Era 9: 20th Century World

Suggested time for instruction: eight to nine weeks

• SOL Standards
• Macro View
• Focus Questions
• Global Themes
• Resources
• Benchmarks
• Legacies

World History and Geography Macro View

Global conflict marked the first half of this era resulting in the disruption of European political and economic dominance and the collapse of European hegemony. The cost of World War I, along with the hardship of the Great Depression led to disillusionment with democracy and the rise of dictatorships. Imperial struggles were ultimately replaced by the East-West ideological conflict of the Cold War ending with the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

^ back to top

---

Focus Questions for Era 9

1. How did economic and political competition arising out of imperialism and nationalism set the stage for World War I?
   
   
2. Who were the major leaders and what were the major events and trends of World War I?
   
   
3. How did World War I reshape the imperial world?
   
   
4. How did the characteristics of the global economy contribute to the scope and magnitude of the Great Depression?
   
   
5. How did authoritarian political systems emerge as a differing response to economic crisis and decolonization in various regions of the world?
   
   
6. What were the causes of World War II, and how was this war a continuation of the global imperial struggles of the 19th century?
   
   
7. What were the major events, leaders and short-term outcomes of World War II?
   
   
8. How did African and Asian peoples achieve independence from European colonial rule during the 20th century?
   
   
9. Under what circumstances did Communism arise in different parts of the world and what ultimately led to its decline?
   
   
10. How did the world cultural and political landscape change as a result of World War II?
    
    
11. How did superpower rivalry reshape global interactions?
    

^ back to top

---

Global Themes for Era 9

• Patterns of human population and migration: While the rate of world population growth continued to accelerate due to improvements in nutrition and health, war caused significant regional and generational population loss. War also caused large-scale social disruption that resulted in the unparalleled population shifts of refugee flows in Europe and Asia.
  
  
• Development and diffusion of Technology: During the two world wars, military needs drove the development of new technologies including weapons, medicine, transportation and communication. As wartime production turned to peacetime output, industries used military technology to meet consumer demands. New methods of agricultural production led to improved levels of nutrition. The Cold War became an impetus for the East-West space race spurring further advances in science and technology.
  
  
• Conflict: Two major world wars created distinct divisions in political ideals for countries around the globe. The advent of weapons of mass destruction changed the nature of conflict. Nuclear powers searched for alternative means of managing conflict through international organizations and the conduct of regional wars by proxy.
  
  
• Political legitimacy and authority: Political conflicts in the 20th century became more ideologically based. Conflicts between liberal, fascist, and communist regimes intensified and resulted in World War II and the Cold War. Liberalism dominated the post-Cold War era but continued to be challenged.
  

^ back to top

---

Benchmarks:

NOTE: Red Bolded content in the indicators is considered essential and must be taught in all classrooms. Content which is not bolded goes beyond the scope and sequence of the state standards.

Benchmark 9.0: The student will improve skills in historical research and geographical analysis during the 20th century. (WHII.1)

9.0 Performance Indicators
Students reach the benchmark when they are able to:

1. Identify, analyze, and interpret primary and secondary sources to make generalizations about events and life in the 20th century.
   
   
2. Use maps, globes, artifacts, and pictures to analyze the physical and cultural landscapes of the world to interpret the 20th century.
   
   
3. Identify geographic features important to the study of the 20th century.
   
   
4. Identify and compare political boundaries with the location of civilizations, empires, and kingdoms in the 20th century.
   
   
5. Analyze trends in human migration and cultural interaction in the 20th century.
   

Benchmark 9.1: The student understands the causes of World War I as they relate to the economic and political competition arising out of imperialism and nationalism. (WHII.9)

9.1 Performance Indicators
Students reach this benchmark when they are able to:

1. Analyze the causes of World War I (alliances, nationalism, diplomatic failure, militarism, imperialism, and competition over colonies).
   
   
2. Evaluate the ways in which views regarding science, technology, and material progress affected attitudes toward war.
   

Benchmark 9.2: The student understands the major events, leaders, and trends of World War I. (WHII.9)

9.2 Performance Indicators
Students reach this benchmark when they are able to:

1. Explain how the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the immediate cause of World War I (Kaiser Wilhelm, and Serbian nationalism).
   
   
2. Analyze the role of the United States and Russia as they influenced the course and outcome of World War I (Woodrow Wilson, Nicholas II, U.S. enters war, and Russia leaves).
   
