Part Nine IX › Division VII VII › Section 971 971

International Movements, Diplomacy, and War Since 1920

Subject Outline

AThe period between the World Wars (1920-39)
- 1Immediate postwar problems (1920-24)
  - aFailure of attempts to establish socialist and new democratic governments in Europe: dictatorships in the new nations of central and eastern Europe
  - bDiplomacy after the Paris Peace Conference (1919-20): establishment of the League of Nations; U.S., Soviet, and German diplomatic isolation; crises concerning enforcement of the peace settlement
- 2The temporary amelioration of international relations by the Locarno (1925) and Kellogg- Briand (1928) agreements, European recovery and the rapprochement with Germany
- 3International affairs in the 1930s
  - aThe upsurge of strife in Asia: civil conflict in China and the Japanese seizure of Manchuria (1931-32), rise of the militarists in Japan and the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere
  - bThe Popular Front and the Spanish Civil War (1936-39): unchecked Italian aggression against Ethiopia (1935-36), failure of the League of Nations and other diplomatic attempts (e.g the Munich agreement) to avert war
  - cThe European colonial empires and client states: increased demands for self-determination among subject peoples, realignment of colonial powers
- 4Economic developments in the postwar period (1920-39)
  - aIncreased government control (1920-29): reconstruction, social welfare, and inflation
  - bEconomic and political impact of the Great Depression of the 1930s: collapse of the world market and responses by various governments
  - cThe establishment of Nazi Germany and economic recovery based on rearmament, Germany's alignment with Italy and Japan, the New Deal policy in the U.S., War Communism and the New Economic Policy in the Soviet Union
BWorld War II (1939-45)
- 1German conquest of Poland (1939) and France (1940); the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (1939) and subsequent German invasion of the Soviet Union (1941); the Battle of Britain (1940-41) and the war in North Africa (1940-43)
- 2The war in Asia and the Pacific (1937-45)
  - aFurther Japanese aggression in China from 1937: the clash between U.S. and Japanese interests in the Pacific, the attack on Pearl Harbor (1941) and U.S. entry into the war
  - bJapanese conquests in the western Pacific and Southeast Asia (1941-42); the Allied counteroffensive from 1942 and Japanese defeat (1945)
- 3The war in Europe and North Africa (1942-45)
  - aBeginning of U.S. active participation (1942), Allied progress against the Axis Powers in North Africa and Europe
  - bCollapse of the German Eastern Front (1944) and Soviet conquest of eastern Europe (1944- 45), Allied invasions of Italy (1943) and France (1944) and the defeat of Germany (1945)
- 4The leadership, industrial strength, strategic plans and goals, and tactical and logistical procedures of the Axis Powers
- 5Allied wartime leadership and diplomacy: the Atlantic Charter; industrial strength, strategic plans and goals, and tactical and logistical procedures
- 6The burgeoning of military technology; e.g., developments in communications devices, naval ships and aircraft, ground weapons and missiles, atomic bombs
CInternational relations
- 1International relations before and during World War II
  - aThe Eurocentric world and its collapse
  - bIdeologies in World War II
    - iThe Nazi-Soviet pact
    - iiRoosevelt, Churchill, and the Atlantic Charter
    - iiiSoviet expansion, Stalin and the Nazis, annexations
- 2The postwar years (1945-57)
  - aThe end of the war and the early United Nations (UN)
    - iThe atomic and hydrogen bombs
    - iiTruman's fundamental principles
    - iiiThe UN as a Western organization
  - bReconstruction and European political instability
  - cThe beginnings of the Cold War
    - iConsolidation of Soviet power in eastern Europe: the Iron Curtain
    - iiThe Cold War as Realpolitik and as ideology
    - iiiThe confrontation in Germany: the Berlin blockade
    - ivThe formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
  - dEast, South, and Southeast Asia, 1945-57
    - iThe colonial territories of Asia
    - iiCivil war in China and communist rule
    - iiiThe Korean War: its meaning, course, and consequences
    - ivThe transformation of the American role in Southeast Asia
  - eThe Middle East (1945-57)
    - iThe U.S. in the Middle East
    - iiThe Iranian and Turkish cases
    - iiiPalestine: Israel and the Arabs
    - ivNasser and the Suez crisis
  - fThe continuing Cold War
    - iThe U.S. policy of containment
    - iiThe late Truman administration
    - iiiThe Eisenhower years and McCarthyism
    - ivDe-Stalinization in the Soviet Union
    - vUnrest among the satellites
    - viNATO and European economic recovery
    - viiSoviet responses
    - viiiThe problem of nuclear energy: the balance of terror, France as a nuclear power
    - ixThe Austrian treaty and the German problem
- 3The period since 1957
  - aThe Great Powers and the world
    - iPostwar economic growth: U.S. economic dominance
    - iiDecolonization
    - iiiThe Soviet Union and "national liberation"
    - ivThe new states: nonalignment and domestic problems, aid programs
    - vThe Third World as a zone of conflict in the Cold War
    - viLatin America in the Cold War: Fidel Castro
    - viiThe Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis: consequences
    - viiiSino-Soviet relations: the consequences of their rift
    - ixPeaceful coexistence and detente
    - xResolution of the German problem and the two Germanys; the Helsinki conference (1973); arms buildup and deterioration of superpower relations; disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War
  - bThe lesser powers
    - iPeace in postwar Europe
    - iiIntegration movements in western Europe
    - iiiEastern Europe under the Soviet variety of imperialism
    - ivCentral and eastern Europe's struggle for economic and political integration with the West, movements toward democracy and free markets, renewed ethnic conflicts
  - cAreas of conflict
    - iSoutheast Asia: the Indochina War
    - iiThe Middle East: the Arab-Israeli wars, the new role of petroleum, the Iran-Iraq War, the Persian Gulf wars
    - iiiSub-Saharan Africa: superpower involvement, civil warfare, ethnic strife, genocide
    - ivInternational terrorism