Chapter 23 Review

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Chapter 23 Review 								Joe Puccio

Key Terms

Good Neighbor Policy
Lend-Lease Act
Munich Conference
Weimar Republic
Nonaggression pact
Dawes Plan
Appeasement

People To Identify 

Winston Churchill- Britain Prime Minister; loathed Nazis; became personal friends with Roosevelt; declared “All peoples should be free to live in peace and choose their own government”; offered Stalin supplies.
Francisco Franco- General, led a group of Spanish army officers to rebel against the government, beginning the Spanish Civil War which aroused the passions not only in Spain but throughout the world.
Hideki Tojo- Japan’s War Minister who thought that war with the United States was inevitable; argued that Japan should strike first before US forces could mobilize.
Anastasio Somoza- Nicaraguan National Guard’s first commander; was liked by American officials because he attended school in the United States and spoke fluent English; seized power and ordered Sandino killed; became corrupt, brutal, but still pro-American; the Somoza family ruled Nicaragua until 1979 when leftist revolutionaries overthrew the dictatorship.
Joseph Stalin- Soviet leader who focused less on world revolution and more on modernizing his nation’s backward economy; admired American productivity and was eager to learn from US experts.



Places To Locate
D
F
E
B
C
A


Reviewing the Facts
Isolationism is the policy of avoiding entanglements.  Although it sounds like isolation from other nations, it did not mean this.  It meant that the country would keep a free hand in foreign affairs.  The United States feared becoming trapped in future European conflicts and decided to turn to isolationism.
In the 1920s, to achieve stability, the United States took part in several international peace efforts.  At the Washington War Conference, the United States was on the verge of a naval arms race with Japan and Great Britain.  This lead to the Five-Power Treaty which made it so there was a ten-year ban on the building of warships, and the delegates agreed to a fixed ratio of naval strength.  In the Four-Power Treaty, Japan, Great Britain, France, and the United States agreed not to attack each other’s possessions in the Pacific.  In the Nine-Power Treaty, China’s independence was agreed to be respected.  Another peace effort was the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which meant that the nations who signed pledged to renounce war as an instrument of national policy.
During the 1930s, the United States used diplomacy rather than force to achieve its goals in Latin America.  The earlier American policy of armed intervention was rejected as unnecessary, expensive, and to some, immoral.  Franklin Roosevelt tried to promote stability in Latin America through aid and economic development.
Postwar Italy’s people felt betrayed by the Versailles Treaty because they had fought on the winning side, but had gained little of the Austrian territory they had hoped for.  Italy also struggled with internal problems; its economy was failing and political and class tensions divided its people.  In 1919, unemployment and inflation produced bitter strikes, some led by Communists.  These, along with the rise of Mussolini contributed to the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s.
Benito Mussolini was a blacksmith’s son and a combat veteran.  He was a powerful speaker who played to popular fears and hatred.  Mussolini blamed Italy’s problems on Communists, corrupt business and labor leaders, and weak politicians.  Mussolini founded the Fascist Party in 1919.  He gained power by promising to restore the glory of ancient Rome.  Adolf Hitler blamed Germany’s defeat in World War I on traitors, cowards, Jews, and Communists.  Like Mussolini, Hitler gained a lot of his success from his charismatic personality.  He capitalized on German feelings of humiliation and resentment to become ruler of Germany.  He promised to build a new German empire.
During the Great Depression in Japan, militarists, who had been waiting in the background, finally made their move, bullying and murdering democratic leaders in the 1930s to gain control.  The Japanese wanted to expand for a few reasons.  The first was because military leaders claimed that it was Japan’s destiny to drive out the Western colonial powers and rule over all of Asia.  The other reason was that Japan’s population was booming and had over 70 million people in a space the size of Montana.
The recognition of the Soviet Union changed greatly when Roosevelt became President.  Previous Presidents (Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover) refused to recognize the Moscow dictatorship.  When Roosevelt took office, however, he scrapped the non-recognition policy.  FDR believed that increased trade with the Soviet Union could assist the Depression-hit economy and he thought to make allies with the soviets.
Appeasement is a policy of granting concessions to a potential enemy in order to maintain peace.  Hitler initiated this policy in Europe to get countries on his side.  France and Britain agreed to it because neither country wanted to get into a war with Germany.
Hitler’s aggression in Europe began when he sent his army to annex Austria without opposition.  His next move was turning on Czechoslovakia, but the Czechs actually fought back.  During the Munich Conference, Hitler promised that he would make no more territorial demands in Europe.  But this, of course, was a lie.  He proceeded to seize the rest of Czechoslovakia, followed by Poland.  He claimed that he had to liberate the suffering Germans.  Appeasement had failed and France and Britain decided to defend Poland.  Hitler and Stalin signed the nonaggression act, promising not to attack each other and the communists and Nazis became allies.  France and Britain then declared war on Germany.
In 1939, the United States decided that they would stay neutral and out of the war.  However, in 1941, Pearl Harbor, America’s largest naval base, was bombed by Japanese bombers, fighters, and torpedo planes.  They killed over 2300 American servicemen and destroyed 18 ships.  Other American bases in the Pacific were attacked as well as British and Dutch possessions.  The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war and both houses complied within hours.

Critical Thinking

The measures taken to prevent war in the 1920s didn’t work simply because they were’n enforced. A more effective strategy would have been to establish some army bases in potentially threatening nations in order to be able to enforce the Treaty of Versailles. 
Nations like the United States that had much to lose from entering a war - but still profited off them because they had the resources to sell to involved nations who are more likely to follow isolationist policies. 
Once fascist leaders realized that they could get away with breaking treaties they took bigger and bigger steps. Appeasement was destined to fail. 
I think that eventually, maybe after Great Britain had fallen, the United States would’ve entered the war. I think this because the war with Japan would’ve been more to assert dominance in a way, and the war in Europe still would’ve been perceived as none of America’s business.