UNIT 1 NOTES

MEXICAN REVOLUTION

I. Mexican War for Independence and Aftermath 1810-21

A. Spain controls the middle portion of the Western Hemisphere (Portugal controls the westernmost
portion) from 1520 and three centuries onwards. Spain rules for God, Gold, and Glory not to
settle.
B. The Spanish control weakens, which leads to the 19th Century independence movement in Mexico
(1810-1821).
C. Mexico achieves independence in 1821. They
a. Expel the Spaniards, who took all of their wealth with them. Mexico is now absolutely broke.
b. Are left with many mining operations left by the Spaniards, which have now fallen into
disrepair. The mines take too much time and money to repair.
c. Have no infrastructure, because Spain never planned to colonize Mexico.
d. Are at a 30% unemployment rate (which varies by region) (for able adult males). There is no
government to support them, either.
e. Have a surplus of peasant labor (also contributing to unemployment).
f. Are filled with a strong anti-foreign (specifically anti-European)attitude, even though they
needed the help.
g. They turn to the U.S. even though it is an exploitive relationship, in the U.S. they employ
many of the unemployed, living in extreme fear
II. Reign of the Caudillos (1821-60)
A. A caudillo is a political boss or regional warlord. They came to power because of the loyalty of the
military. When the war for independence was over, the militia remained in power. L
a. Unified under Defeat the Spaniards, but after they were able to rid of the Spaniards, the
caudillos were fighting for reign/power.
b. There were about 50 presidencies during 1821-1860, mainly caudillos
1. Antonio Lopez De Santa Anna was a notable president. He was elected 9 separate times.
(want $, no attempt at government)
B. Societal Structure:
a. Landed Creole upper class who had land and focused on a more agrarian economy (who the
Caudillos exploit; Creoles: Of mixed European descent)
b. The NEW politically active business class (business/shop owners/professionals)
c. Classic peasantry (The majority-Campesinos: Camp workers, Mezitos: Of mixed Spanish and
Indian descent)
C. Church Power
a. The Spaniards originally converted Latin America to the Catholic church.
1. There was no separation of church and state.
2. The church controlled over half of Mexicos land.
3. Owned the land and acted as landlords (high income from rent/investments)
4. The church was Mexicos largest banking operation, making the church rich.
5. They had very close ties with the upper class.
b. In the 19th century, there was some dissatisfaction with church leaders (they were known for
exploitation), but the people had so much respect for their authorities and spiritual advisors
that they never questioned them.
c. Caudillos worked hand-in-hand with the church.
D. Foreign Influence (i.e. North America)
a. Mexico controlled the Southwest portion of the current U.S., but the U.S. was looking to
expand west (Manifest Destiny (1840s)).

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 1. The portions of land that Mexico owned in the west were not settled, except for missions
(since the Spaniards only wanted gold and to convert natives).
2. Caudillos wanted to make money off of this land.
3. Zachary Taylor believed in manifest destiny
4. also didnt see native americans as worthy of land
E. Mexico encouraged Texico, since they could tax farms (this was Santa Annas idea), it served as
a buffer state between Mexico and the USA, and the Texicans enjoyed it because it was a good
opportunity for slave owners.
i. Steve F. Austin (as in Austin, Texas) was the first settler in 1821.
2. Taxpayers became discontent, because they were paying taxes to Mexico but getting
nothing in return (compare that to paying your taxes but the government not using it in the
betterment of the community).
3. they request to be annexed, Santa Anna says no (want rights protection, free trade, etc)
leads to the battle of the Alamo
4. In 1836, the settlers declared independence (The Alamo) and became the Independent
Republic of Texas.
i. Santa Anna defeated them at the Alamo but eventually lost to Sam Houston in the
battle of San Jacinto, becoming the independent Lone Star Republic.
ii. The Texicans requested to be added as a state so the US government could protect
them from Mexican invasion. They were annexed in 1845.
F. 1846-48: Mexican-American War (or, as its known in Mexico, the War of the North American
Invasion)
a. James K. Polk, the US President, was an expansionist.
b. He claimed the Rio Grande river was the border between the USA and Mexico, and stationed
troops there.
c. Mexico disagreed with this border, as the correct border was the Nueces River, and saw this an
invasion, and thus attacked.
1. The US media made it look like Mexico started it.
d. The war ended when Winfield Scott and the Boy Heroes of Chapultapec took Mexico City
and accepted the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago (1848)
i. This treaty gave the US a lot of land: The US grew by 1/3 and Mexico gave up half
their land. It contributed to the amount of resources and coastlines that the US had.
ii. Treaty rose many economic and political consequences
iii. Leads to Yankee-Phobia in Mexico
III. La Reforma: Reform and Restoration 1855-57
A. Mexico struggled to get back on its feet after the Mexican-American War
a. Mexico was left with humiliation, continued economic collapse, prolonged political
uncertainty, the fear of Europe and now the US.
b. 1840 until the early 1850s
B. (1854) The Gadsden Purchase was negotiated by Santa Anna, a 30,000 sq. mi. and $10m amount
of land purchased from Mexico by the United States.
a. Santa Ana needed the money for himself (to pay for (fact check me: to fill his coffers )
and for Mexico
b. The U.S. needed the land to complete their transcontinental railroad, since the Gadsden
Purchase land went through desert, and without it they would have to build through a
mountain range (The US wanted an easier way to facilitate trade).
c. This made Mexicans furious, since there was such a strong anti-US sentiment and they had
already lost half of their land. They oust Santa Ana from his presidency.
C. This led to a civilian-led government from 1855-1858. They
a. Abolished Fueros (ecclesiastical exemptions from trials)
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 b. Abolished private property/property owned by the church and state unless it was being used in
day-to-day functions (this eliminated the common occurrence of owning land strictly to tax.)
c. Transferred the handling of civil functions from the church to the state (such as the registry of
birth, marriage and death certificates) *This marked the beginning of church and state
separation in Mexico.
d. Created the first constitution (1857) with a full Bill of Rights
1. Reaction: Swift. Elite and military essentially engaged in toppling civilian led government
IV. Wars of Reform 1858-61
A. Benito Juarez (a civilian leader, formally elected as president in 1861) was still trying to enact
laws of reform
a. He officially separated church and state, but nobody really complied and then stuff went down
and it was forgotten.
b. Because of the recent overthrow of the government, he refused to pay off a foreign loan to
France (odious debt)
B. In 1864, Napoleon III (France) invaded to take back debts by force or to take enough resources
that amounts to the debt
a. The US didnt notice because they were occupied in their own Civil War.
b. Napoleon III put the Hapsburg Intervention (1864-1867) into place:
1. Ferdinand Maximilian von Hapsburg was placed as the emperor of Mexico (Napoleon III
was married to his daughter and wanted to place someone he knew/trusted)
2. Had good intentions:
i. He tried to unite the nation (since the North and South and peasants and wealthy were
so separate)
ii. He toured the country
iii. He freed the press and many political prisoners
C. Benito Juarez defeated the French forces on Cinco de Mayo (1862)
a. Ferdinand (Maximilian I) surrendered and was executed.
b. Benito Juarez was elected as president again in 1867 and continued education and economic
reforms. He was elected again in 1871.
1. He defeated Porfirio Diaz in 1871, who pointed out the problem of indefinite reelection
and how it wasnt democratic. (hypocrite omg (seriously lame))
c. Juarez died of a heart attack in 1872 and was succeeded by his Vice President (Sebastian
Lerdo de Tejada) who finished the term until 1876 and ran again, but lost.
D. Porfirio Diaz was elected in 1876.
V. The Porfiriato: The Porfirio Diaz Regime (1876-1911)
A. He came to power after a rigged election, using violence and intimidation, however no one really
ran against him either.
a. He ruled Mexico on and off for 35 years, which is ironic, since he complained about infinite
reelection while Juarez was in power.
1. Porfirio took many long-term causes and heightened them, which led to the revolution
later.
B. He believed in stability, and believed that it would only come from economic growth and
healthy repression
a. He used guardias rurales (the rural guard), his own paramilitary police force, to sustain
healthy repression. They used violence and brutality. (Similar to Nazi Storm Troopers)
b. He created a broad coalition of elites to help him run the country, which he named
cientifcos.
1. These cientifcos created all policies. They were businessmen and political and military
leaders. (wealthy, educated, powerful)
2. This created a kind of oligarchy.
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 c. He was seen to many as grandfatherly
1. He created economic stability, infrastructure, and economic growth.
d. He wanted to make Mexico more modern and European. In fact racism was an issue in Mexico
because they looked down or became angry with the indigenous people who held them back
e. His motto: Order and Progress.
f. Terrenos Baldios: Land open for foreign investment and private exploitation
g. He took the unused lands that were seized from the church and gave them to foreigners. This
severely hurt the agricultural workers (because for them, land = life), but the United States
loved him.
h. Porfirio Diaz believed in an ideal called positivism. Positivism was fathered by Auguste
Compte, a French philosopher who believed that all civilized societies had three major phases:
1. Religious/Theological: ignorant and focussed on the church
2. Metaphysical: From enlightenment, belief that humans have a mind and brain and they can
ultimately govern themselves with a governing system
3. Scientific/ Philosophy: The brightest, los scientificos. They made the decisions, deals, to
do what was best for Mexico
C. By 1908, the US controlled 75% of Mexicos mining operations.
D. By 1913, Mexico owned over $2 billion in foreign investment. Over 50% of this was from the
United States alone.
E. In 1880, there were 750 miles of railroads TOTAL in Mexico. By 1900, there were over 12,000
miles of tracks.
a. In 1907, the state took control of the railroads (which used to be controlled by the United
States).
b. Railroads brought life, economy, products, goods, services, low taxes, and good investment.
c. This helped improve the infrastructure and political stability in Mexico, but unemployment
and wage/income disparity remained a huge issue.
F. From 1895 onwards, Mexico thrived! They experienced
1. A budget surplus every year
2. Balanced budgets:
3. Economic activity, it was not a one-horse economy-they had various industries
4. Diverse economic development
5. Growing and strong entrepreneur class
6. Stable banking system
7. Strong currency
8. Functioning taxes
b. However, Mexico still dealt with a labor surplus, low wages, inadequate agricultural
production (it was just an export, so peasants were starving), high infant mortality rates, and
illiteracy.
1. 1% of the population controlled 85% of the wealth (class warfare). They had 900 large
landowners (hacendados), and a total population of 15 million (about 9 million
peasants).
VI. The Election of 1910
A. Francisco Madero planned to run as Porfirio Diazs vice president (used strong arm tactics). The
cientifcos, however, were already planning who would succeed Diaz.
1. Madero was a rich landowner. Milk Toast
i. He was basically a spineless softy
b. Diaz snubbed Madero, and in response, Madero ran against him in a new party, the anti-
reelectionist party.
c. They lost, however, mainly because Diaz threw Madero and his supporters in jail before they
could really do anything.
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B. While in jail, Madero wrote his Plan de San Luis Potosi. He published it from Texas in November
1910. His ideals were as follows
1. The ultimate destruction of Diazs authoritarian regime
2. Madero will become the provisional president until elections can be held
3. Mexico will return to democracy, by violence if necessary.
b. It is important to note that this was NOT a revolution based on land reform.
C. Resistance grows and the Maderistas are formed. Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and Pascual
Orozco support him.
D. When fighting breaks out, Madero tells the generals to pull back for fear of bullets crossing the
border and enraging the US. Pancho Villa and other military generals (Pascual Orozco) ignore him
and go on anyways. (^This is at the battle at the border city of Juarez)
E. In May 1911, Maderos forces force Diaz to resign and be sent into exile. In June of the same year,
Madero triumphantly enters Mexico City and takes office.
F. The support of Zapatas begins to fail because Madero resists Zapatas request for land reform.
G. In November 1911, Zapata created the Plan de Ayala, which called for
1. Maderos rule must come to an end
2. Conformation of the agrarian nation
3. Haciendas to be seized, and foreign-held lands will be returned to the people.
4. Call for free elections
5. Pascual Orozco will be the temporary leader until elections can be held (Zapata never
wanted to become leader).
b. Zapata began a violent campaign to seize lands and return them to the peasants.
1. He used female soldiers (soldaderas) in combat
2. Madero sent Victoriano Huerta (a military general) to stop Zapata, and they had a very
violent exchange.
3. Rallying cry: reform, freedom, justice, and law (reforma, libertad, justicia y ley), and
later just land and freedom (tierra y libertad)
H. (1913) The Embassy Pact was then created by Bernardo Reyes, Felix Diaz, Henry Lane Wilson,
and Victoriano Huerta. Its goals were.
1. Eliminate Madero
2. Huerta will take control
i. Huerta is known for protecting US business interests, so they were all for this.
b. In February 1913, Madero is assassinated after the Ten Tragic Days (La Decena Tragica)
1. During the Ten Tragic Days, the military seized Mexico City in a military coup.
2. Many Madero supporters were killed as well. There was fighting in the streets.
I. In 1912, Woodrow Wilson is elected president after the Republican vote was split between
Roosevelt and Taft.
a. Wilson was a stubborn idealist.
b. He supported Pancho Villa, and did not associate with Huerta, because he believed in stable
government and a diplomatic presidency.
J. War of the Factions
a. These men turned on Huerta:
1. Pancho Villa
i. The only one of these men to not have a revolutionary plan, but he did authorize the
seizure of all haciendas and lands owned by the government so that he could fund his
military.
ii. From the Northern state of Chihuahua, he became their Governor later on, and had one
of the largest and most well organized army in all of Mexico
2. Venustiano Carranza
i. From Coahuila
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 ii. He originally supported Madero, but eventually joined with Reyes.
iii. Carranza was first chief of the constitutional army when Madero was assassinated.
3. Emiliano Zapata
Zapata was from the South and was always for the poor agrarian workers, and for
the restoration of the ejidos, or the foreign held lands that he wanted to return to the
old families.
b. Venustiano Carranza created the Plan de Guadalupe (March 1913), which declared
1. The end of Huerta
2. The power of the Huertas federalization is illegitimate
3. Local authorities that recognize Huertas federalization are illegitimate
4. Carranza will remain the first chief of the Constitutional Army
5. When the army takes Mexico City, Carranza will be the interim president
6. Mexico will then hold elections
7. The chief of the constitutional army will seize rogue states
K. U.S. Intervention
a. In 1914, Woodrow Wilson sent troops to occupy Veracruz. This led to the Tampico
Affair/USS Dolphin.
1. US gunboats were parked off the coast of Mexico to protect citizens and products.
2. In April 1914, the USS Dolphin navigated up a river into Tampico. There was fighting
going on in the streets on either side of the river.
3. Every time the ship passed by a Mexican flag, it shot a 21 gun salute (to honor the defeat
of the French, a.k.a. Cinco de Mayo).
4. 9 sailors were sent into the city to pick up fuel.
5. As they were there, Huertas troops confronted them. Because there was no translator,
there was a misunderstanding and the Americans were imprisoned for a couple of hours.
6. Admiral Mayo, the commander of the USS Dolphin, was extremely offended and wired
Washington DC.
7. Woodrow Wilson sent in a regiment and demanded that the city raise the US flag and give
them a 21 gun salute, as an apology.
8. Huerta, of course, refused, and Wilson authorized a U.S. invasion.
i. Woodrow Wilson was not really in full support of Huerta anyway, so this could have
come at any point.
9. The U.S. placed an embargo on Mexico in order to destabilize Huertas regime. (consisted
of an embargo on arms and fuel)
b. Invasion of Veracruz
1. At one point, a German ship (Ypringa) tried to enter Veracruz with supplies, and the U.S.
tried to stop them.
i. It was later discovered that a U.S. manufacturer had shipped arms to Germany to be
sent to Mexico.
Mexico was not allowed to buy arms from the US
2. The U.S. invaded Veracruz in attempt to stop them. Woodrow Wilson expected Carranza,
Villa, Zapata, and Obregon to appreciate it...surprise surprise, they didnt. At all.
3. It did, however, destabilize Huertas regime, because he had to divert his forces into
smaller regiments to stop the U.S. along with other conflicts
4. The ABC countries (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile) were also affected by this invasion.
They stepped in to help stop the crisis. If America was able to make it past Mexico, that
means that they would most likely go into Latin America (which they do later in the Cold
War (?)) which is why they intervened.
5. Eventually, a deal is negotiated: The U.S. will leave if Huerta resigns and is exiled. After a
small bout of resistance, Huerta complies in July 1914.
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 i. Hes later found in New York City, conspiring with some Germans about renewing his
military coup.
ii. He was captured and brought to a prison in Texas. (Fort Bliss)
iii. After he was released on house arrest, he was captured again and brought back to
prison and died (probably killed) in January 1916.
L. Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Alvaro Obregon, and Venustiano Carranza met in
Aguascalientes(October 1914) to hopefully end the revolution and work out a suitable settlement.
It failed, and they split into two factions.
a. Villa and Zapata became the head of the Revolutionaries.
1. They met after Aguascalientes to divide their military power. Villa is chosen as the
military leader.
2. Together, they controlled about two-thirds of Mexico.
i. Mostly agricultural land
b. Obregon and Carranza became the head of the Constitutionalists.
1. They control only one-third of Mexico, but they have most of the ports and important
cities, power-based Mexico.
2. Carranza created a few labor laws to bring more agricultural workers and laborers to the
Constitutionalist side. He...
i. Restores the ejidos (ancestral lands) to their rightful owners
ii. Creates a national agrarian commission
iii. Restores legal titles
iv. Offers more favorable labor laws to the growing labor movements
The Red Battalion is a notable semi-Marxist labor union.
c. In 1915, Villa and the Revolutionaries attack the Constitutionalists, but are beaten by Obregon.
1. The U.S. allowed the Constitutionalists to outflank the Revolutionaries by crossing through
U.S. territory.
i. Villa lost his support from the U.S. in 1914. There are many reasons why, culminating
in his disgust with the Veracruz invasion.
2. In retaliation, Villa crossed the border in Columbus, New Mexico and basically burned the
town to the ground. Men, women, and children were killed.
i. In response to the Columbus incident, Woodrow Wilson sends John Blackjack
Pershing into Mexico on the Punitive Expedition.
Punitive means punishing.
ii. Pershing was basically told to find and kill Villa. They chased him all around the
Chihuahuan deserts, but Villa was much more familiar with the terrain and was never
found. Pershing eventually had to return to the U.S. so the military could be deployed
to WWI.
d. With Villa on the run (and basically defeated), the Zapatistas were confined to the southwest.
1. They were not prepared to deal with a modern army, as they were mostly farmers. Some of
them had guns but they fought with whatever they had.
M. In 1916, Carranza called for a constitutional convention. Debate begins, and he formally assumed
the presidency in 1917. His first move was to create a new, reformed, more liberal constitution
(the Mexican Constitution of 1917).
a. The Mexican constitution is longer than the U.S. constitution
b. There are four major articles that were distinctly different from the constitution of 1857.
1. Article 3: Educational Reform
i. Free public education
ii. Compulsory elementary education
iii. Education will be secular (free from Church or political involvement).

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 The church controlled all education until the 1850s, when the civilian-led
government came into place. This is the first time it was strictly enforced, though.
2. Article 27: Land Reform
i. All ejidos will be restored to their rightful owners.
ii. All of Mexico and all resources within it belong to Mexico.
This freaked foreign entities out, because they owned property and equipment in
Mexico. If Mexico were to take their property, that would mean they lose their
property without being paid for what they built on that land.
3. Article 123: Labor Reform
i. 8 hour work day
ii. Prohibition of child labor
iii. Equal pay for equal work
iv. Wages must be paid in legal tender
Before they were paid in whatever others had i.e. chickens
v. Labor unions have the right to collectively bargain and to strike.
vi. maternity leave
vii. for every 6 days of work you are required to have 1 rest day.
4. Article 130: Church Reform/Restrictions
i. The state cannot establish an official religion.
ii. Marriage is a civil contract, and does not have to do with the church.
iii. Church ministers must be Mexican-born.
iv. Property ownership by the church is restricted.
N. There were 1.5-2 million casualties during the Mexican Revolution (out of a population of 15
million).
VII. Culmination of the Reform Phase
A. In 1917, Carranza accepted the presidency, and Obregon, having changed his mind about
Carranza, apparently, resigned.
B. In April 1919, Carranza killed Zapata.
a. Colonel Jesus Guajardo was caught drunk in a bar, seen as a disgrace, and thrown in military
prison. General Pablo Gonzalez came up with a plan to destroy Zapata, involving Guajardo.
He told Guajardo he has two options: either to be disgraced or to pretend to defect to the
Zapatistas. Guajardo chose the latter, and even attacked some of his own troops to convince
Zapata that he really was defecting. Zapata met Guajardo, but as he entered the grounds, he
was met by soldiers. Instead of saluting him, they executed him.
C. Also in 1920, Carranza tried to appoint his own successor (Ignacio Bonillas). Obregon opposed
this vehemently.
a. Obregon then created the Plan de Agua Prieta (Apr. 1920). It had two points:
1. Carranzas presidency must come to an end.
2. We must reject certain state governments.
b. In May of 1920, Carranza attempted to flee (taking a lot of money with him) as Obregons
troops closed in. He was either caught and killed or committed suicide as he was surrounded.
D. In 1923, the U.S. formally recognized Obregons regime, on the condition that he agreed to the
Bucarelli Treaty. (He agreed.)
a. The Bucarelli Treaty stated that Article 27 is not retroactive, and is only applicable from now
onwards (therefore they cant kick the U.S. companies off their soil).
E. Also in 1923, Pancho Villa was finally caught and assassinated by Obregon.
F. Obregon then endorsed Plutarco Elias Calles as his successor.
a. The only opposition to this was Aldofo de la Huerta, Obregons military leader. He tried to
start a rebellion bugt was brutally crushed.
VIII. Reform Phase (1920-40)
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 A. Plutarco Calles is elected in 1924. His reign has two phases:
a. The Populist Phase (1924-26)
1. Calles is a benevolent, democratic president.
2. He continues reforming land, labor, and education laws, etc.
b. The Anti-Catholic Phase (1926-28)
1. The Catholic Church resisted the constitution (since it cut off so much of their power).
Calles responded harshly.
i. There was a brief civil war during this period, referred to as the Cristero Wars, from
1926-29.
2. In 1928, Obregon amended the constitution to allow for his reelection after Calles reign is
over. He was then assassinated by a Catholic radical.
B. Thus began the Maximato. It lasted from 1928-34, and while Calles was never directly the
president, he had all of the power.
a. It is called the Maximato because Calles nickname is Jefe Maximo, or Big Chief.
b. There were four presidents during this time period.
1. Emilio Portes Gil (1928-30)
i. He serves out the end of Obregons term.
2. Pascual Ortiz Rubio (1930-32)
i. He resigns in 1932 because he is discontent just being a figurehead while Calles gets to
make all the real decisions.
3. Abelardo Rodriguez (1932-34)
i. He serves out the end of Rubios term.
4. Lazaro Cardenas
i. Cardenas comes to power with Calles support, but Cardenas turns on him in 1936 and
sends him into exile.
C. Cardenas resumed the populist reforms:
a. Continued restoring ejidos with strong support from the government
b. Implemented a socialist education system to try to improve literacy (normal schools that
train teachers)
c. Eliminated capital punishment (specifically fusilamiento, or death by firing squad)
d. Formed workers cooperatives
e. Nationalized the oil industry
1. The U.S. did not respond to this because they were preparing for WWII.
2. Pemex was created.
f. Renamed the political party Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) to the Partido Revolucion
Mexicana (PRM)
D. In 1940, Cardenas stepped down and handed over the presidency to Manuel Avila Camacho. This
was the first time in Mexican history that a president has stepped down without either appointing
the next leader or violence.
IX. Arts and Education
A. Jose Vasconcelos was appointed by Obregon as the very first Secretary of Education (1921-24).
He
a. Spearheaded secularization
b. Created the National Symphony Orchestra in 1920 and the Symphonic Orchestra of Mexico in
1928
c. Wrote La Raza Cosmica (The Cosmic Race) in 1925, which was controversial because it
promoted ignoring differences in race.
d. Created two new and very distinct educational genres:
1. Americanista (education of the greater Americas)
2. Indigenismo (the idea of reconnecting Mexico with their pre-hispanic past)
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e. He also supported the development of the arts, and promoted the
1. Muralist Movement
i. The main objectives of this movement were to
Educate and Inform
Promote Indigenismo
Empathize with Mexicos masses
Heap scorn on Spanish conquerors/conquistadors and Americas yankee capitalists
Aggrandize former populist leaders.
f. Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco were three very prominent artists
of this movement.
1. Orozcos painting Prometheus is at the Frary Dining Hall at Pomona College.

