Twentieth Century History Final Exam Review Guide for Spring 21015 WOH 2040 Final Exam
True/False
1. After the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848, there were no successful Communist
revolutions in Europe until the Russian Revolution of 1917.
2. For most of World War I, warfare on the Western Front was characterized by static (littlemoving) battle lines resulting from defensive technological advantages.
3. India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947 following a nonviolent independence movement
led by Mohandas Gandhi.
4. The U.S. sought an “open-door” policy in China in the late 1800s and early 1900s because it did
not have spheres of influence in China.
5. Unlike most other members of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong believed that peasants
would be the backbone of the revolution.
6. In general, much of the 1920s was characterized by recovery and prosperity in Europe and the
U.S.
7. The population of the earth roughly trebled in the twentieth century.
8. Forty percent of the people killed during World War II were Soviet citizens. This fueled the
Soviet Union's desire to create a buffer of satellite states in Eastern Europe to protect them from
Western attacks.
9. One of the most important consequences of World War II was the disintegration of European
overseas empires.
10. Most countries in the world today are, to varying degrees, democratic.
11. One of the major issues on the Korean peninsula at the beginning of the twenty-first century was
North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions.
12. Germany and Great Britain passed social welfare measures in the late nineteenth century to head
off the growing popularity of Marxist parties in their respective countries.
13. The Egyptian advocate of Pan-Arabism and the architect of the United Arab Republic was
General Gamal Abdel Nasser.
14. The major French goal in Africa during the period from about 1870 to 1914 was to control
territories stretching from the west coast to the east coast, while the major British goal was to
control territories stretching from Egypt to South Africa.
15. The only nation in the Middle East that has firmly established democratic institutions is Israel.
Mutliple Choice
16. Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes argues that we should delineate a “short twentieth century”
lasting from 1914 - 1991 that began with the outbreak of World War I and ended with the
disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.
17. The ideology that brought about the most change throughout the world in the nineteenth century
was nationalism (Napoleonic Wars, Latin American revolutions, etc.).
18. Beliefs of nineteenth century liberals included all of the following: 1) Political democracy; 2)
Governments should protect basic civil rights, 3) Governments should have limited powers, 4)
There should be property qualifications for voting, 5) Capitalism should be the form of economy
in a liberal society (an economy free of government regulation, where the profit motive spurs
economic growth and the free market ("invisible hand") sets prices and wages.
19. According to University of Hawaii Professor R. J. Rummel, roughly 38 million soldiers died in
wars and 169 million civilians died in government sponsored persecutions, mass murders, and
genocides during the twentieth century.
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20. Reasons for the rapid expansion of European imperialism in Africa in the late 1800s includes all
of the following: 1) The development of a prophylactic to prevent malaria; 2) Advances in
transportation technology; A desire for raw materials and protected markets. Though tere was
great tension among imperial powers over colonial expansion in Africa, no major wars over the
issue of imperialism ever occurred prior to World War I.
21. The countries with the two largest overseas empires by 1900 were Britain and France.
22. In 1900, there were about 50 states, while in 2000, there were almost 180.
23. The only African states free of European rule by 1914 were Ethiopia and Liberia.
24. The European leader who created a private association for the purpose of exploiting resources
in the Congo was King Leopold II of Belgium.
25. For the British, India was the “jewel of the British Crown,” and controlling the Suez Canal was
crucial to maintaining access to it.
26. According to most historians, Germany and Austria-Hungary deserve most of the blame for
starting World War I.
27. The country with the largest land empire in the early twentieth century was Russia.
28. The country famously described as the “sick man of Europe” in the early 1900s was the Ottoman
Empire.
29. Contributing factors to the outbreak of World War II include all of the following: 1) The
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne; 2) A set of
"entangling alliances" that dragged all major European powers into the war; 3) competition for
imperial possessions; 4) British fear of Germany’s growing naval and commercial power; 5) An
arms race in the late 1800s and early 1900s, spurred by nationalism and the belief that war was a
necessary evil.
