AP European History
AKA "Torture" :)
I. In the interwar period, fascism, extreme nationalism, racist ideologies, and the failure of appeasement resulted in the catastrophe of World War II, presenting a grave challenge to European civilization. A. French and British fears of another war, American isolationism, and deep distrust between Western democratic, capitalist nations, and the communist Soviet Union allowed fascist states to rearm and expand their territory
1. You can use any of the following as examples
a) Remilitarization of the Rhineland
b) Italian invasion of Ethiopia
c) Annexation of Austria
d) Munich Agreement and its violation e) Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact
2. Germany’s Blitzkrieg warfare in Europe, combined with Japans attacks in Asia and the Pacific, brought the Axis powers early victories.
3. American and British industrial, scientific, and technological power and the all-out military commitment of the USSR contributed to the Allied victories.
4. Fueled by racism and anti-Semitism, German Nazism sought to establish a “new racial order” in Europe, which culminated with the Holocaust
. a) You can use these as examples
(1) Nuremburg Laws
(2) Wannsee Conference
(3) Auschwitz and other death camps
1. In WWI, France was one of the winners but also was the one that got rekt. So hard. Like, 1,357,800 dead rekt. England got pretty beat up, too, with about 908,000 dead. So as one could assume, they were extremely wary of getting into another war. America was like "okay that was awful byeeeee" and retreated into its little freedom hole trying to patch itself up. After the Russian revolutions and everything, people were like "hrmm them Soviets are kinda scary I don't really like them" and then you had Trotsky like "LETS FREAKING COMMUNIST IT UP FRICK YEAH THe WhOle DAMneD WrORld!!!!!!" So when fascist states like Italy and Germany just innocently whistled and twiddled their thumbs while doing some messed up stuff, no one was really all that concerned. Like, Hitler straight up remilitarized the Rhineland, unabashedly breaking the Treaty of Versailles and France was like ".... uh.... I won't do anything unless England does something, so...." but then England was like "nahh bro.... pacifism... good vibes, dude✌️"
2. So at first, the Axis powers (Italy, Japan, and Germany) got some victories. They achieved this through a few different methods, one of the most prevalent being Germany's Blitzkrieg, or "lightning war". These were coordinated airstriked and super speedy deployment of tanks and other motorized things, that were meant to just overwhelm the heck out of other countries, like when your team in dodgeball would just throw all of the balls at one kid at a time so you were guaranteed to get someone out. Japan pulled some expanisionist stuff, taking over the coast of China and driving Chinese forces well inland.
3. Okay so u know how in WWI they were all about that trench warfare and tanks were just being made a thing? And how France tried to go into WWII with that same stuff? Well, Germany was much more advanced than that, and so when they came in with their blitzkrieg, the technologically advanced England and America were like "we can do that too" so they used all their stuff and began developing nuclear bombs and whatnot, so that led to their victories.
4. Well you see the Nazis were abhorret, racist pieces of crap that found justification in slaughtering millions of humans for no reason other than their own huge, enormous freaking egos. They legitimately believed that they, the """Aryan race"""(because there is definitely subdivisions of race within t the human race right???) were the actual best and tha the entire freaking world shouold belong to them, the roughly 66 million out of TWO POINT 3 BILLION PEOPLE, WERE THE BEST. So what to do if not revoke all other humans' rights and treat them like absolute shit, right? And also straight up kill millions of them in work camps, gas chambers, and by firing squads???? Oh, not to mention, before they got to the murder, they enacted the Nuremburg laws, which made it illegal for Jewish people to marry anyone that was German, revoked their citizenship, and pretty much took away their human rights.