   
3. Explain how massive industrial production and innovations in military technology affected strategy, tactics, scale, and duration of the war.
   
   
4. Explain how colonial peoples contributed to the war effort of both the Allied and the Central Powers by providing military forces and supplies, which increased colonial demands for independence.
   
   
5. Analyze the role of nationalism and propaganda in mobilizing civilian populations in support of “total” war.
   

Benchmark 9.3: The student understands the impact of World War I and its aftermath in reshaping the imperial world. (WHII.9)

9.3 Performance Indicators
Students reach this benchmark when they are able to:

1. Explain the causes of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the resulting civil war, and analyze why the revolutionary government progressed from moderate to radical (defeat in Russo-Japanese War, landless peasantry, incompetence of Nicholas II, defeats in World War I, and Kerensky, Trotsky, and Rasputin).
   
   
2. Explain Leninist political ideology and how the Bolsheviks adapted Marxist ideas to conditions peculiar to Russia and assess the effects of the New Economic Policy on Soviet society, economy, and government.
   
   
3. Assess the demographic, social, economic, and environmental consequences of World War I’s unprecedented violence and destruction (enormous cost of war in lives, property, and social disruption).
   
   
4. Explain how the collapse of the German, Hapsburg, and Ottoman Empires and the creation of new states affected international relations in Europe and the Middle East (Mustafa Kemal/Ataturk, Weimar Republic, Yugoslavia, and Poland).
   
   
5. Describe the conflicting aims and aspirations of Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan at the Versailles Conference in 1919 and analyze the responses of these major powers to the terms of the settlement (German reparations, limitation of German military, forced to accept war guilt, and German loss of territory).
   
   
6. Explain how the League of Nations was founded and assess its promise and limitations as a vehicle for achieving a lasting peace (League of Nations – international cooperative organization, established to prevent future wars, U.S. not a member, and the League failed because it did not have power to enforce its decisions).
   
   
7. Explain the mandate system that emerged in the aftermath of World War I (created to administer the colonies of defeated powers on a temporary basis, and France and Great Britain became mandatory powers in the Middle East).
   
   
8. Explain how the mandate system altered patterns of European colonial rule in Africa and the Middle East and how this system contributed to the rise of Pan-Arabism, nationalistic struggles for independence, and resulted in conflicts created by religious differences in the Middle East (French mandates – Syria and Lebanon; British mandates – Jordan and Palestine).
   

Benchmark 9.4: The student understands the interplay of new artistic and literary movements with changes in social and cultural life in various parts of the world during the decades following World War I. (WHII.10)

9.4 Performance Indicators
Students reach this benchmark when they are able to:

1. Evaluate the meaning and social impact of innovative movements in literature, architecture and the fine arts, specifically Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, Socialist Realism, and jazz.
   
   
2. Evaluate the impact of innovative movements in Western art and literature on other regions of the world and the influence of African and Asian art forms on Europe.
   
   
3. Analyze how new media – newspapers, magazines, commercial advertising, film, and radio – contributed to the rise of mass culture around the world.
   

Benchmark 9.5: The student understands the characteristics of the global economy in the 1920s and 1930s and how these affected the scope and magnitude of the Great Depression. (WHII.10)

9.5 Performance Indicators
Students reach this benchmark when they are able to:

1. Analyze the financial, economic, and social causes of the Great Depression and why it spread to most parts of the world (German reparations, Stock Market Crash, expansion of credit, expansion of production capacities, and dominance of U.S. in the global economy).
   
   
2. Describe the effects of the Great Depression and its global consequences (high unemployment, collapse of credit, growth of Nazism in Germany, bank failures, and collapse of prices).
   
   
3. Analyze how the Great Depression contributed to the growth of socialist and communist movements and how it affected capitalist economic theory and practice.
   
   
4. Describe how governments, businesses, social groups, families, and individuals endeavored to cope with the hardships of worldwide depression.
   

Benchmark 9.6: The student understands the rise of authoritarian political systems in the 1920s and 1930s. (WHII.10)

9.6 Performance Indicators
Students reach this benchmark when they are able to:

1. Describe the rise of Joseph Stalin to power in the Soviet Union and analyze ways in which collectivization and the first Five-Year Plan disrupted and transformed Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s (Great Purge, secret police, gulag, and kulak).
   
