Instituto Superior de Formación Docente y Técnica Nº 81

Profesorado de Inglés
Lengua y Cultura II – The West between the Wars

PART A: THE WEST BETWEEN THE WARS

A.1. THE FUTILE SEARCH FOR STABILITY
Task 1: Define the key following key terms:
DEPRESSION COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
Task 2: The Great Depression. Complete the chart below. Identify two causes and three political effects of
the Great Depression.

Task 3: Answer
1) Why was the League of Nations not very effective in maintaining peace?
2) How did the crash of the U.S. stock market affect Germany and other European countries?
3) What was the New Deal?
A.2. THE RISE OF DICTATORIAL REGIMES
Task 4: Define the key terms below.
TOTALITARIAN STATE FASCISM NEW ECONOMIC POLICY POLITBURO
COMMUNIST PARTY COLLECTIVIZATION
Task 5: Complete the chart below listing the dictator who took control in each of these contries following
World war I and describe how each dictator came to power.

COUNTRY DICTATOR HOW HE CAME TO POWER

ITALY

SOVIET UNION

SPAIN

Task 6: Answer
1) What is a totalitarian state?
2) What is Fascism?
3) What economic changes were made during the Stalinist Era?
A.3. HITLER AND NAZI GERMANY
 Instituto Superior de Formación Docente y Técnica Nº 81
Profesorado de Inglés
Lengua y Cultura II – The West between the Wars

Task 7: Use the chart below to summarize the policies and activities of Hitler and the Nazi Party as they
relate to the subjects or groups in this chart.

NAZI POLICIES AND ACTIVITIES

TERROR

ECONOMY

SPECTACLES /
ORGANIZATIONS

WOMEN

JEWS

Task 8: Answer:
1) What were some of the ideas expressed by Hitler in Mein Kampf?
2) How did the Great Depression contribute to the rise of Nazism in Germany?
3) What did the Nazi mean when they use the term Aryan?
4) How were radio and the movies used for political purposes in Nazi Germany?
5) How did the Nazis use leisure activities to control people?
6) What scientific fact was the foundation for the uncertainty principle?

PART B: NATIONALISM AROUND THE WORLD

B.1. NATIONALISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Task 9: Read the texts below and use the diagram to help you take notes. Trace the loss of territories that
gradually reduced the Ottoman Empire to the area of present-day Turkey.
Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire had been growing weaker since the end of the eighteenth century. Its size had
decreased dramatically. In North Africa, Ottoman rule had ended in the nineteenth century when
France seized Algeria and
Tunisia and Great Britain took control of Egypt. Greece also declared its independence in the
nineteenth century.
In 1876, reformers took control of the empire’s government. They adopted a constitution with the goal
of forming a legislative assembly. But the sultan they put on the throne, Abdulhamid II, suspended the
new constitution. The
constitution became a symbol of change to a group of reformers named the Young Turks. This group
forced the restoration of the constitution in 1908. They deposed the sultan in 1909. The Ottoman
Empire came to an end during World War I. The Ottoman government allied with Germany. As a result,
the British tried to undermine the Ottoman Empire by supporting Arab nationalists in the Arabian
Peninsula. In 1916, the local governor of Makkah declared Arabia’s independence. British troops seized
Palestine. During the war, the Ottoman Turks practiced genocide—the deliberate mass murder of a
particular racial, political, or cultural group. (A similar practice would be called ethnic cleansing in the
Bosnian War of 1993 to 1996.) The Christian Armenians were a minority in the Ottoman Empire. They
had been demanding their independence for years. In 1915, the government reacted to an Armenian
uprising by killing Armenian men and deporting women and children. By 1918, 1.4 million Armenians
had been killed. At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Great Britain and France
divided up territories in the Middle East. Greece invaded Turkey and seized western parts of the
 Instituto Superior de Formación Docente y Técnica Nº 81
Profesorado de Inglés
Lengua y Cultura II – The West between the Wars

Anatolian Peninsula. As a result of this invasion, Colonel Mustafa Kemal called for the creation of an
elected government. His forces drove the Greeks from the Anatolian Peninsula. The Ottoman sultans
fled the country, which was now declared to be the Turkish Republic. .Colonel Kemal became president.

Ottoman Empire TURKEY

1. Africa

2. Europe 3. Middle East

Task 9: Read the texts below and answer the questions.

