Chapter Resources
Chapter 7: The Path to European War 1930–39
Debates
Debating ideology and foreign policy in the 1930s
Maps
Discussion Questions
- What impact did the Great Depression have on the foreign policies of the European Great Powers?
- Was Hitler's dictatorship the most likely outcome of the collapse of the Weimar Republic?
- In what ways were the Nazi and Fascist regimes similar?
- What impact did the Abyssinian War have on European politics in the 1930s?
- Why did France and Britain ‘appease’ Nazi Germany in the early 1930s? Why is the word ‘appeasement’ problematic in this context?
- Why did collective security ‘fail’ in Europe in the 1930s?
- Why did the United States and the Soviet Union pursue their own brands of ‘isolationism’?
- Who ‘won’ the Munich Crisis of September 1938?
- Could the more active intervention of either the US or the Soviet Union have prevented the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe?
- Why and with what consequences did British, French and German foreign policies change so radically after the Munich Crisis?
Weblinks
Avalon Project at Yale Law School
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm
The Avalon Project aims to provide access to documents relating to law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy and government over the World Wide Web. The web site has a clear structure, making it straightforward to search, particularly by keyword or by category. The categories available for browsing include date (pre-eighteenth century, eighteenth century, nineteenth century, twentieth century), author, major document collections, subject, title, bibliography of sources and common names of diplomatic documents. The source of each document is clearly stated. The project aims to include links internally within the documents, and also to other sources, in order to aid navigation and facilitate study. A huge range of documents are available via this site and they are easy to locate, making it a valuable resource for primary sources.