Chapter Ten

Title: Recent Stuff: Around 1914 to the Present

Summary: A. The World War I Era. B. The World War II Era. C. Communism and the Cold War. D. Independence Movements and Developments in Asia and Africa. E. Globalization and The World Since 1980.

Notes: A. The World War I Era

1. Germany, worried that France would want to get back at them for their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, had Otto von Bismarck negotiate the Triple Alliance among Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary in the 1880s.

2. After Otto von Bismarck was booted by William II in 1890, William ignored Russia's previous agreements with Germany. With an alliance with Russia up for grabs, France jumped at the opportunity. Britain also signed a treaty with Russia and France, creating a force known as the Triple Entente.

3. The Schlieffen Plan in Germany was designed for an attack on France through Belgium, who was neutral at the time.

4. In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, of Austira-Hungary, was killed by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia allied with Serbia, and declared war on Austria-Hungary. Russia and Austria-Hungary were on opposite sides of the Triple Alliance and Triple Entente, France, Britain, Germany and Italy were pressured to join in.

5. Britain didn't want to join the war, but Germany enacted the Schlieffen Plan and stormed into France. Britain jumped in and helped.

6. Italy stayed out of the war, and declared itself neutral, but the Ottoman Empire took its place and forming alliance with Austria-Hungary and Germany. The three of them were called the Central powers.

7. Japan fought alongside Britain, France and Russia, and they were known as the Allies.

8. America was passive, till a German submarine sunk a British passenger liner with over 100 Americans on it. Germany also attacked American supply ships on their way to England. Then the Americans intercepted the Zimmerman telegram from Germany to Mexico. The telegram was an invitation for Mexico to join Germany, offering America to them. In 1917, America entered the war on the side of the Allies.

9. In 1918, after to much death, Germany and the Central Powers gave up.

10. Over 8.5 million soldiers were killed in World War I, and millions more civilians too.

11. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 brought an official end to World War I, and required the Germans to pay repairs, give up territory and downsize their army. The treaty also split Austria-Hungary into two different nations.

12. President Wilson made a Fourteen Points speech, which was about building a better future.

13. In President Wilson's Fourteen Points speech, he called for the creation of a joint council of nations called the League of Nations. Not many countries joined the league at all.

14. The Russian Revolution began before World War I had even ended. Finding themselves lacking good leadership, in 1917, Czar Nicholas was forced to abdicate his throne.

15. Under Alexander Kerensky, a provisional government was established. It shared it's power with local councils, called soviets.

16. In 1918, Vladimir Lenin mobilized the support of the workers and soldiers. He issued his April Theses, which demanded peace, land for peasants and power to the soviets.

17. In 1918, the soviets signed an armistice with Germany, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ceded a huge piece western Russia to Germany. Russia dropped out of World War I, so it didn't need to sign the Treaty of Versailles.

18. The Red Army was a Russian military force under the command of Leon Trotsky. It was a sizable force that defeated counterrevolutionaries.

19. Because the Ottomans joined the losing Central Powers in World War I, they lost all of their land in the peace treaty, opening them up for attacks from Greece.

20. Mustafa Kemal led successful military campaigns against the Greeks, and then overthrew the Ottoman sultan. In 1923, Mustafa became the first president of Turkey.

Notes: B. The World War II Era

1. Vladimir Lenin first instituted the New Economic Policy in the early 1920s.

2. After Vladimir Lenin died, the leadership of the Communist party moved to Joseph Stalin.

3. Stalin successfully industrialized the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and improved economical conditions for the country.

4. Millions of Soviets were murdered under Stalin's direction.

5. World War I cost lots of money. Countries spent more then $180 billion on armaments, boats, and trenches, and Europe spent an extra $150 billion rebuilding.

6. America sent Europe billions to help repair after WWI, mostly France and Germany were in need of the money.

7. When the U.S. stock market crashed in 1929, a spiral of monetary and fiscal problems called the Great Depression quickly turned into an international issue.

8. During the Great Depression, in both the U.S. and Germany, one third of the population was unemployed.

9. Italy was the first state to have a fascist government. The founder and leader was Benito Messolini, who created the National Fascist Party in 1919.

10. Benito Mussolini took control of Parliament in 1922.

11. The Nazis rose to power in the 1920s, ushered in by the Great Depression.

12. Adolf Hitler rose to power as the head of the Nazi Party, he argued that Jews should be eliminated and that Germany should rule Europe.