The Beginnings of Modern Iran
In Persia, the Qajar dynasty (1794–1925) had not been very successful in resolving the country’s problems. The discovery of oil in
the country in 1908 attracted foreign interest. The presence of more and more foreigners led to the
rise of a Persian nationalist movement. In 1921, Reza Khan led a military uprising that took control of Tehran, the capital. In 1925,
Reza Khan made himself the shah (king) and was called Reza Shah Pahlavi. He introduced a
number of reforms to modernize the government, the military, and the economic system. He did not try to destroy Islamic beliefs,
but he did encourage a Western-style educational system. He also forbade women to wear the veil
in public. Persia became the modern state of Iran in 1935. To free himself from Great Britain and the Soviet Union, Reza Shah
Pahlavi drew closer to Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union and Great Britain sent troops to Iran during
World War II. Reza Shah Pahlavi resigned in protest and was replaced by his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Arab Nationalism
World War I gave Arabs the chance to escape from Ottoman rule. The Arabs were not an actual nation, but a collection of peoples
united by language and religion. Great Britain had supported Arab nationalists in 1916. The nationalists
hoped that this support would continue after the war. Instead, France and Britain created mandates in the area. These mandates
were territories that had previously been part of the Ottoman Empire but were now supervised by the
League of Nations. Great Britain was given the right to govern Iraq, Palestine, and Jordan. France governed Syria and Lebanon.
In most of these nations, the Europeans determined the borders and divided the peoples. In most cases, the
people in each country did not identify strongly with their country. But they continued to have a sense of Arab nationalism. In the
early 1920s, a reform leader, Ibn Saud, united Arabs in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Ibn Saud had a great deal of
support. He created the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. (The word Saudi comes from his name.) At first, Saudi Arabia was very
poor. Muslim pilgrimages to Makkah and Madinah were its main source of income. During the 1930s, however, U.S prospectors
began to explore for oil. Standard Oil found oil at Dhahran on the
Persian Gulf in 1938. Saudi Arabia was flooded with Western oil industries that brought the promise of wealth.
The Problem of Palestine
The situation in Palestine made problems in the Middle East more complicated. Both Jews and Muslim Arabs felt they had a claim
to the region as their homeland. Jews had lived there in ancient times, but in the first century A.D.
they were forced into exile. As a result, Muslim Arabs made up the majority of the population, although many Jews continued to
live there. In the 1890s, a Zionist movement argued that Palestine should be established as a Jewish
state. Then during World War I, the British issued the Balfour Declaration. It supported the idea that Palestine should be a national
home for the Jews, but it also said that the rights of the non-Jewish population should be protected.
The Balfour Declaration drew many Jews to Palestine. In the 1930s, many Jews also fled to Palestine because of Nazi
persecution and violence against them. Muslim Arabs began to protest the growing number of Jews, and there
were several outbreaks of violence. In 1939, the British responded by allowing only 75,000 Jewish immigrants into Palestine over
the next five years. After that, no more Jews could enter the country. This policy intensified the tension
and increased bloodshed in the region.

1. Who determined the borders of most of the nations in the Middle East following World War I?
2. What was the situation in Iran? What were some of the changes that Reza Shah Pahlavi made in
Persia?
3. What was the Balfour Declaration? What were some of its results?
 Instituto Superior de Formación Docente y Técnica Nº 81
Profesorado de Inglés
Lengua y Cultura II – The West between the Wars

B.2. NATIONALISM IN AFRICA AND ASIA

Task 10: Define the key terms below
PAN-AFRICANISM MAHATMA CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ZAIBATSU

Task 11: Leaders of reform and independence movements in parts of Africa and Asia used various methods
to protest colonial rule. Identify the countries of the following leaders and summarize the mthods that they
used.
Leader Country Method of Protest

Harry Thuku

Omar Mukhtar

Nnamdi Azikiwe

Mohandas Gandhi

Ho Chi Minh

B.3. REVOLUTIONARY CHAOS IN CHINA

Task 12: Chiang Kai-shek established a Nationalist government over China in 1928. Summarize the
programs and projects of Chiang Kai-shek as they relate to the areas in this diagram.

VALUES

GOVERNMENT TRANSPORTATION

Programs and
projects of
Chiang Kai-shek

EDUCATION ECONOMY

B.4. NATIONALISM IN LATIN AMERICA

Task 12: Instability caused by the Great Depression led to the creation of many military dictatorships in Latin
America in the 1930s. Describe the governments in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico during the 1930s.
Country Government in the 1930s
Argentina
Brazil
Mexico
Instituto Superior de Formación Docente y Técnica Nº 81
Profesorado de Inglés
Lengua y Cultura II – The West between the Wars