Unit 7
Global Conflict
After 1900

Long-term tensions (MAIN) made Europe explosive; the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the spark, not the cause. The alliance system turned a regional crisis into a world war in weeks.

Key argument: The Treaty of Versailles (1919) ended WWI but planted the conditions for WWII — the War Guilt Clause, reparations, and territorial losses created a crisis of legitimacy in Germany.

Total war mobilized entire economies and societies. Machine guns and barbed wire produced the Western Front stalemate. Governments used propaganda, censorship, and rationing to sustain civilian commitment over years of devastating conflict.

Key argument: Total war blurred the soldier/civilian line — the home front became as strategically important as the battlefield. This redefined what states could demand from their populations.

The Great Depression (1929) collapsed world trade by 50% and devastated democratic governments. Responses varied sharply: Keynesian spending (U.S. New Deal), centralized planning (Soviet Five Year Plans), and import substitution (Latin America).

Key argument: Economic desperation made populations willing to accept radical solutions — the Depression was the key enabling condition for fascist movements in Europe.

WWI weakened European empires and raised expectations of self-determination — promises that were not kept. Resistance movements intensified, from Gandhi's nonviolent civil disobedience to armed anti-colonial uprisings.

Key argument: European states used the language of democracy and self-determination to justify war, but denied those same rights to colonized peoples — creating a legitimacy crisis that accelerated decolonization after WWII.

The slides walk through four key appeasement moments: Japan’s invasion of Manchuria (League fails to act), Hitler’s Rhineland remilitarization, the annexation of Austria, and finally the Munich Agreement — where Chamberlain handed Hitler the Sudetenland and declared “Peace for our time.”

Pattern to see: Each time the Allies failed to act, Hitler grew bolder. Japan observed the same weakness and escalated in China. This is the lesson of appeasement: rewarding aggression signals that more aggression is safe.

AP angle: Appeasement is a Complexity move — argue that WWI exhaustion explains Allied inaction, but that inaction made WWII inevitable. Don’t just say “appeasement was bad.” Explain why rational leaders made that choice and why it still failed.

The slides cover three genocide case studies: the Armenian Genocide (Ottoman Empire, 1915–1923), the Cambodian Genocide (Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979), and the Rwandan Genocide (1994). The Holocaust and the Nanjing Massacre (“Rape of Nanking”) are also central to Unit 7.

Key argument: Modern state capacity — bureaucracy, railway networks, propaganda, industrial technology — made 20th-century genocides possible at a scale impossible in pre-industrial societies. The state did not just permit these killings; the state organized them.

AP angle: Use genocide as evidence for the broader argument that total war and authoritarian nationalism dehumanized out-groups. The Nanjing Massacre connects directly to Japanese imperial expansion; the Armenian Genocide connects to Ottoman collapse and WWI.

Radio, film, and print allowed states to mobilize entire populations. Propaganda shaped what civilians understood about the war. States suppressed bad news (Britain never announced the sinking of HMS Audacious) while amplifying narratives of national sacrifice.

Key argument: The development of mass media created a new form of state power — the ability to shape popular belief at scale was as important to total war as industrial production.