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 UNIT 2 NOTES
WORLD WAR 1
I. Background
A. Russia (a monarchy led by the Romanovs), Prussia (a monarchy led by the Hohenzollerns), France
(a new democracy), Great Britain (a constitutional monarchy), and Austria-Hungary (a monarchy led
by the Hapsburgs) are the five main powers of Europe.
1. The Ottoman Empire was often known as the sick man of Europe, because at this point it
was already falling apart.
B. Otto von Bismarck, a Prussian statesman and eventually Minister President of Prussia, skillfully
crafted wars as to minimize collateral damage. He was mainly responsible for the unification of the
German states and the establishment of Germany as a world power.
1. He was ambitious, manipulative, and self-serving. He only cared about human life as a
means to an end. He didnt really respect the king. He understood the ripple effects of his
decisions, and knew exactly how far to push (illustrated by his hesitancy to invade Vienna
after invading Austria). He was an extremely smart diplomat, often referred to as the puppet
master/chess master/conductor.
2. He used the idea of realpolitik: withdrawing and creating alliances, manipulating global
affairs by manipulating Prussia/Germanys relationships and economic ties. It is a pragmatic
type of diplomacy, ruthless but successful (success being defined as having the least
amount of collateral damage).
C. In 1815, the expansive Napoleonic wars ended. European countries were fearful, because
Napoleon very nearly controlled all of Europe.
D. This led to the Congress of Vienna. The main goal of this meeting was to create a new system to
maintain peace in Europe.
1. The five main powers of Europe were present: Russia (represented by Tsar Alexander I),
Prussia (represented by Karl August von Hardenberg), France (represented by Charles
Talleyrand), Great Britain (represented by Lord Castlereagh), and Austria-Hungary
(represented by Klemens Von Metternich).
2. They created the Concert of Europe, sometimes called the Metternich system because
Metternich was the main architect. It was not a formal alliance; it was an agreement that if
any conflict similar to Napoleon is to arise again, these five powers will meet to deal with it.
3. Also at the Congress of Vienna, the Holy Alliance was created between the three remaining
monarchies: Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary.
E. In the 1820s-30s, a number of small-scale economically-based revolutions occurred in Europe.
F. In 1848, led by Prussia and Austria-Hungary, the people of the German states attempted to rise up
and unify, but were crushed brutally.
1. This is when the Hohenzollerns and Bismarck of Prussia realized they needed to take action
to unify the German States.
2. Many German people had a stronger national identity with their state than with
Germany/Prussia, which is why unification would prove to be difficult.
G. In 1865, Prussia went to war with Denmark.
1. It was technically over a small territory (Schleswig-Holstein), so that Prussia could have
more access otto the seas.
 H. From 1866-67, Prussia went to war with Austria-Hungary.
1. Austria-Hungary was the more dominant power, so Bismarck orchestrated this war not to
destroy their country, but to shift the power.
I. From 1870-71, Prussia instigated a war with France, creating the Franco-Prussian War.
1. The war was over territory along the Alsace-Lorraine.
2. Bismarcks goal with this war was so that they would win and the Hohenzollerns could call
themselves emperors.
J. Germany had mineral wealth (a strong economy), they just needed power. In 1871, Germany
unified. Bismarcks new goal was to maintain this stance.
K. In 1875 and lasting until 1878, a crisis broke out in the Balkans (called the Eastern Crisis).
1. Since the beginning of time, people have been passing through the Balkans. This led to a
very diverse country, separated by very rugged terrain. As the Ottoman Empire decayed,
separate areas wanted to become independent countries.
L. Thanks to Bismarck, 1871-1914 is currently the longest stretch of European history without any
major wars.
II. Long Term Causes
A. Ideological
1. Imperialism
a) The definition of imperialism is countries controlling other countries in order to have
access to resources and cheap labor, so they can create goods to sell and trade.
(1) This is also called economic colonialism, and is generally why capitalism is
seen as exploitative.
b) The idea that the world is our oyster, or the white mans burden
c) As the space to colonize ran out, European powers clashed.
d) Germany did not have much of a colonial empire compared to the other European
powers. Bismarck chose instead to consolidate their power in Europe, in order to be
seen as the strong and stable country while the others clashed on other continents.
(1) This is Mitteleuropa: the idea that Germany is the economic center of
Europe, a global marketplace.
(2) Their goal was to maintain stability in Europe and around the
(3) world.
e) Post 1890 (after Bismarck was deposed), the Germanic people came up with the
idea that Germany needed to assume its place in the world. The economy, birth
rate, industry, and trade were all on the rise and the people of Germany wanted a
global empire. This was called Weltpolitik.
(1) Germany then began building a navy.
(a) This pissed Great Britain off, because they are known for their strong
control of the seas.
(2) Germanys GDP was twice that of the French. While Frances birth rate was
declining, Germanys continued to rise. This is because France did not
industrialize as fast as Germany.
2. Pan-Slavism
a) The Eastern Crisis was also the Slavic independence movement.
 (1) The Slavs were Eastern Orthodox, living under an Islamic government. The
growing sense of nationalism among the different provinces eventually led to
the Eastern Crisis.
(a) Russia saw itself as the mother of all Slavic people, because when
Constantinople fell, they took over the Eastern Orthodox Church.
(b) Austria-Hungary saw Serbia and Bulgaria as their people.
(2) Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria (aided by the Serbians and Montenegrins)
went to war with the Ottoman Empire in the hopes of establishing a greater
Slavic empire with Russia.
b) At the end of the Eastern Crisis, the Treaty of San Stefano (1878) was established.
(1) Bulgaria and Romania were established as independent countries, and
Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania acquired a lot of land.
(2) Russia was happy, because it got a lot of new warm-water ports (which it
needed, because most of theirs were either heavily monitored or iced over
most of the year).
(3) Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Great Britain did not accept this treaty,
because it gave Russia a worrying amount of access to the seas, and they
wanted to keep the Russians out of the Mediterranean and the Suez.
c) In 1878, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Great Britain held the Congress of Berlin to
replace the Treaty of San Stefano.
(1) Bismarck came up with a new settlement: he shrank some of the states of the
Balkans, which angered Russia. He also told Russia and Austria-Hungary to
stay out of the Balkans.
(2) The fact that this congress was held in Berlin is also significant, because
most prior global conferences had been held in Paris. Obviously, Bismarck
was succeeding in creating mitteleuropa. (First crisis unified Germany took
a leading role in trying to settle). This kept France on the outside.
B. Economic
1. The Industrial Revolution led to rapid industrialization and urbanization in Europe. There
was a population boom, an increase in marketing and trade, development of global
economies, and the development of new cities. This exponential growth happened too fast
for society to manage well.
2. Global Interconnectedness
a) Protectionism: countries began to try to protect their businesses by placing high
tariffs on imports, so that people would choose local businesses over foreign imports.
b) Free trade also increased global competition and created global marketplaces.
3. Realpolitik
a) Bismarck wanted to control all the affairs in Europe.
(1) Germany was close with Austria-Hungary because of their shared culture and
the war between Austria and Denmark.
(2) Bismarck isolated France, who became a natural enemy of Germany.
4. ln 1873, Bismarck renewed the Holy Alliance, but renamed it the Dreikaiserbund.
a) Dreikaiserbund translates roughly to three emperors league.
b) This alliance had become tenuous after Germany unified in 1871.
5. The Long Depression
a) Capitalism is known for its ~10 year boom-bust cycles. In 1873, Europe fell into a
bust.
b) The global downturn created tension between Russia and Germany.
(1) Russia was dependent on Germany because they had loans from the
country. Bismarck manipulated Russia to make this happen.
(2) The Conference of Berlin did not favor Russia, and Germany and Austria-
Hungary didnt want more Russian influence.
(3) In 1878, Russia pushed for more control, and in 1885, Bismarck closed all of
Germanys money markets to Russia.
(4) France saw this as an opportunity to take Germanys place as a Russian ally,
and extended loans to Russia from 1888-1889.
(5) Russia was a firm autocracy and France was a liberal democracy, so
Germany didnt worry. (?) [Kaiser Wilhelm turned his back on Russia]
6. In 1879, Austria-Hungary and Germany created the Dual Alliance. This was the first military
alliance created in peacetime, and also the first alliance made by a treaty since the 1600s or
so.
7. The Scramble for Africa lasted from the 1880s-1900s, as European countries colonized the
indigenous countries of Africa.
a) In 1885, Only 20% of Africa was colonized--the middle part wasnt mapped at all.
(1) The Belgian king, King Leopold, sent an explorer to map it.
b) Also in 1885, the Conference of Berlin attempted to carve up Africa between the
major powers in an attempt to maintain peace and end the slave trade.
c) The French attempted to establish an East-West colonial band, while Great Britain
(and Cecil Rhodes) attempted to paint Africa red with a North-South colonial band.
This created conflict, even though the countries are technically allies.
8. In 1881, the Dreikaiserbund was renewed, because tensions in the Balkans were
increasing, and the Ottoman Empire was trying to reassert control in its former territories.
a) Bismarck saw it as an opportunity to unite Germany, A-H, and Russia against
Ottoman Empire
b) The Ottoman Empire failed in moving west, so they turned east...towards Armenia.
(later leads to Armenian genocide)They tried to consolidate control over Asia minor.
9. In 1882, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed the Triple Alliance.
a) France had just moved into Tunisia, which worried Italy, because they also wanted to
expand.
(1) Germany supported Italys colonization in Northern Africa.
b) The Triple Alliance was secret.
10. Mediterranean Agreement, 1887
a) Bismarck saw a need to involve Great Britain in the Triple Alliance, but Great Britain
wanted no part in continental European affairs.
b) However, they did become an associate of the Triple Alliance, and thus gained
support from Italy for their expansion into Northern Africa.
 11. Bismarck negotiated a secret reassurement treaty with Russia in 1887, stating that in the
face of conflict, Russia and Germany will remain neutral, to avoid escalation. This placates
Russia. (vague agreement/ warning to stay out of Balkans)
12. In 1890, Bismarck was deposed, and Kaiser Wilhelm II turned his back on Russia.
a) Russia and France created the Dual Entente, which was ratified in 1894.
13. The Mediterranean agreement was renewed, but this time focused on Russias interest in
the Balkans, and how to avoid an invasion.
C. Militarism
1. Kaiser Wilhelm II rapidly militarized Germany.
a) He believed that the stronger a nations navy, the stronger their economy.
(1) This set Great Britain on edge.
b) Kaiser Wilhelm II was Queen Victorias grandson. He was also slightly deformed. He
acted rashly, possibly to compensate for his deformity and to step out from Bismarck
and his grandmothers shadow.
c) He believed in Weltpolitik.
d) A.T. Mahans 1890 book The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1660-1783)
(1) A revolutionary analysis of the importance of naval power as a factor in the
rise of the British empire
D. Religious
1. Pan-Slavism
2. Russia wanted to reposition Eastern Orthodoxy in Constantinople.(Hagia Sophia church)
III. Short-Term Causes
A. Hegemonic Stability
1. Global leaders must lead internationally to maintain order or it will lead to instability.
a) Power vacuums can be created if global interconnectedness is not upheld.
b) Hegemonic powers are the dominant powers. They are not always used
internationally to maintain peace, but if they dont, things might go badly for the
world.
2. Germany was the continental hegemonic power, while Great Britain was the global
hegemonic power.
a) They needed to take responsibility for the instability in Europe and Africa.
B. Economic
1. Russo-French Rapprochement
a) In the early 1890s, Russia and France became concerned that Germany was turning
away from Russia and towards Great Britain.
b) This was not a formal document, rather just a name for the strengthening of ties
between Russia and France.
c) Rapprochement means coming together.
2. Social Darwinism
a) In the end of the 19th century, the United States and Europe (especially industrial
powers like Germany and Great Britain) began to believe in the concepts of social
darwinism.
(1) The theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same
Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals. Used to justify
 political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention
and reform. (-Google)
b) Germany was progressing very fast due to cultural and ethnic superiority. They
began to view war as a panacea for certain social problems, that they needed war to
get rid of the weak/poor as they died in battle and strengthen those who were
already strong.
(1) The last major war was in 1871, so peoples memories of the horrors of war
were fading.
(2) British Lord Roberts (in talking about how war was a necessity) said: The
mass of human rottenness that threads the thoroughfares of our large
industrial cities.
C. Political
1. Schlieffen Plan
a) Implemented in 1892 by the German General Chief of Staff Count Alfred Von
Schlieffen.
b) A plan of attack in the event of an outbreak of war, based on speed:
(1) Germany would sweep through the neutral country of Belgium to take Paris.
The English channel would serve as a natural barrier against Great Britain,
giving the Germans time to fortify their defenses before Russia arrived.
(a) French defenses were stronger along the French-German border,
which is why Germany would cut through Belgium.
(b) There was fear that Great Britain would get involved when Belgium
was invaded, since it was a neutral territory.
(c) Von Schlieffen assumed that France would be at odds with Germany.
(d) He also assumed that Russia would take longer to mobilize, since
they were the least industrialized country at the time.
2. In the 1890s and onwards, colonial conflict was of greater concern for Great Britain, and
they began to feel the effects of their isolationism.
a) Germany had claimed Boer, a colony in South Africa, as theirs. The Boers (originally
Dutch/East Indian settlers) disagreed. Conflict broke out, and though Great Britain
still claimed them as a colony, they gave them autonomy.
b) In 1895, Great Britain attempted to raid the Boers in the Jameson Raid. The Boers
won.
(1) Not very much later, in 1896, Britain intercepted the Kruger Telegram: a
telegram from Germany to the Boers congratulating them on defeating
Britain. Great Britain was, understandably, livid.
c) In 1898, Great Britain and France fought over Fashoda, a country in Northeast
Africa. No shots were fired, but diplomatic relations between the two major powers
became more tense.
d) The United States was in the heat of the Spanish-American war, and during that,
became a major naval power, and wanted more control over the Caribbean. They
eventually had a border dispute in Venezuela in 1898, which ended in a US victory,
though both countries came out happy. They negotiated the Great Rapprochement,
in which the United States and Great Britain allied.
 e) Great Britain was also worried about the Boxer Rebellion in China. Russia had
recently moved into Manchuria and other European powers were looking towards
China for possible colonization.
f) In 1902, at the end of the Russo-Japanese war, the British-Japanese Alliance was
created.
(1) The Russo-Japanese war was based mainly on territorial disputes: Russia
wanted to create a trans-Siberian railroad and had occupied Manchuria, parts
of China, and the Korean peninsula. Japan wanted minerals from these
areas.
(2) Great Britain agreed to support Japan against Russia, and Japan agreed to
support Great Britain in their colonial interests in East Asia.
(a) This allowed Great Britain to divert their navy towards the
Mediterranean and the Atlantic, since they knew they were supported
in the East.
g) In 1904, the Entente Cordiale was established between Great Britain and France. It
was essentially a diplomatic agreement that stated that the two countries would
attempt to talk out issues instead of going to war.
(1) This stemmed from the Fashoda incident.
3. First Moroccan Crisis
a) Morocco was a strategic place for European powers, because it was at the mouth of
the Mediterranean and was very close to both Germany and Great Britain.
b) France moved into Morocco, which was not allowed, as per the Conference of Berlin.
c) Kaiser Wilhelm II took advantage of this opportunity to shame France and called an
international conference.
(1) France saw what they did wrong and even dismissed their foreign minister to
avoid war breaking out.
(2) Germany wasnt having it, because their goal was to destroy Great Britain
and Frances relationship. They called for a vote for an independent
Morocco only three nations voted yes. Britain backed France. Wilhelm had
accidentally strengthened Great Britain and Frances relationship instead of
tearing them farther apart, which was his original goal.
4. Dogger Bank Incident
a) A British fishing vessel was fired upon by a Russian fleet in 1904. Great Britain was
furious but Russia apologized profusely.
5. In 1907, Great Britain, France, and Russia formed the Triple Entente, to protect themselves
against Germany.
a) Germany feared encirclement, or einkreisung.
6. Great Britain had a disagreement about military expansion within their population.
a) Extreme navalists, or admiralties (such as Winston Churchill), believed that they
needed to expand their navy in response to Germanys expansion.
(1) 8 new capital ships were built.
b) More liberal groups stated that doing that would invite war.
7. Bosnian Crisis, 1908
 a) In 1908, the Young Turk movement (of the Ottoman Empire) took hold of
Constantinople.
b) This renewed and escalated the conflict between Russia and Austria-Hungary in the
Balkans.
(1) Russia had recently lost to Japan in the Russo-Japanese war, and was
turning towards the Mediterranean.
c) Count von Aehrenthal of Austria-Hungary and Alexander Izvolsky of Russia met to
settle the Bosnian Crisis peacefully, but before they could return, the news of their
agreement was leaked. The public was not happy, and the agreement was never
settled.
d) Austria-Hungary took the land they would have been awarded anyways, and Russia
was very angry.
8. 2nd Moroccan Crisis, 1911
a) The Franco-German Settlement in 1909 established the rules for Germany and
France about occupying Morocco. France broke that treaty, and was presented with
the Port Agadir Crisis (or, in german, the Panthersprung).
(1) Germany sent a gunboat (the Panther) to Port Agadir, basically as a
threatening message.
b) France called on naval support from Great Britain.
(1) Great Britain was still isolationist, but choosing to send backup would be just
as bad of a choice as choosing not to.
(a) If they sent backup, they would be escalating the conflict and going
against the Franco-German Settlement.
(b) If they did not, their relationship with France would be further strained.
c) The Prime Minister to-be, David Lloyd George, delivered the Mansion House speech
in 1911. This speech stated that Great Britains role as a global hegemonic power
meant they would respond to all who attempted to destroy world peace.
(1) The German people are humiliated by this.
(2) General von Moltke says in 1912, I hold war to be inevitable, and the sooner
the better.
(3) Directed to both France and Germany
d) In the new settlement, France was granted Morocco and Germany was given control
of a large part of the Congo.
9. Haldane Mission
a) On February 8th, 1912, Lord Haldane (Great Britain) traveled to Germany to discuss
a solution for growing tensions.
b) The day he arrived, Germany announced a new naval expansion program. Lord
Haldane left immediately (February 9th, 1912).
(1) This was purposely to embarrass Great Britain the way Germany was
embarrassed by the Mansion House speech.
c) Great Britain realized that Germany had no interest in de escalating.
(1) Great Britain moved their naval fleet from the Mediterranean into the North
Atlantic.
 (a) This meant they were now responsible for protecting the French
coastline, too.
(2) Germany moved their fleet into the Mediterranean, since it was now open.
10. 1st Balkan War, 1912
a) Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Greece declared war on Turkey.
(1) This was possibly the first time small, independent countries acted
independently from their mother countries.
b) The war destabilized these countries and created vacuums. (?)
c) The Treaty of London in 1912 was established to end the war.
(1) Serbia lost access to the Mediterranean.
(2) Albania became independent.
11. 2nd Balkan War, 1913
a) Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Romania turned on Bulgaria.
(1) They declared war because they were angry about the results from the
Treaty of London and because of ethnic differences.
b) Bulgaria called on Austria-Hungary for help.
c) This crisis was settled by the Treaty of Bucharest (1913).
(1) Serbia was enlarged, which amplified their power and increased their
opposition to Austria-Hungary.
12. Archduke Franz Ferdinands Assassination
a) Serbia and Austria-Hungary (?)
IV. Types of war during World War I
A. World War I was a total war.
1. Total war means all resources go towards the war, and the war is waged on land, in the sea,
and in the air. It also aims for complete and utter defeat and obliteration of the enemy.
2. It can be argued that the war was limited for the U.S. at first.
B. There were small-scale civil wars in the Balkans.
C. Turkey endured a civil war.
1. The Turks used WWI as an opportunity to expand east towards Russia.
2. Armenian Genocide 1915
a) Armenians were deported to the Syrian desert.
(1) They were deported because they were Christian, and seen as subversives.
(a) This is the last genocide of Christians to date, but one of many
genocides in the 20th century.
b) 1.5 million were killed en route.
(1) Harsh treatment
(2) Exposure
(3) Sold into slavery
(4) Executed
D. Russia endured a civil war.
1. This was called the October Bolshevik Revolution.
a) It wasnt really a revolution, it was a coup detat, orchestrated by Lenin and Trotsky.
(1) Revolution: grassroots effort to overthrow the central government
2. The Tsarists (white army) against the Bolsheviks (red army).
 a) The Bolsheviks were a minority party. They were called the Mensheviks when the
revolution began.
3. The Russian calendar is a little off, so it was actually the November Menshevik Group that
led the coup.
E. WWI also used guerrilla warfare (a.k.a. asymmetrical warfare).
1. Guerrilla warfare is intended to destabilize governments. It is often used by knowingly
smaller nations that cannot engage in real battle with their opponent. It is also defined as
any war that is not conventional.
a) Conventional war includes: organized battles and uniforms.
b) Guerrilla war includes: the scorched earth policy, targeted civilian attacks, covert
operations, u-boats, biological warfare, and attacks on supply lines.
V. WWI
A. WWI began as a war of movement.
1. The fail of the Schlieffen Plan
a) Unexpected Belgian resistance
b) Russians attacked sooner in the East than expected
c) French forces counterattacked through the Alsace-Lorraine (the Battle of the Marne)
2. Trenches were hastily constructed at the beginning of the war, but eventually ended up as
an extensive network stretching from the English Channel to Switzerland, so after the first
few months, there was very little movement.
a) As soon as the trenches were dug, the war became a static conflict. This was the
biggest turning point of the war. This is when the war became unconventional.
b) Airplanes were first only used for aerial reconnaissance (reporting on trenches), but
evolved throughout the war:
(1) Throwing bricks and rocks from the cockpit
(2) Throwing grenades from the cockpit
(3) Brought a second person into the cockpit with a rifle to shoot at other planes
(4) Mounted machine guns on the planes
(5) Interruptor is introduced to shoot through the propellers on other planes
B. Great Britains objective was to take Paris.
C. The war was more of a defensive war than an offensive war.
1. La Guerre Futur by Ivan Bloch (1898) predicted this, saying that war technology was
progressing faster than society could keep up with. He said a bloodbath was coming,
basically, and he was right.
a) Defensive technology included: trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, and
minefields.
b) Offensive technology included: artillery, rifles, grenades, pistols, and mortars.
D. World War I was a war of endurance.
1. Mass attacks
a) Battle of Verdun 1916: German General Falkenhayn attacked Verdun, a French
fortress. Both sides suffered 300,000+ casualties in a single battle.
b) In the battle of the Somme (July 1916), Douglass Hayes led a combined allied force.
Over a million men died in just a few months.
2. Civilian Targeting
 a) The war was country vs country, not army vs army. This was the first time a war like
this had been waged.
3. Unrestricted Submarine Warfare (USW)
a) The United States was angry at Germany for sinking civilian ships, so Germany
stopped, until the United States and Britain started using civilian vessels to transport
troops and equipment, so Germany began again.
4. Nighttime bombing raids
a) Bad precision led to civilian casualties.
5. Atrocities at the Battle of Halen
a) Germany took out their frustration about the unexpected Belgian resistance on
civilians.
6. Conscription
a) Everyone except Great Britain was conscripting by the end of 1914.
b) Great Britain (Lord Kitchner) began conscripting by the end of 1916.
7. Ersatz
a) A recycling program by Germany, where they used substitutes for materials they
could not access because of the war.
8. Government Control
a) Most of the countries involved were liberal and democratic, and were not good at
decision-making, so it led to more centralization of government.
b) Great Britain (and other countries):
(1) Seized control of railroads
(2) Tax money was given to arms manufacturers
(3) Forced rationing of food
(4) Conscripted civilians to work in armaments factories
(5) Interfered with public perception of time (daylight savings time)
(a) Allowed for longer work hours for war prep
(6) Made striking illegal
(7) Assumed control of private residencies
c)
d) Nationalism rose
e) Prisoners of war were treated poorly
9. Destructiveness
a) 10-18 million killed, 20 million injured, 5 million widowed, and 9 million orphaned.
(1) There was nothing this destructive in Europe since the plague.
b) Nationalism and racial hatred soared.
(1) Prisoners of war were treated horribly.
c) Humanity in Europe was not prepared. They were used to conventional war, and
now cities were leveled. It transformed life in Europe.
E. Technological Developments
1. More efficient explosions
a) Nitroglycerin
2. More accurate rifles
a) Up to 200 yards
3. Self-loading, automatic machine guns
4. Steel shelled artillery with automatic recoil
5. Interior of barrels spiraled
a) Added distance and accuracy
6. U-boats
a) Unterseeboot, submarines
b) Mass deployment
c) Significant effectiveness
7. Trenches with bunkers, tunnels, and barracks
8. Chemical weaponry
a) Chlorine gas
b) Phosgene
c) Mustard gas
9. Big Bertha: 7-8 miles, 16.5 inch shell
10. Rail Gun/Kaiser Wilhelm gun: 70-75 miles
a) Paris gun: people from Paris couldnt even hear it fire, it was so far away. It was the
first man-made object to leave our stratosphere. Of course there was no way to not
hit civilians.
 UNIT 3 NOTES
JAPANESE EXPANSION IN EAST ASIA

