Sample Quiz Questions: The Era of the Dictators

A comprehensive selection of statements is offered below so that you can study many of them and thus become casually familiar with the correct answers as you delve in your notes or text for them. With that factual background, when added to y our analytical skills, you should be able to write effective essays.
Your answers (i.e., how you complete the statement) should both be grammatically correct and make good historical sense.

TopicStalin's Russia

      
  1. A material advantage enjoyed by Stalin in his struggle for power against his Bolshevik rivals after 1924 was the position he held in the party apparatus, namely that of .................   
  2. 'Building up socialism in a single state', in opposition to the ideas of promoting world revolution (as had been urged by Trotsky), was the goal advocated by .............   
  3. In the late 1920s, as Stalin proceeded to take full control of the state, he put an end to the Leninist policy of ................ , a policy regarded by many old Bolsheviks as something of a betrayal of the socialist idea because........ .......   
  4. The phrase "the liquidation of the kulaks as a class" implied that ....................   
  5. Stalin's Five-Year Plan, adopted in early 1929, was designed to achieve both ............ and ...........   
  6. The years between 1924 and 1928 saw a desperate struggle for power over the government of the Soviet Union between the two leading Bolshevik rivals ........... and ............... .The second rung of leading Bolsheviks in this period included ......... and .........   
  7. In Dec. 1934 a leading Bolshevik figure, Serge Kirov, was assassinated. This fateful event inaugurated ........   
  8. While Stalin's first Five-Year Plan was a relative success in the industrial development of the Soviet Union, other components of the Plan, namely, ................... , precipitated catastrophe

Topic:Weimar Germany: The Rise of the Nazi party

      
  1. One example of the use of force in compelling defeated Germany to live up to the terms of the treaty of Versailles was the ............. in 1923   
  2. By the famous article 48 of the Weimar constitution, the president of the new German republic was empowered to .....................   
  3. Explain the 'stab-in-the-back' legend that circulated in .......... (country) after WWI: ............................................   
  4. Between 1919 and 1923 the Weimar republic was rocked by three attempts to overthrow the government, as follows:
    1919: emanating from the........................
    1920: emanating from the.......................
    1923: emanating from ..........................   
  5. One lesson clearly learnt by Hitler following his failed attempt to overthrow the government was that in terms of his future political strategy he ...................   
  6. For the period between 1924 and 1929, it may be said that as far as the economic situation in Germany was concerned, the country was .............. This did not bode well for the political fortunes of ..........   
  7. The great boost to the Nazis' political fortunes in the 1930 election may be attributed to .............   
  8. The essential doctrines of Hitler's Mein Kampf, insofar as Germany's future was concerned, looked to ............... and ........................   
  9. The so-called Dawes and Young plans were devised to solve the issue of ............... as they pertained to ............. . The obligations of that country in that respect were finally resolved when ......................   
  10. After 1924 a new spirit of cooperation emerged among the powers of western Europe. In 1925 France and ........ signed the Locarno treaty by which the latter country accepted . . . . . . However, there was to be no acceptance of her border with .........   
  11. No factor contributed more to Hitler's success in achieving leadership of the government than the economic crisis. This began around ............. and its worst effects were demonstrated by the prevalence of .......... which Hitler promis ed to solve

See if you can choose the one correct answer in each of the following:

      
  1. One problem working against Hitler's elevation as chancellor in 1932 was the fact that :
      
  2. The 1925 Locarno treaty :
      
  3. The so-called Kapp-Lüttwitz putsch against the German government in 1920 was designed to :
      
  4. The crucial factor in the selection of Hitler as chancellor in Jan. 1933 was :
      
  5. The period 1924-28 was, for the Nazi party, one in which they :
      
  6. In terms of the political allegiance of Germans prior to 1933, it may be said that :
      
  7. In terms of the appeal of the Nazi party to the general population, it is seen that :
      
  8. Although Hitler came to power legally in 1933, it is pertinent to note that the Nazis had :
      
  9. The French occupation of the Ruhr valley in 1923 was intended to :
      
  10. One lesson clearly learned by Hitler from the disaster of the 1923 putsch was the fact that :
      
  11. Nazi electoral successes were an important factor in Hitler's eventual claims to the premiership. For instance, in the 1930 election, the Nazi party :