   
2. Explain the ideologies of Fascism and Nazism and analyze how fascist and authoritarian regimes seized power and gained mass support in Italy, Germany, Spain, and Japan (extreme nationalism and anti-Semitism, militarism, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Hideki Tojo, Hirohito, and Francisco Franco, weak democratic governments, inflation, depression, racism, and restore the glory of Rome).

Benchmark 9.7: The student understands the causes of World War II and the ways in which this war was a continuation of earlier global imperial struggles. (WHII.11)

9.7 Performance Indicators
Students reach this benchmark when they are able to:

1. Analyze the importance of the legacy of World War I, the Great Depression, ethnic and ideological conflicts, imperialism, nationalism, and traditional political and economic rivalries as underlying causes of World War II (Treaty of Versailles).
   
   
2. Explain German, Italian, and Japanese military conquests and drives for empire in the 1930’s (aggression, invasion of Ethiopia, Manchuria, the Rhineland, Sudentenland, Anschluss).
   
   
3. Analyze the motives and consequences of the Soviet non-aggression pacts of 1939 and 1941 with Germany and Japan.
   
   
4. Analyze the consequences of Britain, France, the United States, and other Western democracies’ failure to oppose aggression (aggression by totalitarian powers – Germany, Italy, and Japan; nationalism, appeasement, failure of the League of Nations, tendencies towards isolationism and pacifism in Europe and the United States, Munich Agreement, and Neville Chamberlain).
   
   
5. Analyze the ways in which World War II affected the global distribution of political and economic power.

Benchmark 9.8: The student understands the major events, leaders, and short-term outcomes of World War II. (WHII.11)

9.8 Performance Indicators
Students reach this benchmark when they are able to:

1. Identify the major events of World War II (Invasion of Poland, Fall of France, Battle of Britain, Invasion of Soviet Union, Pearl Harbor, D-Day [allied invasion of Europe], dropping of atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Holocaust, lend-lease, and Battle of Atlantic).
   
   
2. Identify major leaders of World War II (FDR [U.S. President], Truman [U.S. President after death of President Roosevelt], Eisenhower [U.S. general], MacArthur [U.S. general], George Marshall [U.S. general], Winston Churchill [British Prime Minister], Joseph Stalin [Soviet dictator], Adolf Hitler [Nazi dictator of Germany], Hideki Tojo [Japanese general], and Hirohito [Emperor of Japan]).
   
   
3. Analyze the causes and events of the Holocaust as an example of genocide (systemic and purposeful destruction of a racial, political, religious, or cultural group) in the 20th century (Nazism, anti-Semitism, economic depression blamed on Jews, Hitler’s belief in master race, defeat in World War I, totalitarianism combined with nationalism, and the Final Solution – extermination camps and gas chambers).
   
   
4. Compare the Holocaust with other examples of genocide that have occurred throughout the 20th century (Armenians by leaders of the Ottoman Empire; peasants, government and military leaders, and members of the elite in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin; the educated artists, technicians, former government officials, monks, and minorities by Pol Pot in Cambodia; Tutsi minority by Hutu in Rwanda; Muslims and Croats by Bosnian Serbs in former Yugoslavia).
   
   
5. Assess the worldwide impact of World War II (loss of European empires, establishment of two major powers [U.S. and U.S.S.R.], war crimes trials, “Iron Curtain,” Soviet satellite nations, establishment of the United Nations [U.N.], Marshall Plan, formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO], and Warsaw Pact).
   
   
6. Identify the ways in which the Allies promoted reconstruction in Europe and Japan after World War II (Tehran, Yalta, Potsdam, Germany – Germany and Berlin divided into four sectors, democratic government installed in West Germany and West Berlin, emergence of West Germany as economic power in post-war Europe; Japan - U.S. occupation under MacArthur, elimination of offensive military capabilities, emergence of Japan as dominant Asian economy, democratic and economic development, and U.S. guarantee of Japan’s security).
   
   
7. Compare World Wars I and II in terms of the impact of industrial production, political goals, national mobilization, technological innovation, and scientific research on national strategies, military operations, and levels of destruction.
   
   
8. Explain why fascism was discredited after World War II and how popular democratic institutions were established in Italy, the German Federal Republic, Greece, Turkey, India, Spain, and Portugal between 1945 and 1975.
   
   
9. Compare the United States’ commanding economic position and international leadership after World War II with its international policies following World War II, as exemplified by the Truman Doctrine and the policy of containment [U.S. policy for preventing the expansion of communism].