I. Background
A. (Feudal System)Emperor > Shogunate (government) > Daimy > Samurai > Peasants > Merchants and
Artisans
B. The Tokugawa Shogunate lasted from 1853-58.
1. During this time, Japan was protective of its culture and did not allow anyone to enter Japan for
trade or any relations.
a) The Shogunate were aware of the Brits and their exploits of the Opium Wars and European
colonization
2. They believed that outside merchants and artisans were defiling Japan.
C. Commodore Matthew Perry and the Treaty of Kanagawa
1. In 1852 Matthew Perry is sent to Edo Bay in his black ships and demanded/threatened that Japan
open trade.
2. They arrived in Tokyo in 1853 and Japan opened.
3. The Japaneses fear of their lack of technology led to the Treaty of Kanagawa being placed in 1854.
a)
b) In Tokyo, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, signs the
Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and
Hakodate to American trade and permitting the establishment of a U.S. consulate in Japan.
c) They were not happy with this treaty but the trade with US merchants would help the
merchants and artisans
4. In 1858, the Treaty of Amity and Commerce was established and later ratified in 1860 in the US
a) This impacted Japanese culture and the Japanese felt the need to compete and thus
develop their country.
b) As a result, merchants and artisans climb the socioeconomic ladder because of newfound
trade opportunities.
c) It opened the ports of Kanagawa and four other Japanese cities to trade and granted
extraterritoriality to foreigners, ammong a number of trading stipulations.
D. Meiji (Enlightened) Restoration of 1867
1. Under Emperor Meiji, Japan modernized rapidly also put an end to feudal Japan.
2. The Emperor became much more involved in governmental affairs, and began an industrial and
military restoration.
3. In 1868, Meiji created a charter oath of the Meiji government. It demanded
a) Public discussion for policies (more democratic approach)
b) All classes will unite to carry out the administration of the state
c) All classes have the opportunity to pursue any occupation they wish
d) Evil customs stopped and reliance on customs of nature
e) Pursue knowledge to strengthen empire
f) Rich country, strong military
(1) This ideology was adopted from the Prussian Military customs (The japanese studied
up on European military)
(2) They received assistance from the Brits in terms of building a navy because the Brits
wanted to prevent Russian ports and Russian navy from forming
E. 1st Sino-Japanese War, 1894-95
1. Japan had a superiority complex and believed they were the top dog of the asian countries which
threatened Britains onlook in China
2. Japan won, and in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, they gained...
a) Pescadores
b) Formosa (Taiwan)
c) Liaodong Peninsula
 d) Shandong
e) Reparations from China
(1) Korea was also granted independence.
3. This was Japans first foreign engagement. It emboldened them but frightened European countries.
4. Triple Intervention of 1895
a) Germany, France, and Russia forced Japan to give the Liaodong Peninsula to Russia and
the Shandong Peninsula to Germany.
b) Great Britain and France also manipulated this treaty in order to gain access to Chinese
ports for trade.
c) The reason as to why Japan was pissed: The European countries were doing this for their
own benefit rather than that of the Chinese which demonstrates a sense of inequality.
d) Secret society, the Amur River Society, wanted to expand into the mainland
II. Causes for Expansion
A. Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902
1. This was the first diplomatic alliance initiated by Japan, and also the first alliance between an
Eastern and a Western country. It was an alliance between Great Britain and Japan.
2. It was very strategic because Britain and Japan were both wary of Russia, thus, if war were to break
out, the Russians would be outranked in terms of navy.
B. Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905
1. Japan was interested in Manchuria for these reasons:
a) It was 4x larger than their islands, and they had a population density issue, and needed more
living space.
b) There was not much farmable land in Japan.
c) There were many mineral resources (magnesium, gold, iron, coal)
2. This win was significant because it was the first time that an asian country had smashed a Major
Western Power
a) The Japanese were ready to capitalize on this defeat but the British and Americans try to
mediate the treaty because fear of the growing Japanese influence. This also pisses off the
Japanese because they do not get to dictate the terms of their own peace
3. Japan attacked Manchuria as the aggressor. They were mostly successful, though it was bloody and
costly.
4. The Battle of Tsushima (in the Tsushima Strait) ended the war (Japan won).
C. Japanese Immigration and Racial Insult
1. A revolution began in Japan after the Russo-Japanese War.
2. Japan perceived Korea as a dagger pointing directly at their heart due to their close proximity.
3. Negotiations were held in Portsmouth, Maine in 1905, moderated by Teddy Roosevelt. They created
the Treaty of Portsmouth.
a) Japan gained the Korean Peninsula, southern Manchuria, southern portion of Sakhalin
island, but most importantly, lots of respect from Western powers. But they still didnt get to
dictate their own terms of peace.
b) This confirmed Japans idea that they were the chosen people of the East.
4. Yellow Peril
a) Japan was imperializing, modernizing, and industrializing.
b) From 1895-1905, the population of Japan suffers from military build up (the country focused
on building the army too much). Taxes begin to rise and therefore, dominant families begin to
rise and the poor are taxed until they sell their business and leave the country.
c) Japanese began to immigrate to the U.S., Canada, Hawaii and Latin America.
(1) They did mostly unskilled manual labor.
d) They were met with extreme racial hostility and segregationist laws.
(1) Western countries felt invaded/taken over.
(2) They were denied citizenship and the right to own their own land
(3) The Californian government stood up to the U.S. government and fought for separate
but equal laws.
 5. Gentlemans Agreement 1908
a) Agreement with U.S.- Japan denies passports to manual laborers who wanted to go to the
US and in return, the the schools in San Fran were desegregated
(1) Japanese laborers already owning passports were now denied exit from the country
b) Root-Takahira Agreement
(1) Schools (specifically San Francisco) rescind segregationist laws
(2) The U.S. recognizes Japanese China territorial gains, and Japan recognizes the U.S.
Pacific gains further limiting immigration.
D. Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
1. Issued by Henry C. Lodge in 1912., targeted Japan
2. What prompted it: The U.S. wanted to build the Isthmus Canal in Central America. They targeted
Nicaragua but eventually chose Panama, so Nicaragua looked into other foreign investors, like
Germany or Japan.
3. To Put muscle behind the Monroe Doctrine
4. Any non-European powers (Japan) cannot own any territory in the Western Hemisphere.
E. Immigration Act 1924
1. Japan was the only country not allowed any immigrants to the U.S.
F. World War I
1. Japan declared war on Germany because they wanted back the territories that had been seized
during the Triple Intervention. After taking back their islands from Germany, they issued their 21
Demands:
a) Group 1 (Article 1-4): Shantung Province
(1) Railways, coastal possessions and major cities
b) Group 2 (Article 5-11): Manchuria and Inner Mongolia
(1) Rights of settlement, and Chinas acknowledgment of Japanese gains
c) Group 3 (Article 12-13): Han-Yen-Ping Company
(1) Control of Chinese mining company
d) Group 4 (Article 14): Foreign Powers
(1) No other power gets any coastal or island territory in China
(a) This ends Chinas short-lived open door policy.
(2) This article is highly disputed.
e) Group 5 (Article 15-21): Internal Control
(1) China hires Japanese advisors in politics, finance, and the military.
(2) This article is highly disputed.
f) Japan revised and accomplished Groups 1-3. They were still in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance,
however, which raised concerns for Great Britain and the United States.
2. Japan benefited economically from World War I. (The United States also benefited the
TREMENDOUSLY!)
a) The German U-boat campaign limited British and French exports, so the United States and
Japan took their place, and their market soared.
3. When Russia withdrew in 1917, the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, the United States, and
Japan) moved in to support the Tsarist white army against the Bolsheviks. This was called the
Siberian Expedition.
a) Japan promised the Allied powers that they would provide 7,500 troops, but showed up with
75,000.
b) They also stayed in Russia until 1922, much longer than any of the other powers, most likely
in the hopes of gaining some territory.
(1) This raised concern for Japanese officials, because it seemed that Japan was starting
to overextend themselves, and the military was beginning to operate independently.
(2) This was jeopardizing their international reputation.
4. Japan was part of the Council of Ten at the Paris Peace Conference.
a) They gained islands as a Class C mandate and joined the League of Nations.
 b) Japan left the conference frustrated, as they were denied their request for a racial equality
clause. They were denied mbecause...
(1) Woodrow Wilson believed in ethnic self determination
(a) He was also racist.
(2) The US was concerned that if they were to recognize the Japanese as equals, they
would no longer be able to limit immigration.
G. Lakardo Spirit
1. In the 1920s, Japans foreign policy shifted. There was a growing sense of optimism.
2. TMany of the harsh punishments declared at the Paris Peace Conference were being lifted.
3. Emperor Shidehara Kijuro began to shift the Japanese foreign policy from imperialist to international.
4. The Lakardo Spirit was the idea that weve experienced the worst, now we can move on. Nothing
like this will happen again. It was a generally pro-disarmament, anti-war spirit.
H. Washington Treaty System
1. Four-Power Treaty, 1921
a) The United States, Great Britain, France, and Japan
b) This ended the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and created an agreement to diplomatically
resolve any crises.
2. Nine-Power Treaty, 1922
a) United States, Great Britain, France, Japan, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and
China
b) Demanded that all countries will respect the sovereignty, the independence, and the
territorial and administrative integrity of China.
(1) This lead Japan to return the Shandong Peninsula to China.
(2) This also decisively ended Chinas open-door policy.
3. Five-Power Naval Treaty, 1922
a) United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy
b) Established a ratio of 5 : 5 : 3 : 1.67 : 1.67 to limit the amount of battleships and aircraft
carriers.
(1) United States = 5, Great Britain = 5, Japan = 3, France = 1.67, Italy = 1.67
(2) It was extended in 1927 to include small ships, as well.
c) Japans imperial navy was deeply concerned by this ratio, because they were in the process
of expanding.
(1) The treaty faction led by Naval Minister Admiral Tomasaburo Kato was in favor of
this ratio.
(2) The fleet faction led by Fleet Admiral Kanji Kato was not in favor of this ratio. These
people were in favor of expanding the navy and defying the government.
I. In 1924, the Immigration Act was passed in the United States, banning all prospective Japanese
immigrants.
J. Emperor Taisho died in 1926, and the Taisho Democracy began to crumble.
1. In 1925 the Peace Preservation Law was passed, which severely restricted and punished any
seditious activity and censored all anti-government propaganda.
2. Emperor Hirohito came into power after Emperor Taishos death and began the Showa Era.
a) The fleet faction continued to fan the flames of imperialism and nationalism.
K. London Naval Conference 1929-30
1. France and Italy recused from the disarmament ratio.
2. The conference pushed for a new ratio of 10 : 10 : 7
L. Restless Military of the 1920s
1. Double Leaf Society
a) In October of 1921, a group of young Japanese officers studying abroad in Germany formed
a secret Double Leaf Society.
b) They pledged to reorganize the army and purge it of its old, aristocratic elements.
(1) They wanted to weed out Choshu (traditional) elements
(2) This began to happen during the 1920s.
 2. In 1921, General Taro Utsunomiya, a hypernationalist, as he was dying, summoned a young
colonel, Sadao Araki, to Hispanic bedside. He had him bring a map and mark it in red, and made
Araki promise to conquer those areas so that he could die happy.
a) These areas were about half of Russia, most of Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand,
India, Indonesia, China.
3. Ugaki vs. Araki
a) Kazushige Ugaki was the son of a samurai. He became the head of the conservative faction,
tosei ha.
(1) The tosei has goal was to expand in a controlled fashion.
b) Sadao Araki was a son of a Buddhist priest. He grew up in poverty. He became the radical
head of the kodo ha.
c) These two factions vied for control in Japan throughout the 1920s.
4. Prime Minister General Giichi Tanaka came to power in Japan 1927.
a) Aligned more with the Kodo Ha
b) Travelled to Mukden to meet with other Japanese officials of Manchuria.
(1) A newspaper published an account of this trip, but Japan denied it.
c) Engineered the 8 Point Program for Manchuria, but points 7 and 8 were concealed:
(1) 7: Japan will support any regime change that is favorable for them
(economically/militaristic interests)
(2) 8: If there is any problem in Manchuria or Mongolia that affects Japanese interests,
Japan will intervene.
M. Japanese Domestic Issues
1. In 1928, the Japanese Quantung Army acted out of orders and assassinated Manchurian warlord
Zhang Zoulin.
a) The emperor demanded that those soldiers be disciplined, but Japan refused and said it
would undermine their position in Manchuria.
(1) This was the beginning of the army working independently.
(a) The governmental structure of Japan allowed for an independent military to
form due to a lack of a checks and balances system. Different parts of Japan
operated without watching over each other (this is called a dual government),
which worked as long as the emperor could balance it by himself.
(i) Emperor Meiji did a very good job of this until his death in 1912.
(2) This was one of the factors that let Tanaka to resign in 1929.
2. Economic Issues
a) During the Taisho Era of 1912-26, the emperor Taisho (Yoshihito) was physically weak and
mentally ill. When he died in 1926, the Japanese military became completely independent.
(1) In 1900, General Yamagata convinced Emperor Meiji that only active duty admirals
and generals had the right to serve in the government.
b) The economic boom from WWI lasted until the middle of 1921, when the government started
to favor large landowners and corporations (zaibatsus), and the agriculture economy
dropped drastically.
c) Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923
(1) There were 40,000+ casualties.
(2) It was a magnitude of 7.9.
(3) The banks issued earthquake bonds.
(a) In 1927, the government proposed redeeming the bonds, as they hoped it
would help their economy. People feared that the banks would not be able to
do this, which caused the bank run of 1927, and subsequently a huge
financial crisis.
(i) This helped lead to the Great Depression.
d) In 1929, the stock market crashed in the United States. This led to a global economic
meltdown.
(1) Countries put protectionist tariffs on foreign exports.
 (a) The Smoot-Harley tariff was perhaps the most infamous, because it was the
highest tariff in American history.
(2) World trade fell by 70%
(3) 50% of Japanese factories closed down
(4) Silk production (which was Japans #1 export) fell by 67%
(5) Japanese military factions carried out multiple assassinations and the right wing took
power.
(6) The League of Nations had no military power, and only had power in their economic
sanctions. The Great Depression took this power away from them. The only option
left for them to control other nations was using appeasement.
(a) This allowed aggressor nations the freedom to move.
e) In 1937, the four leading zaibatsus controlled a third of all bank deposits and foreign trade,
half of all ship building and maritime industrie, as well as most heavy industries.
N. Political Instability in China
1. In 1910, Japan annexed Korea, making the United States more worried about Japanese expansion.
a) In 1911, U.S. Rear Admiral Raymond Rogers drafted War Plan Orange (one of the Rainbow
War Plans) because of the growing concerns of a rival in the Pacific. It was implemented
during WWII
2. The Qing/Manchu Dynasty fell in 1911.
3. The Chinese Civil War lasted from 1916-28: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao
Zedong versus the Guomindang (GMD) led by General Jiang Jieshi
a) The CCP and the GMD jointly launched the Northern Expedition in an attempt to unite China.
(1) This threatened Russian interest.
b) Jiang Jieshi and the GMD saw the CCP as a greater enemy than Japan.
III. Events
A. In 1922, the Manchurian Warlord Zhang Zoulin declared independence from China and let Japan continue
their interests in the country.
1. Their army grew so large that China began to consider it a threat.
2. The Quantong army (Japanese army stationed in Manchuria) assassinated Zhang Zoulin in the
hopes of keeping Jiang Jieshi and the Chinese nationalists out of Manchuria.
3. Zhang Xueliang (often known as the Young Marshall) is his successor
a) To the Japaneses dismay, Xueliang was much more inclined to ally with the GMD.
B. The kodo ha (otherwise known as action group) led by Prime Minister Osachi Hamaguchi (1929-31) pushed
for better relationships with China.
1. He pushed for better salaries and cut military funding.
2. When Hamaguchi was assassinated in 1931, Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijiro came to power.
3. Reijiro learned of Manchurias plot to blow up the South Manchurian Railroad. He sent a letter
demanding that the Kwantung army back down, but it was intentionally not delivered.
a) The railroad was blown up in September of 1931. This was called the Mukden incident.
(1) It did not actually affect the operation of the line.
C. Japan set up a puppet government in Manchuria called Manchuko, which was based upon the Manchu
dynasty.
1. Manchuko was denied membership to the League of Nations and no other countries acknowledged
their existence.
D. 2nd Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
1. The first year of the war was very successful for Japan. They took many cities, though they did not
achieve an ultimate surrender from China.
a) Communism is a disease of the heart, the Japanese are but a disease of the skin, -Jiang
Jieshi
2. Jiang Jieshi held a meeting with his generals in Xian. Young General Zhang Xueliang placed him
Jieshi under arrest until Jieshi agreed to create a second united front in order to focus on Japan.
3. Near Beijing on the Marco Polo Bridge on the night of July 7th, 1937, China and Japan exchanged
fire.
 a) One Japanese soldier did not return to his post, and when investigated, China denied Japan
entrance into the city. This is the start of the Sino-Japanese war and also considered by
some to be the beginning of WW2 as well
4. Japan deployed the Shanghai Expeditionary Army, so Jiang Jieshi moved the capital to Nanking and
guarded the route.
a) Shanghai fell quickly.
b) In November of 1937, Japan organized the Central China Army and began to shoot down
soldiers on their way to Nanking.
c) Jiang Jieshi used the phrase selling space to buy time to refer to his consistent moving of
the capital throughout the second Sino-Japanese War. China was a large country and could
avoid to give up land.
5. Jiang Jieshi moved the capital to Wuhan, and left a small force behind to protect Nanking.
6. In December of 1937, Japan moved into Nanking. Emperor Hirohito of the GMD was appointed by
Prince Asaka to be the head of the Central Chinese Army with General Iwane Matsui.
a) Asaka ordered all Japanese soldiers to be executed instead of captured. Melaena Hauptmann 12/14/2016 3:47 PM
Comment [1]: Emperor Hirohito of Japan
b) The Rape of Nanking or the Nanking Atrocities occurred on December 13, 1937. appointed Prince Asaka, his uncle, to be
Somewhere between 40,000-300,000 people were killed. head of the Central Chinese Army
(1) Japan still denies that this occurred. It is a large part of the tensions that still exist (Japanese force) with General Iwane
Matsui
between China and Japan.
Michael Dauber 12/14/2016 3:47 PM
7. In October of 1938, Jiang Jieshi moved the capital to Chongqing Comment [2]: _Marked as resolved_
a) Jieshi sets up a often known as Wangs Puppet Regime or Wang Jingwei. Michael Dauber 12/14/2016 3:47 PM
b) Wang Jingwei was anti-communist, but leaned towards fascism. He saw Japan as his best Comment [3]: _Re-opened_
hope for defeating the communists.
8. The CCP worked with Chinese peasants and waged an effective guerrilla campaign against Japan
by attacking their supply lines.
9. In December of 1936, while China and Jiang Jieshi were dealing with Xian, Japan made the Anti-
Comintern Pact with the Nazis.
a) Japan was concerned about a Soviet reprisal, and made this pact to stop communism.
b) They hoped their German ally would discourage the Soviets from attacking them.
10. In November of 1938, a new order in East Asia was created by Prime Minister Konoye. It was meant
to be a cultural, political, and economic union.
a) They wanted to drive out western influence and create an Asia for Asians
11. In January of 1939, the U.S. placed a moral embargo on Japan
a) Due to the atrocities of Nanking and Japans habit of purposeful civilian bonding.
b) This was the U.S.s first step in moving away from neutrality during WWII.
c) They saw Japan as an evil empire.
12. Japan and the USSR had multiple skirmishes.
a) Japan was bombing Chongqing and was being attacked by civilians, so the Soviets took the
opportunity to gain land.
(1) The USSR supported China.
b) They fought along the Manchurian border in 1938, and along the Mongolian border in 1939.
c) Japan lost both.
IV. World War II
A. Nazi-Soviet / Ribbentrop-Molotov Nonaggression Pact
a) In August of 1939, Japan was terrified because the Soviets and the Naziis signed a
Nonagression Pact. This highly disturbed Japan because they needed German support and
had already signed a pact with them
b) Japans Prime Minister also kept changing and their government kept changing directions.
B. Pearl Harbor
1. In May of 1940, right after France fell to the Nazis, the US became concerned by German victories
and moved their fleet to Pearl Harbor, as a move against possible Japanese threat
a) They wanted to protect their interests in the Pacific. (Japan was moving towards Pacific)
 2. Japan turned their interests to southeast Asia and the Dutch East Indies. They asked permission
from Frances puppet government to move into French Indochina, which was granted in September
of 1940.
a) Japans Prime Minister, Matsuoka Yosuke, signed the Tripartite Axis pact in September
1940.
(1) This pact was expanded from the Rome-Berlin Axis.
(2) He negotiated a neutrality pact with the Soviets.
(3) This caused the U.S. to place an embargo of scrap iron and steel for Japan.
3. In July of 1941, the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands placed a complete trade
embargo on Japan.
a) They also froze Japanese assets overseas, stopped selling them oil, and gave China 25
million dollars in aid
(1) Japan believed they had 18 months of oil left, so they needed to move into the
Southeast Indies quickly, but they knew that that would cause the United States to
declare war on them.
(2) They hit the United States first, in the hopes that it would take the United States a
while to mobilize.
4. In October of 1941, Prime Minister Konoye resigned and was replaced by Admiral Hideki Tojo.
5. The U.S., in the hopes of ending the trade embargo, administered the Hull Note, demanding that
Japanese forces withdraw from Indochina, China, and Manchuria.
6. In the first week of December, 1941, Japanese aircraft carriers moved undetected across the
Pacific.
7. On December 7th, 1941, 350 Japanese aircraft attacked in two waves at Pearl Harbor.
a) 18 ships were damaged
(1) 8 battleships, 3 cruisers, 3 destroyers, 4 others
b) 188 aircraft destroyed
c) 2,402 killed, 1,178 injured
(1) Many naval personnel
8. Japan also attacked the Philippines, Guam (a communications hub), and Wake Island (an imperial
air base)
9. The United States took less than a year to fight back.
C. Responses
1. In September of 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria from Korea.
a) The League of Nations responded to Chinas request that Japan exit the country.
b) Japans government agreed, but their military did not.
2. In February of 1932, Japan set up the puppet regime of Manchukuo in Manchuria.
a) In December 1931, Lord Lytton of Great Britain was appointed by the commission to travel to
Manchuria and give a report. In October of 1932, he gave the Lytton Report to the League of
Nations, stating:
(1) Japan has made major financial contributions to Manchuria.
(a) This means there was a legitimate reason for Japan to be in the country
(2) Manchurias population was 90% Chinese
(a) Japan had originally stated that they were Manchurian, not Chinese.
(3) Japans claim that they had invaded Manchuria to protect the Manchurians from the
Chinese was false.
(4) Japan was indeed the aggressor nation.
b) The League of Nations ruled that Japan must give Manchuria back to China, and that other
countries may not recognize the government of Manchukuo.
(1) The vote for this was held in February 1933, 32 nations voted in favor, and 1 nation
(Japan) was not in favor.
(2) This could not be enforced because the League of Nations had no economic power
due to the Great Depression.
 (3) Foreign Minister Matsuko, the Japanese representative at this meeting, gave a
dramatic speech withdrawing Japan from the League of Nations.
(a) They claimed the League of Nations was hypocritical and racist, which were
not unfounded claims.
(b) Germany withdrew in 1933, Italy and Spain withdrew in 1937, and the USSR
was expelled in 1939 (which was the last act of the League of Nations).
3. When Japan invaded China in 1937, China appealed to the League of Nations.
a) Under Jiang Jieshi, China always appealed to the League of Nations when possible.
b) The Nine-Power Treaty Conference was held in Belgium, and came up with the demand that
China and Japan end hostilities.
(1) They didnt.
4. In March of 1933, Japan took Jehol, which led to the Tanggu Truce in May of 33.
a) This truce established a neutral zone between Manchukuo and China (which went mostly
ignored), gave a lot of land to Japan, and China promised not to fight to take back any of it.
5. The 1st United Front (GMD vs. CCP) fell in 1941, and the CCP was crushed.
a) This did not united the country at all. The CCP was more of a grassroots, elusive campaign,
that existed in the countryside and in rural areas, so it was not really defeated.
(1) The CCP was popular because of their good treatment of civilians; they had strict
policies against stealing and they gave great respect to the peasants.
(2) The GMD was extremely corrupt.
(a) Money and military equipment flowed into China from the United States and
other countries, but it only went to Jiang Jieshi and his closest friends.
b) The GMD created the Yellow River Flood in 1938 in order to impede the CCPs advance.
(1) This killed millions.
 IB HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS 2
UNIT 4 NOTES
GERMAN AND ITALIAN EXPANSION 1933-40

