World History in Credo: 20th Century

War between the Central European Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and allies) on one side and the Triple Entente (Britain and the British Empire, France, and Russia) and their allies, including the USA (which entered in 1917), on the other side.

Formulation of a peace program, presented at the end of World War I by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in an address before both houses of Congress on Jan. 8, 1918.

World War I ended in November 1918. At the beginning of 1919 the victorious allies met at the French Palace of Versailles, near Paris. Their aim was to decide how to treat the defeated enemy (Germany) and to redraw the map of Europe.

International organization formed after World War I to solve international disputes by arbitration. Established in 1920, the League included representatives from states throughout the world, but was severely weakened by the US decision not to become a member, and had no power to enforce its decisions. Existed from 1920 until 1946, with its seat in Geneva (in neutral Switzerland). The league cannot be dissociated from the ravages of the Great War and the emergence of its conception as “the war to end all wars,” even though it totally failed in its goal of preventing the outbreak of another world war.

War between Germany, Italy, and Japan (the Axis powers) on one side, and Britain, the Commonwealth, France, the USA, the USSR, and China (the Allies) on the other.

Meeting (Feb. 4-11, 1945), at Yalta, Crimea, USSR, of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. The Yalta conferees confirmed the policy adopted at the Casablanca Conference of demanding Germany's unconditional surrender. Plans were made for dividing Germany into four zones of occupation (American, British, French, and Soviet) under a unified control commission in Berlin, for war crimes trials, and for a study of the reparations question.

Meeting (July 17–Aug. 2, 1945) of the principal Allies in World War II (the United States, the USSR, and Great Britain) to clarify and implement agreements previously reached at the Yalta Conference.

Military association of major Western European and North American states set up under the North Atlantic Treaty of 4 April 1949; with aim of maintaining international peace. NATO's role is to ensure the freedom and security of its members by both political and military means.

An association of independent states formed in 1945 by 51 states as a successor to the League of Nations. The UN aims to maintain peace and international cooperation as well as to promote social development and human rights; has headquarters in New York City. At the end of World War II, the United Nations was established with the aim of preventing further devastating wars. It is a member-based international organization open to all legitimate sovereign states in the international community. While it has a broad and expanding mandate that changes with the times, maintaining international peace and security remains a central aim.

Treaty establishing the European Union (EU). Agreed in 1991 and signed in 1992, the treaty took effect on 1 November 1993 following ratification by member states.

Gradual achievement of independence by former colonies of the European imperial powers, which began after World War I.

From Chambers Dictionary of World History
Under the Indian Independence Act of July 1947, the formerly British-ruled Indian sub-continent was partitioned on 14–15 Aug into two independent countries, a predominantly Hindu India and a predominantly Muslim Pakistan.

From Encyclopedia of Empire
The Suez crisis of 1956, which was precipitated by the President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal Company in 1956, culminated in an Anglo-French-Israeli assault on Egypt at the end of the year.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
World War II air battle between German and British air forces over Britain from 10 July to 31 October 1940. Losses August–September were, for the RAF: 792 fighters totally destroyed; for the Luftwaffe: 668 fighters and some 700 bombers and other aircraft.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
During World War I (1914-18) the term commonly referred to the British army serving in France and Flanders, although strictly speaking it referred only to the forces sent to France in 1914; during World War II it was also the army in Europe, which was evacuated from Dunkirk, France in 1940.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Two decisive battles of World War II in the western desert of northern Egypt. In the first (1-22 July 1942), the British 8th Army under Auchinleck held off the German and Italian forces under Rommel; in the second (23 October-4 November 1942), Montgomery defeated Rommel.

1915, Allied expedition in World War I for the purpose of gaining control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, capturing Constantinople, and opening a Black Sea supply route to Russia.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
German air raids against Britain September 1940-May 1941, following Germany's failure to establish air superiority in the Battle of Britain. It has been estimated that about 42,000 civilians were killed, 50,000 were injured, and more than two million homes were destroyed and damaged in the Blitz.

The informal name of the French political regime between 1940 and 1945; officially l’Etat Français (‘the French State’).

