14th-Century Crises in the Church: Part I

Pope Boniface VIII and the College of Cardinals

The third major disaster of the 14th century in Europe was comprised of a series of crises within the Western, or Roman Church (We call it the Roman Catholic Church these days.). The Catholic church had its origins in the final centuries of the western Roman Empire, and, through the course of the middle ages, became one of the most powerful entities in western Europe. As it christianized the various barbarian nations that settled in Europe, the Catholic Church provided a source of unity in the Western world that was key to the emergence of a distinctly Western and European civilization. The bishop of Rome, eventually referring to himself as Pope (from the Latin word for father), claimed primacy in the church as both the spiritual and temporal leader of Europe. Technically, kings were granted their power by God through his representative on Earth, the Pope. The Church was represented as the instrument through which God granted salvation. It dominated the daily lives of medieval Europeans.

The failure of harvests, the tragic scale of the Black Death, and the death and destruction wrought by the pillaging and raping mercenary companies during the Hundred Years' War, served to weaken the faith of Europeans in a church that was already reeling from a series of crises that began at the turn of the 14th century. The problems of the Church had their origins in the struggle of kings to centralize power in the monarchies of their realms. In order to accomplish this kings needed to eliminate real and potential challenges to their authority. This meant the eventual rounding up and controlling of the rowdy nobility. But first, it meant asserting royal control over the affairs of the Church within their territories. This was not a new struggle, by any stretch of the imagination. However, it did come to a head at this time.

Philip IV and family

The quarrel, this time, began with Philip IV of France (r. 1285-1314), also known as Philip the Fair (Apparently, he was a good-looking dude.). Like many of the monarchs we will study, Philip had a cash-flow problem. In his quest to increase his royal revenues at the least possible expense to royal power, Philip made the claim that, as king of France, he had the right to tax the clergy of France as royal subjects. This clashed with the pope's claim of authority over both the church and the secular state. Pope Boniface VIII (r. 1294-1303) responded by issuing the Papal Bull (Not that kind of bull! It's an official letter of policy from the pope) called Claricis Laicos which expressly forbid the French monarchy from collecting taxes from the French clergy or seizing church property. Unmoved by this Bull, Philip continued to collect taxes (one half of their annual incomes) from the clergy of France.

His Holiness brought out the theological big guns in response to this upstart king's refusal to submit to papal authority. In the Bull Unam Sanctam (1302), Boniface made the strongest theological case for the supremacy of the spiritual authority (the pope) over the temporal authority (kings, princes, dukes, etc.);

"We are told by the word of the gospel that in this His fold there are two swords - a spiritual, namely, and a temporal... Both swords, the spiritual and the material, therefore, are in the power of the church; the one, indeed, to be wielded for the church, the other by the church; the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of kings and knights, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. One sword, moreover, ought to be under the other, and the temporal authority to be subjected to the spiritual....

Indeed, we declare, announce and define, that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff." 

Since the king of France refused to be "subject to the Roman pontiff" in all affairs, Boniface VIII excommunicated him, denying him access to salvation. Philip sent troops into Italy to arrest Boniface. The plan was to bring him back to France to face trial. Boniface was rescued by Italian nobles, but soon died from the shock of this ordeal. Philip won; popes would never make these kind of outrageous claims at absolute authority over church and state. The power and prestige of the Church had taken a big hit. It was about to get much worse.

