Key Figures and Concepts of 20th Century History

Key Historical Figures

• Lvov: President of the Russian Provisional Government
• Trotsky: Founder of the Red Army
• Hoover: American President from 1929 to 1933
• Lenin: Leader of the Soviet Union since 1924
• Hitler: German Chancellor in 1933
• Goebbels: Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda
• Roosevelt: American President since 1933
• Russian Tsar: Nicholas II
• Pius XII: Pope who wrote an anti-Nazi encyclical
• Victor Emmanuel III: Italian King

Vocabulary and Definitions

• Duma: Russian parliament
• Gestapo: Nazi secret police
• Hitler Youth: Nazi youth movement
• NKVD: Soviet secret police
• New Deal: Policy issued by Roosevelt
• KKK: American racist movement
• Kinder, Küche, Kirche (KKK): Nazi policy on gender
• Nuremberg Laws: Laws that outlawed marriages between Jews and Aryans
• Putsch: Attempt by the Nazi party to seize power in 1923
• Red Army: Communist army founded by Trotsky
• SA: Nazi paramilitary group
• SS: Nazi paramilitary unit that began serving as Hitler's bodyguard
• TVA: Federal agency created to provide economic development in the Tennessee Valley
• USSR: New state founded by Russian communists

Historical Corrections

• Communists set fire to the Reichstag.
• Hitler used his time in prison to write Mein Kampf.
• SA leaders were killed on the Night of the Long Knives.
• Germans were considered Aryans.
• The Gestapo was the secret police.
• Dachau was the first concentration camp.
• The Skull units were the SS groups that ran the concentration camps.
• The Nuremberg Laws outlawed marriages and sexual relationships between Jewish and Aryan people.
• If the Nazis wanted you to go to prison, a judge would send you there.

The Russian Revolution

• Russia was an autocracy; the Bolsheviks were led by Lenin.
• The Tsar was Nicholas II.
• In the October Revolution, the Bolshevik party overthrew the provisional government.
• Lenin promised land, bread, and peace in his April Theses.
• Trotsky led the Red Army.
• The USSR was created in 1922.
• After Lenin's death, Stalin and Trotsky fought for leadership.
• Women left their jobs to bring down the unemployment rate for men.

Economic and Political Systems

The Great Depression

• Hoover: The USA stopped loans to other countries, unemployment rose rapidly, and hundreds of factories closed because they were unable to sell their products.
• Roosevelt: The state stimulated the realization of great public works and subsidized agricultural prices. This New Deal advocated state intervention to revive the economy.

Political Ideologies

• Fascist Characteristics: Anti-parliamentarism, control of education, adulation of a single charismatic national leader, imperialist expansionism, sexism, fraudulent elections, violence against opponents, and supremacy of the military.
• Democratic Characteristics: Autarkic economy, disdain for intellectuals and the arts, belief in the equality of people, ultranationalism, multi-party system, press censorship, racism, and antisemitism.