AP World History — global conflict 1900-1945: wars, revolutions, fascism and mass atrocities

Unit 7 of AP World History: Modern, Global Conflict, covers a crowded half century: two world wars, three revolutions that remade Russia, Mexico and China, the rise of fascism, and mass atrocities on a scale without precedent. Short-answer and long essay questions often ask about causes here, so this material is built around causation and its limits.

You begin with the causes of World War I, separating long-term tensions such as alliance systems, naval and imperial rivalry and Balkan nationalism from the trigger at Sarajevo. You then see the war as a global one: Indian, West African, Indochinese and Chinese soldiers and laborers served the Allied empires, and fighting reached Africa and the Middle East. Point V of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, quoted from the 1918 text, lets you weigh the hopes such promises raised against the peace settlement, which kept the empires and handed German and Ottoman territories to Britain, France and others as League of Nations mandates.

The revolutions come next: the war losses and shortages that brought down the tsar and let the Bolsheviks seize power in 1917, the Mexican Revolution against the Díaz regime and its Constitution of 1917 with land reform and national control of subsoil resources, and the fall of the Qing in 1911 followed by warlord division and the Nationalist-Communist rivalry. You then study the features of fascism in Italy and Germany, Japan's seizure of Manchuria in 1931 and invasion of China in 1937, and the failure of appeasement before the invasion of Poland in 1939. The last questions treat the Armenian genocide during World War I and the Holocaust, and ask what these atrocities share with later ones in Cambodia and Rwanda.

The quiz has twelve questions with explanations for every option. The flashcards cover the key terms, from the alliance system to appeasement. The written work offers eight open questions to answer by hand, focused on causes, comparison and continuity, the reasoning skills this unit tests. The oral exam lets you explain these events aloud, one question at a time, with brief feedback at the end.

It complements the category's material on the world since 1900, which treats total war and the Depression; use it during Unit 7 or in spring review before the May exam.

• Distinguish long-term causes of World War I from its trigger, and explain its global reach
• Explain how the peace settlement and the mandate system disappointed colonized peoples
• Explain the causes and outcomes of the Russian, Mexican and Chinese revolutions
• Describe fascism and explain the causes of World War II in Europe and Asia
• Describe the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust and what mass atrocities of the century share

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the College Board AP World History: Modern course framework, Unit 7 (Global Conflict): shifting power after 1900, causes and conduct of World War I, unresolved tensions after World War I, causes and conduct of World War II, mass atrocities. Point V of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points (1918) is quoted from the US National Archives transcript.