Pope Clement V, the first Avignon pope

In order to avoid the kind of challenge to royal authority he had under Boniface VIII, Philip IV arranged for the election of Frenchman to the office of pope. This new pope, Clement V, was much more cooperative with Philip's ambitions. He essential got rid of the most restrictive elements of Clericis Laicos and did away with Unam Sanctam. His biggest decision, however, involved the holy city of Rome. By 1300, Rome had become less than a shadow of its ancient glory. The former capital of the Roman Empire, which had housed over a million citizens within its walls, now contained only 40,000 people. Only one third of the space within the walls was occupied, and forests grew over the ruins of the ancient city. Wolves hunted and killed the cattle that grazed in the old forum at night. The city, and the Church, were at the mercy of the warring Colonna and Orsini families. Boniface used this turmoil in the city of Rome as an excuse to move the papacy to the city of Avignon, a territory of the Holy Roman Empire. Although it was not a subject of France, Avignon was across the Rhône River from French territory. This, paired with the apparently pro-French position of Clement V, led to the impression that the papacy was essentially a captive of the French monarchy. The papacy remained in Avignon for seventy-two years, a period of time known as the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1305-1377).

So what? What's the big deal? People and organizations move all the time.

The first major with this problem with this move was rooted in the theological and biblical basis for the primacy of the bishop of Rome in the Catholic Church. The very first bishop of Rome was St. Peter, the apostle of Christ, who was martyred in Rome and buried on the nearby Vatican Hill. The popes claim their authority as the heirs of St. Peter. This authority was derived from a passage in the Bible that was interpreted as giving primacy to Peter, and hence to the popes.

“And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter (Greek, Petros, rock, a nick name given to Simon Peter), and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

These words now adorn the inside of the dome of the Basilica of St. Peter at the Vatican. For many Europeans, the Pope derived his authority from the residence of the papacy in Rome. Since the pope no longer resided in the holy city, the office lost much of the prestige it had once enjoyed. The perception of the pope as being the captive of the French monarchy didn't do much to improve this loss of prestige, nor did the creation of several new French cardinals at Avignon.

The Papal Palace in Avignon

The second problem with this move had to do with the finances of the papacy. Running the Catholic Church was expensive; in fact it was becoming more expensive every day. Once the papacy had resided in Avignon for over 25 years, the pope decided that it was time to construct a palace worthy of the head of the Church. Unfortunately, when the Clement V moved away from Rome, he also gave up direct control of the Papal States, a collection of small states in northern Italy. This meant that he also gave up the revenues associated with control of those states. The pope needed money to pay for his palace and the day-to-day operation of the church. One answer to this financial problem came in the form of the increasing size of the papal bureaucracy. In order to compete with the increasing size and complexity of the monarchical states (especially France and England) and exert more control over the church, the papacy developed one of the most complex bureaucracies in the world. The sale of offices within this administrative system became a way for the popes of Avignon to raise the cash they desperately needed. The imposition of new church taxes also helped to increase papal revenues. The popes and the cardinals who took up residence in Avignon turned the stinky little backwater village into a thriving metropolis of grand palaces. The common people of Europe began to feel disconnected from the clergy and the institution of the Church. The inability of the Church to explain or to deal with the Black Death only increased this sense of alienation. The pope and the cardinals lived in splendor while most of Europe lived in squalor. As the 14th century progressed, Avignon became a symbol of everything that was wrong in the Catholic Church.

As the criticism of the papacy grew louder, many people began to call for the popes to return to Rome. Ironically, it was the attempt to effect that return that led to an even greater crisis for the Catholic Church, the Great Schism. This is where we will pick up in the next blog post.

Sources

Merriman, John, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present, 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 2004

Palmer, R. R., Colton, Joel, A History of the Modern World, 8th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995

Spielvogel, Jackson, Western Civilization, 6th ed., Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2006

The Hundred Years' War

The English (in Red) vs. The French (in Blue) at Crecy

The Causes
The plague that struck Europe from 1347-1351 returned to kill again every five to ten years for the next 150 years. The plague's return in western Europe was probably facilitated by the second disaster of the 14th century, the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). This multi-generational war that divided Europe and dominated the political scene for the next century had its roots in the major problem with hereditary monarchy; the last Capetian monarch of France, Charles IV, died without a male heir. This led to a major dispute over the crown that was complicated by the fact that the closest male relative of Charles IV was his nephew, the young Edward III of England, the son of Charles' sister Isabella. Edward had a very clear claim to the crown, however was overruled by the nobility of France, who decided that the succession could not be passed through the female line. They opted for Charles' cousin, Philip of Valois, who became Philip VI of France in 1328. 

