What the exam asks
- Multiple Choice (Section I, Part A): Stimulus sets often use wartime propaganda posters, speeches by leaders (such as Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, or Joseph Stalin), or casualty charts to test Governance (GOV) and Technology and Innovation (TEC).
- Short Answer (Section I, Part B): Commonly tests causation (linking interwar tensions to the outbreak of war) or comparison (how different political systems mobilized populations and colonial subjects).
- DBQ & LEQ (Section II): Often appears in prompts evaluating how twentieth-century states expanded control over economies and societies during global conflicts, or how technological innovations altered the nature of warfare.
Core ideas
Causes of World War II (Causation)
The war resulted from converging structural failures and ideological aggression:
- Unsustainable peace after WWI: The Treaty of Versailles fueled bitter resentment in Germany through territorial losses, war guilt, and reparations, while leaving Italy and Japan dissatisfied with their meager territorial rewards. The League of Nations lacked the military enforcement power to stop aggression.
- The Great Depression: Global economic collapse discredited parliamentary democracies and pushed desperate populations toward extremist ideologies promising economic revival and national greatness.
- Continued imperialist aspirations:
- Imperial Japan sought raw materials and a self-sufficient empire (the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere), invading Manchuria (1931) and launching full-scale war against China (1937).
- Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia (1935).
- Fascist and totalitarian aggression: The primary catalyst was the aggressive militarism of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. Pursuing Lebensraum (living space) and racial supremacy, Hitler rearmed Germany, remilitarized the Rhineland, annexed Austria (Anschluss), seized Czechoslovakia after Western powers failed to stop him through appeasement at the Munich Conference (1938), and invaded Poland in September 1939.
Waging total war and ideological mobilization (GOV)
Total war meant governments dedicated all national and imperial resources to the war effort, erasing the distinction between soldiers and civilians.
- Propaganda, media, and nationalism: States used radio, film, art, and posters to demonize enemies, boost morale, and sell war bonds.
- Colonial and former colonial mobilization: Britain recruited over two million soldiers from India and drew heavily on troops and resources from Africa and the dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand). France relied on West and North African troops.