Deck 22: Ideologies: the Triumph of Political Extremes, 1922-1940

Question 1

How did Mussolini come to power in Italy?

A) He was appointed prime minister by the king.
B) He was a leader of a successful military coup.
C) He became the head of the powerful Communist Party.
D) He was elected democratically.
E) He led a nonviolent revolution.

Answer 1

He was appointed prime minister by the king.

Question 2

Which of the following statements is true of city life in Europe in the inter-war period?

A) Automobiles were outnumbered by horse-drawn carriages.
B) Large-scale construction of skyscrapers created new skylines.
C) Public transportation was unreliable and still largely nonexistent.
D) Cities remained largely dark and quiet at night, and entertainment was saved for the daytime.
E) New media helped facilitate the rise of commercial advertising.

Answer 2

New media helped facilitate the rise of commercial advertising.

Question 3

Which of the following is true of the experience of European women in the inter-war period?

A) Women experienced few changes in fashion and tended to wear long skirts.
B) New technologies reduced the time required for domestic tasks.
C) Most women continued to advance in the jobs they'd taken during World War I.
D) On the whole, European women experienced a less liberated social role than before World War I.
E) Female suffrage was achieved in all European nations.

Answer 3

New technologies reduced the time required for domestic tasks.

Question 4

Why did the Great Depression result in so much political change in Europe?

A) Industrial and political leaders fled Europe for the United States, creating power vacuums.
B) High unemployment rates pushed most governments to adopt Keynesian
Approaches.
C) The extreme suffering of poverty made people open to Communist systems.
D) Economic crisis exacerbated an already acute sense of political and cultural instability.
E) The League of Nations responded to unequal access to natural resources by once again shifting national borders.

Question 5

In Germany, what was an effect of the conditions stipulated by the Versailles treaty?

A) the creation of a one-party political system, which led to Hitler's rise to power
B) forced demilitarization, which resulted in many generals fleeing the country
C) difficulty recovering economically from World War I due to the need to pay reparations
D) the stability of the reichsmark (the German currency) due to improved international trade
E) the widespread popularity of the Weimar government due to their negotiation tactics

Question 6

What were Hitler's strengths as a political leader at the time of the formation of the Nazi Party?

A) He spoke with conviction and was able to cobble together a theory that convinced many people.
B) He excelled at negotiating compromises and building political alliances with groups that differed from his own.
C) He tuned into people's dislike of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and successfully used his prominent social status to dissolve the party.
D) He was exceedingly popular with the lower classes and minorities and made people feel at ease due to his reserved nature.
E) He had a strong capacity for establishing common ground and forging quick friendships.

Question 7

Which of the following are considered the two primary causes of declining birthrates in the 1920s?

A) growing public acceptance of homosexuality and the decline of urban areas
B) casualties from World War I and the spread of disease
C) rapid increases in levels of female education and full-time employment
D) general economic uncertainty and the availability of birth control
E) infertility caused by poor nutrition and the spread of poverty

Question 8

Which of the following nations maintained stable democratic governments throughout the interwar period?

A) Poland and Lithuania
B) the many small new nations on the Balkan peninsula
C) nations in the Scandinavian region
D) Turkey and Greece
E) Italy and Spain

Question 9

Which of the following European countries was hit the hardest during the Great Depression?

A) Austria
B) Britain
C) Sweden
D) France
E) Germany

Question 10

Which European nation accepted the highest percentage of immigrants in the inter-war period?

A) Britain
B) Germany
C) France
D) Sweden
E) Soviet Union

Question 11

Which of the following was a powerful challenge facing all new states created by the Treaty of Versailles?

A) limited natural resources
B) ethnic tensions within national confines
C) food shortages and famine
D) poor transportation networks
E) a lack of urban centers

Question 12

In the years before Lenin's death, what approaches advocated by Trotsky did Stalin publicly oppose?

