CHAPTER 9 VOCABULARY
1. deficit spending = the spending of government funds, raised by borrowing from loans rather
than by raising taxes.
2. collective bargaining = the right of unions to negotiate with employers about wages, benefits &
working conditions.
3. Dawes Plan = an international commission which set up a new plan to help Germany’s ability to
make war reparation payments.
4. diplomacy = peaceful efforts to solve disputes among nations.
5. Kellogg-Briand Pact = an agreement among 63 nations to renounce war as an instrument of
national policy.
6. pact = a written agreement between two or more parties.
7. tariff = a tax on imported goods, designed to protect domestic production from foreign
competition.
8. depression = a downward spiral of economic losses including: lower wages, consumer
confidence, sales & production and higher levels of unemployment.
9. laissez-faire = belief that it’s in a government’s best interest to not get directly involved in
economic affairs.
10. totalitarian state = a government that aims to fully control the political, economical, social,
intellectual & cultural lives of its citizens.
11. fascism = an extreme right-wing (reactionary) political philosophy that glorifies the past and
uses violence and intimidation to enforce its policies against moderate and left-wing groups.
12. squadristi = bands of black-shirted, armed fascists organized by Benito Mussolini to attack leftwing socialist offices, newspapers & striking workers.
13. New Economic Policy (N.E.P.) = Lenin’s program which kept communist government control
over big industry, banking & mines, but allowed peasants to sell their own produce in local
markets and people could privately own and operate small stores.
14. Politburo = the leading policy-making committee of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.
15. collectivization = many small, private farms forcibly taken over by government officials and
turned into very large government owned and supervised farms.
16. Lateran Accords = an agreement between the papacy & Mussolini in which Catholics gained
sovereignty over Vatican City in return for church support of the fascist government.
17. Popular Front = a coalition of leftist political parties which followed liberal policies to deal with
French post-war economic problems.
18. New Deal = F.D.R.’s government intervention policies of relief, restoration & reform of the
American economy during the Great Depression.
19. Spanish Civil War = the conflict between the Republican government and its Soviet allies
against Franco’s fascists and their Nazi allies.
20. Aryans = mythological “superior race” of Germanic people in Northern Europe & Scandinavia.
21. charisma = a personality which has a strong emotional & psychological influence on people.
22. genocide = the mass murder of an entire group of people due to their race, religion or
nationality.
23. anti-Semitism = hostility toward or discrimination against Jewish people.
24. Kristallnacht = evenings in November, 1938 in which German mobs attacked Jewish people,
homes, businesses & synagogues with support from the Nazi government.
25. orator = one who is skilled in giving inspirational public speeches.
26. Lebensraum = geographic “living room” in the heartland of Eurasia claimed by expansionist
Germany.
27. Reichstag = the law-making body of German government officials and the building in which
they meet..
28. Weimar Republic = the German democratic state that struggled after World War I due to the
terms of the Treaty of Versailles & the effects of economic depression.
29. avant-garde = a group of intellectuals who develop new or experimental concepts in the arts.
30. surrealism = a type of art made popular by Salvador Dali which sought a “greater reality” that
existed beyond the world of physical appearances.