30. Otto von Bismarck did all of the following: 1) He was the architect behind German unification in
1871; 2) Once Germany was established in 1871, he sought to antagonize other European powers
as little as possible (example of his concept of realpolitik); 3) He coined the term geopolitik,
referring to a global foreign policy strategy; 3) Kaiser Wilhelm II forced him to resign in 1990, so
he could assume the office of Chancellor for himself.
31. Major Allied powers during World War I included Russia, Britain, France, Japan, Italy and the
U.S.
32. During World War I, about 10 million people were killed, and 20 million people were wounded.
33. Important British imperial possessions by 1914 included India, Egypt, Hong Kong and Gibraltar.
34. The ideas of both Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche argued that human beings were
essentially irrational.
35. contributions of Albert Einstein to science in the early twentieth century include the following:
1) Time is affected by how fast a body travels through space; 2) A small amount of mass can
produce tremendous amounts of energy, paving the way for the development of the nuclear
bomb; 3) The force guiding smaller heavenly bodies towards a large heavenly body is a pushing
force produced by warped space surrounding the larger heavenly body.
36. The factor that led the U.S. to enter World War I was Germany's resumption of unrestricted
submarine warfare.
37. Self-governing dominions of Great Britain by 1914 included Australia, New Zealand and the
Union of South Africa. Australians and New Zealanders contributed greatly to Britain's forces in
World War I.
38. Ideas in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel's theory of Scientific Socialism/Communism include the
following: 1) Economic relationships serve as the driving force behind historical change; 2)
Conflict among diametrically opposed classes in society will lead from one stage in history to the
next (dialectical materialism); 3) Capitalism has to fully develop before a successful socialist
revolution can occur.
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39. Social Darwinists argue that certain races, countries, and world regions are predisposed to
dominate other races, countries and world regions.
40. Terms of the Treaty of Versailles include the following: 1) Germany’s armed forces were greatly
limited; 2) The Rhineland region of Germany had to remain demilitarized; 3) Germany and
Austria-Hungary had to admit guilt for causing World War I (most hated term); 4) Germany had
to pay a tremendous amount of reparations to the Allies; 5) Small pieces of German territory
and big chunks of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were used to create new states to help
counterbalance Germany (i.e., Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia).
41. All of the following are true of the movement to found an Jewish state in Palestine: 1) It was
called the Zionist Movement and was founded in 1897; 2) Its founder was Theodor Herzl; 3) It
began during a time when anti-Semitism was rampant in Europe.
42. The League of Nations dismembered the Ottoman Empire and assigned mandates in the Middle
East to Britain and France. These were pseudo-colonies that were only to be under the control
of European powers until they were ready for independence. Britain was assigned Palestine,
Transjordan and Iraq. France was assigned the mandates of Syria and Lebanon.
43. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was a famous Ottoman general during World War I (he led the defeat of
the Allies at Gallipoli). He led the Turkish War of Independence which prevented Europeans
from turning Turkey into a European mandate following World War I.
44. Many historians argue that the first major genocide of the twentieth century was conducted by
Ottoman authorities against Armenian Christians during World War I.
45. President Woodrow Wilson pushed to have the Allies create the League of Nations after World
War I. The U.S. Senate, however, did not ratify the treaty that created it. This was one reason
why the League of Nations ultimately failed and was replaced by the United Nations after World
War II.
46. The world's first successful communist revolution occurred in Russia.
47. The two countries most severely affected by the Great Depression of October 1929 were the
U.S. and Germany. This was mainly because the Stock Market crash in the U.S. started the Great
Depression and because U.S. banks called in loans made to Germany to help it make its
reparations payments.
48. Most Latin American nations gained independence from Spain in the early 1800s.
49. The type of government prevalent in Latin America during the 1800s was military dictatorship.
50. Cuba gained its independence from Spain as a result of the Spanish-American War.
51. By 1939 the only two major democratic states in Europe were Britain and France.
52. Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy, was a socialist prior to World War I. He became an
ardent nationalist as a result of World War I. He was given power during the Fascist March on
Rome in 1921. He gained the support of the Roman Catholic Church by giving it the Vatican
through the 1929 Lateran Treaty. He joined World War II on the side of the Nazi Germany.