I. Causes of Italian Expansion

A. Background
1. Roman Empire
a) Dominated the world, overrun by barbarians
b) Eventually Italy (Rome) was ruled by foreigners and allowed to devolve into rival city-
states fighting for power
2. Renaissance (rebirth)
a) Revival of literature, art, and culture.
(1) The rival city-states still existed.
b) Desire to reunify in Italy make something great again
c) Petrarch, Italiamia (my Italy) and Machiavelli, The Prince
(1) Theme: the rise of a prince/leader who could end petty squabbling and reunite
Italy; Italian reunification
d) The French Revolution inspired revolutions around the world, and led to Napoleon, who
eventually left Italy.
(1) After Napoleon was gone, a discussion about what to do with Italy (a previous
collection of city-states ruled mostly by foreigners) arose.
(2) Piedmont and Sardinia
(a) Count Cavour
(b) Giuseppi Garibaldi
(c) Giuseppi Mazzini
(d) King Victor Emanuel II
(3) Risurgimento (resurgence)
3. Carbonari (coal burner) insurrections (1820-21)
a) A secret underground society trying to drive out foreign influence in Italy.
4. Austro-Prussian War (1866)
a) Austria lost control of Venetia, it was annexed to Italy.
(1) Bismarck began to lead the German state.
5. Franco-Prussian War (1870)
a) Italy became united!
b) Rome was abandoned for the Italians.
(1) The Pope abandoned it.
(a) The Italians moved into Rome slowly with many treaties.
c) Pope Pius IX
(1) Had extreme opposition to being an independent colony.
(2) Wanted independence but also religion.
6. Italy united in 1871
a) Issues still existed:
(1) Conflicts with the Catholic church until the late 1920s
(2) There were no Italian people
(a) Italy has been made. Now it remains to make Italians.
(3) Corruption and organized crime was still rampant, especially in the south.
(4) Northern Italy developed into an industrial, free market economy, but the south
remained underdeveloped, agricultural, and impoverished.
(a) Unification caused the Southern economy to collapse.
(5) Italia Irredenta, or Unredeemed Italy
(a) There were still Italian speakers who did not live within the Italian
kingdom.
B. Economic: Impact of domestic economic issues on the foreign policies of Italy
1. Italy considered World War I a mutilated victory.
a) Even though Italy entered the war late (in 1915), they had over 600,000 casualties.
 (1) 39.1% of their army was killed or wounded.
(2) The loss of human capital affected the economy greatly.
b) Italy left the Paris Peace Conference extremely frustrated.
(1) They were not granted the territory they were promised in the Treaty of London
(1915).
(a) They got: the Brenner Frontier in South Tyrol and Istria
(b) They didnt get: Half the Dalmatian Coastline, territory in Africa and the
Middle East, and the Port of Fiume.
(2) They felt betrayed by the European powers.
(3) This helped lead to the rise of the National Fascist Party (PNF) in 1921.
(a) The Fascist party was founded upon the 19th Century desires of
resurgence, unification, and the establishment of a third Rome.
(b) Benito Mussolini (otherwise known as Il Duce) was the figurehead of the
Fascist state.
(i) He designed himself after Caesar.
(ii) Empire is not only a territorial or military or mercantile concept,
but a spiritual and moral one.
2. During WWI (1914-15 especially) Italy had an economic boom due to its agriculture. However,
after the war, the economy crashed.
a) The war caused high inflation, which in turn caused prices to quadruple, and upwards of
2 million Italians were unemployed by 1919.
b) Italy also borrowed 148 (lira) to finance their military when they joined WWI, which put
them in major debt.
c) Prior to 1914, Italians would immigrate to the United States when times got tough.
During and after WWI, however, the U.S. started closing their doors to new immigrants,
so they were no longer Italys outlet.
3. From 1919-1920, Italians were scared of the Bolshevik Revolution spreading to Italy. This was
called the Biennio Rosso, or Two Red Years.
a) There was worker unrest in Italy due to the high unemployment rate.
b) The Bolsheviks could not take Italy, because
(1) Opposition from the church
(a) The church saw the Bolsheviks as a godless political system.
(2) The Southern portion of Italy was not yet indicted the PNF as a viable alternative
to their current governmental system.
c) He conducted the March on Rome, and was welcomed by the
government.Industrialized, and was mostly rural, while the Northern portion was
industrialized but functioned as sort of an oligarchy.
d) In October 1922, Mussolini decided to provide Italy with a better option, and presen
(1) Wealthy industrialists liked the idea, and didnt want to deal with the unrest that
would come with blocking Mussolini.
e) Mussolini was soon after declared the Prime Minister.
f) He began creating a corporatist state, and integrated church, state, and business.
(1) When accused by liberals of creating a totalitarian government, he embraced it
rather than denying it.
g) Almost all of his economic policies were entirely hit and miss. He was entirely fiscally
irresponsible.
h) His goal was to achieve autarky, or self-sufficiency, especially in agriculture.
(1) He focused on productivism, which involved high taxation and the focus on heavy
industry at the expense of consumer goods.
(2) Battle for Grain (1925)
(a) The goal of the battle for grain was to make Italy self-sufficient
agriculturally.
 (b) It increased grain production, and increased exports by 75%.
(c) It did not provide protection for other goods so all other agricultural
industries (such as olives, etc) collapsed.
i) Battle for Lira (1926)
(1) Mussolini believed that Italy needed to have a strong currency.
(2) He fixed the exchange rate from lira to pounds from 150 : 1 to 92.5 : 1
(a) This caused economic mergers, companies collapse, wage reductions,
and prices lowering.
j) Mussolini Law (1928)
(1) The goal of this law was to develop infrastructure in Italy and create civil
engineering projects.
(2) Almost every project was just a publicity stunt.
(a) The one project that Mussolini actually did complete was the draining of
the Pontine Marshes.
C. Ideological: Impact of fascism on the foreign policies of Italy
1. Mussolini strongly believed that Italy needed to expand. He believed the people of Italy needed
living space, or spazio vitale (vital space)
a) He saw the Mediterranean less as our sea (Mare Nostrom, what it was referred to in
Latin) and more our prison
(1) He began building up the navy to move out of the Mediterranean, as most ways
out were controlled by Great Britain.
2. Mussolinis foreign policy was sporadic, not progressive, and ineffective.
3. Corfu, 1923
a) Corfu is an island held by the Greeks along the Adriatic.
b) 5 Italians were killed along the border of Greece and Albania, one of which was a
military officer.
c) Mussolini sent the Italian navy, shelled the (mostly uninhabited) island, invaded and took
control.
(1) This was mostly a show of power.
d) Greece was annoyed, because there was no proof that they even killed the 5 Italians.
(1) They appealed to the League of Nations, who tended to favor the more powerful
country. They responded by telling Greece to apologize to Italy for the deaths
and pay them 10 million.
4. Fiume, 1924
a) Italy wanted the Port of Fiume at the Paris Peace Conference.
b) They demanded it from Yugoslavia, who wanted to avoid conflict, so they gave it to
them.
5. Locarno, October 1925
a) Mussolini met with the major European powers (and the Swiss) in Switzerland and
played a key role in establishing a new era of international cooperation.
(1) Italy gained nothing from the conference.
6. Libya 1922-28
a) Mussolini sent in the Italian military to help calm the civil unrest in Libya.
(1) Mussolini called this a pacification campaign, though it eventually used
repression and mass executions.
7. Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928
a) Mussolini helped author this pact, which denounced the use of war.
8. Treaty of Friendship with Abyssinia 1928
a) This was a cynical treaty. Italys goal was always to conquer Abyssinia when their
military grew strong enough.
II. Causes for German Expansion
A. Economic: Impact of domestic economic issues on the foreign policies of Germany
1. Treaty of Versailles
a) Territory
(1) Germany lost a LOT of territory--some was mandated, some was just taken by
other countries during the war. They lost...
(a) 25,000 mi2 (13%) of their European territory, which included about 6
million people.
(b) About 1 million mi2 of colonial territories, which included about 12 million
people.
(c) 45% Coal
(d) 57% Zinc
(e) 57% Lead
(f) 12%-15% Agriculture
(g) 25% Rubber
(h) An extreme amount of human capital (about 2 million ethnic Germans).
This was the most felt loss.
(2) The Germans strongly believed that they would win this land back at some point.
b) Reparations
(1) Their reparations were originally set at 269 billion gold marks, which is over 50%
of all the gold ever mined.
(a) Germany was no longer able to pay after their first payment, so the
reparations amount was changed in April 1921 to be 121 billion gold
marks, paid over 42 years.
(b) Germanys main issue with reparations was that it was too timid or short
sighted to secure loans to pay off their debt.
(c) Germany instead decided to print more currency and tax their people.
(i) In 1920, German marks were worth 10x less than they were in
1914. In 1923, German marks were worth 2,500x less than they
were in 1914.
(a) They became worth less than the paper they were printed
on!
(d) David Lloyd George (the Prime Minister of Great Britain) proposed a
moratorium on German reparations, but it could not be passed because
France refused.
(i) He also asked the USSR to open their gates to foreign investors,
but they refused.
(2) In July of 1922, the United States called in Great Britains loans. Great Britain,
then, called in Frances loans. France could not pay back these loans without
their reparations payments from Germany, so 60,000 French troops invaded the
Ruhr. This was called the Ruhr Crisis of 1923.
(a) The German workers in the Ruhr were told to go on strike to protest the
French invasion. The Weimar Government promised to pay their wages
anyway.
(i) This caused hyperinflation to soar.
(ii) Gustav Stresemann became Chancellor of Germany in
September of 1923 and ended the strike.
c) The London Conference was held, and Great Britain and the USA aired on the side of
benevolent neutrality.
(a) Charles Dawes instead made his own plan, the Dawes Plan: The Weimar
Government would let the United States lend them money ($2.5 billion) in
return for leveraging the railroads.
 (i) This really didnt fix anything, because it just made all of the debt
into a circle: U.S.A. Germany France Great Britain U.S.A.
and repeat
(b) The plan was put into place in 1924, and helped the German economy
recover slowly from 1924-28.
(2) The French agreed to secretly withdraw from the Ruhr in July of 1925.
(a) It was only secret so that the French public would not see their
government or military as weak.
(3) The Young Plan of 1929-30 lowered German reparations to 112 billion gold
marks, paid over 59 years.
2. Germany, along with all the countries involved in WWI, needed to rebuild. But Germany was
different in that it had to deal with its internal crises before it could even begin.
a) The Spartacist Group (led by Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht) were a communist
party attempting to spread the Bolshevik Revolution.
(1) President Ebert used the Freikorps to shut the Spartacists down in 1919.
3. Because Germanys economy was so closely connected with the United States economy,
Germany was the most rapidly and acutely affected by any economic changes in America.
a) In 1929, 500 thousand working-age males were unemployed. By 1933, over 6 million
(33% of all working-age males in Germany) were unemployed.
b) In 1928, the Nazis held 14 seats in the Reichstag. In 1930, they held 107 seats, and had
gained ~6 million votes. In 1932, they held 230 seats (30% of the total Reichstag), and
gained 11 million votes.
B. Ideological: Impact of Nazism on the foreign policies of Germany
1. Radicalism
a) Pacifism
(1) Those who fought in the trenches didnt want any further conflict.
(a) They didnt want to put up a fight against Hitler, either.
b) Diktat
(1) Inspired by the idea that the Paris Peace Conference was biased, because
Germany was not allowed a representative, even though they had made
gestures to change.
c) Adolf Hitler
(1) Hitler grew up in Vienna. He was a starving artist.
(2) Hitler was a part of the Freikorps.
(3) He was the 55th member of the NSDAP. 1 year later, he became the leader of
the party and created the 25 point program.
(4) Anti-semitism existed long before Hitler.
(a) Myth of the wandering Jew: they were seen as greedy, money-hungry
migrants.
d) Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
(1) In 1921, the Sturmabteilung (aka the SA, Storm Troopers, or Brown Shirts) were
formed.
(2) The failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch happened in 1923.
(3) In 1929, while imprisoned at the Landsberg Prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My
Struggle).
(a) He called for lebensraum, a new 1,000 year 3rd Reich.
(i) Hitler calling for the third Reich was much the same as Mussolini
calling for the resurgence of the Roman empire.
(a) The first one was Rome, the second was Bismarck.
2. Resurgent Nationalism
 a) Germany was enamored with the idea of gaining back their land and ethnic Germans
lost in the Treaty of Versailles.
b) The League of Nations was designed to help avoid hypernationalism, but failed
miserably, as we know.
(1) They had no means of enforcement, they did not include the most powerful
country in the world (the United States), and Germany and the USSR were
abandoned.
3. Naive Optimism
a) Both Germany and the League of Nations did not recognize the severity of the NSDAP.
b) Appeasement
(1) Balm for a guilty conscience, the idea that everything will be fine
(2) Repudiation of the war guilt clause
(a) The idea that Germany wasnt the only country guilty for WWI began to
materialize, and they were invited to bring a representative to Locarno.
c) Locarno Treaties 1925
(1) Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain and Gustav Stressman of Germany worked
out that Germany would accept their losses in the west, return to normal relations
with France (France agreed to this), demilitarize the Rhineland, and enter the
League of Nations.
d) Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928
(1) Aristide Briand of France and Frank Kellogg of the USA created this pact to
outlaw war.
(a) It was very naive.
(2) 15 countries signed the pact in 1928, and 55 more had signed by 1933.
4. Religious Extremism
a) Aryanism and the cult of der Fhrer
(1) Hitler liked Lanz von Liebenfelss book Theozoology (writen in 1904), which
stated the idea of a master race and proposed ideas like forced sterilization and
forced labor.
b) The German people were looking for a holistic, political and religious savior, and they
saw this in Adolf Hitler.
C. Political
1. Scapegoatism
a) Dolchstosslegende, or the Stabbed in the Back Theory
(1) The Social Democrats and the Catholic Center parties were used as scapegoats
by the Nazi party.
b) 376 political assassinations happened from 1919-22 (the Weimar government was not
accepted)
2. Political Opportunism (taking advantage of the political climate)
a) The Nazis used political pandering and campaign promises (that they did not follow
through on) to appeal to the public.
b) Treaty of Rapallo
(1) Opportunism on the part of Germany and the USSR at the Geneva Conference
(a) Great Britain was trying to fix the economy.
(2) On the surface, Rapollo was a treaty of goodwill, saying that the two countries
would acknowledge each others governments and forgive each others debts.
(3) The secret part of this treaty was that the USSR allowed Germany to
manufacture planes and ammunition as well as training soldiers in Russian
territory.
(a) Germany also agreed to train Soviet soldiers.
c) Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution
(1) This article stated that the Chancellor could take total control in the event of a
disaster.
 (2) Hitler was able to manipulate this treaty and become the temporary dictator, but
during his temporary dictatorship, he imprisoned all his opposition and used the
Enabling Act of 1933 to confirm his permanent dictatorship.
d) Reichstag Fire
e) Gleichschaltung
(1) Translates directly to the grinding of the gears, but would more appropriately
translate to putting things in motion.
III. Events
A. German challenges to the Post-War settlements & expansion (1933-1939)
1. World Disarmament Conference
a) Article 8 of the League of Nations says that national armaments must be the lowest
possible to maintain national security.
(1) Not addressed until 1932
b) Germany wanted equality with France and Britain, but was denied this by France.
(1) Resulted in Germany leaving the conference and League of Nations.
2. Remilitarization
a) Feb. 1933, Germany begins rearmament.
b) German expenditure increases 23%
c) Germanys army goes from 7 to 21 divisions
d) March 1935, Herman Goering reveals the Luftwaffe, manufactured in the Soviet Union
as per the Rapallo Treaty.
3. German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact
a) Jan. 1934, Hitler signs a 10-year nonaggression pact with Poland (despite resentment
over the Polish Corridor that separated Germany and Prussia)
b) Germany did this (probably) to undermine the Franco-Polish alliances of 1921 and 1925
(and secure Germanys eastern border as it militarized)
c) The demise of the League of Nations would be complete during the Abyssinian Crisis.
4. The Night of Long Knives
a) Internal German purge of potential competition to Hitler within his own force, the SA
b) Roehm (the head of the SA) boasted that the SA could absorb the German military (and
thus was jockeying for Hitlers position).
(1) He was therefore eliminated.
5. Occupation of the Rhineland
a) March 1936, Hitler remilitarizes the Rhineland
(1) Causes British remilitarization
(2) League fails to act in the face of the Abyssinian Crisis
b) Hitler has said that if he had been opposed at this time, all would have been lost.
6. The Spanish Civil War
a) 1936-38
b) Proxy war
c) Allows Communism and Fascism to fight on a smaller scale
d) Allows Russia and Germany to test new military hardware.
e) Drove Italy and Germany together.
7. Rome-Berlin Axis
a) Oct. 1936: Hitler and Mussolini sign this treaty.
b) Within a month, this is expanded to include Japan (Anti-Comintern Pact of Nov. 1937)
Italy agreed.
8. The Hossbach Memorandum
a) Provided proof that Germany was actively seeking to go to war
b) November 5th 1937: Named after the minute-taker, Fredrich Hossbach
c) Hitler said that it was of utmost importance that war begin by 1945, or else the German
war machine would be obsolete.
d) Hitlers last will and testament should he die.
9. Anschluss
a) Forced annexation of Austria in March 1938
b) There was a failed attempt of this in 1934 due to Italian opposition and mobilization in
the Brenner Frontier.
c) Under the guise of safeguarding the integrity of elections, Nazi troops went to Austria,
resulting in a vote of 99.75% in favor of a union.
 10. Sudetenland
a) Hitler began an invasion of Western Czechoslovakia, aka the Sudetenland.
b) Trying to propose a peaceful solution to the crisis, Britain, France, Italy, and Germany
agree to give Hitler that land as long as he stops. This was decided without the consent
of Benes of Czechoslovakia or Stalin.
c) Germany totally broke the agreement 6 months later.
11. Pact of Steel
a) Hitler strengthens the Rome-Berlin axis in the face of British and French unification by
creating an alliance between Germany and Italy.
b) Japan, while invited, refused to join, stating that it wanted to focus on the Soviet Union.
12. Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact
a) Stalin believed that the Soviet Union would need to fend for itself, since it wasnt
included in the Munich Conference.
b) On Aug. 23rd 1939, the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact is signed
c) Allows the germans to split Poland right about the Curzon Line and promising non-
aggression towards the other.
13. Germany invades Poland on Sept. 1, 1939
a) Secures the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.
B. Italian Expansion
1. Italy did not have many natural resources, they needed to take territory OR take control of the
seas.
2. Abyssinia
a) Abyssinia is modern-day Ethiopia.
b) Italy wanted Abyssinia for its resources and as a step towards taking the seas.
(1) They were not concerned about the French or Greek navies, but Great Britains
was a concern.
c) In 1932, Mussolini began to plan the invasion and started gaining political and public
support.
d) The first clash was at the Wal-Wal Oasis in December of 1934, even though the official
invasion had not begun yet.
e) In April of 1935, Mussolini met with the British and French Prime Ministers (Ramsay
MacDonald and Pierre Laval) in Italy.
(1) He wanted support for recognizing and maintaining an independent Austria.
(2) There was an attempted merger in 1934, but it didnt work.
(3) Great Britain and France needed confirmation that Italy would help protect
against German expansion.
f) Mussolinis armies used chemical weaponry in Abyssinia as well as mass executions.
(1) Italys army wasnt that strong, but was tons stronger than Abyssinias.
(2) Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (also known as Ras Tafari Makonnen)
appealed to the League of Nations.
(a) The League condemned Italy but delayed action because they did not
have support from Great Britain and France.
g) British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval and
created the Hoare-Laval Pact, which stated that of Abyssinia would go to Italy, and
Abyssinia itself would get to keep the other .
(1) It was leaked and ultimately nothing happened.
h) In April 1936, at Lake Ashagi, Italy took Abyssinia for good.
3. The League of Nations was not able to maintain global peace because it favored large powers
a) Italy moved closer to Nazi Germany
b) Final nail in the League coffin
c) It is us today, tomorrow it will be you
4. Albania
a) Albania was a satellite state of Italy. They were run by a puppet government, with
General Ahmed Zog in power.
(1) Eventually Zog began acting independently and they began to break off.
b) Hitler eventually broke the Munich Pact (which Mussolini helped draft) and took all of
Czechoslovakia
c) Italy, to prove to Germany that they could also act without permission, took Albania.
(1) This threatened Yugoslavia and Greece.
5. World War 1
a) Italy did not join the war immediately.
(1) Mussolini originally told Hitler that Italy would not be prepared for the war until
1945.
(2) He may have been holding out in the hopes of an alliance with Great Britain and
France...maybe.
b) Their reasons for joining the war:
(1) It was consistent with his rhetoric.
(2) It had the potential to reinvigorate his regime.
(3) If he didnt side with Germany and the Germans won, Hitler would have shown
no mercy to Italy.
(4) Germany owed Italy money, and Italy was dependent on German coal.
(a) In May of 1940, Great Britain blockaded Italy, stopping the export of
German coal. Italy declared war in the next month.
 IB HOTA 2 UNIT 5
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 1936-39

I. Long Term Causes

A. Ideological
1. Liberalism
a) The Spanish Civil War was the result of a prolonged backlash against the old, conservative,
Catholic guard.
b) The growth in the rise of liberalism began when the Spanish public began to want
representation in their government and economic parity.
(1) They saw this in other revolutions throughout the world (like in France).
(a) All Euro countries except Russia had some sort of political disrupt following the
Enlightenment
c) The Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol, or the Spanish Socialist Party, or PSOE for short, grew
during the early to late 19th century, mostly in urban areas in the Northeast.
(1) They were not altogether united: they had the moderates (led by Indalecio Prieto) and
the radicals (led by Largo Caballero).
2. Anarchism
a) Anarchism grew in the latter part of the 19th century.
(1) Anarchism means they wanted little to no government at all, not even democracy.
(2) The Spanish Anarchist Party was called the Federacion Anarquista Iberica, or the FAI
for short.
b) They favored radical economic change, fighting for equal redistribution of land and profits. They
were very active in revolutions and in trade unions and industrialist towns. They also
participated in many, many assassinations and bombings.
B. Political
1. Historical Military Involvement
a) The Spanish Military had a tradition of being involved in politics, and had a reputation for
brutality and was very expensive to run (which in turn put a very heavy tax burden on the
public).
(1) It was much more expensive to run than in any other country--even more than the US
and the USSR during the arms race (by % of GNP, not total $).
(2) This was because of its structure: it had way too many leaders and too few troops, and
the leaders were paid significantly more.
(a) A tradition in Spain was that the firstborn sons of wealthy landowning families
would take over the land, and the rest of the sons would take comfortable
positions either as priests or as military officers.
2. Political Instability 1820-1931
a) When England defeated the Spanish Armada, Spains economy slowly began to fall apart over
the course of many centuries.
(1) If the Ottoman Empire was the sick man of Europe, Spain was dead. --Mr. Thomas
(a) They were never considered among with the major powers of Europe, since
they were underdeveloped from a socioeconomic perspective.
(2) Spain was also losing their territory in the Americas. While they once held almost the
entire Western Hemisphere, they lost their last bit of it in 1898 during the Spanish-
American War and ended up only with holdings in Morocco.
(a) They were losing all this land because of the growing factions in the military, the
Africanistas (those who wanted to expand into Africa and take back their role as
a major power) and the Abandonistas (those who accepted that Spains reign
was over).
b) In 1808, King Ferdinand VII was overthrown by Napoleon, which began the Peninsula Wars.
(1) Napoleon placed his brother Joseph Napoleon on the throne, which was, of course, met
with significant resistance.
c) When Napoleon was defeated in 1812, Spain drafted a constitution and put Ferdinand VII back
on the throne.
(1) From 1813 until the late 18-teens, King Ferdinand allowed for some of his power to be
taken from him in favor of a more constitutional monarchy.
(2) In the years leading up to 1820, Ferdinand VII began to reassert more absolutist control,
and was overthrown by the liberals and the military.
(3) An official constitutional monarchy was then established, which lasted for three years;
called the Trienio Liberal, or the three liberal years.
d) Spain began losing all of their territory in the Americas during the Spanish-American War in the
1820s. Any chance of constitutional monarchy gaining a foothold is lost.
e) In 1822, Ferdinand VII, in an attempt to gain back his power, appealed to the Holy Alliance
(Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Prussia) for support.
(1) King Louis XVIII of France sent his Hundred Thousand Sons of St. Louis (which was
really only around 60,000 troops). He succeeded, and ended Spains constitutional
monarchy in 1823. King Ferdinand VII was once again Spains absolute monarch.
f) Ferdinand VII ruled from 1823 until 1833, until he died, and Spain was met with a succession
issue: he had left no sons.
(1) Salic Law (coming from French Catholicism) stated that the throne must go to the Kings
male heir, or, if he had no sons, it must go to his brother.
(2) King Ferdinand had a brother, Don Carlos, but his wife Maria Christina convinced him on
his deathbed to change the law to allow his daughter, Isabella II, to take the throne.
(3) The Carlists were established (as in Carlos, for Don Carlos). They were a group of
conservatives who wanted to preserve Salic law and put Don Carlos in power.
g) The Reign of the Queens lasted from 1833-1868.
(1) In this time, there were three Carlist wars, between the Carlists and the
Christinos/Isabellinos (as in Maria Christina and Isabella II).
(2) The military became influential in the government during this time, as Isabella needed
their support. She offered them more of a voice in government as well as better pay.
(3) Isabella was overthrown in the timespan of 1868-1870 by a conspiracy of liberal
generals. A series of revolts followed soon after.
h) The constitutional monarchy was restored from 1870-73. Amadeo I, a royal, but from a
completely different line of ancestry, was placed on the throne.
(1) Amadeo I quit in 1873, saying that the Spaniards were ungovernable.
(a) This ushered in the First Republic, which lasted from 1873-74.
(b) It also set off the third Carlist war.
i) In 1874, the monarchy was restored: Isabellas son Alfonso XII became King.
(1) He actually died at age 25 in 1885, and was succeeded by his son Alfonso XIII, though
he was an infant and thus his mother, Maria Christina of Austria, ruled as Queen
Regent.
(2) She allowed elections, and allowed the Spanish parliament (the Cortez) to make day-to-
day decisions.
(3) Power began to concentrate in the hands of the wealthy oligarchs, or Caciques.
(a) Spain is historically an oligarchy, so it was easy for fascism to take hold after
that.
(4) In 1906, an anarchist tried to kill Alfonso XIII on his wedding day.
(5) Alfonso favored the Africanistas because he leaned towards oppressive and
expansionist tendencies.
(6) The Republic of the Rif (the Berbers) were declared independent in 1921.
(a) Spain tried to take over the Republic on the Rif but it was never effective. In 1922
they were massacred.
(b) The Berbers were led by Ab El Krim (you dont need to remember his name).
(c) The entire conflict cost an estimated $800 Million
(7) Reinforcements were sent in 1925 and by 1926, Spain took control under the leadership
of General Jose Sanjurjo.
 j) In 1923, Alfonso XIII realized he had lost control of the government. He abdicated control and
supported General Primo de Rivera in a bloodless coup.
C. Economic
1. Beginning with the Peninsular Wars in 1808, all Spanish holdings in America began to fight for their
independence.
a) This ended in 1933, but in 1898 they lost their final holdings: Puerto Rico and Cuba.
2. Towards the end of the 19th Century, as the FAI grew, the government used the civil guard to try to
suppress the disorder.
3. Workers who felt oppressed had to choose whether to turn to the leftists or the Church.
a) The Catholic Agrarian Federation helped poor workers in poverty if they would renounce all
association with the FAI, PSOE, and all other socialist parties.
b) This worked with the agrarian workers, but industrial workers chose to oppose the Church.
4. Spain had low wages and bad living conditions in urban areas.
a) Two trade unions were formed: the Union General de Trabajadores, a.k.a. UGT (a socialist
general workers union) and the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo, a.k.a. CNT (radical,
anarchist, and cynical)
b) Change in Spain needed to happen from the top down.
5. Spain had a land ownership system very similar to the haciendas in Mexico. This was called latifundia.
Large landowners were called grandees.
a) This system depended on day labor (no contract, hired per day, no long-term guarantees).
b) There was no job security and always a surplus of labor.
c) Unemployment spiked to 100% for about a third of the year, every year.
6. During WWI, Spain remained neutral.
a) They actually had a boom cycle during the war because they sold agrarian goods.
b) The economy faltered from 1919-1923.
c) Spain remained over 20% unemployment throughout the 1920s. (3-4% unemployment is good.)
D. Religious
1. The Catholic Church supported the conservative government.
a) The church controlled education, and the state provided them money.
2. Rural workers and peasants were conservative, and were much more tolerant of the church and
governments oppression.
II. Short Term Causes
A. Ideological
1. The liberal constitution was a short-term byproduct of long-term liberalism.
a) AKA Spanish Constitution of 1931
2. From June 1931, the Second Spanish Republic came into existence.
a) The first government was a leftist coalition of parties. It lasted until November of 1933, when the
left wing was thrown out.
b) A right-wing party coalition took power until February 1936, when they were thrown out and a
left-wing coalition took power.
c) This kind of political instability had existed for over a century, but in these 5 years there were
much more rapid and radical shifts.
d) At the beginning of this period, not many people would say that civil war was inevitable, and
most had hope for change. By the end of the Second Republic, however, there was so much
unrealized change, that most of the country had concluded that war was inevitable.
e) Fatalism was a byproduct of destabilization.
3. Global trends in 1936 showed the rise and success of single-party states (such as the USSR, Japan,
Germany, and Italy). A radical single-party state seemed like a viable solution to Spain.
B. Economic
1. The global depression affected Spain as well, but mostly in the North.
2. The Asturian Mining Revolt in 1934 was designed to become a nationwide strike.
3. All attempted economic reforms in Spain failed.
C. Political
1. Miguel Primo de Rivera, who ruled during the 20s, brought some political stability.
 a) He ended wars in Morocco, but Spain was still in debt.
b) Spain saw significant industrial progress during his rule, but it didnt really fix issues.
c) He tried to make reforms but he fell drastically short of what Spain really needed.
(1) Creating a governmental arbitration committee
(a) This settled disputes between the caciques and their workers.
(b) It was rejected.
(2) Creating a public works committee
(a) This had marginal success.
(b) They succeeded in building the first rail over the Pyrenees!
(3) Reforming the military
(a) This was the most controversial.
d) In 1930, King Alfonso XIII requested his resignation.
2. In April of 1931, King Alfonso called for elections to vote for a representative democracy.
a) This completely backfired on him (he didnt win), and he fled the country, ending Spains
monarchical rule and ushering in the 2nd Spanish Republic under President Alcala-Zamora
3. Alcala-Zamora called for parliamentary elections in June.
a) The winner was a coalition of liberal parties (primarily the PSOE and the Radical Party) who had
previously met in San Sebastian and formed a coalition, the San Sebastian Pact.
(1) They instituted numerous polarizing leftist reforms. They were helped put into place by
Manuel Azaa, the leader of the PSOE and the new Prime Minister in the Cortez.
(a) Separation of Church and State
(i) Opposed by the Church
(b) Land Redistribution
(i) Opposed by grandees
(c) Urban Workers Reform
(i) Opposed by caciques and industrialists
(d) Military Reforms
(i) Opposed by military officers
(e) Move toward regional independence (e.g. Catalonia)
(i) Opposed by the Nationalists
b) New right-wing political movements came out of this left-wing rule: Confederacion Espanola de
Derechas Autonomas (CEDA) and the Falange.
(1) CEDA was led by Jose Maria Gil-Robles.
(2) Falange was led by Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (son of Miguel Primo de Rivera), who
modeled the Falange after the ever-successful Namzi party.
4. The attempted military reforms led to the greatest backlash.
a) Their first attempt to reform the military was by offering early retirement to officers with full pay.
(1) About 50% of the officers in the military took the offer, but it didnt do what he intended--
the only officers who took the offer were moderates, leaving a small, radical officer
corps.
b) In August of 1931 General Sanjurjo attempted a military coup, but failed.
c) In response to increasingly violent protests, Azaa put together a new civil guard, called the
Assault Guard, who dealt with the various uprisings.
d) In January 1933 in Cadiz, there was an anarchist uprising. The assault guards arrived and most
anarchists surrendered, but some at Casas Viejas refused. 19-24 people were killed by the
assault guard.
e) Manuel Azana resigned in 1933 and emergency elections were held.
5. The Right Republic
a) The Casas Viejas Incident and Azaa resigning causes the Cortez to shift to the right, primarily
due to the movement of The Radical Party from their centrist-left position to a centrist-right.
b) The Radical Party comes to power under Prime Minister Alejandro Lerroux
c) CEDA, a more radical right wing party, led by Gil-Robles, refuses to work with the Radical Party
unless CEDA members are given government roles. Alcala-Zamora gives a few CEDA
members cabinet positions within his government.
 d) 1933-1934 the Right Republic reverses all of the Left Republics reforms (e.g. separation of
church and state is undone)
e) The government is nationalistic which causes Catalonia to revolt.
6. Asturian Mining Revolt 1934
a) 1934-miners revolt in response to the Right Republics reversal of reforms. They try to start a
national workers strike but it is poorly planner and is only effective in Asturias. Asturias breaks
from Spain, declaring themselves an autonomous marxist principality, which is met with
backlash.
b) The government sends in the military to end the strike, Francisco Franco is the general in
charge.
c) Franco brutally represses the strike in 1934: kills 1,335; wounds 3,000; imprisons 30,000 (it is
basically a one sided fight).
d) Francos brutality causes him to lose support from some previous right wingers, particularly the
Basques- they go back to the left wing.
e) The likelihood of civil war increases greatly due to the polarization and hostilities
7. Communist Surge
a) PSOE leader Largo Caballero calls for a Bolshevik-type revolution and Gil-Robles responds with
order for brutal repression of any communists in Spain
b) PSOE gains sympathy from the Soviet Union who sees a potential ally in Spain
c) All sides had their own governmental interests. They were only unified when they were fighting
against a common enemy, but once they achieved their objective, they werent able to work
together.
d) Communists unite with the left wing which leads to the development of the Popular Front in
1935
8. The Popular Front
a) 1936 is the next election, the Popular Front (leftist) comes to power
b) Meanwhile, Spain is still dealing with economic problems of the 30s
c) Disunity is manifested because of differing aims and objectives
9. Calvo Sotelo
a) A monarchist, far right wing, popular CEDA member
b) Fled the country in 1931 when the Second Republic was established with a left wing coalition
c) He returned in 1935 to fight for a right wing victory in the 1936 election
d) When the Popular Front won, Sotelo publicly criticized the government. He was found murdered
the next day. This event precipitates the coup detat
10. Coup detat
a) Generals Sanjuro, Mola, de Llano, and Franco plan the coup, though Mola is the chief architect.
With the assassination of Sotelo, they decide that the time to execute the coup was in July
1936. Franco is the only General that is not immediately on board. The others eventually issue
him an ultimatum, stating that they will rebel with or without him.
b) The Spanish Civil War escalates into a Satellite War
11. Satellite War
a) The Spanish Civil War escalates into a Satellite War of fascism v. communism due to the role of
foreign powers.
b) Also referred to as a proxy war (more than just Spain)
D. RELIGIOUS
III. 20th Century Warfare
A. Technological Developments
1. The Republicans held the technological advantage around 1936, but it switched back and forth
between the left and the right multiple times throughout the war.
2. The Spanish Civil War was a good time for Germany to test out their new technology and tactics.
a) They created new long-range artillery, airplanes, and lighter/faster armour.
b) One of the reasons Germany failed in WWI was because of the failure of the Schlieffen Plan
due to them being unable to move as quickly as they planned. They began to overcome these
faults as they developed new technology for Spains civil war.
B. Strategies and Tactics
1. The military coup was successful for the right in that they gained territory, but a failure in that it resulted
in civil war. This was the reason why Mola lost the support of the other generals when Sanjuro died in
the plane crash.
2. The army rebelled against the leftist government. Many officers were in coalition with African generals,
and tended to side with the Nationalists.
3. of Spain, most major cities, industrial areas, gold reserves, and the loyalty of the airforce and navy
belonged to the Republicans.
4. The war was defensive; and initially favored the Republicans.
a) The Nationalists, though, had the support of the army, the church, the wealthy, the industrialists,
the rural peasants, Germany, and Italy.
b) It was also a war of terror. Massacres were common; the majority of deaths during the war and
in the years immediately after were by execution. ~500,000 people are estimated to have been
killed by execution during this time (300K during the war and 200K after). The limpieza
(cleaning up) by Franco after the war is called the white terror.
(1) Bombing raids were carried out on targeted civilians.
C. Course of the War
1. The nationalist coup was planned to begin on July 18th, 1936, but actually began a day early. It was led
by General Emilio Mola.
a) They began with coordinated attacks in Morocco and in the Northwest of Spain.
(1) It all happened very quickly due to the Spanish Military Union.
b) General Sanjuro, the chief of the rebel army, died in a plane crash three days after the war
began (July 20th, 1936).
(1) They were met with a question, in August 1936: who will be the chief of the Rebel army?
(a) In the South, Nationalist General Francisco Franco split South African forces to
Grenada and Barajos.
(b) General Cabanellas defended Aragon while General de Llano moved into
Grenada.
(2) An internal election was held and Francisco Franco was elected Commander in Chief
with very little opposition, because he was supported by Hitler.
2. July 1936 Airlift
a) The German air force provided an airlift for the (Nationalist) Spanish army of Africa across the
Straits of Gibraltar.
(1) This allowed the army to move from Cadiz through Andalucia and into Extremadura.
b) The Nationalists held of the country, but the Republicans had the other , including all big
cities, etc.
(1) The Republican army defended Madrid, plus South and East Spain.
3. August-October 1936 Country Divided
a) The Nationalists goal to seize Madrid was not realized.
(1) Franco was diverted to Toledo and its ancient fortress city of Alcazar. He wanted to take
it, and succeeded on September 27th.
(2) The delay from the capture of Alcazar allowed the Republican army to get
reinforcements in to fortify Madrid.
(a) In October, the leftists received armor and airplanes from Mexico and the USSR.
(b) In November, 35,000 volunteer freedom fighters (the International Brigade)
arrived for the defense of Madrid.
(3) When the Nationalists attempted to take Madrid, they were stopped at Casa del Campo.
(4) The lines were drawn there for 6 months, and there was no movement. The Republicans
maintained a defensive stance.
4. January-March 1937 Republican Government flees Madrid
a) The Republicans abandoned Madrid for Valencia.
b) The Nationalists attempted to cut off Madrid, but failed in February at the Battle of Jarama.
c) Also in February, the Nationalists took Malaga. This was a strategic move.
d) In March, the Nationalists tried for Madrid again, but this time failed at Guadalajara.
 e) All the way through March, the Republicans held the technological advantage.
(1) They gained territory in Spain up until this point, but soon stopped expanding and
remained on the defensive.
5. March-October 1937 Spanish Traditionalist Party (FET)
a) At this point, the technological advantage shifted to the Nationalists side as they gained new
aerial weaponry from Germany.
b) Franco turned from Madrid to the Asturias in the North.
(1) This led to the bombing of Guernica in April.
(2) They took Bilbao in June (as they moved from the East to the West), and had control of
Gihon by October.
c) Franco was able to unite divergent right-wing forces.
(1) The Carlists, the Monarchists, and the Falange all came together to create the Falange
Espaola Tradicionalista, or the Spanish Traditionalist Party, or FET.
d) In May, the Republican Army (especially in Catalonia) began to break up.
(1) The extremists began to separate from the moderates, and they had their own civil war
within a civil war.
(a) The extremists were thrown out.
(2) The Prime Minister was thrown out along with the extremists. He was succeeded by
Juan Negrin (Republican).
(a) Juan Negrin tried some counter-offensive moves against the Nationalists, but it
was too late; none succeeded.
6. Summer 1937 Madrid besieged
a) The Nationalists besieged Madrid in the summer of 37.
b) Negrin launched a second counter-offensive and took back Teruel, but was soon cut off from
Madrid and forced to surrender.
c) The Nationalists continued to move into the Northeast.
7. 1938 Defensive hold out at Ebro River
8. February 1939 Barcelona falls [to whom?]
9. March 1939 Madrid falls
a) Negrin attempted a conditional surrender to Franco, but he refused.
b) Negrin was forced out and Madrid fell on March 27th, 1939.
10. April 1939 End of war
a) Franco announced the end of the civil war.
D. Impact on the Homefront
1. Communism grew in popularity at the beginning of the civil war because of the USSRs support of the
left.
a) In 1936, there were about 40,000 people in the Spanish Communist Party. By 1937, that
number had grown to 400,000.
2. Due to the targeting of civilians, churches, and priests, the Spanish Civil War became a culture war.
3. Spain began the war in an economic disaster which only worsened throughout the war.
a) The USSR helped them until 1938, when they stopped all military shipments and withdrew their
troops. They made the Spanish government pay back all the equipment they loaned them.
E. Resistance Movements
1. Germany
a) Hitler was thrilled at the idea of another fascist state in Europe, and supported Francos coup.
b) He provided air and naval support.
(1) Germany really wanted to test their new military equipment, especially aircraft.
(2) An estimated 12,000-15,000 German troops fought in the Spanish Civil War.
c) On the surface, Hitler was committed to non-intervention (unlike Mussolini), so most of their
support was very covert.
d) Germany looked to benefit from the mineral wealth (especially iron ore) in Spain.
e) Hitler joined the Non-Intervention Committee in 1937, but then supported the Nationalists
through the end of the war.
 2. Italy
a) Mussolini was overtly supportive of the Nationalists.
(1) He looked forward to having a friendly fascist state at the mouth of the Mediterranean.
b) An estimated 75,000 Italian troops fought in the Spanish Civil War.
c) The Spanish Civil War, for Italy, marked the end of the Stresa Front.
3. France
a) France had issues getting their parliament to decide whether or not (and how much) to support
the Republican government in Spain.
(1) They officially opposed fascism, but were divided internally between the left and the
right.
(2) They did not want to create any more conflict with Germany or jeopardize their
relationship with Great Britain.
b) France ended up as a center for coordinating assistance (the USSRs equipment, international
brigades, and humanitarian aid came through France to Spain).
4. Great Britain
a) Great Britain was firmly committed to non-intervention, and leaned towards appeasement.
(1) They proposed the Non-Intervention Committee (NIC), which was signed by about 24
countries.
(a) Three of these were Germany, Italy, and the USSR, who immediately
disregarded it.
(2) They knew that countries were disregarding the NIC, but were willing to sacrifice Spain
to avoid conflict with Germany, Italy, and Portugal.
(3) In December of 1936, the Prime Minister signed an agreement that allowed British
companies to trade with the Nationalists, though the country remained neutral.
5. USSR
a) The USSR very much wanted a communist state in Western Europe (to distract Germany when
WWII inevitably began).
b) Stalin was afraid of overtly supporting the Republicans because it would prompt Germany and
Italy to support the Nationalists, but once he saw they were supporting the Nationalists anyway,
he went for it.
(1) Initially, he only committed 750 tanks and 1,000 aircraft.
c) Stalin organized the international brigades.
(1) There were about 35,000 total volunteers, mostly defending Madrid.
d) In 1938, the USSR withdrew all support.
IV. Results and Effects: Political Repercussions
A. Domestic
1. Casualties
a) There is estimated to have been about 500,000 casualties throughout the course of the war.
(1) 300,000 of these casualties were by execution.
b) In Francos attempt to consolidate his rule, he started the limpieza, or cleaning up, sometimes
known as the White Terror.
(1) Many people were put in concentration camps, and kids were taken out of homes and
re-educated. An estimated 200,000 were killed during this time.
2. Economic Cost
a) Spains already depressed economy was completely destroyed.
(1) 10-15% of wealth in Spain was destroyed.
(2) The per capita income decreased by 28%.
(3) 60% of railways were destroyed.
(4) 200 towns were destroyed.
(5) 250,000 homes were left uninhabitable.
(6) 5,000 churches were burned.
(7) Madrid was reduced to rubble.
b) After WWI, in 1946, there was a massive famine.
 c) The only thing that eventually saved the Spanish economy was a trade agreement with the
Allies during WWII: If they stayed neutral, the Allies would supply them with humanitarian aid.
3. Political
a) Franco dominated Spain until his death in 1975.
(1) He united the country but it remained divided.
(2) As much as he tried to erase it, he still maintained the legacy of brutal civil war and
oppression.
(3) Francisco confiscated land and banned political activism. The country remained isolated
and unmodernized for 36 years.
(a) Foreign The intellectually elite fled because of the extreme oppression.
(b) An estimated 500,000 refugees fled Spain for France, the USSR, and South
America.
B.
1. Communism
a) Communism suffered a PR nightmare after the Spanish Civil War and left idealistic communists
disillusioned.
(1) The USSR tried to create a global communist alliance of countries (COMINTERN), but
pulled out of Spain in their time of need and basically let them die.
b) The international brigades were a utopian military with no ranks.
2. Fascism
a) The Spanish Civil War drew Germany and Italy together officially.
(1) Tension from the Stresa Front and the Abyssinian Crisis completely thawed.
(2) In December 1936, Hitler and Mussolini signed together, and joined the Anti-
COMINTERN Pact in 1937.
3. World War II
a) Great Britain was so committed to non-intervention that Germany knew they could keep
invading other countries without threat of Britains fighting back.
 UNIT 6 NOTES
WORLD WAR II 1939-1945

