HIST103 Study Guide

Unit 11: The Interwar Period

11a. Analyze how Europe attempted to create a new political order after World War I

  • How did economic depression stunt the recovery in Europe?
  • What was the League of Nations, and why did it fail?
  • How did World War I impact Europe's political landscape?

The physical destruction of World War I transformed Europe. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed into today's Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Poland, and parts of Italy. The Ottoman Empire disintegrated into Eastern Europe's Baltic States and modern-day Turkey.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson created the League of Nations (1920), the first global organization designed to maintain peace, but it had limited success. It seemed doomed to failure when the U.S. Congress declined to join. Similarly, the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), which renounced war as an instrument of national policy, could not prevent World War II. These international efforts were the precursors to the United Nations, which was formed after World War II.

Several European countries granted women suffrage after the war (the USSR in 1917, Germany, Austria, and Poland in 1818, and Britain in 1928). The United States ratified the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. Although Jim Crow laws continued to plague the southern United States, the American Civil Liberties Union was formed in 1919, and the roots of the future Civil Rights Movement took hold.

Meanwhile, Russia emerged as the communist-controlled Soviet Union (also known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR) in December 1922 following a bloody civil war between the communist Red Guard, led by the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, and the White Army, a disorganized mix of forces with disparate goals, including those who wanted to restore the Tsarist regime and support from foreign countries that opposed communism.

To review, see:


11b. Discuss the rise of the Soviet Union and its leadership

  • How did the Soviet Union come into power?
  • How were Lenin's and Stalin's visions different?
  • What was Stalin's First Five-Year Plan?
  • What were the results of Stalin's reforms?

By the end of the civil war in 1920, the Bolsheviks had to build a new economic infrastructure for the new Soviet Union. In 1921, Lenin introduced his New Economic Policy (NEP), which created some stability and instituted limited free market policies, such as land ownership. However, Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) won the power struggle that followed Lenin's death in 1924.

During the 1930s, Stalin nationalized the Soviet economy and reinstituted the authoritarian policies of war communism to create a command economy. He demanded laborers build the heavy industrial base that would create a modern industrialized economy, forced the peasants into mass collective farms, which led to millions of deaths during the Great Famine (1932–1933), and provoked a mass migration of millions of peasants to the Soviet urban centers (1928–1932). In 1934, Stalin declared the revolution was over.

Researchers estimate that Stalin's forced collectivization efforts killed nearly 10 million people in the Soviet countryside (primarily in Ukraine) during the Great Famine. To eradicate "enemies of the working class", Stalin imprisoned more than a million people in the Gulag prison system and executed at least 700,000 individuals during the Great Purge between 1934 and 1939. 

To review, see The Formation of the Soviet Union and First Five-Year Plan.

11c. Describe the Great Depression and the political effect it had in Europe

  • What was the Great Depression?
  • What caused it in the U.S. and Europe?
  • How did it impact Europe and the U.S.?
  • How did it lead to World War II?

The Great Depression followed the crash of the U.S. stock market on October 29, 1929, and led to massive inflation, homelessness, and political destabilization in the United States and Europe. Post-war Europe had grown increasingly dependent on the United States, and their economies suffered when the American economy collapsed. Germany's weakened economy was completely devastated – its currency became worthless, and people famously bought loaves of bread with wheelbarrows full of money.

In addition to the rise of Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and the German Nazi Party, the economic collapse also prompted the rise of Benito Mussolini's (1883–1945) fascist regime in Italy. Germany embarked on a war of conquest with claims that the Jewish people and others (including homosexuals, the disabled, and Roma gypsies) poisoned the race and did not deserve to live, especially when compared to their belief in the superiority of the "Aryan race".

To review, see The Great Depression and Fascism.

11d. Analyze the postwar demand for greater rights both within foreign colonies and domestically

  • What impact did World War I have on civil rights throughout the world?
  • How did World War I impact French Indochina and India?

World War I played an essential role in weakening colonialism as independence efforts increased across the globe and proclaimed self-determination and social justice for the traditionally oppressed.

Be sure to review the petition Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), an independence leader from French Indochina, sent to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson on June 18, 1919, during the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles, asking the colonial powers to consider the rights, needs, and sovereignty of the people of Indochina. It called upon Enlightenment ideals of equality and freedom. 

In the Middle East, nationalistic movements spread in Iraq. Calls to establish a homeland for Jewish people in British-controlled Palestine also gained momentum. Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), a Jamaican activist, and W.E.B. DuBois (1868–1963), an American sociologist, led the Pan-African movement and hosted the First Pan-African Congress in 1918, demanding world powers embrace self-determination for African colonies to become independent countries. 

Great Britain's control over India also began to weaken. Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), an Indian lawyer, protested the oppression Indians suffered under British rule. The Indian Independence movement focused on nonviolent resistance to British colonial rule as it continued to gain strength until it achieved victory after World War II. 

To review, see:


Unit 11 Vocabulary

  • 19th Amendment
  • Adolf Hitler
  • American Civil Liberties Union
  • Austro-Hungarian Empire
  • Benito Mussolini
  • Bolsheviks
  • civil rights movement
  • collective farm
  • collectivization
  • command economy
  • First Pan-African Congress
  • French Indochina
  • gulag
  • Ho Chi Minh
  • Jim Crow laws
  • Joseph Stalin
  • Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • League of Nations
  • Mahatma Gandhi
  • Marcus Garvey
  • Nazi Party
  • New Economic Policy (NEP)
  • Red Guard
  • Soviet Union
  • suffrage
  • The Great Depression
  • The Great Famine
  • The Great Purge
  • Ukraine
  • W.E.B. DuBois
  • war communism
  • White Army
  • Zionism