53. Italy, Germany and France were multi-party democratic states immediately following World War
I. The multi-party nature of their democracies made it difficult to deal with these countries
problems. As a result, Fascism took root in Italy and Germany. France, however, remained a
democratic state at the start of World War II.
54. The two countries whose independent unification movements were complete by 1871 were
Germany and Italy.
55. Two countries created by the treaties that ended World War I that disintegrated by the 1990s
were Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.
56. In 1867, Japan began modernizing along Western lines as a result of the Meiji Restoration which
claimed to be restoring the Meiji emperor to power.
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57. One of V. I. Lenin’s major contributions to Marxist thought was the idea that socialist revolution
could only be successful in Russia if led by a vanguard of revolutionaries.
58. The leader of India’s nonviolent independence movement of the early twentieth century was
Mohandas Gandhi.
59. In response to the terms of the treaties that ended World War I, Ho Chi Minh led an independence
movement in Vietnam.
60. The royal dynasty which came to power in Iran in 1925 was the Pahlavi Dynasty which ruled Iran
until 1979 when the Shah of Iran was overthrown by a fundamentalist Islamic revolution. During
the revolution many U.S. Embassy workers were taken hostage.
61. The 1917 statement that pledged British support for the establishment of a “national home” for
Jews in Palestine was the Balfour Declaration.
62. The Middle Eastern nation where vast oil reserves were discovered in 1938 was Saudi Arabia.
63. The Comintern was an organization of Communist parties committed to world revolution led by
the Soviet Union.
64. By the 1920s, the British response to the various groups of Indian nationalists was to give some
Indians a somewhat greater role in the governing process.
65. The Nationalist Party leader whose international efforts were instrumental to the 1912
revolution that ended the Qing Dynasty was Sun Yat-sen.
66. The event that led Mao Zedong to become the leader of the Communists in China was the Long
March of 1934 - 1935.
67. One major effect of World War I on Latin America was that the United States increased its role
in Latin American economies.
68. By the end of World War II, South America's major industrial power was, and still is Brazil.
69. The Mexican politician who redistributed 44 million acres of land to peasants and who took over
and nationalized the foreign oil interests was Lazaro Cardenas.
70. The dominant party in Mexican politics from the end of the Mexican Revolution to the election
of 2000 is the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
71. On Europe's Eastern Front, the turning point in World War II in Europe was at the Battle of
Stalingrad.
72. One of the differences between the new totalitarian states and traditional authoritarian
monarchies is that totalitarianism demanded the active loyalty and commitment of the citizens
to carry out the regime’s plan for a perfect society.
73. The Nazi Party had little political success in the 1920s but grew greatly in popularity as a result
of the Great Depression.
74. The Enabling Act of March, 1933 suspended the constitution for four years in order to give Hitler
the power to solve Germany's many problems.
75. By the late 1930s, Nazi Germany's chief fascist ally in Europe was Italy.
76. World War II began in Europe on September 1, 1939, with a Nazi invasion of Poland.
77. On June 22, 1941, in spite of a non-aggression agreement, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet
Union.
78. The United States gained naval superiority in the Pacific during World War II at the Battle of
Midway.
79. History's greatest naval invasion occurred at Normandy.
80. The "Final Solution" was ultimately carried out in death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau.
81. Approximately 100 new countries were created during the period 1945 - 1965, mostly from the
great overseas empires.
82. The Truman Doctrine said that the United States would support free peoples resisting
Communist aggression.
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83. By 1948, the fate of Germany had become a source of bitter contention between the Soviet Union
and the West sparking the Cold War.
84. The European Recovery Program of 1947 is better known as the Marshall Plan. It gave massive
amounts of American aid to European powers to rebuild. The Soviet refused this aid seeing it as
"dollar imperialism" and pressured its satellite states in Eastern Europe to refuse it as well.
85. The Eastern European communist states organized a formal military alliance called the Warsaw
Pact. It was created in 1955 in response to the U.S. establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) in 1949.
