Study Guide Questions for History

1- What is wrong with viewing WWII as the victory of democracy over tyranny?

1- Britain and the US were only able to defeat the Axis through an alliance with the Soviets who were communists.

2- Also, the Allies victory made the world safer for Communism. The Soviets emerged stronger and were able for the 1st time to spread communism to other countries.

2- What is wrong with saying that the alliance between the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and the United States created overwhelming superiority in manpower and resources?

        1- The comparative quality of the weapons. Germany had better planes in the beginning of the war.

        2- The gap between the potential and real resources

        3-The German and the Japanese were better fighters.

        4- Both the Axis and the Allies made considerable efforts to deny the other side of resources.

3- Why was democracy in retreat by the 1930s?

        1- WWI shock the confidence of Europe because the barbaric way the war was fought

        2- The Great Depression was so bad that it discredited the idea of democracies with Capitalist systems creating vacuum and that vacuum was filled by people advocating Communism or Fascism.

        3- The two leading democracies: Britain and France were weak by the 1930s. They did not have the money or the military resources to defend the existing order. The United States retreated to Isolationism and rejected institutions and treaties that could have saved democracy.

        4- American Isolationism

4-What was the New Order that German, Italy and Japan called for the 1930’s?

They wanted empires and they were going to take it by conquest. The leaders concluded that the only way out of the Great Depression was to have their own empires, living space to guarantee the future of their people to expand and grow.

5- What reverses did the Axis suffer between 1942 and 1944?

1-The Soviet Union defeated Germany in Stalingrad and Kursk.

2- The United States defeated the Japanese in Midway and Coral Sea.

3-The Anglo-American forces defeated the German-Italian forces at Al-Ameen in the Middle East.

6-How did the actions of neutral states in 1944 and 1945 show the odds had changed?

        1- Turkey, Sweden and Spain came out of Neutrality to support the Allies

        2- Latin American nations declared war on Germany

        3- Romania switched side from the Axis to the Allies.

7- How was WWII different from WWI?

1- The intentions of nations fighting the war. Regardless of the outcome of WWI, no one doubted that all of the major nations that existed at the start of WWI would still exist at the end. The only aim is to be on top of the pecking order.  

2- Nationalism formed by ideology shaped WWII. People had a vision of a new World Order that they wanted to create. Hitler is the reason that WWII was radical in ways that WWI was not.

8- What limited the choices of the victorious Allies and prevented recognition of the total defeat of Germany?

1-The unexpected defeat of Germany: German leaders sensed an eminent collapse of the German forces in the western front. So, rather than allowing that to happen which would let to the invasion of their own land, they decided to seek peace. Because the war was fought outside Germany the Allies never occupied Germany.

2- It created the stab-in-the-back legend. The majority of the German would never accept that they lost the war because the German forces were winning in the Eastern Front.

3- When the peace was signed and turned out to be surrender, the German government collapsed during the shock of defeat and made it hard to impose terms.

9- Why did the Allies continue to fear Germany even after its defeat?

        1- It took an alliance of every major power in the world to beat Germany.

        2- Germans had a real talent introducing new war weapons and methods of war. This meant that Germany had unique talent for military destruction. Example: unrestricted submarine warfare, poison gaz.

10- Why was Germany not split up into smaller, less threatening nations?

Woodrow Wilson believed that it is against the self-determination base of the peace treaty.

11-Why did Britain and France, which had done most of the fighting, not have a hand in dictating the terms of the peace?

Because the war have changed the world order. The war has made specifically the United States, led by Woodrow Wilson who believed in Self Determination principle, and Japan into superpowers. The Soviets also, who cut a separate peace with Germany and were invited to negotiate the peace treaty, had a very different idea of a world order than the traditional balance of European empires. In the long run, the Soviets would undermine efforts to contain Hitler’s Germany. Three new nations which each had their own sense of world order that is different than the traditional one that had been led by Britain and France for a 150 years.

12-Why was Germany not crushed by the peace settlement?

Many European and Americans thought the treaty was unfair because Germany did not cause WWI. So, there were a series of modifications to the terms of the treaty all of which favored Germany. The occupation of the Rhineland ended, people who were supposed to monitor German armed forces left earlier than they were supposed to, and the reparation payments were reduced under the Dawes Plan and later canceled. Because the war was fought in Belgium and France, once Germany was excused from paying reparations the costs of rebuilding these countries were shifted to the people who can least afford it which provided an advantage to Germany.

13- What lessons did the United States draw from WWI, and how did it shape American foreign policy?

American leaders concluded that European countries always have war with each others, and for the first time the United States was drawn into their conflicts. As a result of that, the United States retreat into Isolationism. The United States rejected institutions and treaties that could have prevented the rise of Hitler such as United Nations, and the Kellogg Briand Pact that France presented to the US to sign a defensive alliance against Germany. The American rejected the idea, but proposed a treaty that outlaws war. The US focused on keeping the United States out of the war by signing various Neutrality Acts, and reducing the size of the American army to the size Germany had to reduce its army too by the terms of the treaty of Versailles.

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