• textbook --> pp. 923 - 930.

1. Why was the decade of the 1920s in Europe characterized as both an "Age of Anxiety" and a "Period of Hope?"
2. With what issues was French preoccupied in the 1920s?  What were economic conditions like at this time?
3. How did the French attitude toward reparations lead to the Ruhr Crisis of 1923?  What was the results?
4. How did the great inflation of 1923 affect the various classes in Germany?
5. How were fundamental issues of international affairs being met in the 1920s?  What was the nature and significance of the Locarno Pact?
6. What were the circumstances that contributed to Britain's economic difficulties in the 20c?  How were these difficulties reflected in the events of the 1920s?
7. Why did the Labour Party become one of Britain's two major parties in the years after 1922?
8. What were the causes of the Great Depression?  How did the European states respond to it?
9. What did the economist John Maynard Keynes suggest should be done to solve the economic problems created by the Great Depression?
10. What was the impact of the Depression on Britain?  How did the Labour government of 1929 become transformed into a National government?
11. How did the National government attempt to cope with the Depression?  Was it successful?
12. How did the Popular Front emerge in France?  How did it resemble and differ from the American "New Deal" during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration?

                          ASSIGNMENT 2:

• textbook --> pp. 931 - 935.

1. What are the chief characteristics of totalitarianism?
2. What elements of dissatisfaction and unrest appeared in Italy after World War I?
3. How did Mussolini and the Fascists take advantage of the postwar situation?
4. Describe the regime that Mussolini established. 
5. What was the purpose, in theory, of the corporative state?  What was it actually like?
6. What arguments were advanced to assert the superiority of fascism and the corporative state over Western democracy?
7. What was the significance of the Lateran Treaty of 1929?  How did it make Mussolini's position in Italy stronger?

                         ASSIGNMENT 3:

• textbook --> pp. 936 - 944.

1. What were some of the problems which the Weimar Republic had to contend with in its early years?
2. What attitudes did Hitler form in Vienna before the First World War?  How did the war play a role in his life?
3. What was the political philosophy and social theories proposed by Hitler in his book, Mein Kampf?
4. How did the Great Depression affect Germany?  How did Hitler exploit the feelings generated in Germany by the Depression?
5. Describe the circumstances under which Hitler became Chancellor.  What was the significance of the months from June, 1932 to January, 1933?  the elections of March, 1933?
6. What methods were used to implement Hitler's ideas once he and the Nazis had established the Nazi state in Germany?
7. How were German Jews initially affected by Hitler's rise to power?
8. What were the outstanding political, economic, and social changes introduced in German under the Third Reich?

                          ASSIGNMENT 4:

• textbook --> pp. 944 - 957.
• FILM --> clip from "Triumph of the Will."

1. How did the Communist Party govern the Soviet Union in the early 1920s?
2. Explain the background, nature, and results of the NEP.
3. What role did Stalin play in the struggle for power that took place in the years immediately following Lenin's death?  What criticisms did Trotsky level at the Soviet regime in 1925-1926?
4. What were the objectives of the First Five-Year Plan and the system established to carry it out?
5. What were the origins and nature of the collectivization program in agriculture?  At what cost was it accomplished?
6. What were the effects of the Five-Year Plans on Soviet society?
7. How did Stalin initiate a series of purges and purge trials in the 1930s?  What was their net result?
8. What were the causes of the Spanish Civil War?  How did it affect international relationships?
9. How was the Spanish Civil War a dress rehearsal for World War II?
10. What impact did the growth of mass culture and mass leisure have upon European society in the 1920s and 1930s?
11. List the major cultural and intellectual trends of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe.
12. How did these cultural and intellectual trends reflect a crisis of confidence in Western civilization?