * Hitler and Mussolini discovered that Britain and France and the United States were quite willing to sacrifice small states, such as Spain and Czechoslovakia in the false hope that the fascist and Nazi territorial ambitions would be satisfied and the war could be averted.
 * Leaders like Winston Churchill who warned that a major war was inevitable given Hitler's motivations were kept from power by voters who had no stomach for such another World War.
 * Rival politicians such as Neville Chamberlain and the socialist leaders of France also corectly that rearming as Churchhill proposed would put an end to their ambitious schemes to build welfare states and an antidote to further economic depressions.
 * Although Nazi aggresions traditionally have been stressed as the precipitants of World War II, the Japanese military actually moved first.
 * At first the advancing Japanese forces met with great success, occupying most of the coastal cities indcluding Shangai and by the end of 1938 Canton zx sdll as the Hinterlands behind the cities of the North.
 * As Chinese resistence stiffened in some areas, Japanese soldiers resorted to draconian reprisals against both the Chines fighters and civilians.
 * Many instances such as the caoture in December 1937 of the city in Nanjong Japanese forces took out their frustrations on retreating Chinese troops and the civilian population.
 * The waton destruction, pillage, murder of innocent civilians and rape of tens of thousands of undefended Chinese women that accompanied the Japanese occupation of the ancient city was only a prelude to the unparalled human suffering of the World War that was about to begin
 * Deprived of the coastal cities and provinces that were the main centers of their power, Chiang and the Guomindang forces retreated to the Yangzte River, deep into the interion of the city Chingqing, which became the nationalist capital for the rest of the war.
 * Long before the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, and western colonies throughout southeast Asia in late 1941 Japan and China were engaged in a maddive and deadly contest for control of all east Asia.
 * Japan had plunged into this war without even consulting Germany and Italy. The Tripartite Pact which the three expansive states in a loose alliance was not signed until September 1940, when the war was well under way in both Europe and east Asia.
 * With a pause to consolidate his stunning gains in central Europe from 1936 to 1938, Hitler now concentrated his forces on the drive to the Slavic east which he had long staked out as a region that would provde living space for the Germanic master race. He bought time to prepare the way for tha assault on the main target, the Soviet Untion, by signing a non aggression pact with Stalin in August 1939.
 * Military emissaries of the two dictators that seperated their empires and Stalin swallowed short- term disappointments such as the division of Poland to prepare the Soviet Union for the invasions that most observers were now convinced was inevitable.
 * The brutal Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 put an end to any doubts about Hitler's contempt for treaties and repeated assurances that Germany's territorial ambitions had been satisfied by the absorption of Czechoslavakia into the Nazi Reich.

The Conduct of a Second Global War MI:
 * The reluctance to rearm and react displayed by both the Western democracies and and the Soviet Union in the 1930's made possible crushing and almost undermitting victories and rapid territorail advances on the part of the main Axis powers, Germany and Japan early in the War.
 * Once the inital momentum of the Axis war machine had slowed it became increasingly clear that the Anglo-American and Soviet alliance was decidedly more powerful in terms of population, size, potential industrial production, technological innovation, and military capacity. on land, seas, and in the air.
 * Nazi Blitzkrieg, Stalemate, and the Long Retreat
 * Germany appeared unstoppable and the fate of a large chunk of humanity seemed destined for a long period of tyrannical Nazi rule.
 * From the outset, German strategy was centered on the concept of blitzkrieg or "lightening war" which involved the rapid penatration of enemy territory by a combination of tanks and mechanized troop carriers, backup infantry, and supporting fighter aircraft and bombers.
 * Effective deployment of of these forces overwhelmed the Poles in 1939 and more critically routed the French and British within a matter of days in the spring of 1940 accomplishing what the kaiser's armies failed to do during the gour year long warfare between 1914 and 1918.
 * German willingness to punish adversaries or civilian populations om areas that refused to yield greatly magnified the toll of death and destruction left in the wake of Hitler's army.
 * In early 1940's the Dutch port of Rotterdam was virtually leveled by Nazi bombers which killed over 40,000 civilians.
 * Under the courageous leadership of Winston Churchill, the British people weathered what their new prime minister had aptly pronounced the nations "darkest hour"
 * A smaller British air force proved able to withstand the Nazo air offensive. Victory in what became to be known as the Battle of Britain was due to a mix of strong leadership by Churchill and a v ery able coalition cabinet, innovative air tactics made possible by the introduction of radar devices for tracking German assault aricraft,the bravery of Britain's royal family, and the high morale pf the citizenry as a whole that the bombing raids only seemed to enhance
 * Unable to destroy Britains air forces orbreak the resolve of its people Hilter and the high commanfhad to abondon their conquests of the British Isles.
 * By mid-1941 the Germans controlled most of the continent of Europe and much of the Mediterranean. They had rescued the Italians' floundering campaign to conquer Albania and overrun Yugoslavia and Greece.
 * Once conquered the hundreds of millions of people subjugated by Nazi aggression were compelled to provide resources war materials, soldiers, and slave labor to German war machine then being directed agianst even more ambitious targets.
 * Frustrated by British defiance Hitler and the Nazi high commanf turned to the south to regain the momentum that had propelled them so many victories in the first years of the war on Europe.
 * Nazi forces began numbering in at 3.5 million.
 * Renewed German army officensives in the spring of 1942 again drove deep into Russia but failed a second time to capture the key cities.
 * The Nazi's mass killings and harsh treatment of the Slavic people including the Ukranians aroused Guerilla resistence by tens the hundreds of thousands of particans who fought behind German lines throughoyut the rest of the war.
 * In 1943, the Red armies went on the offensive at numerous points along the overextended, undermanned, and vulnerable German front. With staggering losses in lives and equipment, the Nazi forces despite Hitler's rantings that they die in place.
 * As the Soviet Union forces advanced inexorably toward Germany, it was clear that the destruction of Hitler's "thousand year reich" was only months away. It was also apparent that the almost unimaginable sacrifices and remarkable resilience of Russian soldiers, which included many women, had contributed mightily to the destruction of the vaunted Nazi armed forces.