This little tiff over the succession to the French crown was bad enough. But it was made even worse by the feudal system of vassalage that governed politics in the middle ages. The king of England, Edward III, was also the duke of Gascony, a territory in southwestern France near the modern border with Spain. As the duke of Gascony, Edward was supposed to pledge his loyalty as a vassal to the king of France, his cousin Philip. This arrangement had always irritated the kings of England. They viewed themselves to be peers of the kings of France, and therefore on an equal footing. This was particularly annoying to Edward because he believed he had a claim as the rightful king of France, and refused to swear loyalty to Philip as a mere subject. He refused to swear loyalty as a vassal of France. Philip responded by seizing the duchy of Gascony. Edward then declared war on Philip, calling him the "so-called king of France." (Oh snap!)

The War

I will try my best to break this century-long conflict into more manageable chunks for you. It won't be easy. The war and it's course became increasingly complicated. The fighting wasn't constant. In fact, there was a twenty-year truce declared in 1396. The devastation was, however, made worse by the changes in the attitudes brought about by the plague, and by the changes in warfare that this kind of conflict necessitated. Take a deep breath. Here we go!

Phase I: 1337-1396
The first phase of the war did not go well for the French. French noblemen were true believers in the idea of chivalry. As trained warriors they saw themselves as true fighting heroes, capable of miraculous deeds on the battlefield, almost invincible. They looked down on the common foot soldier of peasant stock. They, like all nobles of the time, believed in their superiority over the commoners. After all, God had divided society between "those who pray, those who fight, and those who work" for a reason. The mounted knight, draped in heavy armor and weapons formed the core of the French army throughout most of the conflict. The English, on the other hand, was composed of many more paid foot soldiers. They were well armed with pikes, big can openers on a pole, perfect for dealing with mounted knights and the horses they rode in on. They were also armed with the Welsh longbow, a deadly weapon with a relatively rapid rate of fire.

English Longbows rule at Crecy

After his initial efforts in France fizzled out, Edward III tried to get things going with a big invasion of Normandy, directly across the Channel from England, in 1346. This set up the first major blunder for the French. Philip's forces, sensing the opportunity for glory, attempted to crush the English army camped out on high ground outside of the town of Crécy. Instead of giving his forces time to rest and to come up with some sort of plan after the long march to Crécy, Philip sent his knights charging immediately into battle. Edward and the English were ready and waiting for them. English archers negated the numerical superiority of the French under a hail of arrows. The English knights, having learned the value of dismounting and fighting along side the foot soldiers, combined with their forces to slaughter French knights who had been knocked off of their mounts in heavy armor. The French, slow to learn and still convinced of the superiority of the mounted knight, repeated this performance 10 years later at the Battle of Poitiers in western France. This time, the English managed to capture the king of France, John II. The English forces were led at Poitiers by Edward, the prince of Wales. His policy of living off of the land, stealing anything of value, and leaving behind nothing but burned cropland and villages earned him the nickname The Black Prince. The Peace of Brétigny, signed in 1359, forced the French to pay a huge ransom for their king, and enlarged English holdings in France. It was never enforced. Companies of mercenaries, no longer in the employ of the English, roamed the French countryside burning villages, killing, raping and stealing to support themselves. The image of the noble knight as the flower of chivalry and the protector of the innocent seemed as distant a memory as that of the Caesars.