13. In the 1930s, as the Great Depression beat down on the German economy, Hitler gained more support.

14. In 1933, Hitler became chancellor, he then seized control of the government, and set his eyes on conquering Europe.

15. Hitler began to rebuild the German military, a violation of the Treaty of Versailles, but other countries chose not to object, for fear of war.

16. In early 1904, Germany assaulted Holland and Belgium. Two days later. Germany attacked France.

17. Hitler thought that Britain would be taken easily after France, but Winston Churchill replaced the more diplomatically minded Chamberlain. Churchill proved to be a strong minded prime minister.

18. The Japanese attacked Vietnam and took it. For trade reasons, America saw this as hostile, the U.S. froze their assets to Japan. The Japanese made war plans against the U.S. if they didn't unfreeze their connections. They didn't, and in 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

19. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. declared war on Japan, and Germany declared war on the U.S.

20. In 1944, the U.S., Canada and Britain launched their biggest attack, landing on the beaches of Normandy on what is now known as D-Day.

21. In 1945, Allied forces closed in on Berlin, as they went towards Hitler, he commit suicide.

22. When the Japanese would not give up on World War Two, the U.S. atomic bombed
Hirshoshima in 1945. When they still would not surrender, and so the President Truman ordered a second bombing on Nagasaki. The Japanese finally surrendered and WWII was over.

23. As many as 6 million Jews were killed during WWII, as well as millions more soldiers and civilians.

24. After WWII, the Allies believed that international organizations would help prevent future wars. The first of these organizations was the United Nations.

Notes: C. Communism and the Cold War

1. The Cold War lasted from 1945, to the early 1990s.

2. The Cold War was fought between the Russians and the U.S. because of their different views. The U.S. promoted capitalism and democracy, the Soviets promoted communism.

3. The Soviets wanted control of Berlin, and so cut off all land access to Berlin by land from the west, this was known as the Berlin Blockade.

4. B the late 1940s, Europe was divided East and West, each under the influence of the U.S. or the Soviet Union.

5. East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania became the Soviet Bloc.

6. The Western bloc was comprised of Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, West Germany, and later on Greece and Turkey.

7. The Truman Doctrine stated that the U.S. would assist countries threatened by communist takeovers.

8. Sun Yat-sen, who lead the Chinese Revolution of 1911, took over China, and it became more westernized in order to kick the Europeans and Japanese out.

9. Sun Yat-sen promoted his Three Principles of the People - nationalism, socialism and democracy.

10. Sun Yat-sen established a political part called the Kuomindang, which he made for his own use.

11. Sun Yat-sen's successor, Chiang Kai-shek, set the Kuomindang as the leading party of China.

12. By 1949, Mao Zedong, a communist, led millions of peasants in northern China, and came down south Kuomindang strongholds hard.

13. The Kuomindang, after running from Mao Zedong to Taiwan, established the Republic of China.

14. In the China mainland, the impact of Republic of China was huge. It became the People's Republic of China, the largest communist nation in the world under the command of Mao Zedong.

15. In Mao Zedong's plan called his Great Leap Forward, the government set up large communes to send the revolution through the roof. But the government didn't have enough agricultural surplus to foster these communities. They lied about their food production, which lead to a great time of starvation in which nearly 30 million Chinese died.

16. In 1964, China tested its first atomic bomb.

17. In 1966, Mao Zedong thought that the Chinese people weren't as "communist" as they were a little while back, and so enacted the Cultural Revolution. The idea of the revolution was to discourage any thought of freedom among higher classes.

18. China realized that it needed to open itself to the western world. In 1976 when Mao Zedong died, his successor, Deng Xiaoping focused on changing the educational policy and restructuring the economical polices.

19. After the defeat of Japan in WWII, Korea was held in two separate pieces, South Korea held by the U.S. and North Korea held by the Soviet Union.

20. In 2006, North Korea declared its nuclear bomb testing a success.

21. the Platt Amendment allowed the presence of the U.S. in Cuba, as well as U.S. military bases.

22. From 1939 to 1959 the U.S. supported the Batista Dictatorship in Cuba, which continued the policies that benefited the wealthy land-owners.

23. In 1956, the peasants in Cuba started a revolt under the leadership of Fidel Castro. Because of the revolutionaries were to deadly, the U.S. withdrew itself from Batista. The revolutionaries made great advances, and by 1959, Batista had fled, making the Cuban Revolution a great success against a dictator.

24. After the success of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, the leader of the revolutionaries, took control of the government and became a dictator.

25. In 1962, the Soviets and the Cubans tried to build a missile on Cuba. Worried about this, President Kennedy ordered a blockade around the island, so that no more missile parts could be shipped to Cuba from Russia. The Russians agreed to stop the missile project as long as the U.S. didn't invade Cuba.