A) collectivizing agriculture and focusing on revolution only in domestic spheres
B) further limiting the rights of the press and the right to protest
C) encouraging communism abroad and forcing rapid industrialization
D) implementing the eight-hour work day and offering free public education
E) expanding free market systems and forming an alliance with Germany

Question 13

Which of the following was an outcome of the Beer Hall Putsch?

A) deflation
B) Hitler's imprisonment
C) the assassination of Walter Rathenau
D) the formation of the Nazi Party
E) Belgian and French occupation of the Ruhr

Question 14

What did the Bauhaus School focus on promoting?

A) strictly functional design in architecture
B) stream-of-consciousness techniques in literature
C) ornamentation in all art forms
D) the commemoration of those killed in World War I
E) access to education for women

Question 15

What group in Germany was hostile to the Weimar Republic?

A) socialists
B) Jews
C) police
D) military leaders
E) communists

Question 16

How did Stalin come to power?

A) Lenin named Stalin as his successor before his death in return for Stalin's help suppressing the Bolsheviks.
B) Stalin was narrowly elected due to his honesty and character, running a campaign free of propaganda.
C) The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Italy must elect a new leader through highly structured, democratic processes.
D) Stalin placed allies in crucial positions in the Communist Party, eventually forcing Trotsky out.
E) Stalin created the Left Opposition against Trotsky and gave non-Communist organizations more power.

Question 17

What historical precedent did Mussolini's corporatism reference?

A) Adam Smith's "invisible hand"
B) Roman collegia
C) medieval guilds
D) Catholic monasteries
E) an Enlightenment ideal of civil society

Question 18

During the inter-war period, what opinion did much of the British and French public hold in response to the experiences of World War I?

A) The romantic movement was better suited than modernism to evoking the war.
B) War was a wasteful mistake, to be avoided at all costs.
C) The war was for a worthy cause and one they would gladly fight again.
D) The experience of fighting in the war had provided a sense of meaning that modern life lacked.
E) European cities had become dangerous and desolate places due to combat.

Question 19

Most states that were created following the Treaty of Versailles-such as Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Turkey-started out by embracing

A) the organization of constitutional monarchies.
B) fascism.
C) communism.
D) the organization of composite monarchies.
E) a "social" vision of democracy.

Question 20

What economic approach was advocated by John Maynard Keynes?

A) coordinating government action to stimulate demand through public spending
B) encouraging foreign investment through open borders and low taxes
C) nationalizing banks, utilities, and transportation networks
D) maximizing productivity by applying scientific rules to workflow
E) reducing tariffs and regulations to allow free markets to flourish

Question 21

What did the Nuremberg Laws do?

A) They canceled the Olympic Games indefinitely.
B) They stripped Jews of citizenship.
C) They outlawed competing political parties.
D) They disbanded the secret police.
E) They required Germans to greet one another with "Heil Hitler."

Question 22

How did German politicians, such as Franz von Papen, respond to Hitler prior to the Reichstag fire?

A) They gave him extraordinary powers by passing the Enabling Act.
B) They attempted to have him returned to prison.
C) They challenged his growing popularity by forming a coalition across party lines.
D) They attempted to control him by filling Cabinet posts with non-Nazis.
E) They organized rallies in which they condemned his anti-Semitism.

Question 23

Why were Britain and France able to maintain their democracies during the Great Depression?

A) Communist parties had been outlawed.
B) These nations had deep-rooted democratic traditions.
C) There were no active fascist organizations there.
D) Their economies remained strong throughout the 1930s.
E) They had strong national leaders who created unity.

Question 24

What approach to political change did Gandhi propose?

A) economic collectivization
B) legislative petitioning
C) nonviolent resistance
D) cultural renaissance
E) "divide and conquer"

Question 25

What prompted the Spanish Civil War?

A) a right-wing insurrection in the military
B) the assassination of King Alfonso XIII
C) the election of fascist leader Francisco Franco
D) a communist revolution
E) the bombing of Guernica

Question 26

What was the significance of Moscow's marble-lined subway?