A detention site outside the normal prison system created for military or political purposes to confine, terrorize, and, in some cases, kill civilians.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
In Irish history, a republican insurrection against the British government that began on Easter Monday, April 1916, in Dublin.

In Irish and English history, political slogan adopted by Irish nationalists in the 19th cent. to describe their objective of self-government for Ireland.

A militant organization of Irish nationalists founded with the aim of striving for a united independent Ireland by means of guerrilla warfare.

Irish nationalist movement. It had its roots in the Irish cultural revival at the end of the 19th cent. and the growing nationalist disenchantment with the constitutional Home Rule movement.

From Routledge Dictionary of Economics
Named for Margaret Thatcher. An attitude of frugality towards public expenditure and a belief in the supremacy of market forces. Four principles of Thatcherism: the strengthening of economic incentives, the reduction of the burden of financing the public sector, the reduction in the role of the state to increase freedom of individual choice and increased responsibility in collective bargaining.

Russian writer widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential authors of the 20th century.

Rand became the author of two unconventional but best-selling novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). In these, as in her other writings, she challenged prevalent philosophies of the time with her ‘objectivism’, a rationalist ethic of ‘heroic individualism’ repudiating all forms of altruism as ‘collectivist’ traps, incompatible with a free society.

French general and statesman, first president (1959-69) of the Fifth Republic.

Fashion icon and designer of the early 20th century. French couturière and perfumer, who created “the little black dress” and the perfume Chanel No. 5. Although many questions surround Chanel’s early life, it is generally believed that she had acquired some experience in dressmaking and millinery before she opened a hat shop in Paris in 1910.

U.S. physicist and mathematician, born in Germany. He formulated the special theory of relativity (1905) and the general theory of relativity (1916), and made major contributions to the quantum theory, for which he was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1921. He was noted also for his work for world peace.

Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1952–2022), elder daughter and successor of George VI.

Irish Antarctic explorer. In 1908-09, he commanded the British Antarctic expedition that reached 88° 23′ S latitude, located the magnetic South Pole, and climbed Mount Erebus. He was knighted in 1909.

British field marshal and statesman. Trained at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich (1868–70), he had a brief period of service in the French army before being commissioned (1871) in the Royal Engineers.

Swedish actress of the 20th century. Bergman is best known for her performances in Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s – most famously Casablanca (1942), in which she starred opposite Humphrey Bogart.

French philosopher, novelist, dramatist, and critic; chief French exponent of atheistic existentialism. Leading advocate of existentialism during the years following World War II.

Italian composer. His work, usually involving electronic sound, combines serial techniques with commedia dell'arte and antiphonal practices, as in Alleluiah II (1958) for five instrumental groups.

An Albanian nun who devoted her life to working among the sick and poor of Calcutta, Mother Teresa built up a worldwide order of more than 3,000 Missionaries of Charity in eighty-seven countries and was revered as a living “saint of the gutters”; her elevation to official sainthood now awaits the approval of the Roman Catholic Church.

Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first woman prime minister, decisively changed the way in which British politics had worked since the end of World War II. The British prime minister between 1979 and 1990, Thatcher won three successive general elections as leader of the Conservative Party. An intensely controversial figure in Britain, she is renowned for her right-leaning reforms of United Kingdom (UK) economic and foreign policy.

French socialist politician, prime minister 1992–93.

Member of the UK royal family. Daughter of the 8th Earl Spencer, Diana married Prince Charles in St Paul's Cathedral, London, in 1981. She had two sons, William and Harry, before her separation from Charles in 1992.

British explorer who reached the South Pole (January 1912) only to find that Roald Amundsen had discovered the spot one month before.

British Labour politician, prime minister 1997-2007. He was leader of the Labour Party 1994-2007. On standing down as prime minister in 2007, he became a Middle East special envoy for the ‘Quartet’ - the USA, European Union, Russia, and the United Nations.

British Conservative politician, prime minister 1940-45 and 1951-55. In Parliament from 1900, as a Liberal until 1924, he held a number of ministerial offices, including First Lord of the Admiralty 1911-15 and chancellor of the Exchequer 1924-29.