Topic:Hitler's Germany

      
  1. The so-called Nuremberg Laws were directed against ............. and stipulated, for example, that ...........   
  2. On June 1, 1933 the Nazi regime issued its law for the reduction of unemployment, which created a loan scheme that benefited newly married couples provided that .....................   
  3. 'Coordination' of the teaching profession was undertaken at an early stage to insure political reliability and commitment to Nazi ideology. The main impact of the changes in the school curriculum was seen in three subjects in particular: German literature, ......... and .........   
  4. Hitler became chancellor (i.e., prime minister) with constitutional legitimacy in January 1933. However, he was determined to exercise his power without the constraints of a constitution. What gave him his dictatorial powers was the .............. passed in March 1933, for which the legislative support of .............. h ad been crucial   
  5. After the takeover of power in 1933, the first Nazi initiative in labor policy was to destroy ............. . These were replaced by a Nazi-inspired ................. to regulate the workplace   
  6. In order to come to terms with the Catholic church, Hitler in 1933 signed a concordat with the Pope. The price paid by the Church in Germany for this apparent assurance of freedom of worship was that .........................   
  7. Whether or not the Reichstag fire of Feb. 1933 was set by the Nazis, it certainly was they who profited by it, particularly insofar as the emergency decree signed by the president on the following day enabled the regime to ............... ....   
  8. Between the summer and fall of 1932 the Nazis received a severe shock to their political fortunes. As evidence of this we may cite.................   
  9. One of the problems faced by the Nazi regime in 1933 was that of unemployment. Among the several measures specifically designed to attack that problem were :................... , ................ and ...........   
  10. The Nazis extolled the traditional virtues of family life, and in that regard closed down birth-control clinics. Among other measures promoted by the government were those that placed curbs on .................   
  11. In the vote on the Enabling Act, when Hitler required a 2/3rds majority to set aside the constitution, his victory was assured by the exclusion from parliament of ............ and the promised (coerced!) votes of ...........   
  12. The so-called 'Aryan paragraph' was increasingly used in the public and private sectors of Nazi Germany as a device to .......................

See if you can select the one correct answer in each of the following:

      
  1. The Nazi 'total' state was never quite all pervasive. Nowhere in the early years of the regime were the limits to Nazi power more observable than in:
      
  2. The concordat concluded in 1933 between the Nazis and the Vatican:
      
  3. It is fair to say that once the Nazis were in power, both Catholics and Protestants:
    vv  
  4. The so-called Night of the Long Knives (June 30, l934) saw:
      
  5. By their electoral victory in March 1933 (i.e., after Hitler's appointment as chancellor) the Nazis:
      
  6. The racial and eugenic nature of Nazi population policy is clearly seen in:
      
  7. In 'Mein Kampf' Hitler emphasized that for the development of a mass political movement, what was necessary was:
      
  8. One of Hitler's successes as chancellor was the rapid reduction in the unemployment statistics. Among the measures contributing to this was:
      
  9. The Nazi attitude toward women was determined largely by Nazism's ideological foundations. In that regard, women:
      
  10. After seizing power, the Nazis began to implement their ideas on the role of women in society. For example, the regime:
      
  11. When Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he was bent on eliminating all parliamentary opposition to his takeover of full power. In setting the stage for this, he made the greatest tactical use of the:

