World History: World War I, Russian Revolution, Fascism and World War II
World History: World War I, Russian Revolution, Fascism and World War II. Questions here reward causal chains and exact dates, especially where one war's settlement becomes the next war's cause.
The First World War
- Long-term causes: the alliance blocs (Triple Alliance 1882; Triple Entente 1907), militarism, imperial rivalry and Balkan nationalism.
- Trigger: the Sarajevo assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914; Austria's ultimatum to Serbia; Britain entered on 4 August 1914 after the invasion of Belgium.
- Total war: conscription, blockade, colonial manpower; the USA entered in 1917, Russia left after Brest-Litovsk (March 1918), and the armistice came on 11 November 1918.
- The Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919) imposed the war-guilt clause on Germany, reparations, armament limits and the League of Nations - which the USA never joined.
Russian Revolution
- February 1917: bread riots in Petrograd, mutiny of the garrison, abdication of Nicholas II; Provisional Government under Kerensky versus the Petrograd Soviet.
- Lenin's April Theses demanded "peace, land, bread" and all power to the Soviets; the Bolsheviks seized power on 24–25 October 1917 (Julian calendar; 7 November Gregorian).
- Followed by Brest-Litovsk, civil war, the NEP of 1921 and the formation of the USSR in 1922.
Fascism and the Second World War
- Mussolini's March on Rome (October 1922); Hitler became Chancellor on 30 January 1933, secured the Enabling Act in March 1933, and passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.
- Anschluss and the Munich Agreement in 1938; Nazi–Soviet Pact, August 1939; invasion of Poland, 1 September 1939.
- Turning points: Stalingrad (1942–43) and D-Day (6 June 1944); Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
Worked example
How did Versailles feed Nazism? Chain it: war-guilt clause and territorial loss → reparations and the 1923 hyperinflation → the Depression after 1929 → loss of faith in the Weimar Republic → Hitler's revanchist platform gaining votes. Then add the caveat that Versailles was one cause among several, alongside propaganda and elite intrigue.
Traps
- Julian versus Gregorian dates for 1917 confuse October with November.
- Munich (1938 agreement) is not the Munich Putsch (1923).
- Versailles was signed in 1919, not at the 1918 armistice.