86. After being defeated by the Communists, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists fled to Taiwan
and dominated the government there until the 1990s.
87. In the Chinese Civil War, the United States gave limited military aid to the Nationalists. As a
result of the Nationalists' loss in the civil war, the Truman Administration was accused of being
"soft on communism."
88. In 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to temporarily divide the Korean
peninsula at the 38th parallel. North Korea became communist.
89. The People's Republic of China entered the Korean War in fear that hostile American military
forces would be stationed on the Chinese frontier.
90. The Soviet response to the Marshall plan was to reject it because it was an example of American
economic and political imperialism.
91. The Geneva agreement of 1954 temporarily divided Vietnam into a communist north and a noncommunist south.
92. Stalin’s first Five Year Plan (1928 - 1932) did all of the following: 1) Forced peasants to live on
huge collective farms to increase productivity; 2) Required Soviet citizens to work on huge state
construction projects, such as canals and factories; 3) It caused the death of millions, particularly
in the Ukraine, where peasant resistance was strongest; 4) It did, however, lead to strong, though
unbalanced growth in the 1930s.
93. The closest the world came to nuclear war was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
94. The U.S.’ worst foreign policy failure of the Cold War was the Vietnam War.
95. Détente refers to the lessening of tensions after the Cuban Missile Crisis between the United
States and the Soviet Union.
96. In 1979, some observers mistakenly believed that the Soviet Union hoped to ultimately extend its
power into the Persian Gulf oil fields by invading Afghanistan.
97. The terrorist group responsible for the tragedy of September 11, 2001 was al-Qaeda.
98. Traditionally, Latin America economies relied on the export of raw materials.
99. During the 1960s, almost all economically advanced South American countries experienced
domestic strife and military despotism.
100.
The Great Leap Forward was a movement to rapidly collectivize agriculture and
industrialize China lasting from 1958 to 1961 that cost many millions of lives due to starvation.
101.
One of the causes of the economic failures in Latin America during the 1970s and early
1980s was the failure of a number of governments to pay interest on their debts to foreign
banks.
102.
The Organization of American States (OAS), established in 1948, promised to end
unilateral action in one state by another.
103.
Under the leadership of Juan Peron, Argentina nationalized railways, banking, insurance
and the communications industries.
104.
Under General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean government refused to return the
previously seized copper industry to its original U.S. owners.
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105.
Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976 had as its major goal to
reinvigorate revolutionary zeal in China’s population.
106.
Following Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, China’s leader Deng Xiaoping added elements of
capitalism to China’s economy.
107.
Women in Communist China were given equal rights with men.
108.
The allied general responsible for the political and social rehabilitation of Japan after
World War II was Douglas MacArthur. He was also called upon to lead U.N. forces against North
Korea during the Korean War but was fired for his comments during the war.
109.
All of the following are characteristic of the "Japanese miracle": 1) Japan succeeded in
spite of a lack of resources in its territory; 2) It established one of the world's most advanced
economies; 3) The literacy rate in Japan approaches 100 percent; 4) It is the world's greatest
exporting nation; 5) The Japanese life expectancy is among the highest in the world.
110.
A problem facing Japan in the immediate future is a declining birth rate.
111.
The leader of the People's Republic of Korea who ruled from the 1948 to 1994 was Kim
Il Sung.
112.
One of the differences between the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People's
Republic of China was that unlike the mainland, Taiwan actively maintained Chinese traditions
and a respect for Confucian values.
113.
The most crucial issue in Taiwan's future is its political and constitutional relationship
with Communist China.
114.
The nation that ruled Singapore and Hong Kong throughout much of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries was Britain.
115.
A major region of violent confrontation between India and Pakistan since independence
has been Kashmir.
116.
Under the leadership of Chung Hee Park, South Korea instituted a series of five-years
plans which created a strong industrial base.
117.
Independent India's political system was organized on the model of Great Britain.
118.
Under Nehru, India's foreign policy maintained a position of neutrality in the Cold War.
119.
The breakup of Pakistan in 1971 created the new nation of Bangladesh.
120.