A) It proved that party elites never advanced higher than the middle class.
B) It was meant to serve as a sign of Communism's promise to bring ease and beauty to the masses.
C) It demonstrated that industrialization had not yet reached the Soviet Union, even after the Five-Year Plan.
D) It marked the successful completion of Stalin's second Five-Year Plan well ahead of schedule.
E) It demonstrated that workers were rarely featured or used in Soviet Union propaganda.

Question 27

In addition to Stalin's growing paranoia, what prompted the Great Terror?

A) the growing threat of Nazi military activities
B) an attempted coup by top military generals
C) the closing of the Gulag and the resurrection of the Left Opposition
D) a failure to fully achieve goals set by the first Five-Year Plan
E) widespread strikes and civil unrest protesting Stalin's totalitarian rule

Question 28

Why did the Middle Eastern mandates gain new attention during the inter-war years?

A) They were oil-rich regions in a world increasingly dependent on oil.
B) They doubled the size of the French Empire.
C) They were the source of more than half of the grain consumed by Britain.
D) They became Soviet territory following the creation of the League of Nations.
E) They comprised the region that Hitler planned to invade first.

Question 29

Which of the following is one of the hallmarks that totalitarianism emphasizes?

A) a government driven by the economy as opposed to ideology
B) alliances with major religious leaders
C) indifference toward popular participation
D) the suppression of civil liberties
E) chaos and haphazard enforcement of the law

Question 30

What action did Hitler take in the 1936 that marked open opposition to the conditions of the Versailles Treaty?

A) He signed a non-aggression pact with Poland.
B) He moved the German army into the Rhineland.
C) He invaded Ethiopia.
D) He revoked the citizenship of the Jews.
E) He outlawed conscription.

Question 31

What was a major result of the Soviet collectivization of agriculture?

A) improved health in the Soviet countryside
B) an increase in grain production
C) a series of successful peasant revolts
D) widespread famine
E) greater prosperity in Ukraine than in the eastern Soviet Union

Question 32

Which of the following occurred soon after the Reichstag fire?

A) Hitler persuaded German deputies to suspend civil rights.
B) The Nazi Party nearly dissolved.
C) Hitler gained the support of the Communist Party.
D) New German political parties formed in opposition to Hitler.
E) The German Catholic Church withdrew its support of Hitler.

Question 33

What characteristic of the Nazi regime was different from Italian fascism and Stalinism?

A) tight control over the economy
B) promotion of the free press
C) creation of a secret police force
D) imprisonment of political opponents
E) extreme racial pseudo-science

Question 34

What is an explanation commonly given for the failure Great Britain and France to oppose Hitler's aggression in the 1930s?

A) reluctance to enter another war following World War I
B) British and French political differences
C) constraints of the League of Nations
D) the weakness of their economies
E) sympathy with German anti-Semitism

Question 35

Who was targeted on the Night of the Long Knives?

A) Nazi Party members whom Hitler viewed as a threat
B) communist and socialist political leaders
C) Jewish academics, industrialists, and bankers
D) Weimar politicians
E) Catholic priests and nuns

Question 36

What was a reason why independence movements flourished in British and French colonies following World War I?

A) Colonial subjects felt a sense of entitlement following their participation in the Allied war effort.
B) The middle classes in most of these territories had largely declined in number and prominence.
C) British and French governments, distracted by the Depression, took few steps to stop independence organizations.
D) Communists agitators, funded by the Comintern, flooded colonial universities.
E) Widespread famine and various epidemics created dissatisfaction with colonial rule.

Question 37

Which of the following statements about life in Nazi Germany is accurate?

A) The new government was widely accepting of homosexuality.
B) Well established Western distinctions between public and private life flourished.
C) The efficiency of public services declined.
D) Crime rates rose significantly.
E) Propaganda was abundant and effective.

Question 38

Who were publicly treated as heroes during Stalin's first Five-Year Plan?