Topic:Hitler's War

      
  1. An example of Chamberlain's policy of 'appeasement' is the agreement made at Munich in Sep. 1938 whereby ......... and ......... agreed to . . . . .   
  2. An early indication that Hitler was dismantling the treaty of Versailles in defiance of .............. and ............ were the announcements in 1935 that Germany was undertaking .............. and was introducing .........   
  3. The concept of Lebensraum developed by .............. envisaged the acquisition of territories in ............   
  4. While Hitler's economic aim in 1933 was the ending of unemployment, the comprehensive Four-Year Plan of 1936 was designed to ......................   
  5. In 1936 another link in the chain of the treaty of Versailles was broken when Hitler .............. . The fact that no action was taken by either ......... or ............ signaled that they were more interested in ...........   
  6. Hitler's first real adventure in foreign policy occurred in the spring of 1938 when he forced ................ to .....................   
  7. Czechoslovakia was the acid test of appeasement. What was at issue here was .............................. .The crisis was resolved when ......................   
  8. The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 finally convinced .......... and .......... of the utter failure of the appeasement policy. An indication of the British reversal of policy after that event was the pledge offered t o ..................... that ................   
  9. On August 23, l939 the world woke up to the startling news that ........................... It was an ominous turn of events that in effect sealed the fate of ...................   
  10. With the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact, Hitler was now able to ...................... without fear of intervention by his great rival to the east, namely, ..................   
  11. Although ostensibly a neutral power before her entry into the war in December 1941, the U.S. signaled her general support for the British war effort by ....................   
  12. Although the Allied success in maintaining the delivery of war materiel to the Soviet Union was of vital importance for the war effort, the real 'turning point' of the land war in the east, and a bitter defeat for German arms, was the ..............................   
  13. To achieve its purposes, the United Nations organization, established in 1945, was equipped with six major organs. Among these are: the Security Council for maintaining peace and order among the nations; and the General assembly comprising ...............   
  14. "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an 'iron curtain' has descended across the continent of ................", warned Winston Churchill in 1946. This statement referred to the fact that ...................   
  15. The terms 'cold war' , 'coexistence' and 'détente' refer to the varying nature of the post-war relationship between, on the one hand, ................ and, on the other, ...............   
  16. "The wind of change is blowing across this continent, and whether we like it or not this growth of national consciousness is a political fact, and our national policies must take account of it." This statement by British prime minister Harold Macmillan in 1960 referred to ..........................

See if you can select the one correct answer in each of the following:

      
  1. The winter of 1939-40 witnessed the so-called 'phony war', a name prompted by:
      
  2. The correct order of occurrence, from the earliest to the most recent, in the following is:
      
  3. Germany's absorption of Austria, making it part of the Third Reich, both improved its strategic position in central Europe and had daunting implications for the survival of (circle the one correct answer):
      
  4. Hitler's problem with Poland centered around (c:
      
  5. Historians have perceived several aggressive steps taken by the Nazi regime on the road to war before the final act in Sep. 1939. One such step was:
      
  6. The main objective of the Nazi Four-Year Plan was to:
      
  7. The concept of Lebensraum as used by Hitler meant the belief that Germany had to acquire:
      
  8. Soon after Hitler's access to power, the initial apprehensiveness of the German army command was considerably allayed by:
      
  9. The policy of appeasement is often cited as one cause of WWII. The strategy of the so-called 'appeasers' included such notions a:
      
  10. As a signal of the Nazi regime's growing alienation from the international standards promoted by the western democracies, Hitler in 1933:
      
  11. Hitler's military conquests after 1939 created the opportunity to put his racial program into effect by 'solving' the so-called Jewish question. This resulted, ultimately, in:
      
  12. As the war dragged on and Germany became more vulnerable to attack, an element of terror for the German population became:
      
  13. The most nearly successful assassination attempt on the life of Hitler was the famous July 20 (1944) plot carried out by:

Complete the following story:
  During his first two years in office, Hitler was preoccupied primarily with .................... in Germany. Thus he pursued a cautious foreign policy without taking excessive risks while insisting to foreign journalists that ................. ... Nevertheless, he denounced the Geneva Disarmament conference and at the same time (Oct 1933) withdrew Germany from .................. , denouncing it as simply a front for France's political domination of Europe.
  Meanwhile, while denying all accusations to the contrary, his government was in fact ................ even in this early phase of the regime's existence. At any rate, the German government was able to announce in March 1935 that Germany ............ , thus openly defying the treaty of Versailles. No combined military or economic action was taken against her by the three powers (namely, ........... , ............. .. and .............. .) who had met at Stresa in Apr. 1935 to consider these events. This lack of action only encouraged Hitler, in fact speeding up his decision to achieve another great success in violating the treaty on March 7, 1936, namely, ............. , the first of his lightning strokes in foreign policy. The democracies reacted the way Hitler had expected to his gamble by .................... . Convinced that the democracies would not oppose changes in central Europe, Hitler proceeded to realize the dream of all p an-Germans by .......................... in March 1938, thus improving Germany's strategic position and facilitating the intolerable pressure he now began to exert against ................... over the ensuing months. His demands in this case focused on the supposed intolerable living conditions endured by ........................ . Deserted by her allies and unable to resis t German threats, ............ capitulated in Sep. 1938, being forced to submit to the Munich Agreement stipulating that ........................ . Shortly after this Hitler began to focus on the city of Danzig, a German enclave in .......... territory. thus setting in train the events that culminated in .................. on Sep. 1, l939

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