Europe - SAT Subject Test in World History

World War I ended with the capitulation of the Germans and a victory for the allied powers. The treaty was called the Treaty of Versailles, and it is very important for understanding what would happen next in the history of Europe. The treaty essentially blamed Germany for the entirety of World War I and established harsh, almost impossible, conditions and debts for the Germans to try and pay off. This led, directly, to the rise of Hitler and Nazism and the outbreak of World War II.

The main reason why large-scale conflict broke out in World War I was the series of entangling alliances that existed before the war. In the pre-war years, all the nations of Europe were heavily nationalistic and heavily militarized. They all feared the strength of each other and sought to ensure their protection by signing treaties. So, the Germans, surrounded on all sides by possible enemies, signed alliances with Austria-Hungary and Italy. The French, fearing the threat posed by the Germans, signed treaties with Russia and Great Britain. The Triple Entente was signed between France, Britain, and Russia to provide for their mutual protection.

The Triple Alliance, designed to counter the threat of the Triple Entente (the alliance between Britain, France, and Russia) involved an alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.

The League of Nations was the brainchild of American President Woodrow Wilson who put forth the suggestion as part of his Fourteen Points at the Paris Peace Conference. Although the League was approved and formed by the international powers, when Wilson returned to America, he found that Congress was unwilling to immerse America so fully in the global experience. Congress rejected the peace treaty and American involvement in the League of Nations. This ensured that from the very beginning the League was without one of the preeminent world powers.

During the early twentieth century, Germany and France heavily disputed the status of Morocco. This was one of the primary sources of tension between the two nations in the buildup to World War One.

The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalist forces in 1914 was the direct inciting incident that led to the outbreak of World War One. In the years leading up to World War One the major powers of Europe signed extensive alliances with one another that ensured that if one country declared war on another country all the rest would be dragged into the conflict like falling dominoes. The Triple Entente between Britain, France, and Russia made the Germans and Austro-Hungarians feel threatened; the British promised to protect Belgian sovereignty; the Russians promised to fight for Serbian autonomy and so on.

Communism was not yet a major factor in international affairs in the period leading up to World War I, as the Russian Revolution had not yet happened. Nationalism and pan-slavism led to the increased ethnic tensions in Europe, especially in the Balkans, and they ultimately provided immediate catalysts for the war, namely the Serbian murder of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and Russia's alliance with Serbia. Imperialism and militarism both contributed to growing rivalry and tension among the major European powers, namely Germany, Britain, and France. Imperialist ambitions, in particular, led to diplomatic incidents (such as the Agadir Crisis of 1911) that heightened tensions among these nations, especially due to British and French fears of German aggression.

The Treaty of Versailles ended World War One, but it imposed a series of strict regulations on German recovery and encumbered the already-struggling German nation with an almost unpayable debt. This caused Germany to feel as if the terms were too harsh and to resent them, and contributed to the rise of Hitler and Nazism.

The various options given that were battles or attacks (Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor, and Midway) cannot possibly have occurred after the war was over, so they can be ruled out. V-E Day is the day when victory was secured for the allied forces in Europe. This came a couple of months before V-J Day—"Victory over Japan" Day. V-J Day was August 15th, 1945.

The Munich Agreement was signed by various major European powers in 1938. It allowed the Nazi government of Germany to annex territory (the Sudetenland) in Czechoslovakia. The European powers conceded this because they feared Hitler's aggressive ambitions and sought to placate him with the policy of appeasement.

In World War Two, the Allied Powers were Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Opposing them were the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Benito Mussolini was the ruler of fascist Italy; Winston Churchill the Prime Minister of imperial Britain; and Josef Stalin the leader of the communist USSR. Harry Truman became President of the United States in the waning months of the war following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Douglas MacArthur, however, was an American general who led a large number of forces in the Pacific theatre of the war.

The Atlantic Charter was an agreement signed by the leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom in 1941 prior to America's entrance into the Second World War. The purpose of this charter was to establish the post-war goals of the Allied powers. Namely, it specified that neither power would seek to make territorial gains and that in the post-war era both powers would seek to promote economic prosperity, social equality, and national autonomy around the world. All of these answer choices were part of the charter except the disarmament of nuclear weapons. The atomic bomb was not invented for another few years.

Benito Mussolini and his Fascist party came to power in the 1920s and promptly suspended several freedoms in the Italian state. In 1935 Italy invaded and occupied Ethiopia. The move was widely condemned by the League of Nations and helped further allign Italy with Nazi Germany against much of the rest of Europe.

Fransisco Franco was a deeply conservative general in the burgeoning Spanish Republic of the 1930s. Franco was dismayed by the movement towards leftist poilitical thinking in Spain and, along with other generals, began the Spanish Civil War to overthrow the Republic. He was succesful (backed by the Italian and German governments) and became a fascist dictator in 1939. He would remain dictator until 1975, but famously kept Spain out of World War Two.

The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were the two primary socialist political parties in 1917, the time of the revolution in Russia. The Mensheviks were lead by Alexander Kerenskii and the Bolsheviks were lead by Lenin. The Bolsheviks were the majority and differed from the Menshevik minority in their beliefs; Mensheviks favored a gradual change and opposed revolution, and the Bolsheviks desired absolute control for the Socialist Party and favored revolution as opposed to gradual change. The Bolsheviks and Lenin would emerge in control.

The Russian Revolution took place in 1917 during World War I. The tsar at the time, Nicholas II, was overthrown, and his government was replaced with a communist government that would grow into the USSR. When the Russian Revolution took place, the population was decimated from warfare and famine, and the new communist government pulled Russia out of the First World War.

The Domino Theory became an important part of American foreign policy during the Cold War. It states that once one country falls under the influence of communism, there is a heightened chance that its neighboring countries will also succumb. It was the main motivation behind several of the United States' conflicts in the twentieth century such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Karl Marx, writer of The Communist Manifesto, expected the communist revolution to take place first in Britain, Germany, or the United States. That it should happen first in Russia, a comparably undeveloped country, would have been a massive surprise to Marx.