From Perecution to Genocide: Hitler's War Against the Jews MI:
 * Polish intellectuals and communists had been rounded up and killed in mass executions during the German offensives into eastern Europe and Russia in the early 1940's. After a final solution for the "Jewish problem" was decided upon by the prominent Nazi officials at the Wannsee Conference in 1942, the regime directed its energies, explicity and systematically to genocide.
 * Concentration camps that had been set up in the 1930's to incarcerate political armies and groups branded a racially inferior were transformed intno factoies for the mass production of death.
 * The more the war turned against Hitler and the Nazi high command, the more they pressed the genocidal campaign against the largely defenseless Jewish peoples of Europe.
 * Vital resources were regularly diverted from the battle fronts for transportation, imprisonment, and mass murder in the camps. where the destruction of human life reached a frenetic pace in the last years of the regime.
 * Jewish and other "undesirable" people were identified and arrested throughout the Nazi empire. They were shipped to the camps in the east, those who were deemed physically fit were subjected to work harsh forced labor that took a heavy toll on their lives. The less fortunate many being women, children, and the elderly were systematically murdered sometimes in experiments carried out by German physicians with the callous disregard for human suffering and humiliation.
 * As many as 12 million people were murdered in what had become known as the Holocaust. Of the dead around 6 million were Jews and many millions of others were Slavic people mercilessly slughtered on the eastern front. Without question the Holocaust was by far the most costly genocide of the 20th century which had begun with the Armenian massacres in 1915.
 * The Holocause was passively abetted by denial on a part of the people of Germany and the occupied countries.
 * The plight of the Jews of Europe was also exacerbated by the refusal of the Western Allies to accept the immigrants any but the most affluent of skilled Jews fleeing Nazi attrocities and by the failure of those same allies to use their military assets to strike at the railway lines and killing chambers they clearly knew were in operation by the last months of the war.
 * These responses to the Nazi horror only steeled the resolve of Zionis leaders in Palestine and elsewhere to facilitate by negotiations with the hated Nazis.

Anglo-American Offensives Encirclement and the End of the 12-Year Reich MI:
 * Before the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States was providing substantial assistance including military supplies to beleaguered Britain. Franklin Rooselvelt was quite openly sympathetic to the British cause and soon established a good working relationship with Churchill.
 * American forces first entered the war in a major way in the campaigns to counter German U-Boat attacks on shipping crossing the Atlantic. American tank divisions and infantry joined the British in reversing Rommel's gains in North Africa in 1942 and 1943.
 * Their steady, but often costly advantage advance up on the peninsula lasted into early 1945 but eventually toppled the fascist regime and prompted a Nazi takeover of norhtern Italy.
 * Mussolinin and the last of his many mistresses were captured and shot by partisans and enraged civilians and hung upside down on a lamp post near Lake Bellagio.
 * Battle of the Bulge- winter of 1944-1945 the Allies had invaded Germany from the west while the Red armies were pouring in from the east.
 * In late April, Russian and American troops linked up at the Elbe River where they became caught up in spontaneaus celebrations. The genuine camaraderie and mutual respect widely displayed by troops on both sides would soon be lost in high stak manueauvers by the poltical leaders in each camp to shape post war colonial order.
 * On April 30 after his betrayal by the German people, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Less than two weeks later German military leaders surrended their forces putting an end to the war in European and Mediterranean theaters.

