AP EUROPEAN HISTORY: WORLD WAR II AND ITS AFTERMATH 1939-1953

PRACTICE ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. “The Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis was more an ideological than an actual alliance.” Assess the validity of this statement. To “determine the truth” of this statement, you have to consider the ways in which the Axis partners aided each other’s war efforts. Did the Italians and the Germans actually coordinate battlefield strategy? Recall Mussolini’s “stabbing France in the back” in 1940; the North African campaign; the “Balkans Rescue”; the invasion of Sicily. Did the European Axis partners ever coordinate battle plans, send or receive war materials, plan overall strategy with the Japanese? How were they united in aims, ideology, political methods. 2. To what extent and in what ways did the U.S., the USSR, and Britain coordinate war aims and strategies? “How and how much” is the issue here. In dealing with Russian and Western cooperation, consider the Big Three conferences: Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam (after the death of Roosevelt); the second-front controversy; the material aid from the United States to Russia. The American-British alliance is more tangible: Lend-Lease; the Atlantic Charter; North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, the bombing and invasion of Germany; the Pacific War 3. The Allied decision to demand “unconditional surrender” of the Axis powers lengthened the war needlessly.” Defend or refute this statement. This has been an issue much argued, “a hypothesis contrary to fact.” Would the war have ended sooner if the Allies had negotiated with the Axis governments or even with anti-government military factions? In framing your answer, consider that despite the saturation bombing of Germany’s cities, the Nazis maintained an iron grip until the end; despite assassination attempts, Hitler ruled until his suicide when the Russians were at the gates of Berlin; despite firebombing and the dropping of the first A-Bomb, the Japanese refused to surrender. 4. Contrast and compare the results of the war on both the United States and the USSR. “Show differences”: What was the destruction to the homelands of each? What political, social, or economic changes took place for each? What were the human losses? What were the war gains? “Examine similarities”: They were the only two powers - superpowers - with the strength left to influence European and world events; they had established parallel spheres of influence; they had simultaneously solidified their competing ideologies and launched the Cold War. This is an abstract question that requires crisp organization and thoughtful presentation. 5. Analyze the way the wartime cooperation of the United States and the Soviet Union degenerated, within a few years after the end of the war, into the Cold War The wartime alliance between the West and the Soviet Union was the cooperation of competing systems in order to defeat a common enemy. Strains showed early in the Russian push for a second front, manifested themselves in the tensions at Yalta and at Potsdam in the Russian refusal to allow free elections in Russian-occupied Eastern Europe. The geographic expansion of communism because of the war frightened the West. The presence of massive US. Forces in Europe frightened the Soviets.