The closing of entry to Berlin from the west by Soviet Forces from June 1948 to May 1949. It was an attempt to prevent the other Allies (the USA, France, and the UK) unifying the western part of Germany.

President John Kennedy visited West Berlin in 1963. There he cited the division of Berlin as a microcosm of the conflict between the communist and free worlds. Facing down the communists as they did, Kennedy proclaimed the Berliners an inspiration to all free men and women, and declared himself their compatriot with the famous phrase: "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner").

The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 to prevent the exodus of escapees from East Germany (German Democratic Republic, GDR) into West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany, FGR). In the decades to follow, the wall provided a symbol of the division between the capitalist American-aligned West and the socialist Eastern Bloc under Soviet hegemony. The Berlin Wall fell (was destructed) in late 1989.

Former federal republic, successor to the Russian Empire and the world's first communist state. The Soviet Union formed on December 30, 1922 and, when dissolved on December 31, 1991, was the largest country in the world.

Communism (from the Latin communis, meaning "shared" or "common"); fundamentally, a system of social organization in which property (especially real property and the means of production) is held in common. Advocates public ownership and communal control of the major means of production, distribution, transportation, and communication. Although modern communism is associated with ideas advanced by German political philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and Russian Communist leader and theorist Vladimir I. Lenin, its intellectual roots are as old as Plato's republic in the fourth century BCE.

The army of the USSR until 1946; it later became known as the Soviet Army. Founded by the revolutionary Leon Trotsky, it developed from the Red Guards, volunteers who were in the vanguard of the Bolshevik revolution.

Russian Communist revolutionary, one of the principal leaders in the establishment of the USSR; his original name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein.

Became leader of the Bolshevik branch of the Russian Social Democrats in the decade before the Russian Revolution. A dedicated revolutionary, an incisive writer, and a compelling speaker, he brought his considerable powers of logic and legal training to bear on organizing an elite core of radicals to lead a successful revolutionary movement. After the revolution, he headed the Soviet Communist Party and was head of the Soviet State until his death in 1924.

Soviet marshal and politician, born in Georgia; general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party 1922-53; premier of the Soviet Union 1941-53.

Soviet economic practice of planning to augment agricultural and industrial output by designated quotas for a limited period of usually five years.

A system of forced-labor prison camps in the USSR, from the Russian acronym [GULag] for the Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps, a department of the Soviet secret police.

Ideological, political, and economic tensions from 1945 to 1989 between the USSR and Eastern Europe on the one hand and the USA and Western Europe on the other. George Orwell first used the term cold war in a 1945 article entitled “ You and the Atom Bomb,” which described the United States, Russia, and China as postwar “superstates” whose nuclear arsenals would involve them in a “permanent state of cold war.” Orwell borrowed this phrase from the French la guerre froide (“ the cold war”), which he translated as a state of war that lacked the overt conditions of war.

Military defensive alliance 1955–91 between the USSR and East European communist states, originally established as a response to the admission of West Germany into NATO. Its military structures and agreements were dismantled early in 1991; a political organization remained until the alliance was officially dissolved in July 1991.

Town in northern Ukraine, 100 km/62 mi north of Kiev. On April 26, 1986 the unit IV nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in the Soviet Union caught fire and exploded. An estimated 100 million Ci (⇒ curies) of radioactivity were emitted with up to half deposited within 30 kilometres of the plant.

Soviet political leader.

Community of independent nations established by a treaty signed at Minsk, Belarus, on Dec. 8, 1991, by the heads of state of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, and were later joined by Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. When Georgia joined in 1993 all of the former republics of the USSR except the Baltic states had become members of the CIS. Georgia withdrew in 2008 following a conflict with Russia. The headquarters of the CIS are in Minsk.

Russian politician, president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) 1990–91, and first president of the newly independent Russian Federation 1991–99. He directed the Federation's secession from the USSR and the formation of a new, decentralized confederation, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), with himself as the most powerful leader.

Russian government official and political leader.