The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific War MI:
 * Long before the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese had been engaged in a major war on the Chinse mainland.
 * The Thais managed to stave off of the invasion and occupation of Siam by retreating into neutrality and cooperating with the ascendant Japanese. Great Britain remained a major combatant and Australia and New Zealand provided important support, the United States quickly emerged as the major counterforce to the Japan's ever so expanding Asian empire.
 * Impressive in size and the speed which it was formed the Japanese empire soon proved highly vulnerable to the Allies. They did so because they calculated that since the European metropoles had been overrun or were hard oressed by the Nazis, the Europeans would not be able to reinforce their colonial enclaves. The Japanese leadership was also aware that the homeland's wartime economy was in desperate need of critical raw materials including oil and staple foods.
 * Resistence fighters also cooperated with British and American forces pushing into the area in the latter stages of the war.
 * Having attacked Pearl Harbor when all of the major American aircraft carriers were at the sea, the Japanese missed the chance to cripple the most potent weapons in the United States arsenals. Within the six months the United States naval and air forces fought the Japanese to a standoff at the Battle of the Coral Sea. In June, less than a month later off Midway Island
 * Once the allied forces had gained the upper hand in the air and on the sea through these engagements they could begin the assault on the double ring of Pacific Island fortresses that protected the Japanese homeland.
 * The high concentration of the Japanese population in urban areas and the wood and paper construction of most Japanese dwellings provided tempting targets for American bomber squadrons.
 * In March 1945, General Curtis Le May, who was in charge of American air operations, ordered mass aerial bombardment of highly vulnerable Japanese cities.
 * In Tokyo alone, these raids killed over 125,000 people, mostly civilians and destroyed over 40% of the city within days
 * By the early summer of 1945, Japanese leaders were sending out peace feelers while the more fanatical elements in the army were promising to fight to the death.
 * On August 6 and three days later on August 9 atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. In moments these cities which to this point had been spared bombing were reduced to ashes.
 * Short-term casualties in both cities were well over 100,000 and deaths from radiation sickness increased the total greatly in the years and maybe even some decades.
 * With the division of Germany, that had begun some months earlier, the Allied occupation of the islands set the stage for the third main phase of the 20th century, which would be dominated by the cold war between the Soviet and American superpowers that would be waged amid collapse of the European colonial order.

War's End and the Emergence of the Superpower MI:
 * Leaders of the Allies opposed to the Axis powers met on several occasions in an attempt to build the framework for a more lasting peace free of the vindictiveness that was so prominent at the Versailles gathering.
 * A key result of Allied discussions was agreement on establishing the United Nations (UN)
 * The United Nations planning to finance and provided a site for the organizations permanent headquarters
 * With the successful establishment of the United States, international diplomacy and assistance moved beyond the orbit of the Western powers who had all but monopolized them for centuries but through their vetoes in the Security Council they retained considerable control.
 * The United Nations primary mission was to provide a forum for negotiating international disputes. But it also took over the apparatus of more specialized international agencies.
 * Although UN intervantions to preserve or restore peace to numerous regions have encountered much resistence by both the great powers and regional power browkers.
 * The United Nations has also sponsored initiatives including critical international conferences that have proved highly influential om shaping policies and programs affecting child labor, women;s rights, and environmental protection.

From Hot War to Cold War MI:
 * The cold war in the late 1980's with various points of crisis and confrontation. Direct conflict between the two superpowers did not occur despite dire forebodings. Much of the world history was shaped by the cold war maneauvering for over decades.
 * The cold war began when World War II allies turned in the war's final conferences to debate the nature of the postwar settlement.
 * Tensions had clearly surfaced during the 1944 Tehran Conference when the allies agreed on the invasion of Nazi occupied France.
 * The decision to focus on France rather than move up from the Mediterranean gave the Soviet forces a free hand to move throught the smaller nations of Eastern Europe as they pushed the Nazi armies forces back
 * The next settlement meeting was the Yalta Conference in the Soviet Crimea early in 1945.
 * President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States was eager to press the Soviet Union for assistance against Japan and to this end promised the Soviets important territorial gains in Manchuria and the northern Japanese islands.
 * The Final postwar conference occured int he Berlin suburb of Postdam in July 1945.
 * Russian forces noe occupied not only most of eastern Europe but eastern Germany as well. This de facto situation prompted agreement with the Soviet Union could take over much of what had been eastern Poland with the Poles gaining part of the eastern Germany in compensations. Germany was divided pending a final peace treaty.
 * Austria was also divided and occupoed gaining unity and independence only in 1956, on condition of neutrality between the United Staes and the Societ Union.