The next king of France, Charles V, spent most of his reign (1364-1380) reclaiming the territory lost by his father in the Peace of Brétigny. The English preferred to stay locked up in their fortresses while the companies plundered the countryside. Edward III simply did not have the resources to claim all of France or to enforce his claim upon the French crown. By 1377 he was dead, and the conflict passed into the hands of a new generation, the ill-fated Richard II, son of The Black Prince. Charles V died in 1380, leaving the fate of the French monarchy to his son Charles VI, also called Charles the Mad. Feeling the need to address the political and economic chaos caused by the war, and to mount a response to the threat of the Ottoman Turks, who had now made an appearance on the continent, Charles and Richard agreed to a twenty-year truce in 1396. Richard would be arrested and assassinated by a faction of nobles led by Henry of Lancaster in 1399; a victim of the aristocratic factionalism that arose as a result of the war and would continue throughout the 15th century. Henry of Lancaster became the new king of England, Henry IV. Charles VI, plagued by bouts of madness, was an increasingly weak king ruled by the competing interests and influence of the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy. The truce was broken after 19 years.

Phase II: 1415-1453
The first phase of this war had nearly ruined France and seriously damaged the power of its monarchy. The second phase, after nearly destroying the French monarchy, would severely damage the English monarchy and lead to the War of the Roses in England. When will they ever learn!?

By 1415, the political situation in France had become a complete mess. Charles VI became increasingly unable to rule, as a result of his more frequent bouts of insanity. This resulted in a civil war between the duke of Burgundy and the duke of Orléans who were fighting for influence over the king. England's new king, Henry V (Get used to the names and learn how to read the Roman numerals), used this as an opportunity to renew the war and the claim on the French crown. Henry invaded France, and once again the English crushed an army of French knights (this time wearing heavier plate armor and having to cross a muddy battlefield) at the Battle of Agincourt. Henry quickly conquered Normandy and allied himself with the duke of Burgundy to control most of northern France. Charles VI had no choice but to sign the humiliating Treaty of Troyes (1420), marrying off his daughter Catherine to the English king and recognizing Henry V as the heir to the French throne. It looked as if the English had finally won the war.

Saint Joan of Arc

After the death of Charles VI in 1322, the fate of the French now fell to Charles the Dauphin (heir to the French throne). Charles considered himself, not Henry V, the legitimate king of France. However, having been driven out of Paris and Orléans by the English and Burgundians, he was unable to back up that claim through coronation. The French caught a break in 1329 in the form of a 17-year-old girl from the Champagne region. Joan of Arc was able to convince the Dauphin, who had nothing to lose at this point, that she had been given a mission by the saints to escort him to Reims to be crowned as king of France. Joan rallied the French troops, liberated the city of Orléans, and saw the Dauphin crowned as Charles VII of France. Joan was captured by the Burgundians less than a year later, and burned at the stake by the English in 1431. The victories of the French armies under this teenaged peasant girl proved to be the turning point in the war. Aided by the introduction of cannons, which allowed them to smash through the walls of the English fortifications, and the increasing political chaos of England under Henry VI, the French finally drove the English out of France. By 1453, one-hundred sixteen years after it started, the conflict was mostly over. The French monarchy still had to take care of the Burgundians, and the troubles with the English flared up briefly in 1475 when they finally gave up all claims to lands in France.

Results & Legacy (The So What)
Okay, I just hit you with a bunch of information. So what? Why is all of this important? What impact did it really have on the greater scope of history?

The Hundred Years' War had an enormous impact on the political development of European states. In England, the war accelerated the development of Parliament as a modern political institution. Wars are expensive. Edward III had a constant need of money during his reign to pay for the mercenary companies that he employed in France. Edward needed to levy new taxes upon his subjects. In England, thanks to the Magna Carta, this meant that he had to rely upon Parliament. Parliament granted these taxes in return for a guarantee that the king would only be allowed to levy direct taxes with the consent of Parliament. They also demanded that Parliament be allowed to take a peek at the king's books to make sure that their tax money was being properly spent. The lower house of Parliament, now called the House of Commons, was able to draft petitions to the king that, if accepted, could become law.

