AP European History › Unit 9
After 1945, Europe rebuilt and then split between East and West. Unit 9 covers the Cold War, the welfare state, decolonization, the fall of communism, European integration, feminism, migration, and globalization. Many questions ask about continuity and change across the century, using sources that range from speeches to charts of economic or demographic trends. Students often treat the European Union as a creation of the 1990s, ignoring earlier steps like the European Coal and Steel Community. Another common error is describing the Soviet bloc as unchanging until 1989.
These are taken from the Regular set, with the answer and explanation shown.
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. . . .
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.
Harry S. Truman, address before a joint session of Congress, March 12, 1947, as posted by the Avalon Project, Yale Law School. Source
The more the war recedes into the past, the more distinct becomes two major trends in postwar international policy, corresponding to the division of the political forces operating on the international arena into two major camps: the imperialist and anti-democratic camp, on the one hand, and the anti-imperialist and democratic camp, on the other.
Andrei Zhdanov, report on the international situation (1947), English translation from the Congressional Record, 80th Congress (1948), as posted by Seventeen Moments in Soviet History (Michigan State University). Source
1. Zhdanov's description of the West as "imperialist and anti-democratic" is best explained by his position as
Answer: A. Zhdanov was a top Soviet party official. He spoke at the founding of the Cominform, a body that linked European communist parties under Soviet direction. His words follow Marxist-Leninist ideas that call capitalist states "imperialist."
Common trap: The Yugoslav option is tempting because Yugoslavia hosted the first Cominform office. But Tito broke with Stalin in 1948, and Zhdanov spoke for Moscow.
By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. They targeted for extinction the forty thousand Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica, a group which was emblematic of the Bosnian Muslims in general. They stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity. . . .
The Appeals Chamber states unequivocally that the law condemns, in appropriate terms, the deep and lasting injury inflicted, and calls the massacre at Srebrenica by its proper name: genocide.
Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstić, Case No. IT-98-33-A, Appeals Chamber Judgement, April 19, 2004, paragraph 38, as posted by the ICTY. Source
2. The judgement best illustrates which broader development in Europe after 1945?
Answer: D. At Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946, Nazi leaders were tried for crimes against humanity. The UN created the Yugoslav tribunal in 1993 on the same idea. A general like Krstić could be personally convicted.
Common trap: The EU did not prevent the war. Its failure, and the UN's failure to protect the Srebrenica "safe area," are why the massacre happened.
In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. . . .
We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.
Enoch Powell, speech in Birmingham, April 20, 1968, transcript as posted by Channel 4 News. Short excerpt for study. Source
3. The immigration Powell objected to came mainly from
Answer: C. Powell refers to "Commonwealth immigrants." The British Nationality Act of 1948 let people from the colonies and Commonwealth settle in Britain. Many came from the Caribbean, India and Pakistan to fill labor shortages.
Common trap: Turkish guest workers and North African migrants were real postwar migrations, but to West Germany and France, not Britain.