 * Read chapter 31p.732 - 750**
 * **What were the major effects of decolonization post WWII on Europe?**
 * **After World War II, the physical destruction alone started to effect the decolonization of Europe. Downed bridges and rail lines complicated food shipments which left many people of France and Germany ill-fed and unable to work. The result of Nazi Germany's use of harsh foregin labor generated hundreds of thousands of refugees who were trying to return home or find new homes.**
 * How did the Cold War divide Europe? What were the implications of this division?
 * The cold war, which was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union had begun to hold a more durable influence on society and politics, which began to divide the West between 1945 and 1947. Due to this, an eastern bloc emerged which included Poland, Caechoslovakia, Bulgaria. Romania. amd Hungary, while the Soviet boundaries were thus pushed West. Under Harry Truman the United States was less either for smooth relations with the Soviets. In 1946, he coined the phrase ion curtain to describe the major divisiopns between free and repressed societies which began to form in Germany. In 1947, the Unitd States then put into play the Marshall Plan, which was a program of substantial loans which were designed to aid the western nations to rebuild from the wars major divisions. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed in 1949 and grouped many of the Western powers and Canada in a defense alliance against the Soviet Union. In response, the Soviet Union organized the Warsaw Pact while establishing its own nuclear capability.
 * Why did European governments move towards Liberal Democracies?
 * European governments moved towards Liberal Democracies, because new regimes would have to be constructed in Germany after the defeats of both Germany and Italy in World War II and the destroying of the fascist and Nazi leadership. Many of these nations, wanted to be able to govern and control themselves, after being freed from the harsh dictatorships of leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.
 * What was the welfare state? Why did they develop? what were the issues?
 * The welfare state, was a period of new activism in politics and the economy. Resistence ideas helped to explain the new activism of the state in ecnomic and welfare issues. One of the major reasons for their development to create programs to reduce the impact of economic inequality and to reward the lower classes for their loyalties. The two major governments which emerged were Britains Labour Party and the Communist-Socialist-Christian democratic coalitions. Welfare states elaborated social insurance measures. Unemployment insurance was improved. Medical care was now being supported by state-funded insurance and the basic health care system was nationalized.
 * Trace growing diplomatic relationships within Europe
 * Campus unrest became a westernwide phenomenon in the 1960's. Major American universities focused on the nation's developments within the Vietnam War. Many resistance leaders tempered their hatred of Naziam with a plea for the reconstruction of European spirit. By 1947 U.S. leaderss were eaager to spur Western Europeans economic recofery across the national boundaries. France initiated coordination woth Germany as a means of setting up a new Europe. Nations of the low countries and Italy soon became linked to these activites. European nation- united to create a single economic entity across national political boundaries. Tariffs were reduced among member nations and a common tarrif policy was set for the outside world.
 * Outline economic development in Europe
 * Welfare states and the European Union may have encouraged economic growth by improving purchasing poer for the masses and facilitating market expansion across national boundaries. By the mid 1950-s - Western Europe had entered a new economic phase. Agricultural production and productivity rates increased. Expensive consumer products such as the automobiles and appliances supported rapid growth in factories.Immigration statistics had begun to increase.
 * Outline the post war development of the non-European West (Excluding the United States)
 * Canada pushed away the welfare policies after World War II. Canada's economic integration with the U.S continued making investments on Canadian exports and resources. By 1980, Canada took measures to limit U.S. penetration causing nationalism to arise in the 190's/ From 1945 onward Australia and New Zealand moved steadul away from their alliance and alignment with Great Britain to join forces and a mutual defense pactwitht the United States in 1951. In 1966, Australian prmie minister declared that the were to fully ally themselves to the United States.
 * Explain the growing role of the United States in world affairs
 * The United States entered a period of intense frenzied concern about communist copnspiracies, ferreting out a host of suspected spies and subjecting people in many fields to dismissal from their jobs on grounds of suspected radical sympathies. The Defense Department was set up in the United States in 1947 to coordinate military policy and the Central Alliance Agency was established to organize World Wide information-gathering and espiangfe network. Military spending increased from about 13.5 billion to $50 billion. The U.S. Air force began bombing communist North Vietnam in 1965. They (U.S.) were spending abput $2 billion a week on a war that never produced an kinds of success.
 * Trace developments for women in the post war West
 * World War II brought increased factory and clerical jobs for women. From the early 1950's, the number of women particularly married women rose steadily in Western Europe, the United States, and Canada. 44% of the total labor force of the Western countries were represented in the employment of adult women. While women lacked the right to vote before in France they were soon able to following the years of the war. Access to divorce increased development of new birth control methods such as the contracepture intro to the pill which was formally introduced in 1960. Sex and procreatiuon became seperate considerations. A new feminism began to take shape with the publication of the Second Sex in 1949.
 * Outline cultural developments in Europe.
 * A shift of focus towards the United States began to occur. As U.S universities expanded they were found to be more influenced by science and prominent individuals. Made new developments in art. The greatest schock to most was the new found appreciation of earlier innovations which were usually displayed in museums and retained clearer advantages in artistic films. Fragmentatiion in the Social Structure however did occuer.