Summary: A Concise History Of The World Since 1945 | 9781352010206 | W M Spellman

Read the summary and the most important questions on A Concise History of the World Since 1945 | 9781352010206 | W.M. Spellman

• 1 The Cold War in global context, 1945-1991

• 1.1 Triumph and disquiet: the human prospect in 1945

• How did the Westerners looked back on 1945?

  With accomplishment and pride.
  

  • The hard-fought military victory over fascist Germany and imperial Japan signaled a resounding affirmation of Western-style democracy, personal liberty, and the rule of law. 
  • In the case of Nazi Germany, state-sponsored brutality on a scale never before witnessed had been eradicated, while in the Pacific theater the insatiable territorial ambitions of the Japanese military had been thwarted. 

• Which two major ideological adversaries were fighting together during the war?

  During the war, two major ideological adversaries, the US and the USSR, played down their many differences in order to defeat a common enemy.

• What formation marked a new era of international cooperation?

  The formation of the United Nations (UN) by 50 states in San Francisco in the summer of 1945 augured well for a new era of international cooperation, one where the myriad mistakes made after the close of World War I would be avoided.

• 1.1.1 The fragile West

• What indicated that the Western world had unlocked the secrets of political stability before the first world war?

  Advances in industry, housing, transport, medicine, and public education all seemed to indicate that the Western world had indeed unlocked the secrets of political stability and material abundance.

• What led to the rise of belligerent and hate-filled Nazism?

  Following a Carthaginian peace in which the fledgling German Weimar republic was obliged to accept responsibility for the misdeeds of Kaiser Wilhelm II and his wartime government, a decade of German resentment against the victors set the stage for the rise of belligerent and hate-filled Nazism.

• How did both West and East deal after WW I?

  • Instead of extending the principles of democratic self-government to their respective colonies, Britain and France enlarged their empires by taking control of former Ottoman territories in the Middle East.
    
  • The US, having become the world's leading creditor nation at the conclusion of the war, refused to join the new League of Nations and instead withdrew into isolationism during the 1920s.
  • In Russia a revolutionary communist government rejected the very foundations of the Western political and economic order. 

• What confirmed the end of political pluralism and parliamentary democracy?

  The start of a worldwide economic depression in late 1929 merely confirmed the verdict, reached separately by fascists and communists, that political pluralism and parliamentary democracy were doomed to extinction.

• 1.1.2 Democracy on the defensive

  This is a preview. There are 1 more flashcards available for chapter 1.1.2
  Show more cards here

• What projected the image of national unity during the 1930s?

  • Dynamic leadership in the fascist states and in the USSR projected the image of national unity and overriding purpose.
  • Perhaps most importantly, these autocratic regimes seemed to place food on the table by guaranteeing full employment. 

• What did historian Carl Becker?

  He wondered whether the values emerging out of the Enlightenment, such values as the autonomy of the individual and freedom of expression, once thought to be in harmony with universal natural laws, constituted no more than a temporary rest stop on the road to another, more efficient if less emancipating form of social, economic, and political organization.

• What did historian Roland Stromberg say?

  In normal times "Hitler would never have found a political career through the usual boring channels; but he could fish in the troubled waters of post-war Germany, where the old order had fallen and everybody was groping for a new one."