HIST120 Final Quiz Questions

What did the Schlieffen Plan call for in 1914?

A lightning attack through neutral Belgium and a quick defeat of France before turning on Russia

What was the Boxer Rebellion?

A rebellion of traditionalist Chinese patriots who wished to expel all Westerners from China

What was the key demand of the Chartist movement?

All men must be given the right to vote.

Why did Klemens von Metternich, as Austrian foreign minister, have to oppose the spread of nationalism in Europe?

Austria was a multiethnic empire, and the spread of nationalism among its different ethnic groups threatened to dissolve the empire.

Who were the kulaks in Stalin's Soviet Union?

Better-off peasants who were stripped of land and livestock and usually not allowed to join collective farms

Why did Britain adopt a policy of appeasement in its relationship with Hitler?

British conservative leaders underestimated Hitler.

Which nations joined the war on the side of the Central Powers?

Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire

What did the "war guilt clause" in the Treaty of Versailles declare?

Germany (with Austria) was solely responsible for the war and had to pay reparations.

Which countries in August 1939 signed a nonaggression pact that led directly to war?

Germany and the Soviet Union

Why did Stalin call for the mass murder of the kulaks?

He believed that as landowners they would eventually embrace conservative capitalism and become great enemies of socialist progress.

How did Mao Zedong gain the support of the peasantry in China?

He promised to expropriate land from the large landowners.

Why was Mussolini expelled from the Italian Socialist Party?

He urged Italian entry into World War I.

The target of the first of two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 was

Hiroshima

What was the effect of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws?

It defined as Jewish anyone having three or more Jewish grandparents.

Why did Austria-Hungary deliberately choose war in July 1914?

It hoped to stem the tide of hostile nationalism within its borders.

What did the Marshall Plan accomplish?

It prevented economic collapse in Western Europe.

What was the result of the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885?

It set up the terms for the division of most of Africa among European colonial powers.

Who was the only Communist leader able to successfully resist Soviet domination?

Josip Broz Tito

How did the British obtain the opium that they smuggled into China?

Opium was grown legally in British-occupied India.

Which of the following cities survived World War II relatively unscathed?

Paris

What was the principle of national self-determination promoted by Woodrow Wilson?

People should be able to choose a national government through a democratic process and live free from outside interference.

What event directly prompted the Great Reforms in Russia, including the emancipation of the serfs?

Russian defeat in the Crimean War of 1853-1856

To receive Marshall Plan aid, European states were required to cooperate with one another. What was the result of this cooperation?

The Organization for European Economic Cooperation

Why were the Balkans considered the "powder keg of Europe"?

The Ottoman Empire had been forced to give up its territory in the region, leading to growing ethnic nationalism.

What ultimately happened to Ukraine and Belarus, parts of the Russian Empire ceded to Germany in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk?

The Soviet Union reconquered those territories during its civil war.

What was the result of breaking the Berlin blockade in 1948-1949?

The creation of two separate German states: West Germany and East Germany

Which of the following was true of World War II?

The death toll far exceeded that of World War I.

What was the driving force in history according to Marx in the nineteenth century?

The economic relationship between classes

Who was Theodore Herzl?

The founder of the Zionist Jewish national movement

What reform did France's Second Republic institute in 1848?

The right to vote for all adult men

What was the Holocaust?

The systematic effort of the Nazi state to exterminate all European Jews during the Second World War

Throughout the First World War, what mistake did military commanders repeatedly make?

They attempted to mount massive offensives designed to break through entrenched lines.

What was the common effect of western-front offensives during the First World War?

They caused the slaughter of massed infantry units.

How did the Nazis manage the northern European states that they conquered?

They established puppet governments with collaborators willing to rule the states in accord with German needs.

What was the primary political weakness of the White forces as they fought against the Bolsheviks?

They had a poorly defined political program that failed to unite the enemies of the Bolsheviks.

What problem was faced by most of the underground resistance groups who opposed the Nazis?

They were not well unified, for they had differing political goals.

What was Germany's goal in the Battle of Britain?

To demoralize the British public and gain air supremacy for a potential invasion of Great Britain

Why were Jewish immigrants in the nineteenth century unlikely to return to their native land?

Violent anti-Semitism in eastern Europe

The Marshall Plan in 1947 was a response to

a Western Europe on the verge of economic collapse

The "cult of the Duce" (leader) promoted the image of Mussolini as

a powerful strongman embodying the best qualities of the Italian people.

Otto von Bismarck's Kulturkampf refers to his

attack on the Catholic Church in the German Empire

Karl Marx argued that socialism would be established

by violent revolution

The reformer Robert Owens sought to

create a single large national union for British workers

In Great Britain, the Great Reform Bill of 1832

gave greater representation to the new, industrial areas of the nation

After the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia

imposed a harsh peace on France

The Bretton Woods agreement of 1944

linked western European currencies to the U.S. dollar.

In nineteenth-century Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi was a

romantic nationalist

What was the immediate cause of British entry into the First World War?

the German invasion of neutral Belgium

Germany's initial offensive was stopped on the outskirts of Paris at the Battle of

the Marne

In 1849, the revolution in Hungary was brought under control with the help of 130,000 troops sent by

the Russian empire

Utilitarianism was Jeremy Bentham's idea that social policies should promote

the greatest good for the greatest number

The parliamentary government in Italy was breaking down at the time of the Fascist march on Rome in October 1922, largely because of

the violence perpetrated by Mussolini's own black-shirted militants.

Rudyard Kipling's "white man's burden" referred to

the white race's supposed duty to civilize inferior, nonwhite races.

Britain and France finally confronted Hitler with the threat of war when he

used the pretext of German minorities in Danzig to threaten Poland.

At the Congress of Vienna, the victorious allies

were guided by the principle of the balance of power

How did the United States respond to the decolonization movement in the first years after the Second World War?

It encouraged European nations to let go of their former colonies.

What was the result of Allied support of the White armies in the Russian civil war?

It helped the Bolsheviks, who could appeal to patriotic nationalism against the Allies.

Why did Italy, after declaring neutrality in 1914, decide to join the Triple Entente in 1915?

It was promised Austrian territory in return.

Why did the Soviet army stop its advance on Warsaw in August 1944?

So that the German army could destroy a Polish insurgence that intended to resist the Soviet army as well

How did the war on the eastern front differ from the war on the western front?

The war on the eastern front remained more mobile, with Germany in a more dominant position.