World Wars

Question 1

Summarise 1914-1945 in regards to Change

Answer 1

- A time of huge political,
  ideological, and technological change
- Major implications exist for out
  world in modern day
* Political Change
* Ideological Change
* Technological change

Question 2

What was the political change which occurred between 1914-1945?

Answer 2

• The end of an era of empires
• The end of Europe as the centre of
  global affairs in the way it had been
  since the 15th Century
• WWI helped trigger American and
  Soviet focus on domestic affairs
  while WWII brought both countries
  into the heart of Europe
• Witnesses consequences of ideas of
  Social Darwinism - a racist
  distortion of Charles Darwin’s theoty
  of natural selection to states and
  people
• The beginning of Political Science
  and International Relations as
  disciplines

Question 3

What was the ideological change which occurred between 1914-1945?

Answer 3

• 1917 bolshevik revolution in Russia
• 1930s US isolationism
• International coordination and
  cooperation from the creation of the
  League of Nations (1920) and the
  Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) to the
  United Nations (1945)
• The development and use of the
  strategy of total war
• Consequences of Social Darwinims
• The ideological and physical
  dismantling of the European empires

Question 4

What was the technological change which occurred between 1914-1945?

Answer 4

- Technological change centred on
  military incentives that had huge
  civilian implications
- Transportation revolution - air, land
  and water
    - Air - from the first flight in
      1903 to the Red Baron’s successes
      in WWI to the Boeing B-29
      Super-fortress of WWII
    - Land- tanks, machine guns, super
      guns in WWI and logistics,
      communications and intelligence,
      medicine, and industrial
      production in WWII
    - The use of total war
    - Harnessing of atomic energy

Question 5

Who were the major European powers in 1914?

Answer 5

• Triple Enetente

* Triple Alliance

Question 6

What was the Triple Enetente?

Answer 6

• Britain
  
  • Constitutional monarchy
  • King George V (1910 - 1936)
• France
  
  • Parliamentary monarchy
  • Pres. Raymond Poincaire
• Russia
  
  • Monarchy
  • Tsar Nicholas II (1894 - 1917)

Question 7

What was the Triple Alliance?

Answer 7

• Germany
  
  • Constitutional monarchy
  • Kaiser Wilhelm (1888 - 1918)
• Austria-Hungary
  
  • Constitutional monarchy
  • Kaiser Franz Joseph (1848 - 1916)
• Italy
  
  • Constitutional monarchy
  • King Victor Emmanuel III (1900 -
    1946)

Question 8

What are the Individual level explanations for WWI?

Answer 8

• Anachronistic leaders (e.g. Kaiser
  Wilhelm) or the death of stabilising
  leaders (Otto von Bismarck)
• Bosnian Serb assassin Gavrilo Princip

Question 9

What are the unit/state level explanations for WWI?

Answer 9

• Aggressive and militarising states
• Nationalism
• Domestic politics
• German Realpolitik
• Germany’s unification and economic
  growth

Question 10

What are the global/system level explanations for WWI?

Answer 10

- Changing distribution of European
  power
- Tech change
- Shifting alliances
- Relative peace but diplomatic
  challenges in previous decades

Question 11

What initiated WWI?

Answer 11

28 June 1914 - Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo

Question 12

What happened between 1918 and 1919?

Answer 12

* January 1918 - Woodrow Wilson
  outlines his 14 points as moral aims
  for US fighting in WWI
                    - 14th point led to League of Nations being founded
- November 1918 - Kaiser Wilhelm
  abdicated
* January 1919 - Paris Peace
  Conference, which leads to the Treaty
  of Versailles (28 June 1919)

Question 13

What was the Treaty of Versailles?

Answer 13

• (28 June 1919)
• French and British population wanted
  hard settlement - wanted to punish
• Germany, Austraia and Turkey lost all
  of their colonies
• German army limited to 100,000
• Austria-Hungary broken up into 6
  countries
  
  • Creation of Czechoslovakia and
    Yugoslavia
• Harsh reparations
• War guilt clause

Question 14

What is the current consensus about the Treaty of Versailles?

Answer 14

Current consensus was that the peace failed to address longterm problems of European security and created new grievances

Question 15

What important events happened in the Interwar period?

Answer 15

- A time of both high hopes and dashed
  expectations
- A time of protectionism, autarky and
  eventual appeasement (Chamberlin)
- 1929-1939 - Great Depression
- 1931 - Japan invades Manchuria
- 1933 (January) - Hitler appointed
  German Chancellor
- 1935 - Italian invasion of Abyssinia
  in 1935
- 1936-1939 Substantial German
  involvement in Spanish Civil War

Question 16

What are the Individual level explanations for WWII?

Answer 16

• Experience of leaders (Hitler,
  Chamberlain)
• Hitler’s ideology and desires to
  right wrongs from Versailles

Question 17

What are the unit/state level explanations for WWI?

Answer 17

- Internal challenges including
  economic hardship
- German, Italian and Japanese
  dissatisfaction with outcome of WWI
- Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1
  September 1939

Question 18

What are the global/system level explanations for WWI?

Answer 18

• Global economic collapse of 1930s
• Multipolar distribution of power
• Germany’s rapid economic and military
  power (1936-1939) destabilised
  European balance of power
• Global divisions along ideological
  lines (e.g. Nazism, fascism,
  communism, capitalism)