Benchmark 9.9: The student understands how African and Asian peoples achieved independence from European colonial rule, and the creation of new countries in the 20th century. (WHII.12)

9.9 Performance Indicators
Students reach this benchmark when they are able to:

1. Explain how the Communist Party rose to power in China between 1936 and 1949 and assess the Chinese Communist policies under Mao Zedong, including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution (Civil War, Long March, Chiang Kai-Shek/Jiang Jieshi [Guomingdang Party], and Taiwan).
   
   
2. Analyze the impact of World War II and post-war global politics on the rise of mass nationalist movements in China as exemplified by the leadership of Mao Zedong in China (division of China into two countries, Chiang Kai-Shek/Jiang Jieshi – Nationalist China [Island of Taiwan], Communist China [mainland China], continuing conflict between the two Chinas, and Communist China’s participation in the Korean conflict).
   
   
3. Analyze the impact of World War II and post-war global politics on the rise of mass nationalist movements in India as exemplified as by the leadership of Mohandas Gandhi (British India, Indian subcontinent, India, Pakistan [former West Pakistan], Bangladesh [former East Pakistan], and Sri Lanka [former Ceylon], role of civil disobedience and passive resistance, and political division along Hindu/Muslim lines).
   
   
4. Analyze the impact of World War II and post-war global politics on the rise of mass nationalist movements in Africa (right to self-determination, U.N. Charter, peaceful and violent revolutions after World War II, pride in African culture and heritage, resistance towards imperial rule and economic exploitation, influences of superpower rivalry during the Cold War; Jomo Kenyatta – violent struggle against Britain; West Africa – peaceful transition; Algeria – war for independence from France; South Africa – black South Africans struggle against apartheid).
   
   
5. Analyze the impact of World War II and post-war global politics on the rise of mass nationalist movements in Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh, role of French imperialism, Vietnam as a divided country, containment, Vietnam War, Vietnam as a reunited communist country).
   
   
6. Explain the historical evolution of the state of Israel in terms of the Zionist Movement, the British Mandate, and the resettlement of Jewish refugees from Europe and analyze why persistent conflict developed between Israel and the Palestinians and neighboring states.
   
   
7. Analyze why some African and Asian countries achieved independence through constitutional devolution and others as a result of armed revolution.
   
   
8. Describe economic and social problems that new states faced in the 1960’s and 1970’s and analyze why military regimes or one-party states replaced parliamentary-style governments.
   
   
9. Analyze the reason for the adoption of democratic institutions by states at the end of the 20th century.

Benchmark 9.10: The student understands the major events of the Cold War and the eventual collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. (WHII.12)

9.10 Performance Indicators
Students reach this benchmark when they are able to:

1. Analyze major differences in the political ideologies and values of the Western democracies and the Soviet bloc following World War II (democracy and free enterprise versus dictatorship and communism).
   
   
2. Analyze the effect of the advent and proliferation of nuclear weapons, the development of military and space technology, and other weapons of mass destruction on the superpower conflict.
   
   
3. Assess the significance of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the Korean conflict, Vietnam War, Berlin Airlift, Berlin Wall, Cuban Missile Crisis, nuclear deterrence, Mutual Assured Destruction [MAD], and Domino Theory.
   
   
4. Analyze the reform policies of Mikhail Gorbachev and explain why the Soviet and other communist governments collapsed and the Soviet Union splintered into numerous states in the 1980s and early 1990s (perestroika, glasnost, Solidarity labor movement, Soviet economic collapse, nationalism in Warsaw Pact countries, Fall of Berlin Wall, and expansion of NATO).
   

^ back to top

---

Legacies

• Technology helped improve quality of life, mitigated environmental constraints, and fostered a sense of global community as it introduced new challenges.
  
  
• New military technologies greatly increased the destructive capabilities of countries.
  
  
• Global depression increased the government’s level of involvement in the lives of its citizens.
  
  
• The League of Nations and United Nations were efforts to establish peace through the concept of collective security.
  
  
• Ideological differences continued after the defeat of fascism and resulted in the Cold War between Western democracies and communist countries.
  
  
• Due to the loss of European and Japanese influence after the Second World War, independence movements in Africa and Asia created instability and led to the creation of new states.
  
  
• With the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, China remains as the only viable Communist power.
  
  
• Ethnic and religious discord continues in many parts of the world.
  

^ back to top