A) workers building new cities, factories, and other industrial sites
B) soldiers establishing defensive barracks along the western border
C) wealthy peasants known as kulaks
D) leadership of the former Left Opposition
E) secret police tasked with rooting out counterinsurgency activity

Question 39

What happened on Kristallnacht?

A) Hitler sent the German army back into the Rhineland.
B) Hitler signed an alliance with fascist Italy.
C) German citizens attacked Jewish businesses and synagogues.
D) Nazis arrested thousands of political opponents.
E) Nazis staged bonfires of "degenerate" books and art.

Question 40

What effect did the Great Terror have on Soviet society?

A) It created conditions that led to the first large-scale famine in decades.
B) It led to popular disenchantment with Stalin and with Communism.
C) It eliminated intellectuals, politicians, and military leaders with valuable skills.
D) It decimated the ranks and destroyed the power of the secret police.
E) It inspired the creation of a powerful and effective secretive opposition
Movement.

Question 41

The German constitution created in Weimar gave the president the power to dissolve the Reichstag and rule by decree.

Question 42

What mistake did the French make in their war preparations?

A) They put too much faith in the Maginot Line.
B) They overproduced tanks and other armored vehicles.
C) They focused efforts on defending the Western frontier.
D) They invested too much in defending their border with Belgium.
E) They gave too much power to General Charles de Gaulle.

Question 43

Which of the following was a trend following World War I that set the stage for World War II?

A) National states fell in number, while composite monarchies rose.
B) European countries grew far more reliant on the economy of Germany than on that of the United States.
C) The Austro-Hungarian Empire experienced a revival and threatened to surpass the German Empire.
D) The economic growth prompted by the war allowed most of Europe to flourish economically despite the Great Depression.
E) The feeling that there was little basis for the loss of human life during the war fueled resentment and extreme ideologies.

Question 44

How did Germany treat Polish Jews immediately after gaining control of the country?

A) They forced them into overcrowded ghettos.
B) They sought to educate them, believing they could become good German citizens.
C) They made most of those who were adult men join the German army.
D) They relocated them to Palestine.
E) They sent them to Soviet gulags.

Question 45

In the 1920s, governments throughout Europe embraced unrestricted free market capitalism as a means to encourage economic growth.

Question 46

By the 1930s, Palestine had become a source of conflict between Palestinian Arabs and a growing Jewish population there.

Question 47

What was the situation in Europe in autumn 1939?

A) There were continued attempts to appease Hitler and avoid war.
B) There was full-scale conflict between Germany and France.
C) Most nations experienced civil unrest, distracting leaders from war preparations.
D) There was an active war on the eastern front, but quiet on the western front.
E) There arose what has been called the Phony War, which was marked by a lull in the fighting.

Question 48

What is one reason why the Spanish Civil War was significant?

A) During the conflict, Germany and Italy aided the Spanish Republic, demonstrating that these three governments shared many of the same ways of thinking.
B) During the conflict, the Soviet Union adopted a position of non-intervention and refused to send aid, which surprised its allies.
C) The conflict functioned as a proxy war and testing ground for the opposing forces that would fight in World War II.
D) The conflict showed that all the major Western powers were so distracted by the prospect of World War II that they ignored other wars in Europe.
E) The conflict demonstrated the ultimate fall of right-wing dictators and, as World War II grew more imminent, gave Britain and France hope.

Question 49

The modernist culture that arose in Europe in the 1920s was, in many ways, a continuation of pre-World War I cultural expressions.

Question 50

How did the Austrians respond to the German invasion in 1935?

A) They offered determined resistance.
B) They appealed to the League of Nations.
C) They formed an alliance with the Soviet Union.
D) They, for the most part, happily welcomed the German troops.
E) They split their nation into eastern and western zones.

Question 51

What happened in Munich in September of 1938?

