IB History (Standard Level)
International Baccalaureate History SL — Prescribed Subject (Move to global war) plus two World History Topics: Authoritarian States (20th century) and Causes and Effects of 20th-century Wars. Emphasis on comparison, historiography and source analysis across diverse regions.
Ämne: Historia · Nivå: Gymnasium (16–19) · 437 kort
Innehåll
- The Mukden Incident (18 September 1931) was a staged Japanese explosion on the South Manchurian Railway near Mukden, used by the Kwantung Army as a pretext to invade Manchuria.
- In February 1932 Japan established the puppet state of Manchukuo, installing the last Qing emperor Puyi as nominal head while the Kwantung Army held real power.
- The Lytton Report (October 1932) condemned Japan's actions in Manchuria but stopped short of branding Japan an aggressor; in response Japan walked out of the League of Nations in March 1933.
- The Marco Polo Bridge Incident (7 July 1937) near Beijing triggered the Second Sino-Japanese War, which lasted until 1945 and merged into the Pacific theatre of WWII.
- The Nanjing Massacre (December 1937 – January 1938) saw Japanese troops kill an estimated 200,000–300,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners, with widespread rape and looting documented by foreign observers.
- The Tanaka Memorial, allegedly drafted by PM Tanaka Giichi in 1927, outlined plans for Japanese conquest of Manchuria and China; most historians today believe it to be a Chinese forgery, though it reflected genuine expansionist currents.
- Japan's invasion of French Indochina (September 1940 – July 1941) gave it bases for operations against China and Southeast Asia, and prompted the US to freeze Japanese assets and embargo oil exports.
- The Tripartite Pact (27 September 1940) bound Germany, Italy and Japan into the Axis, pledging mutual assistance if any signatory was attacked by a power not yet at war in Europe or the Sino-Japanese War.
- The Hull Note (26 November 1941) was a US diplomatic ultimatum demanding Japanese withdrawal from China and Indochina; Japan's leadership saw it as unacceptable and authorised the strike on Pearl Harbor.
- The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941) sank or damaged eight US battleships and killed about 2,400 Americans, bringing the United States into the Second World War.
- Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) on 3 October 1935; Mussolini sought to avenge the 1896 defeat at Adwa and build a new Roman Empire, using poison gas in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol.
- The Hoare-Laval Pact (December 1935) secretly offered Mussolini two-thirds of Ethiopia in exchange for ending the war; public outrage in Britain forced both foreign ministers to resign and discredited collective security.
- Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia, addressed the League of Nations in Geneva on 30 June 1936 warning that 'it is us today, it will be you tomorrow' if collective security failed.
- The Stresa Front (April 1935) was a short-lived alliance between Britain, France and Italy aimed at containing German rearmament; it collapsed within months over the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and Abyssinia.
- Hitler ordered the remilitarization of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936, in violation of Versailles and Locarno; troops were instructed to retreat if challenged, but France did not respond militarily.
- The Anschluss (12 March 1938) was the German annexation of Austria following Chancellor Schuschnigg's resignation; Hitler's troops crossed the border to cheering crowds and a plebiscite recorded 99.7% approval under intimidation.
- The Munich Agreement (29–30 September 1938) saw Britain, France, Germany and Italy agree that Czechoslovakia would cede the Sudetenland to Germany; Czechoslovakia itself was not represented at the talks.
- Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich declaring 'peace for our time'; he had agreed to the Sudeten transfer in exchange for Hitler's signature on a paper renouncing further German territorial claims.
- Germany occupied the remainder of Czech lands (Bohemia and Moravia) in March 1939 and made Slovakia a client state, ending all pretence that Hitler's demands were limited to ethnic Germans.
- The Nazi-Soviet Pact (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, 23 August 1939) was a non-aggression treaty whose secret protocols divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.
- Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 using Blitzkrieg tactics; Britain and France declared war two days later, formally beginning the Second World War in Europe.
- The Anti-Comintern Pact (November 1936) bound Germany and Japan against the Communist International; Italy joined in 1937, formalising the diplomatic alignment that became the Axis.
- The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) became a proxy testing ground: Germany and Italy backed Franco's Nationalists, the USSR aided the Republicans, while Britain and France pursued non-intervention.
- The Saar plebiscite (January 1935) returned the Saar region to Germany by a 90.8% vote, the first revision of the Versailles settlement and a propaganda triumph for the Nazi regime.