While the English Parliament was becoming more important to English system of government, the French equivalent, the Estates General, was not. The Estates General, composed of representatives of the three feudal estates (clergy, nobles, and commons), only represented the north of the country and is representative of the decentralized nature of the French state in the medieval and early modern periods. That decentralization of political power almost destroyed the monarchy during the course of the Hundred Years' War (I'm looking at you, dukes of Orléans and Burgundy). Just like the English king, the king of France needed obscene amounts of money to pay for the soldiers (and ransom) necessary to conduct the war. This required new taxes, a hearth tax (the taille) and a tax on salt (the gabelle). In the French case, however, the Estates General was viewed not as an integral part of the government with whom the king must cooperate, but as an another obstacle to establishing royal authority. When an uprising of the Estates General led by the middle classes (3rd Estate) demanded a role in the French government similar to that of Parliament's role in the English government, King John II crushed the revolt. From that point on, French kings simply side stepped the authority of the Estates General, which was no longer a threat to their authority.

But the Estates General was not the only obstacle to the development of a centralized state in France. The noble factionalism that developed as a result of the war threatened Both of the monarchies of France and England. As the nobility lost its importance as the feudal warrior class of Europe, they found opportunities to continue as the political elite in the new bureaucracies that became necessary to manage the new taxes and armies. Many nobles chose to give the king cash in place of military service. That money was then used to hire a more dependable professional army. In order to assert their role as political leaders, nobles in France and Europe often formed political factions that fought for influence (often violently). This caused the monarchs of England and France to begin the process of centralizing power in the monarchy that would lead to the creation of the first modern nation-states in Europe. All of this was accelerated by the Hundred Years' War.

Sources

Merriman, John, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present, 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 2004

Palmer, R. R., Colton, Joel, A History of the Modern World, 8th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995

Spielvogel, Jackson, Western Civilization, 6th ed., Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2006

Decolonization & the French

1998 World Cup Champion French National Soccer Team

In recent years, the College Board has made an effort to expand its coverage of European history to include groups that don't fall into the historical mainstream. This includes more coverage of Jews in Europe, women, and, more recently, the millions of immigrants that arrived in Europe as a result of break up of European colonial empires and the labor shortages of the post-World-War-II era. These immigrants, in spite of their struggles within their new countries, have made an indellible impression upon the history and culture of Europe. The process of decolonization that took place after the Second World War seems to appear with increasing frequency in multiple-choice and essay questions, however, our textbooks don't really do great service to this important chapter of recent European history. I thought it might be a good idea to put the Cold War on the back burner for a little while and focus this blog post on a brief case study of one of the most destructive examples of decolonization; France and Algeria.

The Algerian War of 1954 to 1962 was so destructive and chaotic because of the special place that Algeria had within the French colonial empire. The French colonization of Algeria began with the occupation of the city of Algiers in 1830 (during the last days of the reign of Charles X). By 1834 the whole of Algeria became a French possession, and was rapidly settled French farmers. By 1848, the beginning of the 2nd Republic, there were well over 100,000 French settlers living in Algeria and the country was declared an integral part of France and politically integrated within the rest of the Republic. The late nineteenth century in Algeria saw increasing favoritism shown toward Algerians of European descent, known as pied-noirs, over the native Arab population of the territory. French citizenship was offered to pied-noirs and Jews, but not to Berbers or Arabs. French law allowed European settlers to purchase land that had been occupied by Arab farmers for centuries. By the end of the 19th century Europeans, who constituted aproximately 2 percent of the Algerian population, controled almost one third of the farmland in Algeria. This discrimination continued into the 20th century. Despite the contribution of almost 200,000 Algerian workers to the French war effort from 1914 to 1918, the French National Assembly rejected an Algerian Charter granting citizenship to Muslim Algerians who fought in the Great War.