In recent decades, India’s government has relied increasingly on the free market.
121.
Issues of caste in India continue to have considerable significance in spite of
constitutional guarantees of equality.
122.
In India today urban women often play a modern role in the marketplace but a more
traditional role at home.
123.
The event that finally drove Indonesia's Suharto from power in 1998 was an army coup.
124.
In July 1946, the United States granted independence to the Philippines.
125.
United States pressure on the Dutch led to the independence of ________________ in
1950.
126.
After achieving independence, most of the nations of Southeast Asia modeled their new
governments on Western democratic models.
127.
The reunification of Vietnam under Communist rule in 1975 led to the emergence of a
brutal revolutionary regime in Cambodia.
128.
The Southeast Asian nation that remains isolated from recent trends and developments is
129.
The Southeast Asian nation that remains isolated from recent trends and developments is
Myanmar/Burma.
130.
The Western colonial presence in Africa resulted in all of the following: 1) Little
industrial development throughout the entire continent; 2) An improvement in sanitation and
medical care; 3) Little improvement in living conditions for most Africans; 4) A continued
reliance on the export of raw materials; 5) a limited introduction of Western political systems.
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131.
Political organizations demanding rights for Africans first began in the aftermath of
World War II.
132.
The political organization and its leader which ultimately massacred more than one
million Cambodians were the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot.
133.
Most political organizations demanding rights for Africans after both world wars were
headed by Western-educated Africans who believed in non-violent change.
134.
The following are true of the ANC in South Africa: 1) It was originally led by Westerninclined intellectuals who had little popular support; 2) it was initially aimed at achieving full
equality for the educated native population through peaceful means; 3) In time, its policies
became more prone to the use of violence to achieve its goals; 4) It faced strong resistance from
the white majority who held power in Africa's Apartheid system.
135.
of the following are correct about Egypt in the twentieth century: 1) It was a British
protectorate for several decades; 3) The Wafd, an independence party, was formed in 1918;3)
King Farouk became the first president of independent Egypt in 1952; 4) Egypt's intellectual elite
opposed both the local royal government as well as the British.
136.
The French colony in Africa which experienced wide-spread violence in the 1950s and
which achieved independence in 1962 was Algeria.
137.
Independence came to Africa later than to Asia because in Africa there were fewer
coherent states with a sense of cultural and ethnic unity than in Asia.
138.
Most African leaders in newly independent countries in the twentieth century accepted
the Western model of political organization.
139.
Most newly independent African states relied on the export of a single crop or natural
resource.
140.
One of the most critical issues facing independent Africa was the countries' boundaries
had been artificially drawn by the colonial powers without taking into consideration the ethnic
groups that lived within them.
141.
The organization established in Addis Ababa in 1963 to further continental unity was the
Organization of African Unity (OAU).
142.
The pluralistic governments established in most African states at the time of
independence gave way to military regimes and one-party governments.
143.
The first president of post-apartheid South Africa was Nelson Mandela.
144.
One of the wealthiest countries in Africa is Nigeria because of its oil resources.
145.
In 1994, a violent conflict of holocaust dimensions between the minority Tutsis and the
Hutu majority occurred in Rwanda.
146.
After a generation or so of Communist party rule, most Communist states began to suffer
from economic stagnation low productivity, and underemployment.
147.
In recent decades Nigeria has experienced all of the following: 1) Military rulers; 2)
Tension between Christians and Moslems; 3) struggles between Pastoralists and farmers; 4)
considerable political and military violence; An unequal distribution of wealth in spite of
Nigeria's vast oil resources.
148.
Because of its economic successes, in the 1990s the main supporter and advocate of the
global economic marketplace was the United States.
149.
In order for a European state to take part in the unification envisioned by the Maastricht
Treaty of 1991 (join the European Union), a nation must comply with the economic requirements
to reduce government deficits and inflation.
150.
The disastrous symbol of environmental destruction caused by uncontrolled industrial
pollution occurred at Chernobyl in 1986.
151.
The highest levels of industrial pollution are found today in China.
152.