26. When the Soviet Union died in the early 1991, Cuba lost its main stream of money. Which was a real loss, since the Soviet Union sent billions to Cuba.

27. In 1980, a group of workers began the Solidarity movement under Lech Walesa. Thousands of workers joined the strike against communism.

28. The government eventually arrested Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders.

29. In 1990, the communist party fell apart in Poland, and Lech Walesa was elected President.

30. Mikhail Gorbachev came to rule the Soviet Union in 1985. He instituted policies of openness and urged restructuring of the Soviet economy.

31. Poland and other USSR areas declared their independence of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union died out in 1991, and Russia became its own country again.

Notes: D. Independence Movements and Developments in Asia and Africa

1. In Amritsar, 319 Indians were slaughtered by British General Dyer during a protest in a city park.

2. When other Indians heard of the Amritsar massacre, millions of them joined the cause.

3. Mohandas Gandhi became the most important speaker and organized enormous protests.
His idea of passive resistance was that you should simply not follow what you were told.


4. In the 1950s, Gamal Nasser, an Egyptian general overthrew the king and established a republic.

5. Gamal Nasser nationalized industries, like the Suez Canal.

6. In 1962, Rwanda, the Hutu revolted against the Tutsu leaders, thousands died. The two groups continued to fight until 1972, when a military group led by Juvenal Habyarimana unseated the government and set up a one-party republic in 1981.

7. There was peace in Rwanda until 1994, when the general of the military group died in a plane crash. A civil war broke out, leaving 800,000 Tutsu dead, and by the next year, over 2 million Hutu fled to the neighboring Zaire.

8. In 1910, the Union of South Africa was formed by two British colonies and two Boer republics.

9. A system of apartheid was established in South Africa in 1948 as a way of dividing blacks and whites.

10. In the 1950s, Nelson Mandela became leader of the African National Congress.


11. During the time of WWI, Zionists living in Britain, convinced Arthur Balfour, Britain's foreign secretary, that a Jewish home in Palestine was desirable and just.

12. In 1917, Arthur Balfour issued what was known as the Balfour Declaration, which stated the right for a home in Palestine for the Jews.

13. In 1948, the United Nations created two Palestines, one for Jews, and one for Muslims.

14. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, announced the official creation of a Jewish homeland. Afterwords, Muslims attacked Israel, but the Israelis quickly counterattacked and took most of Palestine.

15. In 1967, the Six Day War resulted in victory for the Israelis, who took the West Bank of the Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza Strip from Egypt.

16. In 1977, the Israeli Prime Minister Begin and the Egyptian President Sadat signed the Camp David Accords, an agreement which led to Israel pulling out of the Sinai and Egypt.

17. The Palestine Liberation Organization is a group that is dedicated to taking back land for the Muslims to have a state.

18. Ariel Sharon, the newly elected Israeli Prime Minister, has ordered the construction of a wall to be built between the Palestinian West Bank and Israel to protect from suicide bombers.

19. Reza Shah Pahlavi rose to power in 1925 by ousting the ruling shah, who allowed the Persians to fall under European influence.

20. Reza Shah Pahlavi decided that the best way to beat the west, was to westernize. They modernized slowly at first, but they picked up momentum.

21. In 1979, the shah was ousted during the Iranian Revolution. Immediately afterwords the modernization moved backwards. The Qu'ran became the code of law, and women had to wear traditional Islamic clothing.

22. Iran was invaded by Iraq in 1980, after some border disputes earlier between the two countries.

23. In 2005, Tehran's mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran.

24. With all the oil in the Middle East, an organization called the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries gained billions of dollars. Nations used the extra money to modernize.

Notes: E. Globalization and the World Since 1980

1. Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 in an attempt to gain more of the worlds oil reserves.

2. Nur Muhammad Taraki was a Marxist military leader in Afghanistan who had engineered a military coup against the previous government.

3. Osama bin Laden was the leader of an international terrorist network known as Al Queda, which hates America.

4. On September 11, 2001, Al Queda took control of four passenger jets and flew two of them into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one unintentionally into a field in Pennsylvania. When the World Trade Center fell to the ground, it killed nearly 3000 civilians. The U.S. immediately launched a war on terrorism.

5. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade became the World Trade Organization in 1994.

6. Group of Six, created in 1975 as a forum for the worlds major industrialized democracies. The original members include the U.S., Great Britain, West Germany, Italy, Japan, and Poland. Since it was created Canada and Russia have joined, and it is now known as Group of Eight.