I. Origins and Causes of WWII 1919-1933

A. Covered in Units 1-5
II. Types of 20th Century Warfare
A. Civil War
B. Guerilla War
C. Total War
1. All-encompassing character
a) Conscription
b) Civilian targeting
(1) Weapons of mass destruction
(2) Holocaust/Genocide
2. Severity
a) Casualties
b) Displaced persons
c) Physical destruction
3. Total mobilization of natural resources
4. Undermining of social and political structures
a) Marked the end of political regimes and single-party states
(1) Fall of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, imperial Japan
5. Psychological trauma
a) Cynicism
b) Fatalism
c) Isolationism
d) Materialism
(1) Soldiers wanted to come home and forget about the war, buy a house in the suburbs,
and live their lives
(a) This was the first time suburbs existed!
e) Anti-idealism
(1) WWI caused countries to demilitarize, while WWII did not.
(2) WWI was supposed to be the war to end all wars... but now theres another, and
people have lost hope for this kind of thing to never happen again
III. Early Stages
A. The Germans moved from Anschluss to the Sudetenland and into the Rhineland, and were now thinking about
taking Poland.
B. Adolf Hitler violated the Munich Pact and took Czechoslovakia on March 16th, 1939.
C. Poland was terrified of the Germans moving in, and strengthened their ties with Great Britain. The Anglo-Polish
Guarantee was established on March 31, 1939.
D. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (a.k.a. The Nazi-Soviet Pact) was established on August 23rd, 1939.
1. This established that they would split Poland.
2. This also allowed Hitler to focus on Western Europe, and not worry about fighting a two-front war
(which he was terrified of).
E. Poland got scared (again) and established the Polish-British Common Defense Pact on August 25th, 1939.
F. On September 1st, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland with minimal resistance.
1. Within a week, Stalin took Eastern Poland as well.
2. The Germans moved so fast, they described it as a Blitzkrieg, or lightning war.
3. Great Britain and France immediately declared war on Germany.
1
 a) It was described as a phony war, because for 6 months, war was declared but they didnt
actually do anything.
(1) The soldiers described it as a Sitzkrieg, or the Bore War.
b) War was not declared on the USSR, just Germany. Great Britain and France did not want to
inadvertently force the two together.
G. France and Germany built lines of defensive forts called the Maginot Line (France) and the Sigfried Line
(Germany).
1. They were concrete bunkers with huge reserves, stocks on machine guns, and lots of supplies.
2. In WWI, these would have been extremely useful, as the war was defensive. However, in WWII, due to
the new military artillery and the fact that the war was offensive, they were immediately useless.
H. Hitler took Norway and Denmark in March 1940.
I. In May of 1940, Germany rapidly advanced through the Netherlands, Belgium, and into France.
1. 300,000 French and (mostly) British soldiers became trapped between the advancing German troops
and the English Channel. Britain was under attack, and no ships were available to save them. Then
came the Miracle at Dunkirk. Great Britain sent out a call, and from May 27-June 4, 1940, British
citizens responded in mass: fishing boats, ferries, dinghies, any ship that was available sailed across
the (uncharacteristically smooth) English Channel to rescue the troops.
2. France was defeated in 6 weeks. Germany took Paris in June of 1940.
a) Central and Southeast France became independent, or Vichy France.
(1) They were independent, but really just a puppet regime under Nazi Germany.
(a) Rise of General Charles DeGaulle
J. Spain was neutral and fascist (a friend), so Germany turned to Great Britain. This triggered the Battle of Britain,
which lasted from JulySeptember of 1940.
1. This was the first turning point of the war.
2. Operation Sea Lion: Germany bombed England mercilessly to soften it for invasion.
a) The British anti-aircraft guns (RAF) prevented the German invasion.
b) German aerial tech had not evolved enough for the planes to fly all the way over the English
Channel and into the center of the country, so they could only hit cities close to the coast.
c) London was hit, but the Northern industrial areas were safe.o
K. Winston Churchill was elected the Prime Minister of Great Britain on May 10th, 1940.
1. He was called the British Bulldog due to his war-hawk like tendencies.
2. France was invaded this same day.
3. He began defensive preparations immediately: women and children were sent out of London
immediately and the rest of the city was moved underground.
L. In October 1940, Hitler pulled back on his bombing campaign, because it was not doing very well and they
were losing bombers.
IV. In December of 1940, Hitler was presented with Operation Barbarossa: a plan to invade Russia. It began on June 22,
1941.
A. It was supposed to begin in May, but Hitler was initially hesitant. He only agreed to go on with the operation
because the Battle of Britain was not going well.
B. It was a 1,000 mile front, the largest military invasion in history, and accounted for 65% of all the Allied Powers
casualties. It was a massive military invasion using Blitzkrieg tactics.
1. Operation Barbarossa was the second turning point of the war.
2. The Nazis killed 4 million people, 1.5 million of which died in labor camps.
C. First Phase
1. The first two weeks went great for the Nazis. They got much farther into the USSR than anyone before
(even Napoleon).
2. Germany gained
a) Agricultural Resources
b) Baku Oil Fields

2
 c) Forced Labor
3. They destroyed 4,000 Soviet airplanes, most of which were on the ground.
4. Josef Stalin was caught completely off guard and became severely depressed. For weeks he
disappeared completely.
D. Second Phase
1. Germany began to realize how big Russia and its population really was.
2. The Battle of Stalingrad lasted from August 1942 February 1943.
a) There were 2 million casualties.
b) Hitler lost, which was the beginning of the end for Operation Barbarossa.
c) Nikita Kruschev was put in charge of military affairs.
(1) Stalin gave him the order to charge the enemy.
(2) They did not have trained fighters or modern technology, but they did have numbers.
Kruschev just sent wave after wave after wave of troops to fight the Germans.
(a) Kruschev gave the order to shoot anyone who turned back.
d) At the end of the battle, in February of 1943, the Nazis began to withdraw.
(1) 65% of their army was in the USSR and they needed to defend the Western front.
3. While the Germans were retreating after the Battle of Stalingrad, they got into the Battle of Kursk.
a) 800+ Soviet tanks vs. ~500 German tanks.
4. Germany surrounded Leningrad in the Siege of Leningrad from September of 1941 January of 1944
(900 days).
a) Nothing got in or out of the cities (except for a lucky few during the winter).
b) The Soviets experienced mass starvation: 700,000 civilians died. They turned to eating pets,
horses, people, boiled wallpaper, and dirt.
V. On December 7th, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
A. Franklin Delano Roosevelt immediately declared war on Japan, and Germany declared war on the United
States.
1. Germany was eager to declare war on the USA so that they could use their U-boats to bomb American
vessels and cut off supplies to other Allied powers.
B. The U.S. was not prepared for war, and lost all of their early battles to Japan.
1. They lost Guam, Wake Island, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaya, Burma, Singapore, and the Dutch West
Indies.
2. Gen. Isoroku Yamamoto said We can run wild for 6 months to a year [before the U.S. would defeat
us]. He was absolutely right; it took 6 months for the U.S. to prepare for war.
VI. Battle of the Philippines
A. Japan moved into the Philippines the day after Pearl Harbor.
B. 65,000 US and Filipino soldiers marched for 65 miles without food or water in the Bataan Death March, in
March-April 1942
1. Japanese culture indicated that soldiers who gave up were pretty much subhuman, so whoever fell was
shot.
2. They were tortured at Camp Donnell.
3. 10,000+ soldiers died.
4. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was pulled out of the Philippines in April 1940. He vowed I shall return.
VII. European Theater
A. WWII was fought in two theaters: the European theater and the Pacific theater.
B. At the end of December 1941 and early January 1942, wartime conferences began with the Washington
Conference, nicknamed Arcadia.
1. Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met to discuss strategy. They decided to focus on the
European theater first.
2. They determined that Germany could win the war without Japan, but Japan could not win without
Germany.
3
 3. They began offensives in both places at the same time, but they put their best efforts into the European
theater. This was called the Europe-first strategy.
C. As soon as the US entered the war, Operation Drumbeat, a submarine campaign in the North Atlantic, began.
1. Its purpose was for Germany to cut off supplies to the European front. They sunk American and British
ships.
2. From 1941-42, Germany was successful.
a) 1,299 ships were sunk in 1941.
b) 1,662 ships were sunk in 1942.
c) Great Britain had put too much faith in the London Naval Treaty of 1930, and had completely
disarmed.
(1) In the 30s, many felt that Hitler could be appeased, and by the time the majority agreed
that the country needed to remilitarize, it was already too late.
d) Great Britain used a type of underwater sonar called ASDIC (Anti-Submarine Detection
Hydrophonic) to detect German U-boats, but it was not as high-tech as they thought. It had a
hard time differentiating between different underwater sounds and could not tell direction or
speed.
3. At the end of 1942, the tides of the North Atlantic battles turned with the introduction of new technology.
a) The Enigma Code Machine was created to crack German codes.
(1) German codes changed every day.
(2) It was actually the Polish who first cracked the code, but they gave it to Great Britain.
b) The HF/DF, High Frequency Detection Finder, or Huff-Duff was a new, more sophisticated type
of sonar.
(1) It allowed the British to use triangulation to find the speed and direction of submarines.
c) The Hedgehog was an ahead-throwing mortar that detonated only when it hit something.
(1) Prior to this, ships had to roll depth charges off the back at the approximate place they
thought a sub was, and it would detonate at a certain depth. This was inefficient because
it needed to be released exactly above the sub and the depth would have to be
calculated exactly right.
d) Long-range bombers, such as the Liberator, which was also equipped with a massive floodlight
called the Leigh Lights.
D. Operation Torch was the United States invasion of North Africa.
1. This was the first Allied offensive.
2. Lasted from November of 1942 May 1943
3. This doomed fascist Italy.
a) In January of 1943, Italy had already lost, so Germany had to send in troops to both Italy and
North Africa to help.
4. In January of 1943, FDR, Winston Churchill, and the leader of the French resistance movement
Charles DeGaulle met in Morocco for the Casablanca conference, nicknamed Symbol.
a) Stalin was very aware that he was left out. He felt he was being abandoned.
(1) 80% of German troops were in the Soviet Union at this time.
b) They discussed the Italian campaign and a cross-channel invasion.
(1) They decided a cross-channel invasion would not be possible until 1944.
c) FDR and Churchill issued a public statement: they would ally with the USSR and would take
nothing less than an unconditional surrender from Germany.
E. The first step onto the Italian front was Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, in July of 1943.
1. The allies split their forces between General Omar Bradley and General George Patton. They landed
on opposite ends of the island and moved in towards each other.
a) They had a friendly race to see who could arrive in Mecima first.
2. They landed on Polermo and Mecina and the Italians surrendered in mass.
F. Operation Avalanche in September 1943 was an attack on the Italian peninsula.

4
 1. They landed at Solerno.
2. The Allies were led by General Mark Clark.
a) He expected to be in Rome by October.
3. Italy had already surrendered during Operation Husky, but Germany had moved in to support them.
a) They faced massive German resistance, and the United States suffered a massive amount of
casualties.
4. Benito Mussolini fled and became Germanys puppet dictator in a northern region of Italy.
5. General Mark Clark wanted to outflank Germany and began Operation Shingle.
a) They tried to sandwich the Italians between their troops.
b) He told Germany to be careful but then invaded anyways.
c) When he landed on the beach, there was only one way up. Instead of sending his troops up as
soon as they hit the ground, he made them all wait until absolutely everything was unloaded.
This gave the Germans enough time to prepare their defense.
6. In January of 1944, the Allies broke through German lines and made for Rome.
7. The Allies took Rome in June 1944.
G. Operation Overlord - Europe (June 6, 1944)
1. Five beaches needed to be taken: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword
a) Utah and Omaha were assigned to the US, which were the most combatted beaches to take
2. Initial force was 160,000 troops, 12,000 aircraft, 7,000 ships
3. By the end of August there was over 300,000.
4. Two months of slow fighting towards inland Normandy to control and gain support
5. Operation Cobra was the breakout from Normandy, to expand inland into the Western front to take
Paris and continue on to Germany.
6. Planned by Montgomery (a Brit), but involved US troops.
7. Goal: to take back the Netherlands.
8. Plan: go into the Netherlands (like the Schlieffen Plan) to invade Germany indirectly.
9. Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem were the three bridges to drop planned paratroopers.
10. This was a failed operation.
11. Battle of the Bulge occurs as the Germans attempt one last major counter offensive through the town of
Bastogne.
a) 200,000 German troops surround 70,000 American troops, eventually killing 90,000.
b) They had to hold out until reinforcements arrived
12. Soviet and American forces closed in from the East and the West.
a) Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945
b) Germany surrendered May 8, 1945
VIII. Pacific Theater
A. The first United States victory of note was Coral Sea in May of 1942.
1. This Allied victory protected the Northern coast of Australia.
2. The United States intercepted a Japanese transmission, and after cracking the code learned that they
were planning to attack a town in the south of Papua New Guinea.
3. General Chester Nimitz raced to intercept the Japanese Imperial Navy, and succeeded.
4. The Southwest Pacific campaign launched from this battle.
B. The Battle of Midway was another naval campaign won by the United States in June of 1942.
1. They sunk two Japanese aircraft carriers.
a) Every loss was acutely felt by Japan due to their extreme lack of resources.
C. Guadalcanal was a bloody, amphibious campaign. It lasted from August to November of 1942.
1. Their objective was to take Henderson Air Field.
a) It was successful.
2. The United States launched two separate operations, set to converge in the Philippines.
a) The Southwest operation was led by Douglas MacArthur.
(1) He was fulfilling his promise to return to the Philippines.
5
 b) The Central Pacific operation was led by Chester Nimitz.
3. This was the beginning of the United States island hopping strategy.
a) This strategy was based on War Plan Orange of the Rainbow War Plans from Japans invasion
of Korea.
4. It was also the beginning of suicide campaigns.
a) Japanese soldiers just kept running at the United States lines, and the U.S. just mowed them
down with machine guns until the bodies piled up.
5. Rabaul was the largest Japanese air base in the Southwest Pacific. The United States avoided it, and
successfully cut it off without being in direct combat with it.
D. The Solomon Islands campaign was a campaign to take air strips and cut off Rabaul. It lasted until the end of
the war.
1. It began with Operation Cartwheel.
2. Ultimately, it merged with the New Guinea campaign.
3. Battle of Bougainville, November 1943
E. The Central Pacific Fleet engaged in the Mariana and Palau Islands Campaign from June through November
of 1944.
1. They took airfields in order to take off and bomb the next island over: island hopping.
2. It included the battles of Saipan, Guam, Peleliu, Philippine Sea
a) The Battle of the Philippine Sea was the longest and largest of carrier vs. carrier battles in the
South Pacific.
(1) The US had 9 carriers for every 5 that Japan had.
(2) Japans loss marked the beginning of the end for them.
F. MacArthur and Nimitzs New Guinea campaigns merged to begin the Philippines Campaign, which lasted from
October of 1944 to September of 1945.
1. This began with the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
a) Leyte Gulf was the largest naval battle in history.
b) This is the last battleship vs. battleship battle in history.
c) This was the first time Japan intentionally launched attacks.
(1) Kamikaze attacks are suicide missions wherein the pilot, instead of launching a missile
or something, crashes their plane into the target (on purpose). Its like using their plane
as a missile.
2. The United States launched an amphibious assault on the Philippines, and they had an overwhelming
advantage.
a) Their amphibious assaults were effective because of their technology.
(1) LCMs (Landing Craft Mechanized): instead of having to beach their ships or make their
sailors swim, they could float the troops over in what looked like a big box car and just
open it and have hundreds of men pour out on the beach.
3. There were about 350,000 Japanese casualties, and less than 15,000 American casualties.
4. The fighting was mostly done by February of 1945, even though the campaign technically lasted until
September.
G. Volcano & Ryukyu Islands (February June 1945)
1. During this campaign there were two very fierce battles; the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
a) Iwo Jima: 20,000 casualties
b) Okinawa: 50,000 casualties
(1) This was the small island with a large mountain, which the Japanese set up as
honeycomb sort of military base.
c) These battles provided airstrips, which allowed for the United States to launch aerial attacks on
Japans mainland.
d) They used kamikaze and banzai tactics.
H. Japan (July August 1945)

6
 1. The United States had military superiority over Japan.
a) From 1943-44, America could make 90 aircraft carriers in the time it took for Japan to build 7.
IX. Impact on the Homefront and Resistance Movements
A. Japanese-Americans
1. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese immigrants moved to the United States, especially on the West
Coast.
2. In February of 1942, Executive Order 9066 was issued by FDR.
a) All issei (first generation immigrants), nissei (second generation immigrants), and sansei (3rd
generation immigrants) would be relocated for the purpose of national defense.
b) Secretary of War Henry Stimson was authorized to intern anyone deemed necessary to the
safety of the nation.
(1) 110,000 Japanese-Americans were interned
(a) 65% of which were full US citizens
(2) 11,000 German-Americans and 3,000 Italian-Americans were interned
(a) Many of these were Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied territory.
3. In March 1942, the first, largest, and eventually most famous internment camp opened at Manzanar.
a) It housed 10,000 internees.
b) The camps had bad facilities and inadequate conditions. Most internees were forcibly removed
from their homes. The camps were sometimes surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers.
4. Most of the Japanese-Americans took on the attitude of it cant be helped.
5. In May of 1942, Fred Korematsu was required to report to a relocation center. He defied the order,
citing the 14th amendment. He was sent to prison, but appealed, and his case went all the way to the
Supreme Court in Korematsu v. U.S., but lost and was sent back to prison.
a) In 1976, Executive Order 9066 was rescinded by President Ford, and Korematsus conviction
was voided in 1983.
(1) Ford issued an official apology to all internees and their families and gave them all
$20,000 in compensation.
B. Japanese-Canadians
1. Racial resentment was just as strong, if not stronger, in Canada.
a) They felt the immigrants were taking their jobs, especially on the coasts.
2. Executive King issued the War Measures Act, establishing internment camps in Canada at the same
time that they declared war.
a) It also established a zone of protection from the coasts to 100 miles inland. All Japanese
males age 14-45 were removed and their properties were seized.
(1) They were told that their property would be held in trust for them when they returned but
of course, it wasnt.
3. At the end of the war, internment did not end in Canada. Japanese-Canadians were given the option to
repatriate to Japan or reside East of the Rocky Mountains.
C. Mexican-Americans
1. The War Production Board ramped up production in the US, and there was an acutely felt shortage of
labor. FDR met with Mexican President Manuel Camacho in Monterrey, Mexico, in August of 1942 to
lay out a guest-worker program called the Bracero program.
a) This was a mostly agricultural program designed to allow Mexicans to immigrate to the United
States to help with the war effort.
b) 4 million Mexican workers moved to the US.
c) The program technically ended in 1947, though it really lasted until 1964.
2. As soon as the war ended and soldiers began to return to work, there was extreme animosity towards
the Mexican immigrants.
3. In 1954, President Eisenhower began Operation Wetback: an operation to deport the Mexican workers.
a) 1 million were deported in that year alone.

