IB History Regional Study 9: Europe and the Second World War Key Definitions

A territorial dispute between Finland and Sweden over the Aland Islands, an archipelago in the Baltic Sea between the two countries. Both Finland and Sweden claimed sovereignty; the Swedish-speaking islanders wanted union with Sweden. The League of Nations was asked to rule on the dispute, one of its earliest test cases. In 1921, the League awarded sovereignty to Finland but protected Swedish cultural rights and demilitarized the islands. Both parties accepted the ruling. The case was cited as an early success of the League, demonstrating that it could resolve disputes peacefully when great powers were not directly involved.

A dispute between Italy and Greece in August-September 1923. Italian General Enrico Tellini and four members of a boundary commission were murdered on Greek territory while working on the Albanian-Greek border. Mussolini blamed Greece and issued an ultimatum. When Greece refused to comply fully, Italian forces bombarded and occupied the Greek island of Corfu. Greece appealed to the League of Nations. The League Council initially found against Italy, but pressure from France (which wanted Italian support for its Ruhr occupation policy) led the Conference of Ambassadors to issue a separate settlement requiring Greece to pay Italy 50 million lire. Italy withdrew from Corfu. The episode was seen as a League failure: a Great Power had violated the Covenant and escaped significant consequences.

Mobile SS killing units (literally "deployment groups") that followed the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union from June 1941. Organised into four groups (A, B, C, D), they were tasked with killing Jews, Soviet political commissars, and other designated enemies. By mid-1942 they had killed approximately 1.5 million Jews. The Einsatzgruppen conducted the "Holocaust by bullets," the first phase of the genocide before the shift to industrialised killing in death camps.

The French government-in-exile led by General Charles de Gaulle from London from June 1940. De Gaulle rejected the armistice and called for continued resistance in his BBC broadcast of 18 June 1940. Free French Forces drew on colonial territories and volunteers who escaped occupied France, numbering around 400,000 troops by 1944. Free France also coordinated the internal Resistance through the Conseil National de la Resistance (CNR).

The military alliance between Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union formed in 1941 after Germany invaded the USSR and Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Despite their ideological differences, the three powers coordinated strategy to defeat the Axis, agreeing the Europe First priority and planning the Normandy invasion.

A secret agreement negotiated by British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and French Prime Minister Pierre Laval in December 1935, proposing to end the Abyssinian crisis by offering Italy roughly two-thirds of Abyssinia's territory in exchange for a ceasefire. When the proposal leaked to the press in December 1935, it provoked a public outcry in Britain and France. Hoare was forced to resign. The episode exposed the unwillingness of Britain and France to enforce League sanctions against Italy, even as they publicly supported collective security. It severely damaged the League's credibility and accelerated the collapse of the collective security system.

Administrative councils imposed by German authorities on Jewish communities in occupied Poland and Eastern Europe. Composed of Jewish community leaders, they were required to compile deportation lists, distribute food, manage internal ghetto order, and organise forced labour. Judenrate faced impossible choices between compliance (which facilitated deportations) and refusal (which generally resulted in more violent SS operations). The Warsaw Ghetto Judenrat chairman Adam Czerniakow poisoned himself in 1942 rather than submit deportation lists.

An international agreement formally known as the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, signed in Paris on August 27, 1928. It was initiated by US Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand. Sixty-three nations eventually signed, including Germany, the USSR, Italy, and Japan. The pact committed signatories to renounce war as an instrument of national policy and to resolve disputes through peaceful means. It had no enforcement mechanism. Critics noted that it did not define aggression or provide for collective action against aggressors. In practice it proved ineffective: Japan violated it by invading Manchuria in 1931; Germany by remilitarizing and then invading its neighbors.

US legislation signed by President Roosevelt on 11 March 1941 that authorised supplying any nation whose defence was deemed vital to US security. Over $50 billion in goods were supplied to Allied nations, primarily Britain ($31bn) and the Soviet Union ($11bn), including food, weapons, aircraft, and vehicles.

An agreement signed on September 30, 1938 by Germany (Hitler), Italy (Mussolini), Britain (Chamberlain), and France (Daladier), requiring Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to Germany within ten days. Czechoslovakia was not a party to the negotiations. The agreement was presented by Chamberlain as "peace for our time." Hitler had threatened war if his demands were not met, and Chamberlain and Daladier chose to concede rather than risk a conflict. The agreement became the defining example of appeasement. In March 1939, Germany violated Munich by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia, ending any justification for further concessions to Hitler.

