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Black Shirts
The black shirts were Benito Mussolini's band of thugs, who used force to intimidate all opposition to the Italian Fascist Party.
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Bloc National
The Bloc National was a coalition of rightist groups in France that came together in fear of socialist opposition to run the French government during the early years of the inter-war period. The Bloc National maintained conservatism in France to a high degree, and demanded that Germany pay its reparations in full.
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Cartel des Gauches
After the French government's embarrassing failure to collect German reparations even after invading the Ruhr, the Bloc National was replaced by the Cartel des Gauches, a moderate socialistic coalition elected on May 11, 1924. However, the Cartel proved inept at governing, and was dissolved in 1926.
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Central Purge Commission
During the 1930s, Joseph Stalin consolidated power in the Soviet Union by eliminating his opponents. In 1933, he created the Central Purge Commission, which publicly investigated and tried members of the Communist Party for treason. In 1933 and 1934, 1,140,000 members were expelled from the party. Between 1933 and 1938, thousands were arrested and expelled, or shot.
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Collectivization
Stalin's agricultural program, collectivization, forced farmers to pool their lands into government-run farms. When the upper peasant class, the kulaks, protested this program, some three million of them were killed during a reign of terror in 1929 to 1930.
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Dawes Plan
Proposed by the American, Charles Dawes, the Dawes Plan lowered the annual amount of reparations to be paid by Germany to France and Britain, and loaned Germany a sizable amount of money so that it could pay on time.
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Gestapo
Adolf Hitler's secret police, the Gestapo terrorized the German citizens, spying on them and often arresting and executing suspects without a warrant or trial.
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International Brigades
These groups of leftist volunteers were made up mostly of workers, who volunteered to aid the Republicans in the Spanish Civil war. They did so out of boredom, disillusionment, or a desire for adventure as often as from genuine political idealism.
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Kellogg-Briand Pact
Developed in 1928 by United States Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand to jointly denounce war, the Kellogg-Briand Pact stated that the singing parties condemned recourse to war, and denounced it as an aspect of policy. The pact was eventually ratified, often hesitantly, by 65 nations.
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League of Nations
The League of Nations was established as the body of international cooperation after World War One, with the deterrence of war and disarmament as its primary goals. However, largely due to the refusal of the United States to join, the League never grew strong enough to pass any broad measures.
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Livitinov Protocol
The Livitinov Protocol was adopted by the Soviet Union and four other states, in response to the Kellogg-Briand Pact. It contained similar language, denouncing war as an aspect of foreign policy.
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Locarno Pacts
The Locarno Pacts were a series of treaties signed to assure the stability of Germany's borders and discourage Germany from lashing out at its neighbors. They represented a largely French effort to keep Germany crippled and disarmed, and led to an improvement of relations between Germany and its neighbors.
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Mein Kampf
The book Hitler wrote while imprisoned from 1923 to 1925, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) sets forth Hitler's future policies, and expounds upon the inferiority of the Jewish people to the Aryans. The book was widely read once Hitler came to power.
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Nazi
The Nazi Party, short for the National Socialist German Workers Party, controlled Germany completely, under Hitler, from 1933 until the end of World War Two. The Nazi's strove to return Germany to its past glory, rectify the problem of unemployment, and expel German-Jews from society.
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Triple Alliance
Made up of the miners, railway workers, and other transport workers in England, the Triple Alliance was the most organized and powerful labor coalition; it constantly battled the Conservative government for higher wages, better conditions, and shorter hours.
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Westphalian System
Under this system the elites of government often met in secret to determine the fate of Europe and the world. However, World War I shattered the old system along with the empires that had maintained it.
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Beer Hall Putsch
On November 9, 1923, Hitler and World War I hero General Ludendorf attempted a small, and somewhat comic revolution known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler had jumped onto a beer hall table and proclaimed the current Weimar government overthrown. He and Ludendorf led their supporters into the street, and were promptly arrested. While this putsch was unsuccessful, it was important in predicting what was to come.
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Guernica
During the Spanish Civil War, on April 25, 1937, the small northern town of Guernica was bombed by the Nationalists, and civilians were gunned down as they fled the scene. In this brutal massacre 1500 died and 800 were wounded, but the military targets in the town remained intact. While the casualty figures pale in comparison to later numbers, Guernica was crucial in crushing the spirit of the Republicans and convincing many that to resist the Nationalists was to open the doors to bloodbath.
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Washington Conference
In November 1921, the United States convened the Washington Conference, attended by Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, China, Japan, and Portugal. The Conference resulted in a naval armaments treaty that set a ratio for tonnage of capital ships (over 10,000 tons, with guns bigger than eight inches) for Great Britain, the US, Japan, France, and Italy. The ratio agreed upon, in that order, was 5:5:3:1.67:1.67. The Washington Conference and the subsequent London Naval Conference of 1930 produced the only successful armaments agreements of the inter-war years.