7
 4. Young Mexican-Americans, especially in the Los Angeles area, took to wearing Zoot-Suits. This
triggered the Zoot Suit Riots.
a) During WWII, there was a clothing ration in order to make sure there was enough cloth to
provide soldiers with uniforms. Since the zoot-suits were so baggy, many felt that the young
men were defying the ban by using so much extra cloth.
5. At a swimming hole in Los Angeles where teens liked to gather, a fight broke out, and someone was
murdered. A pachuco gang was accused and labeled hoodlums.
a) From May-June of 1943, some servicemen came home on leave, and were beat up in the street
by a pachuco gang.
b) The servicemen drove through the streets of LA and beat up every zoot-suiter they saw.
(1) The LAPD created a vengeance squad to rid the street of all pachucos, as well.
c) This event was called the Sleepy Lagoon Murders.
6. A serviceman, Felix Longoria, was killed in the Philippines. His remains were not immediately
unidentified, but were eventually delivered to his town of Three Rivers, Texas, in 1945.
a) The funeral home and the town refused to handle his body, as Jim Crowe laws were still in
place and they were allowed to be this openly racist.
b) Senator Lyndon B. Johnson argued with this, and eventually made the national news, saying
that Longoria deserved better than to be buried in this racist town, and had his remains moved
to a better cemetery.
D. African-Americans
1. WWII launched the civil rights movement with the introduction of the Double-V campaign.
a) How can we fight Hitler with the hatred of Jim Crowe alive and well?
2. There was a spike in NAACP membership.
3. Hundreds of thousands of African-Americans fought in the war, though their troops were initially
segregated.
a) A. Philip Randolph, the head of the Union for Black Sleeping Car Porters (the only union to
increase in membership during the Great Depression, by the way), was organizing a march on
Washington D.C. in March of 1941.
b) FDR was absolutely terrified of the country splitting apart and losing morale, and what that
would communicate to the Axis Powers.
c) Randolph and Roosevelt met. Randolph pushed FDR to issue Executive Order 8802, thus
desegregating the defense industry, in return for cancelling the march.
(1) This was the first civil rights order by the federal government since the 1870s.
E. Women
1. 6 million women worked outside of the home.
a) 3 million of these women had never done so before.
b) Rosie the Riveter was a symbol of working women.
2. When the war ended, most of the women left their jobs willingly, but about 15% had to be forced out.
3. 350,000 women served in non-combat roles in the military.
a) WACs: Womens Army Corps (Army)
b) WAVES: Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (Navy)
c) WASPs: Womens Airforce Service Pilots (Airforce)
(1) Technically, women were not allowed to serve in combat, so the WASPs only did service
runs and sometimes troop deployment, but never bombing runs.
(2) However, they still had to fly into combat, and sometimes died.
(a) They were not entitled to veteran benefits until 1977.
d) SPAR: Semper Paratus Always Ready (Coastguard)
F. The Jewish Holocaust
1. The Nazis targeted the untermensch, which roughly translates to the subhuman, unwanted, or
disliked.
2. They were denied their rights and forced into labor camps.
8
 a) In 1934, Jews were denied their right to freedom of the press.
b) In 1935, the Nuremberg Race Laws declared that Jews would be denied citizenship.
c) In 1936, Jews were denied the right to vote.
d) The first camp that was built was Dachau.
(1) The original incarcerees in this camp were Communists, but it quickly progressed to
include Jews, as well.
(2) During the mid-thirties, the Jews were led to believe that if they worked hard enough in
these labor camps, they would be freed.
(3) Camps were built in Germany, Poland, Italy, France, and the Balkans.
3. The first act of violence against Jews was Kristallnacht, on the night of November 9, 1938.
a) 30,000 Jews were rounded up and forced into labor camps.
b) Dozens were killed.
c) Thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues were ransacked and destroyed.
4. Jews were cordoned off and forced into ghettos.
a) They were sealed off, denied all civil liberties, and stripped of most of their personal items.
5. Adolph Eichmann took command of the Gestapo (German Secret Police) in 1940.
a) He was a pivotal figure for Hitler and helped coin the phrase The Jewish Question... what do
we do with the untermensch?
b) He was a very large proponent of the development of concentration camps, or
konzentrationslager: work camps.
(1) He developed Auschwitz-Birkenau.
(a) Rudolph Hoss became the first kommandant of Auschwitz.
(b) This was the site of the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, nicknamed the Angel of
Death. He did experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz, focusing on hereditary
traits, specifically twins.
6. German Jews began to be deported to Poland starting in 1940.
a) They were sent to either concentration camps or ghettos.
7. In the summer of 1941, Heinrich Himmler summoned Rudolph Hoss to Berlin to discuss the Jewish
Question. They came up with the Final Solution: the liquidation of the untermensch.
a) Auschwitz became the first extermination camp.
(1) Prisoners were put on a train death camps forced to remove anything of value
(including pulling teeth fillings if they were made of silver or gold) the undressing room
the showers gassed (with Zyklon-B) crematorium
8. In 1938, the SS, under Himmler, created the SS Einsatzgruppen: a single purpose group, otherwise
known as the traveling death squads.
a) It was headed by Reinhard Heydrich.
b) They were usually a firing squad who used pistols, but from 1941-43 they looked for more
efficient means of execution.
(1) In 1941, they developed Zyklon-B: a chemical weapon used to gas prisoners.
9. In January of 1942, the Nazis met at the Wannsee Conference to discuss speeding up the Final
Solution.
a) More death camps were opened in occupied territories.
10. In 1944, the Allied powers pushed in from the East and the West and discovered more camps.
a) 11 million people were executed, 6 million of which were Jews.
b) Adolph Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Josef Goebbels, and Hermann Gring committed suicide.
c) Rudolph Hoss was eventually caught and accepted his guilt, and was subsequently executed.
d) Adolph Eichmann and Josef Mengele fled Germany.
(1) Eichmann was eventually captured in Argentina by the Israelis, tried, remained defiant,
and was eventually executed in 1962.
(2) Mengele was never caught.
9
 G. American Reaction to the Holocaust
1. American soldiers were shocked upon discovering the camps. There was some understanding of what
was going on, but nothing of this magnitude.
a) In Germany, the lack of intelligence, nativist reactions, anti-semitism, and immigration restriction
did little to help.
(1) Conferences were held in Bermuda and Evian France to deal with the immigration
problem.
b) FDRs only Jewish cabinet member, the Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, presented a
report to the President which led to the creation of the War Refugee Board.
2. After Kristallnacht, Jews began to flee.
a) On January 13, 1939, the M.S. Saint Louis (also known as the Voyage of the Damned) set sail
from Hamburg, Germany to Cuba, with 937 passengers aboard.
(1) Cuba denied their entry, so they headed for Florida.
(a) This is confusing, because the Dominican Republic was open to refugees.
Maybe they didnt know?
(2) The U.S. also denied their entry, and sent the coast guard to prevent them from
beaching their ship.
(a) Secretary of State Cordell Hull declared that refugees absolutely could not be
allowed in, and extended tourist visas could not be given out as the passengers
had no home address.
(3) They headed for Canada, who also denied their entry.
(4) They were forced to return to Europe, where they were taken in by France, Belgium, and
the Netherlands.
X. Technological Developments and the Start of the Atomic Age
A. In August of 1939, Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist, asked Einstein to sign and deliver a letter (the Einstein-
Szilard Letter) to FDR about Germanys work on nuclear fission.
1. This was based on Enrico Fermi.
B. After reading the letter, FDR created the Office of Scientific Research (OSRD) using Executive Order 8807.
1. Army General Chief of Staff George Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson agued that the army
should be in control of the program, because they are accustomed to large-scale projects via the army
corps of engineers.
2. Major General Leslie Rhodes was given oversight on the project.
a) He gave it the name The Manhattan Project
3. J. Robert Oppenheimer, a UC Berkeley physicist, was brought onto the project to deal with the
mathematical equations having to deal with device detonation.
a) He took Project Y in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
(1) It was on a plateau, just outside of a town, in an abandoned middle school
4. Oppenheimer and Fermi are referred to as the fathers of the atomic bomb.
C. At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, scientists worked on U-235, a radioactive isotope of
Uranium.
1. Oak Ridge was the main research lab and headquarters for the Manhattan Project.
a) It originally employed 80,000 people, 75,000 of which lived on site.
b) It was completely secret.
2. The first type of weapon that was discussed was the gun-type weapon, which sent a U-235 bullet down
a chamber to start a chemical reaction.
a) Oppenheimer was completely confident in the success of this weapon and did not feel the need
to test it.
b) This type of bomb was nicknamed little boy.
D. In February 1941, P-239 (a radioactive isotope of Plutonium) was discovered.
1. Scientists worked on the enrichment of this element at Richland, Washington.
2. P-239 was much more powerful than U-235.
10
 3. P-239 was used to make an implosion-type weapon, nicknamed fat man.
4. Oppenheimer was not confident about the success of this weapon.
a) On July 16th, 1945, a fat man bomb named Jumbo was tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
(1) This was called the Trinity Test.
(2) There was an audience!
(3) This was equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT.
b) Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds --Oppenheimer
E. On August 3rd, 1945, the U.S. demanded a total surrender from Japan. They refused.
1. If the US were to launch an amphibious assault on the Japanese mainland, they estimated 250,000
U.S. casualties and 1 million in total casualties.
a) Reasons to drop the bomb:
(1) Less casualties than an amphibious assault
(2) The bomb would allow us to show off our power to the USSR
(3) An amphibious assault would cost more
(4) An unconditional surrender was needed, and did not seem to be coming
b) Reasons not to drop the bomb:
(1) The surrender might have come anyway
(2) It was immoral and dangerous
(3) They could just do a demonstration instead of actually killing people
(4) The strategic value of the towns chosen was questioned
(5) It would be a huge blow to the USs image
2. A selection committee came up with a list of cities that would be best to bomb.
a) They were looking for an urban center, at least 3 miles in diameter, and was previously
untouched by the war.
(1) Not only were they dropping the bomb, they were trying to use it as a sort of test--to see
what would happen.
b) Their first choice was Hiroshima.
(1) It was a port city and industrial center with military headquarters.
c) Their second choice was Kyoto.
(1) Kyoto is an industrial center, cultural center, and important military location.
(2) Henry Stimson refused to bomb this city every time it was brought up in debate. He
argued that it was too important culturally to Japan, and the country would never, ever
forgive us if we destroyed it.
(a) Stimson also took his honeymoon there.
d) Kokura, Yomahama, and Nigata were also on the list. Nagasaki was not added as an option
until after Kyoto had been officially rejected.
3. On August 6th, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped little boy on Hiroshima.
a) Little boy destroyed 70% of the city.
b) 70,000 were killed instantly, and another 70,000 surrendered.
c) Japan did not surrender.
4. On August 9th, 1945, the B-29 bomber Bockscar targeted Kokura, but due to cloud cover had to divert
to the next city over, and thus dropped fat man on Nagasaki.
a) Nagasaki is in a valley, so though the blast was more powerful than little boy, it was contained.
b) 44% of the city was destroyed instantly.
c) 35,000 were killed and 60,000 were injured instantly.
5. On August 15th, 1945, Japan surrendered.
a) Their formal surrender came on September 2nd, on V-J Day.
XI. Economic Impact of the War on America
A. During the war, the US alone out-produced all of the Axis powers combined.
1. At the end of the war, they actually had to slow down production!
B. Unions increased in popularity.
11
 1. During the war, 3 million people joined unions (bringing the total union membership from 10 million to
13 million).
2. There were some strikes, but during wartime they were generally not allowed.
3. Wages were high, and profits were higher.
C. The civilian workforce increased by 20 million.
D. Civilians began to move west and to urban cities.
1. 15 million people moved to new counties
2. 8 million people moved to new states
3. The sun belt grew significantly.
a) Californias population grew by 2 million.
E. When soldiers began to return from the war, there was a brief, 6 month economic downturn, however, soldiers
were quickly assimilated back into the workforce thanks to of the GI Bill of Rights (or the Servicemens
Readjustment Act) of 1944 as well as the Veterans Administration, or VA.
1. 15 million soldiers returned, 8 million of which returned to school.
a) 2 million of that 8 went into higher education.
2. This cost taxpayers about $14.5 billion in taxes.
F. The GNP doubled: under $100 billion in 194? to $200+ billion in 1945.
G. Taxpayers experienced the highest income tax in history.
H. The Federal budget increased from $9 billion to $65 billion.
I. Wartime expenses were equal to double of ALL federal expenditures from 1776-1940.
1. $330 billion
J. The U.S. borrowed a lot of money for the war, increasing the national debt from $49 billion to $259 billion.
1. For the first time, the United States became a debtor nation.
K. When the war ended, production did not increase.
1. Eisenhower called this a permanent wartime economy
2. There was a vast military industrial complex.
L. Globalization began and there was a better understanding of the global interconnectedness.
XII. Wartime Conferences
A. At the end of December 1941 and early January 1942, wartime conferences began with the Washington
Conference, nicknamed Arcadia.
1. Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met to discuss strategy. They decided to focus on the
European theater first.
a) They determined that Germany could win the war without Japan, but Japan could not win
without Germany.
b) They began offensives in both places at the same time, but they put their best efforts into the
European theater.
B. In January of 1943, FDR, Winston Churchill, and the leader of the French resistance movement Charles
DeGaulle met in Morocco for the Casablanca conference, nicknamed Symbol.
1. Stalin was very aware that he was left out. He felt he was being abandoned.
a) 80% of German troops were in the Soviet Union at this time.
2. They discussed the Italian campaign and a cross-channel invasion.
a) They decided a cross-channel invasion would not be possible until 1944.
3. FDR and Churchill issued a public statement: they would ally with the USSR and would take nothing
less than an unconditional surrender from Germany.
C. In August of 1943, Prime Minister King and Churchill met for the Quebec Conference, codenamed Quadrant
1. Further planning of D-Day/Operation Overlord
2. Official name of Operation Overlord
a) Additional US troop movement into Britain
3. The three leaders decide that all nuclear weapons research should be under one authority.
a) Churchill and PM King turn over research to the US program, soon named the Manhattan
project.
12
 b) This was the Quebec Agreement.
D. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Jieshi meet in Cairo for a conference, codename Sextant, in November of 1943.
1. Cairo declaration: they will accept nothing but the unconditional surrender of Japan.
E. The big three meet together for the first time for the Tehran conference, or Eureka.
1. The first conference that Stalin attends.
2. Discussion of the actual date of D-Day.
F. FDR and Churchill attended the Second Quebec Conference, codename Octagon in September of 1944.
1. This conference began at the same time as Operation Market Garden, after the success of D-Day.
2. The subject of this conference was less about the Western front and more concerned with post-war
Germany.
a) This was the first conference to discuss the eventual partitioning of Germany.
b) It was clear that it was only a matter of time before Hitler fell.
3. Henry Morgenthau came up with the Morgenthau Plan: the complete demilitarization of Germany.
a) This aimed to strip Germany of its ability to make war.
b) They wanted to make Germany a mainly agricultural and natural pastoral country.
4. The Hyde Park agreement was also established.
a) This established that there would be full collaboration on the atomic bomb project; meaning that
the United States would not keep anything secret from Great Britain.
(1) The project had originally been given entirely to the United States.
G. The Big Three--Stalin, Churchill, and FDR--met for the Fourth Moscow Conference codenamed Tolstoy in
October of 1944.
1. They met to discuss the spheres of influence (or control) in postwar Central and Eastern Europe.
2. After one of the conferences had closed for the day, Churchill and Stalin went out for drinks.
a) On the back of a cocktail napkin, Churchill sketched out some percentages. Stalin approved
them, and thus decided the fate of millions.
b) This was called the percentage agreement or the napkin agreement.
H. In February of 1945, the Big Three met for the last time at the Yalta Conference, nicknamed Argonaut.
1. The Battle of the Bulge had ended, they were experiencing mass surrenders in Germany, and the Allies
were pushing towards Berlin.
2. They discussed the zones of influence in Eastern Europe.
a) The percentages turned out pretty much exactly how they had been described in the napkin
agreement.
b) Polands borders were the most thoroughly discussed, and it was eventually decided that the
Eastern border would be drawn along the curzon line.
c) There was a disagreement about who would become the new Polish government.
(1) The Soviet Union believed that the Lublin Poles were the legitimate government, and the
Western countries believed it was the London Poles.
3. They created plans for the first meeting to establish the United Nations in San Francisco.
a) The USSR agreed to participate, even though they were initially hesitant that it would just be
Western countries trying to westernize the East.
4. Stalin agreed to invade Japan 90 days after Germanys unconditional surrender.
I. On April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died, and Harry Truman became President of the USA.
1. He found out that the United States had been working on an atomic bomb, 2,000 people were involved,
and it had a budget of ~$2 billion.
a) Somehow they had kept the entire project a secret, even from the Vice President!
J. Stalin, Truman, and Churchill (eventually Attlee) met for the Potsdam Conference, nicknamed Terminal (as it
was meant to be the last wartime conference), from July-August 1945.
1. This began the day after the Trinity Test.
a) This was the first successful test of the atomic bomb, in New Mexico.
b) Truman decided to keep this secret for the beginning of the conference.

13
 (1) When he eventually told Stalin on July 25th, he was not surprised. Stalin had spies at
Los Alamos.
2. Churchill was voted out and replaced halfway through the conference by Great Britains new Prime
Minister, Clement Attlee.
3. The Potsdam Declaration was established: the Allies would accept nothing less than an unconditional
surrender from Japan.
XIII. Collective Security and Political Repercussions
A. In January of 1941, FDR delivered his State of the Union address, otherwise known as his Four Freedoms
speech.
1. He asserted that everyone around the world had the right to these universal freedoms/human rights,
and we as a country had an obligation to protect these four freedoms.
a) Freedom of speech
b) Freedom of worship
c) Freedom from want
d) Freedom from fear
B. In August, these four freedoms were expanded upon in the Atlantic Charter.
1. FDR and Churchill met off the coast of Newfoundland.
2. Their goal was to design a concept for what the world would look like after the war.
a) They basically just expanded upon the four freedoms.
b) They focused on the idea of free trade.
(1) This was controversial and immediately ostracized the USSR and its communist allies.
C. In October of 1943, the USA, USSR, and Great Britain met in Moscow for the third Moscow conference.
1. They issued the Moscow Declaration, based on the Atlantic Charter.
a) This basically just established the United Nations as well as the maintenance of peace,
preservation, and security.
D. As a follow-up, the Dumbarton Oaks conference was held in Washington, D.C.
1. It was held in two parts, because the USSR refused to recognize the legitimacy of Nationalist China.
2. This conference was based on Article 4 of the Moscow Declaration, and discussed the formation of the
United Nations, namely who could become members, the formation of the security council, and the right
to veto by permanent members of the sec. Council.
E. From April until June of 1945, the San Francisco Conference, or the first meeting of the United Nations, was
held.
1. 50 countries attended.
2. It was chaired by Algar Hiss.
a) He was later revealed to be a Soviet spy!
3. They focused on rewriting and clarifying what was stated at Dumbarton Oaks, and from that, created
the charter for the United Nations.
F. In February of 1946, Trygve Lie (a Norwegian) was appointed the first Secretary General of the United Nations.
1. His first resolution was the UN Atomic Energy Commission.
a) President Truman appointed Bernard Baruch to be nuclear watchdog for the United States.
(1) Bernard came up with the Baruch Plan: The US should dismantle its entire nuclear
weapons program and only use nuclear fission for energy.
(a) This was rejected by the Soviets.
(2) Baruch resigned in 1947.
G. The Bretton Woods Conference was held in New Hampshire in 1944.
1. 44 nations attended.
2. This conference was the culmination of the Great Depression.
3. They created
a) The International Monetary Fund (IMF)
(1) This was designed to provide loans to developing countries.
b) The International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (World Bank)
14
 (1) This provided long term investments to developing countries for projects.
(2) It was also used to provide money for post-war rebuilding of Europe.
c) The General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT)
(1) This reduced trade barriers and facilitated free trade.
(2) GATT met often (at conferences called rounds) to discuss new issues that arose in the
world.
(3) In 1994, GATT was replaced by the World Trade Organization.

15
1934
MAR: Dachau established*
?: Jews denied freedom of press

1935
SEPT: [15] Nuremberg Race Laws*, Jews denied citizenship

1936
MAR: [7] Remilitarization of the Rhineland
?: Jews denied right to vote

1937
1938
JAN:
FEB:
MAR: SS Einsatzgruppen is established
Anschluss
APR:
MAY:
JUN:
JUL:
AUG:
SEPT:
OCT: [1-10] Germany takes Sudetenland
NOV: [9-10] Kristallnacht
DEC:

1939
JAN: [13] MS Saint Louis sets sail
FEB:
MAR: [16] Hitler takes Czechoslovakia
[31] Anglo-Polish Guarantee
APR:
MAY:
JUN:
JUL:
AUG: [2] Einstein-Szilard Letter
[23] Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
[25] Polish-British Defense Pact
SEPT: [1] Hitler takes Poland
[3] Great Britain and France declare war
[10] Canada declares war, War Measures Act
[17] Hitler takes Eastern Poland
OCT:
NOV:
DEC:

1940
JAN:
FEB:
MAR: [9] Hitler invades Norway and Denmark
APR: [11] Gen. Douglas MacArthur (and US troops) pulled out of the Philippines
Construction of Auschwitz begins
MAY: Germany advances through the Netherlands, Belgium, and into France
United States moves their fleet to Pearl Harbor*
Polish prisoners begin to arrive at Auschwitz
[10] Winston Churchill is elected Prime Minister
[10] Hitler invades France
[27-4] Miracle at Dunkirk
JUN: [14] Germany takes Paris
JUL: [10] Battle of Britain/Operation Sea Lion begins
[26] U.S. restricts oil trade to Japan*
AUG:
SEPT: [22-28] Japan takes French Indies*
[27] A. Philip Randolph meets with FDR
OCT: [1] U.S. Embargo on Japan*
Adolph Eichmann takes command of the Gestapo
[31] Hitler pulls back bombing campaign, Battle of Britain ends
NOV:
DEC: [18] Hitler is presented with Operation Barbarossa
?: German Jews begin to be deported to Poland

1941
JAN: [6] FDRs Four Freedoms State of the Union address
FEB: [23] P-239 Discovered
MAR:
APR:
MAY:
JUN: [22] Operation Barbarossa begins
[25] Executive Order 8802
[28] Executive Order 8807, creating the OSRD/Manhattan Project
JUL: [5] U.S. Moral Embargo*
AUG: [14] Atlantic Charter
SEPT: [8] Siege of Leningrad begins
Auschwitz becomes the first extermination camp
OCT: Tojo Ultimatum*
NOV: [26] Hull Note
DEC: [7] Attack on Pearl Harbor
[8] US declares war on Japan
[8] US moves into the Philippines
[11] Germany declares war on the USA
Zyklon-B developed
Chelmno constructed
Operation Drumbeat begins
[22] Washington Conference a.k.a. Arcadia begins
?: Heinrich and Himmler meet to discuss the Final Solution

1942
JAN: [14] Washington Conference a.k.a. Arcadia ends
[20] Wannsee Conference
Solomon Islands campaign begins
FEB: [19] Japanese air raid on Darwin, Australia*
[19] Executive Order 9066
 [19] Churchill voted out of office, Clement Attlee takes office
MAR: Manzanar opens
APR: [9] Bataan Death March
[18] Doolittle Raid*
MAY: [4-8] Battle of Coral Sea
JUN: [4-7] Battle of Midway
AUG: [4] Bracero program begins
[7] Guadalcanal begins
[17] Battle of Stalingrad begins
SEPT:
OCT:
NOV: [8-10] Operation Torch
DEC:
?: Enigma Code Machine, Huff-Duff, Hedgehog, and Liberator introduced

1943
JAN: [1] Project Y established
Germany sends troops to Italy
[14-24] Casablanca Conference a.k.a. Symbol
FEB: [2] Battle of Stalingrad ends, Germany begins to withdraw from USSR
[9] Guadalcanal ends
MAR:
APR:
MAY:
JUN: [13] Richard A Fass is born in Brooklyn, NY
JUL: [5] Battle of Kursk begins
[9] Operation Husky begins
AUG: [17] Operation Husky ends
[17-24] Quebec Conference a.k.a. Quadrant
[23] Battle of Kursk ends
SEPT: [9] Operation Avalanche
OCT: [18] Third Moscow Conference begins
[30] Moscow Declaration
NOV: [1] Battle of Bougainville begins
 [11] Third Moscow Conference ends
[22-26] Cairo Conference a.k.a. Sextant
[28-1] Tehran Conference a.k.a. Eureka
DEC:

1944
JAN: Allies break through German lines and make for Rome
[16] Morgenthau presents Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of
This Government in the Murder of the Jews
[22] FDR creates the War Refugee Board
[22] Operation Shingle
[27] Siege of Leningrad ends
FEB:
MAR:
APR:
MAY:
JUN: [6] Operation Overlord begins
[19-20] Battle of the Philippine Sea
[22] G.I. Bill of Rights
Mariana and Palau Islands campaign begins
JUL: [1-22] Bretton Woods Conference
[4] Allies take Rome
AUG: [2] Sleepy Lagoon Murder
[21] Dumbarton Oaks Conference begins
[25] Operation Overlord ends
[25-31] Operation Cobra
SEPT: [12-16] Second Quebec Conference a.k.a. Octagon
[17-18] Hyde Park/Quebec Agreement
[17-25] Operation Market Garden
OCT: [7] Dumbarton Oaks conference ends
[9-19] Fourth Moscow Conference a.k.a. Tolstoy
[20] Philippines campaign begins
[23-26] Battle of Leyte Gulf
NOV: Mariana and Palau Islands campaign ends
DEC: [16] Battle of the Bulge begins
[18] Korematsu vs. United States

1945
JAN: [25] Battle of the Bulge ends
FEB: [4-11] Yalta Conference a.k.a. Argonaut
Most fighting ends in the Philippines
Volcano and Ryukyu Islands campaign begins
[19] Battle of Iwo Jima begins
MAR: [26] Battle of Iwo Jima ends
APR: [1] Battle of Okinawa begins
[12] FDR dies and Truman becomes President of the USA
[25] San Francisco Conference begins
[30] Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and Goring commit suicide
MAY: [8] Germany surrenders, V-E Day
JUN: [22] Battle of Okinawa ends
[26] San Francisco Conference ends
Volcano and Ryukyu Islands campaign ends
JUL: Japan campaign begins
[16] Trinity Test
[17] Potsdam Conference a.k.a. Terminal begins
[25] Truman tells Stalin about the Trinity Test
[26] Potsdam Declaration
AUG: [2] Potsdam Conference a.k.a. Terminal ends
[3] U.S. demands total surrender from Japan
[6] Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima
[9] Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki
[15] Japan surrenders
[21] Solomon Islands campaign ends
[25] Battle of Bougainville ends
SEPT: [2] Japan formally surrenders, V-J Day
[2] Philippines campaign ends
OCT:
NOV:
DEC:
?: Felix Longoria Affair

1946
FEB: [1] Trygve Lie appointed first General Secretary of the United Nations
MAR: [11] Rudolph Hoss captured by British troops
APR:
JUN: Baruch Plan