A series of military tribunals held after World War II, beginning with the International Military Tribunal (IMT) that tried 24 senior Nazi leaders from November 1945 to October 1946. Defendants were charged with conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity -- the last being a new category of international law. Twelve defendants were sentenced to death. The trials established that individuals could be held responsible for state-directed crimes and that superior orders were not a defence.

A major Soviet offensive launched on 23 June 1944 that destroyed Army Group Centre, the largest German formation on the Eastern Front. In eight weeks the operation advanced 600 kilometres westward, killing or capturing over 800,000 German troops. Often described as the most decisive Allied military operation of the Second World War in Europe.

The code name for the systematic murder of approximately two million Jews in the German-occupied General Government area of Poland, conducted through three purpose-built death camps: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Named after Reinhard Heydrich after his assassination in May 1942. Between 1942 and 1943 these camps killed approximately 1.7 million people using carbon monoxide gas. Operation Reinhard was the largest component of the Holocaust in terms of lives taken in the shortest time.

• A foreign policy aimed at overturning or renegotiating the territorial and political terms of the post-1918 peace settlement, pursued by states such as Italy and Germany who felt the settlement had denied them the gains or status they were owed.

A French forced labour scheme introduced in February 1943 under Vichy that required young men from specific birth years to perform labour service in German factories. Approximately 650,000 French workers were sent to Germany under the STO. It unintentionally increased the size of the Resistance, as many men fled to join the Maquis rather than comply.

Antisemitic racial legislation enacted by the Vichy regime in October 1940, before Germany formally demanded it. The first statute defined Jews by racial criteria and excluded them from the civil service, military, teaching, and press. A second statute in June 1941 extended exclusions to commerce and industry. The statutes demonstrated that Vichy collaborated voluntarily in the persecution of Jews.

The border regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited by a predominantly German-speaking population (around 3.5 million people), which Czechoslovakia had acquired as part of the 1919 peace settlement. Germany had no historical sovereignty over the Sudetenland, which had been part of Austria-Hungary. In 1938, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland's transfer to Germany, using the Sudeten German minority's alleged mistreatment as a pretext. The Munich Agreement of September 1938 transferred the region to Germany without Czechoslovak consultation. In March 1939, Germany violated Munich by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia), demonstrating that Hitler's demands had not been limited to ethnic Germans.

A summit meeting between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin held in Tehran, Iran in November-December 1943. The first meeting of the "Big Three" Allied leaders, it agreed that Operation Overlord (the Normandy landings) would proceed in 1944 and that the USSR would enter the war against Japan after Germany's defeat.

A mass arrest of Jews in Paris conducted by French police on 16-17 July 1942. Some 9,000 police officers arrested 13,152 Jews, including 4,115 children, who were held in the Velodrome d'Hiver sports stadium before deportation to Auschwitz via the Drancy transit camp. French police chief Rene Bousquet volunteered to include children, exceeding German quotas. It is the most prominent single act of French state participation in the Holocaust.

The government of unoccupied southern France from July 1940 to August 1944, led by Marshal Philippe Petain with its capital at Vichy. The regime ended the Third Republic, concentrated power in Petain, promoted the "National Revolution" (authoritarian, Catholic, and anti-republican values), and actively collaborated with Nazi Germany including passing its own antisemitic legislation and participating in the deportation of Jews.

A territorial dispute between Poland and Lithuania over the city of Vilna (Vilnius). In October 1920, Polish General Lucjan Zeligowski staged a "mutiny" and seized Vilna with Polish government backing, despite the League of Nations having arranged a ceasefire. Lithuania refused to accept the occupation. The League was unable to force Poland to withdraw, partly because the Allied powers were unwilling to pressure Poland. Poland formally annexed the Vilna region in 1923. The episode was considered a League failure because a member state had used force to acquire territory, and the League had been powerless to reverse this.

A meeting of fifteen senior Nazi and SS officials held on 20 January 1942 at a villa in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, convened by Reinhard Heydrich. Its purpose was to coordinate the implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" across all German-occupied territories. The conference did not decide on genocide (already underway) but assigned roles to all relevant government ministries. The meeting minutes (Wannsee Protocol) were drafted by Adolf Eichmann and list the Jewish population of all European countries totalling 11 million people.