Chapter 27 An Age of Catastrophes, 1929-1945

AP FRQ Essays: 

• Analyze anti-Semitism in Europe from the Dreyfus affair in the 1890's to 1939. (2006 B)
• Considering the period 1933 to 1945, analyze the economic, diplomatic, and military reasons for Germany's defeat in the Second World War. (2006A)
• Assess the extent to which the economic and political ideals of Karl Marx were realized in post revolutionary Russia in the period from 1917 to 1939. (2005A)
• Analyze the ways in which technology and mass culture contributed to the success of dictators in the 1920's and 1930's. (2004 A)
• Analyze the participation of European women in the economy and in politics from 1914 to 1939. Use examples from at least TWO countries. (2004 B)
• Compare and contrast the ways that seventeenth-century absolute monarchs and twentieth-century dictators gained and maintained their power. (2004 B)
• Compare and contrast the relationship between artists and society in the Baroque era and in the twentieth century. Illustrate your essay with references to at least TWO examples for each period. (2003 B)
• Analyze the impact of the First World War on European culture and society in the interwar period (1919-1939). (2002 A)
• How did new theories in physics and psychology in the period from 1900 to 1939 challenge existing ideas about the individual and society? (2001)
• Compare and contrast the French Jacobins' use of state power to achieve revolutionary goals during the Tenor (1793-1794) with Stalin's use of state power to achieve revolutionary goals in the Soviet Union during the period 1928 to 1939. (2001)

 Other Potential Essays:

• Discuss the international impact of the Russian Revolution from 1917 to the Second World War. How did the leadership drift away from their original goals and objectives?
• Compare and contrast fascism, communism, and Nazism
• "The centralized governments of continental Europe dominated the rate and direction of industrial development in their respective countries in the period 1850-1940."  Explain the facts and events that form the basis of this statement and describe the specific ways in which the statement is a valid generalization about the period 1850-1940.
• Compare and contrast the extent to which Catherine the Great and Joseph Stalin were "Westernizers".
• Account for the responses of the European democracies to the military aggression by Italy and Germany during the 1930s.
• Compare and contrast the relationship between the great powers and Poland in the periods 1772-1815 and 1918-1939.
• Why did Germany's experiment with parliamentary democracy between 1919 and 1933 fail?
• Compare the rise to power of the fascists in Italy with the Nazis in Germany.
• Compare and contrast the ways in which the following paintings reflect the artistic styles and political conditions of the eras in which they were produced. (Goya's Third of May and Picasso's Guernica).
• Contrast European diplomacy in the time periods 1890-1914 and 1918-1939.  Include in your analysis goals, practices, and results.
• Support or refute: "Dictators in 20th century Europe have had much greater control over culture and society than the divine right monarchs of earlier centuries."
• How and in what ways did European painting or literature reflect the disillusionment in society between 1919 and 1939?  Support your answer with specific artistic or literary examples.
• Compare the economic roles of the state under 17th-century mercantilism and 20th-century communism.  Illustrate your answer with reference to the economic system of France during Louis XIV's reign under Colbert and of the USSR under Stalin.
• Compare and contrast the patronage of the arts by Italian Renaissance rulers with that by dictators of the 1930s.