1947
?: Bernard Baruch resigns
Bracero program ends

1954
?: Operation Wetback

...
1962
?: Eichmann caught and tried

1964
?: Bracero program ends

...
1977
?: WASPs are finally entitled to Veteran benefits

...
1982
?: Korematsus conviction voided
 UNIT 7 NOTES
THE COLD WAR 1945-1991

FIRST TEST
Origins of the Cold War
I. Geo-Political Rivalry
A. The theme of Hegemonic Stability
B. Democracy in America, written by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, argues that other countries have reached
their natural limit, while the United States and Russia will continue to grow and prosper due to their size,
resources and population. He argues that they will control/influence the destinies of half the globe, and thus
they will inevitably clash.
II. Ideology
A. The Communist Manifesto, written in 1848 by Karl Marx
1. He argued dialectical materialism: the idea that everything has to do with materials, or matter.
2. He made three points:
a) Thesis
(1) The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
b) Antithesis
(1) The workers will rise up and seize the tools of production.
c) Synthesis
(1) The workers will establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.
3. These three points implied totalitarianism, which directly conflicts with democracy. The definitions of
democracy and communism each necessitate the demise of the other.
4. This ideology was a threat to any industrial society where there existed haves and have-nots.
5. Lenin became the architect of the terror state.
a) He believed that communism was the ultimate phase of evolution, while the penultimate phase
was capitalism.
b) In 1905, he stated that terror is an instrument of social hygiene.
III. Economic
A. The USA and USSR had divergent goals.
B. Atlantic Charter, August 1941
1. FDR and Churchill met off the coast of Newfoundland to discuss the future of the world after WWII.
2. Politically
a) Affirmed self-determination
b) Affirmed collective security
c) Argued for arms reduction
3. Economically
a) Affirms free trade
b) Affirms equal access to resources
c) Improved labor standards
4. All of these points that were agreed upon directly went against the ideals of the Manifesto.
C. Mutual Aid Agreement, 1942 (a part of the Lend-Lease Act)
1. Focused on Article 7, which stated that the United States would provide money for production,
employment, trade, etc. to all countries of like mind.
D. UN Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, July 1944
1. Created the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT).
2. This allowed the United States (and other countries) to trade freely with foreign countries.
a) Members of GATT were to be given most favored nation status.
(1) This meant that they would be given the best privileges extended to any country.
3. This facilitated global trade and was based upon the idea of open/free markets.
 a) Again, this goes against the Marx ideology.
IV. Political
A. Bolshevik Revolution/November Menshevik Coup (March-November 1917)
1. Russia (or rather, Lenin and the communists) withdrew from WWI, leaving the allies of Tsarist Russia
with a sense of abandonment.
2. The Western countries sent in troops to support the White (Tsarist) Army in the revolution, so the
communists felt abandoned by their allies, as well.
3. There was also a fear of a Russo-German Alliance.
a) Germanys strong technology and well trained army paired with Russias population and
resources would prove deadly.
4. Imperial Russia was in massive debt, and there was fear that it would not be paid back if the Bolsheviks
succeeded.
a) The concept of odious debt (legitimate regime changes in a country are not obligated to pay
debts owed by previous regimes) did not yet exist.
B. Nazi-Soviet/Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939
1. Stalin felt that Chamberlain had surrendered him.
2. Russia is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma - Winston Churchill
C. Casablanca and Tehran Conferences, 1943
1. Stalin felt left out of the Casablanca Conference.
2. Tehran was the first conference Stalin was invited to.
3. Stalin was upset about the delay in the opening of the Western Front.
D. Russias loss of life
1. Russia asked for compensation, a protective barrier, and a sphere of influence. The Allied Powers did
not believe this was asking too much, considering how much life they lost in the world wars.
E. Propaganda
1. The , or NKVD, the Soviet state police, produced a consistent
line of propaganda denouncing capitalism.
2. Both sides used propaganda to promote hostilities.
F. The Percentages Agreement (or the Napkin Agreement) at the Moscow Conference, October 9 1944
1. Romania: US 10%, USSR 90%
2. Greece: US 90%, USSR 10%
3. Yugoslavia: US 50%, USSR 50%
4. Hungary: US 50%, USSR 50%
a) Later changed to US 20%, USSR 80%
5. Bulgaria: US 25%, USSR 75%
V. Political Maneuvering
A. The Yalta Accord of February 1945 was the beginning of the post-war divide.
1. They came up with one statement, the declaration of a liberated Europe: The right of all peoples to
choose the form of government under which they live.
a) Stalin, of course, was just playing the game.
2. Truman and Stalin began to create a plan for Polands government after the war.
a) They would create a provisional government including BOTH London and Lublin Poles.
b) After this, free elections would be held, under the condition that no fascists were allowed to run
for office.
c) As the elections drew closer, the London Poles began to push against this idea of free elections,
claiming they were the legitimate government, and refusing to compromise with the Soviet
Union.
d) During the election, the USSR allowed no outside supervisors.
(1) It was probably corrupt.
e) The government elected was fully communist, and the London Poles fled into exile.
3. Germany was still occupied by the Allied powers, and the Soviets began to worry that the United States
would push them out.
 a) Stalin was also afraid of an American invasion.
(1) General Patton wire tapped a phone call that discussed the arming of Germany for the
invasion of the USSR, though it was never seriously considered.
B. Tensions heightened at the Potsdam Conference (nicknamed Terminal) in July of 1945.
1. Stalin stated of Eastern Europe: A freely elected government in any of these Eastern European
countries would be anti-Soviet, and that we cannot allow.
a) Totally goes against the Yalta Accord! No way theyre going to hold free elections.
2. In 1945, the United States had 8 million troops in Europe, and the Soviet Union had 6 million. In 1947,
the United States pulled their troops back to 1.5 million, and the Soviet Union still had 6 million.
C. The bombing of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) marked the dawn of the nuclear
age.
1. This solidified the fact that:
a) The United States is the only country with the bomb.
b) They are not afraid to use it.
VI. Political Rivalry Crystallizes
A. Stalin vs. Truman
1. The dropping of the nuclear bomb in August of 1945 led to a post-war recovery period.
a) Precedents began to be set between Stalin and Truman: they were not friends the way Stalin
and FDR had been.
2. The goal of the Soviets and other Eastern Bloc nations were to spread worldwide communism.
3. The goal of the Americans and other Western Nations was the containment of communism and
eventual collapse of the entire communist world.
B. Methodologies
1. Espionage (KGB, CIA)
2. Arms Race
3. Ideological competition for the hearts and minds of the third world
4. Bipolarization of Europe
C. In February of 1946, Stalin delivered the Bolshoi Speech (at the Bolshoi Theatre). It basically stated that
capitalism is aggressive and is trying to take over the world.
1. The US State Department contacted the US Embassy in Moscow to ask:
a) Is this threat credible? How credible is it?
b) Should we respond?
2. George Kennan, an American expert on Soviet-brand communism who had been living in Moscow for a
while, responded with an 8,000 word telegram. In this Long Telegram, he stated:
a) Russia is determined to destroy the American way of life.
b) This is the greatest threat the United States has ever faced.
c) The Soviets can be beaten.
d) The Soviets must be beaten.
e) This can be done without war.
f) We must educate the public against communism, and make our country and others wealthy,
happy, and free.
3. This became the foundation on which our foreign policy was built.
D. In March of 1946, Winston Churchill (who was not Prime Minister at the time), visited the United States at
Westminster College in Missouri. He delivered his Sinews of Peace address, sometimes called his Iron
Curtain Speech.
1. From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.
2. Truman stood right behind him as he delivered this speech.
3. Most US citizens did not know anything about the Soviet Union, other than that they were our allies in
the war that we had just won.
4. This speech was condemned by our Allies in WWII, as well as some Americans and US politicians,
because the USSR had been an important wartime ally.
E. The United States did not deliver an official statement condemning the Soviets until the US Secretary of State
James Byrnes in Stuttgart delivered his Speech of Hope in September of 1946.
 1. This was the first public statement against communist aggression.
2. It urged an enduring presence in Europe in support of democracy and free markets.
a) This shifted away from the agreements of Potsdam and the Morgenthau plan.
b) He intended on trying to take back control of Germany, and keep it free.
3. We intend to support the United Nations with all of the resources and power we possess.
F. Poland
1. Poland was seized by the Soviets in 1939. In 1940, in the Forest of Katyn, 14,000 Polish soldiers were
executed and buried in mass graves.
a) The Soviets blamed Germany, but later in the Cold War it was discovered that it was, in fact, the
Russians.
b) This crippled the Polish military--it gave the Poles much less influence in Poland and eliminated
their leadership.
c) This was an example of the Soviets use of demographic engineering for post-war control.
2. In July of 1944, as the Red Army closed in on Berlin, there was an uprising (called the Warsaw
Uprising) against Germany. Instead of stepping in to help, the Soviets stopped at the border, and
allowed Germany to massacre the Poles before they proceeded through.
3. Deputy Prime Minister Stanislaw Mikolayczyk, a London Pole, fled after the corrupt elections of January
1947. Lublin Pole Wladislaw Gomulka took full power.
G. The Greek Civil War lasted from 1946-49, and was (mainly) the Communists vs. the Democrats, though there
were many different factions.
1. The government and the turks were supported by Great Britain in resistance to Soviet pressure.
a) Concessions were made in the Dardanelles.
b) Truman was approached by Great Britain: they could no longer sustain their support in Greece
or Turkey.
2. On March 12, 1947, Truman stood before congress and presented his Truman Doctrine: stating in no
uncertain terms that communism was evil.
a) The United States gave $400 million to Greece and Turkey in aid.
b) He stated that there were two ways of life:
(1) Based upon the will of the majority
(2) Based upon the will of the minority, forcibly imposed upon the majority
c) He stated that the United States must support free peoples resisting attempted subjugation.
H. In June of 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall created the Policy Planning Staff. They advised the
president on foreign policy.
1. George Kennan was flown back from Moscow to become the first director
2. He published the Long Telegram, renamed The Sources of Soviet Conduct under the pseudonym Mr.
X.
a) It was available to the public.
I. On June 5th, 1947, George Marshall was a guest speaker at commencement at Harvard University. He
announced his European Recovery Program, or the Marshall Plan.
1. It was designed to provide monetary aid to post-war Europe to protect against hunger, poverty,
desperation, and chaos.
a) NOT against any ideology or political regime!!
2. The US gave $12.5 billion to Europe in humanitarian aid.
a) Congress was initially tentative about this idea, just because it was so much money.
3. Eastern Europe and the USSR rejected this offer, and responded by accusing the aid of being a ploy of
economic imperialism and a lure to capitalism.
4. In response to the Marshall Plan, the USSR issued the (Molotov) plan, which provided
economic aid to Eastern Europe.
J. On October 5th, 1947, the USSR established COMINFORM: an international organization designed to spread
communist ideology and encourage global communism.
K. On January 25th, 1949, the USSR created COMECON in response to the United States backing Yugoslavia as
an independent communist nation. COMECON was designed to integrate communist economies and
coordinate economic activities.
 L. In July of 1947, The National Security Act was passed. It formed
1. The Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA
a) They were the successor to the WWII agency OSS.
b) They were an international organization.
c) They recruited from OSS and the Ivy Leagues
2. The National Security Council, or NSC
a) They were more of a think tank; they advised the President. They were also an official
governing body. They spied on the public.
b) They were a domestic organization.
VII. Sovietization/Stalinization: The USSR aggressively and directly incorporated Eastern European nations within their
political, economic, and cultural bloc. The USA wooed countries with financial aid packages.
A. Eastern Europe
1. Poland
a) Establish military control
b) Take control of key state elements (e.g. police, media, etc)
c) Denazify
(1) The Red Army occupied all of Poland from 1945 on. Martial Law was in place until
communist influence was firmly established.
d) Loyal Communists imported from the USSR
(1) Lublin Poles are brought in and dominate the provisional government.
e) Left-wing parties "encouraged" to form a coalition with communists to create popular fronts
f) Popular fronts form provisional governments with communists holding key/highest offices
(1) London Poles are marginally represented by Stanislaw Mikolayczk.
g) Popular fronts would organize elections, which the communists would rig to assure a party
victory
(1) Elections were held in January 1947 and outside observers were denied.
h) Popular fronts would remain in name only and genuine opposition parties would be suppressed
(i.e. "sliced off" ==> salami tactics)
(1) Single party control was asserted under Wladislaw Gomulka.
i) Support from communist regime comes from incorporation into the Eastern bloc (COMINFORM,
COMECON, Warsaw Pact)
j) Political and cultural "Sovietization" would be imposed (infiltration by GRU, education
restructured, censorship imposed)
(1) Poland becomes Soviet satellite state.
2. Yugoslavia
a) Establish military control
(1) Was not occupied by the Red Army, nor did it share a border with the USSR. According
to the percentages agreement, it was a 50/50 state.
b) Take control of key state elements (e.g. police, media, etc)
c) Denazify
(1) Denazification was carried out by Josip Broz Tito.
d) Loyal Communists imported from the USSR
e) Left-wing parties "encouraged" to form a coalition with communists to create popular fronts
f) Popular fronts form provisional governments with communists holding key/highest offices
g) Popular fronts would organize elections, which the communists would rig to assure a party
victory
(1) Stalin attempted to pressure Tito into allowing greater Soviet influence, but Tito
successfully resisted, using
(a) Popular support
(b) Financial aid from the USA
(c) Stalins concern about driving Yugoslavia into the West
h) Popular fronts would remain in name only and genuine opposition parties would be suppressed
 (i.e. "sliced off" ==> salami tactics)
i) Support from communist regime comes from incorporation into the Eastern bloc (COMINFORM,
COMECON, Warsaw Pact)
j) Political and cultural "Sovietization" would be imposed (infiltration by GRU, education
restructured, censorship imposed)
(1) Though COMINFORM was largely Titos idea, Yugoslavia was expelled from it in June of
1948. Stalin initiated a crackdown on independent communist states.
3. Hungary
a) Establish military control
b) Take control of key state elements (e.g. police, media, etc)
c) Denazify
(1) Treated as a defeated country by Klement Voroshilov and the Soviet Red Army.
d) Loyal Communists imported from the USSR
(1) A provisional government was formed (led by the HCP), though their party unity was
poor (Laszlo Rajk and Matyas Rakoski, head of the muscovite faction)
e) Left-wing parties "encouraged" to form a coalition with communists to create popular fronts
(1) Smallholders Party gained an advantage in the elections of 1945 under the leadership of
Ferenc Nagy.
f) Popular fronts form provisional governments with communists holding key/highest offices
g) Popular fronts would organize elections, which the communists would rig to assure a party
victory
h) Popular fronts would remain in name only and genuine opposition parties would be suppressed
(i.e. "sliced off" ==> salami tactics)
(1) Smallholders Party leaders, including Bela Kovacs, were arrested by Soviet troops in
late 1946 and early 1947. Nagy was forced to resign in May of 1947.
i) Support from communist regime comes from incorporation into the Eastern bloc (COMINFORM,
COMECON, Warsaw Pact)
j) Political and cultural "Sovietization" would be imposed (infiltration by GRU, education
restructured, censorship imposed)
(1) Rakoski assumes power after rigged elections in August 1947.
4. Czechoslovakia
a) Establish military control
(1) Red Army was present in Czechoslovakia, though in a more amicable fashion. They did
not have a negative history with the USSR
b) Take control of key state elements (e.g. police, media, etc)
c) Denazify
d) Loyal Communists imported from the USSR
e) Left-wing parties "encouraged" to form a coalition with communists to create popular fronts
f) Popular fronts form provisional governments with communists holding key/highest offices
g) Popular fronts would organize elections, which the communists would rig to assure a party
victory
(1) The communist dominated government was formed with minimal control from the USSR.
The Soviets began to assume more control after the USA proposed the Marshall Plan,
and the Czechs were eager to accept aid. Also, the establishment of COMINFORM
targeted Czechs.
h) Popular fronts would remain in name only and genuine opposition parties would be suppressed
(i.e. "sliced off" ==> salami tactics)
i) Support from communist regime comes from incorporation into the Eastern bloc (COMINFORM,
COMECON, Warsaw Pact)
j) Political and cultural "Sovietization" would be imposed (infiltration by GRU, education
restructured, censorship imposed)
(1) Due to growing Western sympathies, communist Minister of Interior Vaclav Nosek
replaced 8 police chiefs with communists. Protests ensue (the Czechoslovakian Coup),
2 government officials were killed and President Edvard Benes resigned in protest.
 B. Post-war Germany was divided into zones.
1. In 1947, the US introduced a new currency in zones of western influence (that would later become the
Deutschmark).
a) This violated the Potsdam accord!
b) The USSR walked out of the AAC (Allied Control Council) - tensions grow!
C. In July of 1948, Truman began Operation Vittles, or the Berlin Airlift.
1. Flights ran 24/7 over the USSR-controlled Eastern German airspace for 320 days, dropping medical
supplies, food, etc.
2. Truman stated if a plane was shot down, the USA would not hesitate to drop the atom bomb on the
USSR.
3. The Soviets hoped that the USA would tire, but they didnt, so Checkpoint Charlie was established,
where citizens could enter and exit Berlin.
VIII. The Traumas of 1949
A. On May 23rd, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was formed with Bonn as their capital.
B. On October 7th, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was formed with Eastern Berlin as their capital.
1. These two points proved there would be no middle ground, and no compromise.
C. In April, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, was formed.
1. This was the first permanent peacetime defensive alliance that the US was a part of.
D. In August, the Soviet Union tested their first A-bomb and it was successful.
1. It was not announced, but the USA gained evidence from the nuclear fallout.
2. The bomb was called Joe 1, First Lightening, or .
3. Americans believed the USSR were atheists (fair enough), heartless, and had no moral fiber they
would drop the a-bomb with no hesitation.
E. On October 1st, China fell to the communists and became the Peoples Republic of China.
1. They were rather independent from the USSR, actually.
2. The USA began to wonder: maybe containment isnt enough?

