5 Steps to a 5TM AP European History

(^182) › STEP 4. Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High
✪^ Blackshirts^ (squadristi) Italian fascist paramilitary groups, largely recruited
from disgruntled war veterans, commanded by Mussolini. They were increas-
ingly relied upon by the Italian government to keep order in the 1920s.
✪^ National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP, or the Nazi Party)^
German political party that began as a small right-wing group—one of
the more than 70 extremist paramilitary organizations that sprang up in
post–World War I Germany. It was neither socialist nor did it attract many
workers; it was a party initially made up of war veterans and misfits. The man
responsible for its rise to power was Adolf Hitler.
✪ Anschluss The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938.
✪ The Holocaust^ A genocide in which approximately six million Jews were
killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
✪ Spanish Civil War^ 1936–1939 Often referred to as a “dress rehearsal” for
WWII. Brought Francisco Franco to power and ended the monarchy.
Key Individuals:
✪ Adolf Hitler
✪ Benito Mussolini
✪ Francisco Franco
✪ Franklin Delano Roosevelt
✪ Winston Churchill
✪ Charles De Gaulle

Introduction

The 1920s were an era of deep uncertainty, as the population of Europe grappled with the

experiences and consequences of World War I. In the 1930s, the politics of the extreme

flourished, as fascism emerged as an ideology that appealed to the downtrodden. By 1939,

Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party controlled Germany, and his systematic repudiation of the

Versailles Treaty led to the Second World War, which raged from 1939 to 1945.

Problems and Challenges After World War I

The men who survived the Great War, as World War I was called in the 1920s and 1930s,

came home to a world of economic, social, and cultural uncertainty.

Governments had borrowed heavily to finance their war efforts, and interest payments

were now coming due. The need to pay enormous sums in veteran and widow war benefits

and unemployment benefits further burdened the economies. The inability of economies

to meet the reviving demand for goods added inflation to an already grim economic mix.

For the first 10 years following the war, Europe experienced a roller-coaster economy, as

recessions followed brief periods of prosperity.

Socially, conditions were equally uncertain. Class deference was a casualty of World

War I; lingering notions that the wealthier classes were somehow superior to working

people were eroded by the experience of working and fighting side by side. Traditional

views on gender had also been challenged by the wartime need to suspend restrictions on

KEY IDEA

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