After the Second World War, the cause of independence and self-determination took on a new importance in the colonial world. This war had been fought in the name of self-determination for the nations that had been conquered by the Axis powers from 1939 to 1945. The colonies of the European powers expected the same in return for their service and support during the war. The world after World War II was very different from the world in 1939. In place of the great European powers that dominated the world before the war were the two super powers of the United States and the Soviet Union. In this two-power world, the French saw themselves as a third great power. After all, they were the country of great monarchs, the Enlightenment, beautiful works of art. This attitude was reflected in their continued indifference to the demands of Algerian Muslims, who continued to demand equal treatment under the law after 1945. Downsizing their colonial empire to match the financial and political realities of the post-war world would come at a high price for the French. It would eventually lead to the downfall of the 4th Republic and a reorganization of the government.

The political failings of the 4th Republic were only exacerbated by the difficulties of maintaining a colonial empire in the 1950s. The unwillingness of the French government to make any concessions to the colonies only served to increase resistance to French imperialism around the world. In May of 1954, following the bloody Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the French began the withdrawal from Vietnam (French Indochina). In November of the same year, the FLN (Front de Liberation Nationale), the Algerian revolutionary group, launched attacks across Algeria and presented their demands and grievances to the the National Assembly, beginning a war that would last for 8 years and leave deep scars in the French political and economic landscape. The FLN launched a campaign of terror against Pied-noirs and Colons (French-Algerian farmers) throughout the 1950s, giving them the choice of "the suitcase or the coffin" (What a choice!). By 1958, a stalemate developed in the Algerian War that lead the French government to take desperate measures. French soldiers conducted house-to-house raids in Algeria that lead to the arrest and torture of many prisoners (water torture, electric shock, and mock drownings). Despite these drastic measures, the stalemate continued and the French government, without a strong executive, was hopelessly mired in debate without any solutions being offered. In 1958 they called for a return of Charles De Gaulle and gave him the power to restructure the French government in the hopes of ending the Algerian War.

In spite of his desires to see France retain her status as a world power, De Gaulle understood that the War in Algeria could not result in the continued political domination of France. Using the new powers granted to the President of the 5th Republic, De Gaulle announce plans to turn the task of governing Algeria over to the Algerians, essentially ending almost 130 years of direct rule from France. This plan for Algerian independence had to overcome the resistance of Pied-noirs and an attempted coup and campaign of terror by the OAS (Organisation de l'Armee Secrete), a counter-revolutionary group led by four French generals. A referrendum in April of 1962 secured the approval of the French people for De Gaulle's Evian Accords granting independence with French cooperation for Algeria. France very quickly became the destination for thousands of Pied-noirs and pro-French Algerians fleeing reprisals in Algeria. France was unprepared for this surge of immigration (almost one million people).

The echos of the Algerian War and decolonization can be heard in France today. In 2005, following the deaths of two North African teenagers in an incident with police, the northeastern suburbs of Paris erupted in violence. The riots in these mostly North African neighborhoods were fueled by the continuing problems of unemployment of young North Africans and the persistent poverty in their communities, and by claims of unacknowledged discrimination in the job market in France. The French government considers all French citizens to be French, and therefore equal under the law, and does not officially distinguish Algerian-French, or any other minority from the general population. Many minority groups in France claim that this allows discrimination in the job market to go unnoticed by the French government. This is an issue that France and many other European countries that invited the immigration of millions of "Guest Workers" will have to face as their populations continue to diversify.

 

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The Second World War and the AP Exam

American tanks enter Nürnberg in 1945

With as much time as we dedicate to World War II in our culture (Band of Brothers, Valkyrie, and every second not dedicated to Ice Road Truckers and Pawn Stars on the History Channel), you would think that it would be a bigger part of the AP European History exam. The truth is that it really hasn't ever loomed large as its own subject on the exam. Very few multiple-choice questions are dedicated solely to the war, and absolutely no essay questions have been designed around it. For us, to be honest, the topic might be too easy. After all, this is "our war," the one of which we are proudest, and the one we cannot stop reliving through film, television, and literature. The reality of the situation for a survey course like AP Euro is that the Second World War is the final chapter in a much bigger series of events that serves as the opening act of the twentieth century. UCLA's Eugen Weber referred to this period as a "second Thirty Years' War" that began with the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 and ended in 1945 with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just as the first Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) had its various phases, and the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) was made up a series of wars and relatively peaceful interludes, this second Thirty Year's War was marked by a first phase that finally ended the remaning vestiges of the Ancien Regime, a relatively peaceful interlude that saw Europe try to piece itself together in a new order, and a final catastrophic phase that saw the balance of power obliterated and ended European hegemony in the world.