By the end of the twentieth century, the "East Asian miracle" had become less miraculous
after the financial crisis of 1997.
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153.
It is predicted that by 2050 the world's population will have reached 9 billion.
154.
In spite of other differences, the one issue which the Arab states in the Middle East could
agree upon in recent decades was the issue of Palestine.
155.
Israel defeated the Arab states in 1948 because the Arabs suffered from internal divisions.
156.
The Middle Eastern state whose delicate balance between Christians and Muslims was
upset by the influx of Palestinian refugees after the 1948 Israeli war of independence was
Lebanon.
157.
In the Six Day War of 1967, Israel added one million Palestinians to its population by
acquring the Occupied territories (Gaza Strip, West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Golan
Heights).
158.
After Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in his own right in 1954, he nationalized
the Suez Canal.
159.
The Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964, stated that native Palestinians
were the only rightful successors to the British mandate.
160.
The 1978 peace agreement between Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin
occurred at Camp David in the United States.
161.
The PLO uprising against Israel in the 1980s and again in the late 1990s is referred to as
the Intifada.
162.
The Yom Kippur War of 1973 produced an oil crisis in the West because the U.S. had
helped supply the Israelis during the war.
163.
Iran's revolution in 1979 established a republic under Islamic religious laws.
164.
At the end of the twentieth century, the most prominent example of a Middle Eastern
feudal monarchy was Saudi Arabia.
165.
By 2000, most Iranian moderates believed that significant liberalization of Iranian society
was at least a possibility. Relations between the U.S. and Iran during the Bush Administration led
to a decrease in such expectations.
166.
The 1990 victim of Saddam Hussein's ambition to build a "greater Iraq" was Kuwait.
This resulted in the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
167.
The first response by the United States after September 11, 2001, was to overthrow
Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
168.
Economic differences in the Middle East for both individuals and nations is the result of
the abundance of oil or the lack of it. The two Middle Eastern nations with large populations and
almost no oil reserves are Turkey and Egypt.
169.
The only truly democratic state in the Middle East is Israel.
170.
The first organization that was created in reaction to the secularization of the Middle East
was the Muslim Brotherhood (est. in 1928).
Essay Questions:
Essay 1: Explain the events that led to the end of the Cold War and how they still impact U.S.Russian diplomatic relations today. Keep in mind the following factors.
~The backward industrial economy of the Soviets, which focused on heavy industry, was
performing very poorly by the 1980s.The Soviet economy was also suffering because of the
nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the U.S.
~Conservatives allowed reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev to become General Secretary of the
Communist Party. Gorbachev made arms control agreements with the Reagan Administration.
He also refused to crack down on countries in Eastern Europe that wanted to move away from
Communism in the late 1980s, such as Poland and East Germany. East Germany allowed the
tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to allow Germans to travel freely between East and West
Germany. The fall of the Berlin Wall came to symbolize the end of the Cold War.
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~Gorbachev initiated two major policies. Perstroika ("restructuring") sought to reinvigorate the
Soviet economy by injecting it with elements of capitalism. Conservatives in the government
stopped him from going as far with his economic reforms as he wanted, so the Soviet economy
didn't improve. Gorbachev also allowed some political freedom through his glasnost ("openness")
policy. This allowed people in the Soviet Union to criticize Soviet history and the current actions
of the government. It had the unintended effect of leading some Soviet republics to try and break
free from the Soviet Union. Gorbachev did use force to try and prevent this. Conservatives,
fearing the breakup of the Soviet Union, attempted a coup in 1991. The coup failed in major part
because of the opposition of Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the Soviet Russian Republic and the first
leader of independent and democratic Russia in 1992.
In an essay, explain three ways in which the world has become increasingly interconnected in the
20th century.
Answers should focus on the many ways that the world has become increasingly interconnected.
Focus on things like the creation of global empires prior to World War I and the relationships that
were maintained after independence (i.e., the British Commonwealth), the formation of
international organizations such as the United Nations and European Union, the impact of
advances in transportation and communications technology, the global reach of nuclear weapons.
Make sure to include dates, important figures and other details in your answers.
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