- Hitler announced German rearmament publicly on 16 March 1935, reintroducing conscription and creating the Luftwaffe in direct breach of the Versailles disarmament clauses.
- The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (June 1935) permitted Germany to build a navy up to 35% of the Royal Navy's tonnage, undermining the Versailles limits and irritating France and Italy.
- The Kellogg–Briand Pact (1928) renounced war as an instrument of national policy and was signed by 62 states including Germany, Japan and Italy; it lacked enforcement mechanisms.
- The 1930 London Naval Treaty extended capital-ship limits from the 1922 Washington Treaty and set ratios for cruisers, but Japan denounced the regime in 1934 over perceived unequal status.
- The Showa Restoration was a slogan used by Japanese military radicals demanding emperor-centred renewal; the 26 February 1936 incident saw young army officers assassinate cabinet ministers in Tokyo.
- Japan's concept of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, articulated in 1940, presented Japanese imperial expansion as Asian liberation from Western colonialism while serving Japanese economic and strategic interests.
- Konoe Fumimaro served as Japan's prime minister in 1937–1939 and 1940–1941; he oversaw the slide into war with China and the Tripartite Pact but resigned before the decision for war with the US.
- General Tojo Hideki became Japan's prime minister in October 1941 while remaining army minister; he authorised the strikes on Pearl Harbor, Malaya and the Philippines in December 1941.
- The US Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936 and 1937 imposed embargoes on arms sales to all belligerents; the 1939 cash-and-carry revision allowed Britain and France to buy American war materiel.
- Lend-Lease (March 1941) allowed President Roosevelt to supply Britain, the USSR and China with war materials without immediate payment; over US$50 billion in aid flowed by 1945.
- The Atlantic Charter (August 1941), agreed by Roosevelt and Churchill aboard ships off Newfoundland, set out post-war aims including self-determination and freedom of the seas before the US had entered the war.
- Roosevelt's 'Quarantine Speech' (5 October 1937) in Chicago called for a quarantine of aggressor states but met strong isolationist resistance in Congress and the press.
- Operation Barbarossa, launched 22 June 1941, was Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union with about 3.8 million Axis troops along an 1,800-mile front — the largest military operation in history.
- The Battle of Khalkhin Gol (May–September 1939), fought between Soviet-Mongolian and Japanese-Manchukuoan forces, ended in Soviet victory under Zhukov and helped persuade Japan to strike south rather than against the USSR.
- The 1937 USS Panay incident saw Japanese aircraft sink a US gunboat on the Yangtze; Tokyo apologised and paid indemnities, and the affair did not derail US-Japanese relations.
- Hitler's Mein Kampf (1925–1926) outlined his ideology of racial hierarchy, lebensraum in the East and rejection of Versailles; historians debate how far it functioned as a blueprint for action.
- The Hossbach Memorandum (5 November 1937) recorded Hitler outlining plans for territorial expansion to senior officers; historian A.J.P. Taylor downplayed it as opportunistic, while others see it as evidence of premeditated aggression.
- A.J.P. Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War (1961) argued Hitler was an opportunist exploiting others' blunders rather than executing a long-laid plan, sparking decades of historiographical debate.
- Historian Richard Overy emphasises ideological and economic drivers of Nazi expansion, arguing the regime needed war to sustain its rearmament programme and demographic vision.
- The Treaty of Versailles (1919) imposed reparations, military restrictions and the War Guilt Clause (Article 231) on Germany; many in Germany regarded it as a Diktat that fed revisionist sentiment.
- The Great Depression after 1929 collapsed world trade, doubled German unemployment to over 6 million by 1932, and discredited liberal-democratic governments across Europe and Japan.
- Japan's silk exports to the United States collapsed by 1932, undermining the export-led growth model and strengthening voices in the army that argued for territorial autarky in Manchuria.
- The League of Nations applied limited economic sanctions on Italy in 1935–1936 over Abyssinia but did not embargo oil, coal or steel — a failure that historians cite as the decisive blow to collective security.
- Edvard Beneš, president of Czechoslovakia, opposed the Munich settlement and resigned in October 1938; he formed a government-in-exile in London during the war.
- Konrad Henlein led the Sudeten German Party in Czechoslovakia and acted on Hitler's instructions to raise unworkable demands, providing the pretext for the 1938 crisis.
- Adolf Hitler was appointed German chancellor on 30 January 1933 by President Hindenburg, following the Nazi Party's emergence as the largest party in the Reichstag in July 1932.