Many of the causes of the Second World War can be traced back to the settlements made during the Versailles Peace Conference and the economic shockwaves caused by the end of the war in 1918. Many Germans were angry with the conditions of peace imposed upon them at Versailles. The felt that the terms of the treaty were harsh. The forced demilitarization of the Rhineland made many Germans feel vulnerable, at the mercy of a vengeful France. These feelings were amplified by the French occupation of the Ruhr Valley from 1923 to 1925. This occupation was the result of another term of the Versailles Treaty requiring the Germans to accept full responsibility for the Great War and to make full reparations for the damages and loss of life that resulted from the war. These reparations, totaling 132 marks (close to $33 billion in 1921), seemed extremely high and nearly impossible to pay to most Germans. The hyperinflation caused by the Weimar government in response to the French occupation ($1 = 4 trillion DM!) may have allowed German industrialists to wipe clean their foreign debts, but it absolutely destroyed the life savings of the German middle classes. The misery caused by the Great Depression in the years before the rise of the Nazi Party (1929-1932), when unemployment in Germany may have been as high as 35%, compounded the anger of the middle classes toward the democratic Weimar Republic. Adolf Hitler used this middle class anger to drive a wedge between the Weimar government and the middle classes, and to increase his own popularity by promising a recovery under National Socialism. He created a vision in which Germany was a weak, disarmed country surrouned by stronger enemies on every side. In this way, he gained the support of the German people in repudiating the Treaty of Versailles, rebuilding the German armed forces, and forcing territorial concessions from neigboring states (Austria & Czechoslovakia in 1938, Poland in 1939).

These are the kinds of connections that you should be able to make on the AP Exam in May. You should be able to identify the long-term causes of WW II, and the consequences of this new type of warfare that made the civilian populations that supported the armies of the warring nations the targets of aerial bombardments. Take a look at this sample multiple-choice question:

Which of the following resulted from the close relationship between science and government in industrialized nations during the Second World War?

(A) The pace of discovery and invention noticeably slowed.

(B) Specialization decreased.

(C) Much scientific research became financially dependent on military funding.

(D) Fewer students were interested in scientific training.

(E) The benefits of scientific advances were no longer questioned.

Notice this question, like most questions on the AP Exam, is conceptual in nature. It is not asking you to show specific knowledge, like who invented the atomic bomb. It is asking you to show your understanding of the consequences of a change in the role of governments that occured during the Second World War. So, if we think about this relationship between science and government in relation to the greatest scientific project of the war, the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb), we should be able to find the answer. First, let's eliminate the answer choices that we know to be incorrect. Answer choices A and C should be eliminated. After all, World War II came in the middle of the "heroic age of physics," when the pace of scientific education and discovery were on the rise. Answer choice B should also be eliminated. Specialization in industry and in science increased dramatically after the advent of the Second Industrial Revolution (Think of the assembly line). So, that leaves us with answer choices C and E. If we relate answer choice E to the horror and disgust that the world felt in the aftermath of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then we are left with answer choice C. Scientific programs like the Manhattan Project and Hitler's Wunderwaffen (Wonder Weapons) were huge, and secret, military programs that stand as examples of the dependency of scientific research upon military funding during the war.

German V-1 Flying Bomb

Remember, the details make great concrete details in essays, but it's the big-picture ideas that will help you to construct stronger arguments and to understand the multiple-choice questions.

 

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