Ch 15 - Years of crisis

• Albert Einstein - Scientist who developed the theory of relativity
• Sigmund Freud - Austrian Physician whose theories of the unconscious mind weakened peoples faith in reason
• William Butler Yeats - irish poet whose poem "The Second coming" conveyed a sense of future struggles
• Existentialism - the belief that there is no universal meaning to life and that each person creates his/her own meaning through their life choices
• Friedrich Nietzsche - German philosopher who urged a return to heroic values of pride, assertiveness, and strength, and who had a great impact on politics in Italy and germany
• Surrealism - Inspired by freud's theories, art movement that sought to link the world with real life
• Jazz - a type of lively and loose beat that was developed in the United States mainly by African Americans
• Igor Stravinsky - a Russian composer who moved away from traditional styles and used irregular rhythms and dissonances in his music
• Charles Lindbergh - American pilot who flew solo from New York to Paris in 1927
• Charlie Chaplin - English born star of the silent screen whose little tramp character conveyed his comedic genius
• Only the United States and Japan came out of the war in better financial shape than before, so many European countries took loans from the US
• Coalition Government - a temporary alliance of several parties needed to form a parliamentary majority, usually made when no single party won a majority
• Unstable new democracies created after WWi made it hard for democratic countries to develop strong leadership and move toward long-term goals. Voters in several countries were willing to sacrifice democratic government for strong, authoritarian leadership.
• Weimar Republic - Germany's new democratic government, which had serious weaknesses from the start. First, Germany lacked a strong democratic tradition. second, postwar Germany had several major political parties and many minor ones. Third, millions of Germans blamed the Weimar government for the country’s defeat and postwar humiliation caused by the Versailles Treaty
• Dawes Plan - a 200 million dollar loan from American banks that recovered Germany from the inflation of 1923
• Germany was admitted into the league of nations after signing a treaty with France promising that the two nation would never make war against each other
• Kellogg-Briand Pact - 1928 - 60 countries agreed to not go to war over any issue and agreed to renounce war as an instrument of national policy
• Stocks on Margin - middle income people paid a small percentage of a stock’s price as a down payment and borrowed the rest from a stockbroker to get in on the Stock Market
• The stock market crash quickened the collapse of the economy and led to the Great Depression
• The Great Depression - A long business slump and economic decline in the 1930s where 1/4 of American workers were jobless
• The US Depression caused the market in America for European goods to drop, as the US congress raised tariffs so did other countries, trade dropped by 65%, and unemployment rose.
• Germany and Austria were hit the hardest in the Great Depression.
• To deal with the economic crisis, Britain formed a multiparty coalition called the National Government, it passed tariffs, increased taxes, regulated currency, and lowered interest rate.
• In Sweden, the government sponsored massive public works projects that kept people employed and producing. All the Scandinavian countries raised pensions for the elderly and increased unemployment insurance, subsidies for housing, and other welfare benefits. To pay for these benefits, the governments taxed all citizens. Democracy remained intact
• New Deal - The program that Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced in 1933 to help the US economy recover from the Great Depression
• Fascism - a new militant political movement that emphasized loyalty to the state obedience to its leader
• The economic crisis of the Great Depression caused many people to lose faith in democratic government
• Unlike communism, fascism had no clearly defined theory or program, it did not seek a classless society like communism did, and they were nationalists unlike communists who were internationalists
• Benito Mussolini - leader of the fascist party in Italy, he took the title of Il Duce after gaining control of the government and abolishing democracy, he never achieved the same total control as hitler or stalin
• Adolf Hitler - political leader who was chosen as the der fuhrer/leader of the Nazi Party
• Mein Kampf - Hitler's book where he expressed his beliefs that Germans "Aryans" were a "master race" and that "non-aryans" were inferior
• Gestap - Nazi secret police
• Hitler turned the press, radio, literature, painting, and film into tools of propaganda
• Lebensraum - Living space
• Kristallnacht - Nazi mobs attacked Jews in a rampage that signaled the real start of eliminating Jews from german life.
• In 1935, Czechoslovakia was the only democracy left in Europe
• Schoolchildren had to join the Hitler Youth (for boys) or the League of German Girls.
• Japan turned into a militaristic government and kept Emperor Hirohito as the leader of the country making him a symbol of state power
• The militarists in Japan wanted to solve economic problems through foreign expansion and planned a pacific empire that included China
• In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria which was the first direct attack to the league of nations. After members of the league protested, Japan ignored them and withdrew from the league in 1933