SECOND TEST
Superpower Relations
IX. The Traumas of 1949 caused Paul Nitze, the head of the National Security Council, to sidestep the usual bureaucratic
channels and deliver a memo (NSC-68) directly to President Truman on April 14, 1950.
A. He said, in short, we need to change our containment policy. His strategies (or beliefs, or suggestions) were
as follows:
1. The United States is the only country with the means to contain communism.
2. Our scope of containment must be global.
a) As opposed to focusing mainly on Europe, which is what they had been doing.
3. The use of force must remain a reliable option.
a) We cannot keep throwing money at countries, war must remain a viable and possible option.
4. We should increase military expenditures 4x.
X. In June of 1950, The Peoples Liberation Army (China) invaded Tibet.
A. They claimed that they were just consolidating the CCCPs control, but outsiders saw it as an invasion.
B. The repression of Tibetans resulted in over a million deaths, and the Dalai Lama fled.
XI. That same month, North Korea (led by Syngman Rhee) invaded South Korea (led by Kim Il-Sung).
A. The United Nations sent their first military force (led mostly by the United States) to help South Korea.
1. The USSR was actually okay with this, since they were technically a peacekeeping force.
2. This was the first time the United States took a stand outside of Europe.
a) We probably sent troops only because of NSC-68.
B. The United States cut off North Korea and pushed them back, back, way past the 38th parallel Just a little
too close to China.
1. Between 700,000 and 1,000,000 Chinese forces came pouring over the border and pushed the
UN/United States (and South Korea with them) back to the 38th parallel.
2. In 1953, there was an armistice arranged between North and South Korea, which established a border
 at the 38th parallel as well as a demilitarized zone.
C. There was a growing concern that if smaller countries began to fall to communism, it would make it easier for
their neighbors to fall too. This was called the Domino Theory.
XII. The Khrushchev Thaw
A. Stalin died on March 1, 1953.
1. Lavrentiy Beria ( ) took over first, but was removed, and ultimately imprisoned and
executed.
2. Georgy Malenkov ( ), Nikolai Bulganin ( ), and Nikita Khrushchev
( ) ran a collective government for a while, though Malenkov was the official first
successor of Stalin.
a) Malenkov was eventually removed and imprisoned.
3. Khrushchev, once taking full power, adopted a New Course with the goal of peaceful coexistence.
a) He had three main beliefs:
(1) Conflict between the East and West is avoidable.
(a) This establishes an obvious difference between him and Lenin: Lenin would
argue that conflict was inevitable.
(2) Capitalism and communism need to cooperate.
(3) Capitalism will die out on his own.
(a) Though he criticized Stalin, he was still definitely a communist.
b) The reasons for this new course could be...
(1) The new sec after the regime changes
(2) The sec during the transition from conventional defense structure to airborne nuclear
deterrence
(3) To prevent the Wests move to incorporate Western Austria with West Germany
(4) A gesture of friendship (possibly strategic, or possibly genuine)
(a) Khrushchev is not Stalin, he actually criticized his cult of personality
(b) Korean Armistice of 1953, dividing Korea at the 38th parallel
(c) The Indochinese Armistice of 1954, which marked the end of the French
Indochinese war, which united Vietnam and promised free elections.
(d) Diplomatic recognition of Greece and Israel by USSR and the UN
(e) USSR restored relations with Yugoslavia in 1955
(f) USSR dropped their claims on Turkish territory
(g) Normalized relations between USSR and Iran
(h) CCCP withdraws from naval base in Finland
(i) Attended the Geneva Summit of 1955
(j) Abolished COMINFORM in 1956
(k) Austrian State Treaty of 1955, where elections were held and zones eliminated,
and the Soviet Union allowed the country to vote themselves into the west, thus
losing Vienna and East Austria.
4. In contrast, the Warsaw Pact was established in May of 1955.
XIII. Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in November 52 and inaugurated in January 53. He and his Secretary of State,
John Foster Dulles, were both staunchly anti-communist.
A. Eisenhowers campaign promise was to roll-back communism, insinuating doing more than just containment.
B. His foreign policy was called the New Look. It included:
1. The idea of massive retaliation
a) The United States would stockpile a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, so that the USSR would
not dare to attack them, for fear of the consequences.
2. Proactively containing communism
a) They would create regional defensive alliances, such as:
(1) SEATO (South-East Asian Treaty Organization)
(a) South Vietnam was not included, but designated a protected area. This was
interesting since, technically, South Vietnam did not exist thus proving the
 United States refusal to recognize a communist Vietnam.
(2) METO (Middle East Treaty Organization), later named SENTO
(a) Created using the Baghdad Pact
3. Extensive use of the CIA and covert operations
4. Brinksmanship
a) The ability to get on the verge of war, as close as possible, without actually beginning a war.
b) Playing chicken with nukes
C. CIA Covert Operations
1. Israel was created in May of 1948 with the passing of UN Resolution 181, or The Partition Resolution.
a) It became a strategic US ally, as it was an anti-communist beachhead in the Eastern
Mediterranean force. It was utilized geopolitically.
b) The CIA supported Israeli operations, as it was always at war with its Arab allies.
(1) They organized radical Muslim organizations to help defeat the Peoples Liberation
Army.
c) Blowback (unintended consequences of the United States covert actions):
(1) Radical Muslim organizations turned into the Taliban, Al Quaeda, ISIS, etc.
2. The CIA, led by Allen Dulles (John F Dulles brother), initiated Operation Ajax in Iran.
a) In 1953, Kermit Roosevelt was sent to coordinate the toppling of the democratically elected
government (led by Mohammed Mosaddegh) because they were trying to nationalize their oil.
(1) Mosaddegh was imprisoned and sent into exile.
b) The CIA implemented Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was anti communist.
(1) He also violated human rights in the country and established a dictatorship for 25 years.
3. John F Dulles was afraid of a Soviet beachhead in Guatemala.
a) The Leftist Arbenz campaign instigated land reform, which hurt the US based Allied Fruit
Company.
b) The CIA waged a guerilla campaign and toppled Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, beginning decades of
a military dictatorship which eventually led to a civil war.
c) The blowback in Guatemala was that Che Guevara witnessed the entire ordeal, and became
even more resolved to support communism in Cuba.
4. In 1954, France was defeated by Ho Chi Minh at Bien Dieu Phu in Vietnam.
a) The United States refused to interfere, and FDR encouraged France to just let it go, which
strained their relationship.
b) The Geneva Conference in 1954 divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with the North led by Ho
Chih Minh and the South led by a US controlled group.
(1) Unifying elections were promised in 1956, but never happened because Ho Chih Minh
would have won and the United States would not allow that.
(2) Also at the Geneva conference: Eisenhower adopted captive nations week, where the
third week of July was reserved for Americans to pray for countries under communist
domination.
D. In February of 1955, Eisenhower called for an in-depth analysis of the nations defenses. He was presented
with the Killian Report, written by James Killian.
1. The Killian Report, in three points, basically said that the USs defenses are not in as good shape as
we thought they were.
a) The USSR leads in long-range rocketry
b) The USSR will secure a nuclear deterrent soon
c) The USs nuclear superiority will not endure longer than the next 3-5 years
E. Geneva Summit 1955
F. 20th Party Congress Secret Speech February 1956
G. De-Colonization and the non-Aligned Movement 1954
XIV. The Cold War Broadens 1956-63
A. Eisenhower/Kennedy vs. Khrushchev
1. Khrushchev was more progressive than Stalin, especially with his endeavors in the West. However he
was still staunchly anti-capitalist, and believed it would die on its own.
 a) Khrushchev suppressed anti-communist revolts in Hungary and oversaw the construction of the
Berlin wall.
2. Eisenhower was even more staunchly anti-communist, though he made it his main goal to defeat it
himself. Eisenhower wanted peace, but more than anything wanted to defeat the communists.
3. All of this culminated in the Cuban Missile crisis.
B. Polish Crisis 1956
1. Polish industrial workers revolted against the communist government, called the Poznan Riots, which
resulted in the establishment of a new regime headed by Wladyslaw Gomulka.
a) After Stalin died, Poland got more progressive, but the people still wanted more: especially in
Poznan.
b) Industrial workers were looking for better working conditions and began a strike on June 28,
1956. The strike soon evolved into a riot, and the NKVD were called to help the situation.
c) Within a few days, 60 people were killed, 200+ wounded, and the strike ended.
2. Golmuka, Polands new leader, could not completely deny Soviet ideals, he could only try to steer
Poland toward increasing independence and Polish national communism.
a) Because Poland did not try to free themselves entirely from communism/Soviet Russia, their
revolution succeeded (for the most part), even though they didnt get everything they wanted.
C. Hungarian Uprising 1956
1. Radio Free Europe was the allowance of free speech over the radio in Hungary.
a) This spread patriotic capitalist and western rhetoric.
b) It gave Hungarians false hope that they would receive help from the US because they were told
that they should keep fighting.
2. Imre Nagy was the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Peoples Republic of Hungary.
a) He wanted to move towards a multiparty political system.
b) He removed Hungary from the Warsaw Pact and appealed to nations in the UN to recognize
Hungary as a neutral state again.
c) When the revolution ended, he was arrested and executed by the Soviets.
3. Matyas Rakoski was the leader of Hungarys communist party from 1945-56. From 1949 on, he was the
de facto ruler of communist Hungary.
a) He did not agree with Nagy, especially his humane way of governing.
4. A group of young intellectuals named themselves after a poet of the bourgeois revolution, Petofi
Circles, who lived in 1949 and became a national martyr after his death.
a) Many people agreed with what the Petofi Circles stood for.
5. Laszlo Rajk was a Hungarian communist politician who served as the Minister of Interior and Minister of
Foreign Affairs.
a) Rakoski saw him as a threat to his power, and had him arrested on false charges in 1949.
b) He died in October of 1956, and many Hungarians thought this marked the end of Stalinist
Hungary.
6. The AVH was Hungarys state security agent/secret police.
a) They were feared and hated, which was one of the main reasons for the 1956 uprising.
b) They sought out people they believed to be against the government and tortured them.
c) Their main headquarters was in the old Nazi building in Budapest because it already had torture
chambers built into it.
7. Red Army was the Soviet army that invaded Hungary.
8. Janos Kadar was the General Secretary of Hungarian Socialist Workers Party.
a) The Soviet tank divisions moved into Budapest with the purpose of crushing the revolution at
dawn on 4 November 1956.
b) The proclamation of the so-called Revolutionary Workers/Peasants Government of Hungary,
headed by Kadar, was broadcast from Szolnok the same day. He announced a Fifteen Point
Programme for this new government:
(1) Secure Hungarys national independence and sovereignty
(2) Protect the peoples democratic and socialist system from all attacks
(3) End fratricidal fighting and restore order
 (4) Establish close fraternal relations with other socialist countries on the basis of complete
equality and non-interference
(5) Cooperate peacefully with all nations irrespective of form of government
(6) Quickly and substantially raise the standard of living for all in Hungary
(7) Modification of the Five Year Plan, to allow for this increase in the standard of living
(8) Elimination of bureaucracy and the broadening of democracy, in the workers interest
(9) On the basis of the broadened democracy, management by the workers must be
implemented in factories and enterprises
(10) Develop agricultural production, abolish compulsory deliveries and grant
assistance to individual farmers
(11) Guarantee democratic elections in the already existing administrative bodies and
Revolutionary Councils
(12) Support for artisans and retail trade
(13) Development of Hungarian culture in the spirit of Hungarys progressive traditions
(14) The Hungarian Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government, acting in the interest
of our people, requested the Red Army to help our nation smash the sinister forces of
reaction and restore order and calm in Hungary
(15) To negotiate with the forces of the Warsaw Pact on the withdrawal of troops from
Hungary following the end of the crisis
(a) The fifteenth point was withdrawn after pressure from the USSR that a 200,000
strong Soviet detachment bbe garrisoned in Hungary. This development allowed
Kadar to divert huge defence funds to welfare.
9. The United Nations called an emergency assembly (UNSC) to discuss Hungary, as they felt the Soviets
had stripped them of their rights.
10. Khrushchev met with Gomulka on November 1st.
D. Suez Crisis 1956
1. On October 29, 1956, Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal after Egyptian
president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70) nationalized the canal in July of that same year, initiating the
Suez Crisis.
2. The Israelis soon were joined by French and British forces, which nearly brought the Soviet Union into
the conflict, and damaged their relationships with the United States.
3. In the end, the British, French, and Israeli governments withdrew their troops in late 1956 and early
1957.
E. Operation PBSUCCESS was the operation to take out Arbenz in Guatemala.
F. Sputnik () was the first artificial satellite put in orbit. It was launched on October 4th, 1957 at 7:28pm.
1. It didnt really do a lot, itself, but what it symbolized was massive. The USA reacted en masse: people
were going outside of their houses to try and see it fly by.
2. This heightened the already growing fear of the technology/missile gap.
a) This became a significant issue and topic of discussion in the election of 1960.
G. Sino-Soviet Split
1. Chairman Mao Zedong visited the Soviet Union for the first time in 1949, while Stalin was still alive.
a) He came away from the encounter feeling slighted. He did not feel like he was treated with all of
the respect of a visiting head of state.
(1) He was housed in a dacha (), a traditional russian country house. It did not have
any facilities like electricity or running water.
2. Mao returned to Russia in 1957.
a) At the Moscow Conference, he criticized Khrushchev for his idea of peaceful coexistence.
b) Khrushchev shot right back with his criticism of Maos Great Leap Forward.
(1) The Great Leap Forward was Chairman Maos plan to rapidly industrialize China, similar
to Stalins Five Year Plans.
(a) He forced peasant farmers to abandon their farms to work in the industry (pig
iron)
 (b) It was extremely ineffective, because the crops were all abandoned and thus not
harvested, leading to the Great Chinese Famine that killed between 18,000,000
and 40,000,000 people.
3. In 1958, Khrushchev visited the Peoples Republic of China for the first time.
a) In response to the way Mao was treated when visiting the Soviet Union in 1949, Khrushchev
was housed in a hotel that had no air conditioning and was infested with mosquitoes (that may
or may not have been placed there intentionally). One of their meetings was even held in a
swimming pool, because Mao was aware that Stalin could not swim. He was provided with too-
small swim trunks and floaties.
4. Chinese and Russian relations continued to degrade as the Chinese Nationalists (beat by the PRC) fled
to the Straits of Tiran.
a) Mao attempted to shell Taiwan to get the Nationalists back, but the United States sent their 7th
fleet. This forced Mao to back down.
b) In 1958, Mao began to mobilize for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan.
(1) The United States declared that they would not back down.
(2) The Soviet Union pulled support for the operation, telling them basically youre on your
own.
H. The Cuban Revolution
1. In July of 1953, Fidel Castro and a handful of other insurgents attacked the Moncada army barracks.
a) Castro was captured, tried, sent to prison, and eventually exiled. Before he was sent away, he
stated (in a speech): history will absolve me
2. In 1956, the oppressive Batista regime was under fire. The USs presence was ramping up the tensions
even more.
a) In an attempt to placate the people, Fidel Castro was freed. He travelled to Mexico to plan his
return, and the revolt.
3. The 26th of July movement (named for the day the Moncada army barracks were attacked) began
when Che Guevara, Fidel and Raul Castro, and 80 others returned to renew the revolution.
a) They set up their first base in the Sierra Maestra mountains.
b) From 1956 until 1958, they waged a slow but effective guerrilla campaign against the Batistas.
c) The revolution grew until they Batistas were completely defeated in 1959, and Fidel Castro and
the communists took control.
(1) Eisenhower and the CIA began to draft plans to overthrow the Castro regime.
(a) This plan was eventually passed on to JFK and became the infamous Bay of
Pigs.
I. In July of 1959, Vice President Nixon attended the American National Exhibition in Moscow as a visiting
dignitary, to host Khrushchev and show him what life in America is like.
1. Days before, public law 86-90 was passed, which was called the Captive Nations Resolution. This
reserved the third week of July every year for the American people to pray for nations under communist
domination.
a) So Khrushchev was already a little pissed, and a little snarky.
2. Khrushchev and Nixon ended up in a model kitchen, and Nixon was explaining all of the different
appliances.
a) Khrushchev said he was surprised they did not have an appliance that could shove food down
your throat.
(1) The argument continued for a while. It was called the Kitchen Debate.
b) Nixon, at the end of the argument, stopped himself: Where are my manners? At least were just
sitting here arguing about this and not firing missiles at each other.
(1) Nixon was not very popular until this statement.
J. In September of that same year, Khrushchev visited the United States to meet with Eisenhower. In the
meantime, he took a tour of the country with his wife and his adult children.
1. In 13 days, he visited Los Angeles, a supermarket in San Francisco, a farm in Iowa, met with Eleanor
Roosevelt in Hyde Park, and ended up in DC.
a) In Los Angeles, Khrushchev was absolutely set on visiting Disneyland, but was informed that his
security could not be guaranteed. He was furious.
 (1) And I say, I would very much like to go and see Disneyland. But then, we cannot
guarantee your security, they say. Then what must I do? Commit suicide? What is it? Is
there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken hold of the
place that can destroy me?
(2) He even believed that the LA traffic was set up just to fool him into thinking that the
entire American public had a car.
K. A summit was planned in Paris for May of 1960. A few days before, however, the Russians shot down a United
States U-2 spy plane over Soviet airspace.
1. The United States denied sending a spy plane. The Soviets released pictures, so the United States
claimed that it must have been an off-course weather plane. The Soviets then produced the pilot,
Francis Gary Powers, who had confessed to being a spy.
a) Powers was put on trial in the Soviet Union.
2. Khrushchev cancelled the Paris summit and stormed out.
3. This was a huge embarrassment to Eisenhower and the entire Republican party.
a) Eisenhower later admitted that the act was distasteful but necessary.
b) This was a contributing factor to the democratic win in the election of 1960.
L. In Eisenhowers farewell address in January of 1961, he stated that the American public needs to be
concerned about the United States in the context of the Cold War. We have created a military industrial
complex of mass proportions. It will feed itself, and will not be easy to shut down.
M. John F. Kennedy was elected on January 20, 1961.
1. While Eisenhower was reluctant to use aggressive tactics, Kennedy was hawkish and invested in a
massive military buildup.
a) Kennedys father was one of the key architects in the failed Munich Pact (that argued for the
appeasement of Hitler). He wanted his children to go into politics, but distanced himself from
them so that they would not end up like him.
(1) When Kennedy was a Junior Senator, he wrote an essay titled Why England Slept,
criticizing appeasement.
2. David Halberstam published a book called The Best and the Brightest in 1972, describing Kennedys
administration (and our approach to Vietnam).
a) Kennedy was an ivy leaguer himself, so he cleaned out the house and brought in the best and
the brightest minds of America. He wanted to out-think the USSR with the right people.
(1) Because he hired only the best and the brightest, his generals did not always respect
him, and went against his orders more than once.
b) His other approach was a massive military buildup.
(1) He started creating ALL types of weaponry, or what he called counter-force. He wanted
the country to be able to be adaptable to any situation.
N. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin ( ) became the first man in orbit aboard Vostok 1 ( 1),
April 1961.
1. In the next month (May 1961), American Alan Shepard achieved suborbital flight.
2. In February of 1962, American John Glenn achieved orbital fight in Friendship 7.
3. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and
measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept,
one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. --JFK,
September 12, 1962
4. In July of 1969, The United States landed on the moon in Apollo 11.
O. Plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion had been created by the CIA, Allen Dulles, and exiled Cuban Batistas since
Castros regime took hold.
 1. A number of exiled Cuban Batistas, or the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front, or Brigade 2506,
had been trained for this by the CIA in Florida and Guatemala.
2. Though Eisenhower initiated the plan, JFK took office before it could be finished. The plans were
basically laid on Kennedys desk as soon as he got to the Oval Office and he was asked to sign them.
a) The fatal flaw in this plan was that it assumed that the Cubans wanted to be freed.
3. On April 14, 1961, the United States air force (painted like the Cuban air force) bombed three air fields
in Cuba.
a) They were trying to completely destroy Castros air force.
b) It was mostly successful, but not completely.
4. As news began to spread in the United States, Che Guevara encouraged arming the population against
the yankee capitalists.
5. On the night of April 15th, the United states launched a phony invasion on Cuba.
6. The next night, the real invasion was launched.
a) 1,400 revolutionaries landed on the beach at the Bay of Pigs.
(1) 25,000 Cubans and 100,000+ members of the Cuban militia trapped the revolutionaries.
(a) It was referred to as shooting fish in a barrel: 100+ were killed and 1,200+ were
captured.
(2) The United States did not send their air force to help the revolutionaries because they
did not want their military to be involved, and stated that the Cubans needed to take
back Cuba themselves.
(a) JFK got a bad reputation as this was one of the first things that happened while
he was in office, but he had inherited a plan he did not design and was pushed
upon him. When it required military assistance, he refused, which reflected badly
upon him.
7. In December of 1962, the United States paid Cuba $53 million for the release of the Cuban
revolutionaries.
8. This event created a rift between Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
a) Che wanted to become closer with China, while Castro felt that having the USSR as an ally
would be more strategic.
P. Khrushchev and Kennedy had their first meeting at the Vienna Summit in June, 1961.
1. Khrushchev was convinced that Kennedy was young, inexperienced, and could be pushed down.
2. Nothing was accomplished about Berlin, which was the main crisis at the time.
3. Kennedy left the summit claiming Ive been savaged. As he left the Summit, he said to a friend, Now
we have a problem: making our power credible. And Vietnam looks like that place.
Q. In August of 1961, the Berlin Wall was built.
1. In 1958, Khrushchev had presented a peace proposal to demilitarize Berlin, which was rejected by the
United States as being a Soviet ploy.
2. 3.5+ million East Germans ( of the population) fled to the West.
a) This was referred to as the brain drain: the Soviets were afraid they were losing some of their
best people, and needed to stop this as soon as possible.
b) On August 12, 40,000 East Germans fed in one day, and Khrushchev officially sealed off Berlin.
3. JFK gave a speech in West Berlin in front of the wall, saying We are all Berliners
a) He actually called himself a doughnut by accident but the message came across.
R. Cuban Missile Crisis
1. Castro was looked at by non-aligned countries as well as the Soviets as good, but the West saw him as
a threat.
a) Castro believed that his relationship with the USSR was critical.
 (1) He sent his brother Raul to Russia to discuss a defensive partnership. He travelled to
Moscow in July of 1962, right after the U2 spy plane incident.
b) Cuba was suffering internal opposition to Castros regime due to
(1) Economic issues
(2) Repressive government
(3) Authoritarian/dictatorial system
(4) Persecution of political deviants
(a) Castro was very paranoid.
c) After Castro and Guevara split, Che left and helped other Marxist revolutions in South America
before ultimately being captured and executed.
2. Khrushchev proposed the placing of missiles in Cuba, to balance out the Jupiter missiles the United
States had placed in Turkey (even though those were out of date).
a) This indicated that he may have been moving towards a first-strike policy.
b) He planted IRBMs, or Dvina () and Chusovaya () missiles in Cuba.
3. Kennedy authorized a quarantine of Cuba on October 22nd.
a) He called it a blockade, because the word quarantine implied war.
4. The crisis ended when the USSR publicly agreed to pull their IRBM missiles from Cuba, and the United
States quietly pulled their Jupiter missiles from Turkey within the next 6 months.
a) This hurt Khrushchevs reputation, but helped Kennedys.
b) Castro was very angry, because he was left out of the conversation and felt that he was left
vulnerable.
5. The White House installed a hot line with the Kremlin in case of an emergency like this, since
communication through any other form was so delayed.
XV. Dtente (1963-79): an easing of tensions
A. In November of 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
B. In 1964, Khrushchev was deposed.
1. Leonid Brezhnev ( ) organized a group of hardliners to overthrow Khrushchev.
2. While Khrushchev was on vacation, he was contacted by Brezhnevs group for an emergency meeting
in Moscow.
a) Khrushchev was, understandably, terrified.
b) He was given the opportunity to resign on his own, which he did.
c) Before leaving, he gave a statement that he was proud of his legacy and he knew he had
changed Soviet Russia for the better.
3. It was truly an anomaly that Khrushchev was not executed.
C. After the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, Willy Brandts Ostpolitik in 1966,
and Dr. Strangelove in 1964, the world began to realize that the concept of MAD (Mutually Assured
Destruction) and brinksmanship were no longer viable options.
1. On June 20th, 1963, a new hotline, called the red telephone, was installed between the Oval Office
and the Kremlin.
2. Weapon technology was progressing rapidly.
a) ABMs, or Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems, were designed to detect and target missiles very soon
after their launch.
b) This was followed by Multi Independent Reentry Vehicles, or MIRVs, which were designed to
launch, leave the atmosphere, and upon returning, deploy multiple independent rockets, each
with different targets.
D. China was critical of the Soviet Union and their relations deteriorated quickly.
1. The Soviets refused to support the Peoples Republic of China in the Sino-Indian Border War of 1962.
 2. In 1964, China detonated their first atomic bomb.
a) It was named 59/6, after the year and month the Soviets stopped helping the Chinese with their
atomic bomb.
3. In March of 1969, the Soviets and the Chinese had a small border war in Manchuria at the Ussuri River.
4. The Peoples Republic of China was worried about the American presence in South-East Asia, and
wanted to improve relations. They initiated the Sino-American Rapprochement.
a) The United States submitted a proposal for both Red China and Nationalist China (the
Taiwanese government) to be represented in the UN.
(1) At the moment, only Nationalist China was represented.
(2) Kissinger wanted to exploit Chinas need for diplomatic legitimacy.
b) In the Spring of 1971, a US Table Tennis team attended the World Championships in Japan.
One team member, Glenn Cowan, was left behind by the team bus one evening after a practice
match. He caught a ride with the Chinese team and was rushed by reporters upon his arrival to
the hotel, since Red China was not yet recognized by international governments.
(1) Secretary of State Henry Kissinger exploited this, and coined the term ping-pong (or
triangular) diplomacy.
c) In July of 1971, Kissinger visited India and Pakistan.
(1) He feigned sickness and cancelled all of his meetings for the day, and then snuck out
and took a top-secret flight to China to meet Zhou Enlai.
(a) This was the first meeting between high ranking officials of the United States and
China.
d) In February of 1972, Richard Nixon became the first US president to set foot in China since
1949.
e) The United States eventually pulled their troops out of Taiwan, and China agreed to be
diplomatic about it.
E. In 1968, Henry Kissinger begins to come up with an exit strategy for Vietnam.
1. In this year, the anti-war movement is beginning, Lyndon B. Johnson does not seek reelection, the cost
of war continues to rise, 300+ US servicemen are killed in Vietnam every week, and Richard Nixon is
elected president.
2. Kissinger has realized that the United States completely misunderstood the Vietnam conflict. It was
never about communism, it was about Vietnams independence.
3. He realizes that he cant just escalate the situation, or pull the troops out all at once, so he comes up
with Vietnamization, a gradual transition from United States forces to South Vietnamese forces.
a) As told to the public, this allowed us to empower the Vietnamese.
4. In the Nixon Doctrine of 1969, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger espoused peace with honor.
5. This was a classic example of realpolitik: Nixon and Kissinger required the help of the Soviet Union and
the Peoples Republic of China in order to pull their troops from Vietnam. In return, the United States
promised to:
a) Recognize the USSRs parity
b) Allow the USSR access to Western technology
c) Avoid interfering with the Soviet Empire.
(1) This linkage ended the idea of rolling back communism.
F. Back in the Soviet Union, Brezner had taken over and the Czechs were having internal issues.
1. The Czech party leader was replaced by Alexander Dubek, and the country was met with economic
issues and riots.
2. Dubek imposed the idea of communism with a human face, which allowed for freedom of the press,
freedom of speech, and the formation of independent workers parties.
 3. The Soviets were a little freaked out by this, but Czechoslovakia assured them they had no intention of
leaving the Warsaw Pact.
4. The Brezhnev Doctrine was presented, and cracked down on this new type of communism. In a
bloodless coup called Prague Spring, Dubek was removed and sent to Moscow.
XVI. Results of Dtente
A. By 1963, over 500 nuclear weapons had been tested. (This number rose to 2,000+ by 1998.) Major powers
began to realize that this could not be maintained. and issued the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
1. This banned all testing except underground nuclear testing.
a) This is mainly because there was no way to monitor underground testing.
2. It was signed by the USA, USSR, and Great Britain.
B. In December 1966, Willy Brandt, the foreign minister of the liberal coalition party, attended a NATO foreign
ministers meeting. He outlined his proposal for reducing tensions between the East and West Germanies
called Ostpolitik.
1. All the way in 1955, Konrad Adenauer espoused the Hallstein Doctrine.
a) It stated that the FRG will have no diplomatic relations with any country that recognizes the
GDR.
b) This resulted in the FRG breaking off relations with both Yugoslavia and Cuba.
C. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) was signed in July 1968 and put into effect March 1970.
1. It was signed by the 5 major powers (USA, USSR, Great Britain, China, and France), plus 59 other
countries.
a) The only countries to refuse were Israel, Argentina, Brazil, India, and Pakistan.
b) North Korea eventually removed themselves from the treaty, as well.
c) Since going into effect in 1970, only Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea remain not part of
the treaty.
2. This treaty promised that countries with the nuclear bomb would not give away the means, materials, or
any information on how to create the nuclear bomb. Countries without the bomb promised not to seek
it.
D. The first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, or SALT I, was signed in 1972.
1. ABM Treaty
a) Limited signees to only two ABM sites, with less than 100 missiles at each.
2. Interim Treaty
a) Limited ICBMs and SLBMs
3. Basic Principles Agreement
a) Agreed that if nuclear war appeared imminent, serious diplomatic discussions were to be had in
the hopes of settling the dispute civilly.
E. The United States left Vietnam in 1973.
F. President Nixon attended the European Security Conference in Helsinki, Finland on August 1, 1975. These
became known as the Helsinki Accords, and the Helsinki Agreement was passed.
1. The Security Basket
a) Influenced by Ostpolitik, agreed to recognize the current European borders and established that
they could not be altered by force.
2. The Cooperation Basket
a) Agreed to greater cooperation between powers in an attempt to depolarize the world.
b) They agreed to share economic, scientific, and cultural achievements.
3. Human Rights Basket
a) Established the universal rights to freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, freedom of
religion, freedom to travel, etc.
G. Discussions for the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, or SALT II, began in 1974.
1. Limited the number of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles owned by a country
2. Banned testing and deployment of new ICBMs and rapid deployment systems
H. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
I. The Nicaraguan civil war began in 1979 as well, and the United States became involved.
J. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected president.
1. He was known as the cold warrior: he believed communism was an evil and that the United States
should devote all of their energies and efforts towards defeating it.
2. He promoted Star Wars: satellite-based ABMs that used lasers to target missiles.
a) Though it was only a theory, it freaked the Soviets out, and they felt they needed to keep up.
(1) Their defense funding was already out of hand, so it sent them into an economic tailspin.
K. Brezhnev died in office in 1982. Mikhail Gorbachev ( ) took office later in the 80s.
1. Gorbachev focused on reforms in the Soviet Union, specifically:
a) Demokratizatsiya ()
(1) Elections should be held for new communist leaders.
b) Perestroika ()
(1) Restructured economy to make it more functional
c) Glasnost ()
(1) Promised openness and transparency
2. Gorbachev, kind of on accident, sparked the Russians desire for freedom and democracy.
a) It got out of control and the Soviet Union was eventually dissolved on December 26, 1991.
1848 FEB Communist Manifesto published
1917 MAR November/Menshevik Coup Begins
NOV November/Menshevik Coup Ends
1939 AUG 23 Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact
1941 AUG 14 Atlantic Charter
1942 JUN 11 Mutual Aid Agreement
1943 JAN 14-24 Casablanca Conference
NOV 28-1 Tehran Conference
1944 JUL 1-22 Conference at Bretton Woods
OCT 9 Percentages Agreement
1945 JAN
FEB 4-11 Yalta Accord
MAR
APR 12 FDR dies, Harry Truman becomes President of the United States
25 San Francisco Conference begins, UN formed
MAY
JUN 26 San Francisco Conference ends
JUL 17-2 Potsdam Conference
AUG 6 Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima
9 Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1946 JAN
FEB Bolshoi Speech
22 Long Telegram
MAR 5 "Sinews of Peace"
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT 6 "Speech of Hope"
OCT
NOV
DEC
1947 JAN Corrupt elections in Poland
FEB
MAR Greek Civil War begins
12 Truman Doctrine
 APR
MAY Ferenc Nagy forced to resign
JUN Policy Planning Staff created
5 Marshall Plan announced
JUL 26 National Security Act
AUG Corrupt elections in Hungary
SEPT 18 NSC formed
OCT 5 COMINFORM created
NOV
DEC
1948 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY Israel created
JUN Yugoslavia expelled from COMINFORM
Stalin places total military blockade on Berlin
12 Matyas Rakosi takes power in Hungary
JUL 24 Operation Vittles/Berlin Airlift begins
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV 4 Harry Truman wins reelection
DEC
1949 JAN 25 COMECON created
FEB
MAR
APR NATO formed
MAY 12 Berlin Airlift ends
23 Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) created
30 Laszlo Rajk arrested
JUN
JUL
AUG 29 USSR drops /Joe 1
SEPT
OCT 1 People's Republic of China (communist China) established
7 German Democratic Republic (GDR) created
15 Laszlo Rajk dies
NOV
DEC Chairman Mao visits Moscow
1950 JAN
 FEB
MAR
APR 14 NSC-68
MAY
JUN People's Liberation Army invades Tibet
North Korea invades South Korea
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1951 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1952 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV 4 Eisenhower elected President
DEC
1953 JAN 20 Eisenhower inaugurated
FEB
MAR 1 Stalin dies
APR
MAY
 JUN
JUL 26 Castro (and others) attack the Moncada army barracks
27 Korean War Armistice Agreement
AUG 15-19 Iranian coup d'etat (Operation Ajax)
SEPT
OCT
NOV 4 Dwight Eisenhower elected President of the United States
DEC
1954 JAN 20 Dwight Eisenhower inaugurated
FEB
MAR
APR 26 Geneva Conference begins
MAY 7 France defeated by Vietnam at Bien Dieu Phu
JUN
JUL 21 Indochinese armistice
21 Geneva Conference ends
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1955 JAN
FEB The Killian Report
MAR
APR
MAY Warsaw Pact created
15 Austrian State treaty
JUN 12 26th of July movement begins
JUL 18 Geneva Summit
AUG
SEPT 22 Hallstein Doctrine
OCT
NOV 4 Eisenhower wins reelection
DEC
1956 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR 17 COMINFORM dissolved
MAY
JUN 28 Poznian Riots
JUL
 AUG
SEPT
OCT 23 Hungarian revolution begins
29 Suez Crisis begins with the Israeli forces pushing into Egypt
NOV 1 USSR rolls tanks into Hungary
4 Fifteen Point Programme of Hungary broadcast
10 Hungarian revolution ends
DEC
1957 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT 4 Sputnik launched
NOV
DEC
1958 JAN Great Leap Forward campaign begins
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1959 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL 24 Kitchen Debate
AUG
SEPT
 OCT
NOV
DEC
1960 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY 1 U-2 Spy Plane incident
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV 4 John F. Kennedy elected President of the United States
DEC
1961 JAN 17 Eisenhower's Farewell Address
20 John F. Kennedy inaugurated
FEB
MAR
APR 12 Yuri Gagarin becomes first cosmonaut in orbit
14 Cuban air fields bombed
15 Phony invasion of Cuba
17 Cuba invaded
MAY 5 Alan Shepard is the first American in space
JUN 4 Vienna Summit
JUL
AUG 12 40,000 East Germans flee in one day
13 Berlin Wall built
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1962 JAN
FEB 20 John Glenn achieves orbital flight in Friendship 7
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL Raul Castro visits Moscow
AUG
SEPT
 OCT 20 Sino-Indian Border War begins
NOV 21 Sino-Indian Border War ends
DEC
1963 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN 20 "Red telephone" installed in the White House
JUL
AUG 5 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
SEPT
OCT
NOV 22 JFK assassinated, Lyndon B. Johnson becomes president
DEC
1964 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT 12 Khrushchev called for a "special meeting" and asked to resign
16 China detonates 59/6
NOV 4 Lyndon B. Johnson wins reelection
DEC
1965 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1966 JAN
 FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1967 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1968 JAN 5 Alexander Dubek takes office, Prague Spring begins
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL 1 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed
AUG 21 Prague Spring ends
SEPT
OCT
NOV 4 Richard Nixon elected President of the United States
DEC
1969 JAN 20 Richard Nixon inaugurated
FEB
MAR 2 Border war (USSR vs PRC) at the Ussuri River begins
APR
MAY
JUN
 JUL 20 Apollo 11 lands on the moon
25 Nixon Doctrine announced
AUG
SEPT 11 Border war (USSR vs PRC) at the Ussuri River ends
OCT
NOV
DEC
1970 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR 20 Nixon speeds up Vietnamization
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1971 JAN
FEB
MAR 28-7 31st World Table Tennis Championships/ping-pong diplomacy
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL Kissinger sneaks out to meet Zhou Enlai in China
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1972 JAN
FEB 21-28 President Nixon visits the People's Republic of China
MAR
APR
MAY 26 SALT 1
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
 NOV 4 Richard Nixon wins reelection
DEC
1973 JAN
FEB
MAR 29 United States leaves Vietnam
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1974 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG 9 Richard Nixon resigns, Gerald Ford is inaugurated
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1975 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1976 JAN
FEB
MAR
 APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV 4 Jimmy Carter elected President of the United States
DEC
1977 JAN 20 Jimmy Carter inaugurated
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1978 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1979 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN 18 SALT II passed
JUL
AUG
 SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC 25 Soviets invade Afghanistan
1980 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV 4 Ronald Reagan elected President of the United States
DEC
1981 JAN 20 Ronald Reagan inaugurated
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1982 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV 10 Brezhnev dies in office
DEC
1983 JAN
 FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1984 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV 4 Ronald Reagan wins reelection
DEC
1985 JAN
FEB
MAR 11 Mikhail Gorbachev takes office
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1986 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
 JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1987 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1988 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV 4 George H. Bush elected President of the United States
DEC
1989 JAN 20 George H. Bush inaugurated
FEB 15 Soviet-Afghan war ends
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
 DEC
1990 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC
1991 JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
DEC 26 Soviet Union dissolved