A) Spanish Republicans ceded control of the nation to the Nationalists.
B) Britain and France appeased Hitler by meeting almost all of his demands.
C) Arthur Balfour promised Palestine to the Jews as a Jewish homeland.
D) German and Soviet foreign ministers signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
E) Hitler announced his decision to invade Poland.

Question 52

How did Britain and France respond to the German invasion of Poland?

A) They began large-scale bombing of Warsaw.
B) They sent troops into Poland from the east.
C) They attacked Germany themselves.
D) They formed a temporary alliance with Japan.
E) They declared war but did not attack.

Question 53

In the 1930s, Jews made up approximately 25 percent of the German population but had had little visibility in the Socialist and Communist Parties.

Question 54

Which of the following statements regarding the crisis in Czechoslovakia is accurate?

A) The Sudetenland showed the greatest resistance to the spread of Nazism of any area in Czechoslovakia.
B) A meeting of German, British, French, and Italian leaders resulted in an agreement allowing Hitler to annex the Sudetenland.
C) The Czech crisis led Stalin to believe that he could, in fact, depend on future support from the West.
D) A series of successful anti-Nazi protests resulted in Czechoslovakia remaining the only European democracy through the end of World War II.
E) After the Versailles agreement, Czechoslovakia no longer had ethnic minorities and, due to its resulting nationalism, it declared war on other eastern European countries.

Question 55

Across the globe, anti-imperialist independence movements were fewer in number and far less successful as a result of the League of Nations.

Question 56

Why did Stalin form an alliance with Hitler?

A) He shared German racial ideology.
B) He sympathized with German resentment of terms of Versailles Treaty.
C) He wanted to avoid going to war with Germany.
D) He hoped to protect Soviet citizens living in Ukraine.
E) He admired Hitler's military prowess.

Question 57

The early 1920s was a period of economic ease and political calm for Britain and France.

Question 58

The election of Jewish socialist Leon Blum to prime minister was a sign that anti-Semitism had been overcome in France.

Question 59

Birth-control proponents in the inter-war period were motivated in part by their belief that it would help avoid the degeneration of the human race.

Question 60

Film and radio were new technologies that first became popular and influential in the 1920s.

Question 61

What was life like for those living in Nazi Germany before the beginning of World War II? What actions had been taken against Germany's Jews?

Question 62

Soviet peasants almost uniformly welcomed the collectivization of agriculture.

Question 63

What were the goals of Stalin's first Five-Year Plan? What did the plan achieve? How did it change Soviet society?

Question 64

Stalin had initially hoped to create an alliance with Britain and France against Hitler.

Question 65

The Soviet army treated Polish citizens well, in contrast to the Germans.

Question 66

How did World War I and the terms of the Versailles Treaty encourage independence movements in British and French colonies? What forms did these movements take? What was unique about the Indian independence movement?

Question 67

Many left-wing foreigners had a positive view of Stalin during the early years of his first Five-Year Plan.

Question 68

What hopes accompanied the creation of the new states of central and eastern Europe? What were some of the causes of the political instability that gradually took hold in these new nations?

Question 69

How did city life change in Europe in the inter-war period? What changes in women's lives occurred in this period?

Question 70

What were the two sides in the Spanish Civil War? To what extent was it an international conflict? Which side was triumphant? Why?

Question 71

What was Hitler's background? What conditions in Germany made his leadership style and message appealing to a significant portion of the population?

Question 72

What were the characteristics of modernist literature, art, film, and architecture during the 1920s and early 1930s? Give an example of one major work or defining trend in each of these four areas.

Question 73

How did Hitler increase German aggression in the 1930s? What rhetoric did politicians use to justify their reluctance to punish Germany? What actions resulted in Britain and France finally declaring war on Germany in 1939?

Question 74

How did the Great Depression spread? What impact did the Great Depression have on European economies and political systems? What was the political impact in central and eastern Europe versus in Britain and France?

Question 75

Japanese military aggression began after the Allies formerly declared war on Germany.