AP® European History review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/euro/units/8/8-11)
Unit 8 · Topic 8.11
8.11 Continuity and Changes in an Age of Global Conflict
This wrap-up topic asks you to build an argument about what changed and what stayed the same in Europe between 1914 and 1945. Strong answers use specific evidence and show complexity, for example by explaining both a change and a continuity, or by qualifying a claim with evidence from more than one country.
Key terms
- continuity and change
- complexity
- total war
- corroborate
- qualify
The skill: continuity and change
A continuity-and-change argument explains how something developed over a period of time: what was different at the end compared with the beginning, what stayed the same, and why. The key word is why. Listing two snapshots is description; explaining what drove the change is analysis.
Complexity in this skill often comes from corroborating, qualifying or modifying a claim. To corroborate is to add evidence that supports it; to qualify is to show its limits (for example, a change happened in Germany but not in Britain); to modify is to adjust the claim in light of new evidence.
Big changes, 1914–1945
- The power of the state: total war in 1914–1918 and again after 1939 brought conscription, rationing, censorship, propaganda and economic planning, and dictatorships kept and expanded these tools in peacetime.
- The map: four empires collapsed in 1917–1918, and new nation-states appeared in central and eastern Europe.
- Political systems: liberal democracy spread after 1918, then gave way to fascist and authoritarian rule across much of the continent by 1939, while the Soviet Union created a communist state.
- Women's roles: wartime work and new voting rights in many countries after 1918.
- Europe's global position: the United States and the Soviet Union rose; European empires were weakened and colonized peoples demanded self-determination.
- Ideas: faith in progress gave way to disillusionment, and physics replaced Newtonian certainty with relativity and quantum uncertainty.
Important continuities
- Nationalism remained the most powerful political force, from Balkan nationalism in 1914 to Nazi expansionism.
- Anti-Semitism continued from the 1890s (the Dreyfus affair, Lueger's Vienna) and became the core of Nazi genocide.
- Great-power rivalry over the balance of power, especially over Germany's place in Europe, continued from 1914 to 1939.
- Empire: Britain and France still held, and in the Middle East expanded, their empires through the mandates.
Using the period in essays
Long essay prompts often span both world wars or compare them. Plan a thesis that names the change, its cause and a limit. For example, you might argue that total war expanded state power in all belligerents, but that democracies such as Britain largely gave up these powers after each war, while dictatorships made them permanent.
Another strong option is to compare the two postwar settlements. After 1918 the victors punished Germany and the United States pulled back from Europe; after 1945 the United States stayed, and the Western powers helped rebuild West Germany as a partner. Explaining why the second settlement lasted longer than the first is a good change-over-time argument that leads into Unit 9.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
A continuity and change thesis
Evaluate the extent to which the role of the state in European society changed between 1914 and 1945. Write a thesis and outline the evidence.
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- Step 1: Make a claim that addresses extent: the state's role expanded greatly, but how much it lasted depended on the political system.
- Step 2: Evidence of change in wartime: conscription, Britain's Defence of the Realm Act (1914), rationing, propaganda, state direction of industry in Germany.
- Step 3: Evidence of change in peacetime dictatorships: Stalin's Five-Year Plans, the Nazi Gestapo and propaganda ministry, Mussolini's corporate state.
- Step 4: Qualify with continuity: democracies like Britain and France dismantled much wartime control after 1918, and private property and markets survived outside the Soviet Union.
Answer: Thesis: Between 1914 and 1945, total war and dictatorship greatly expanded the state's control over European society, but the change was most lasting in authoritarian states, while democracies like Britain largely returned to limited government after 1918. Evidence: wartime conscription, rationing and Britain's Defence of the Realm Act; Stalin's Five-Year Plans and collectivization; the Nazi Gestapo and Goebbels's propaganda ministry; and, as a qualification, Britain's and France's dismantling of wartime economic controls in the 1920s.
- Example 2
Qualifying a claim
A historian claims that World War I permanently transformed women's lives in Europe. Write two sentences that qualify this claim.
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- Step 1: Acknowledge the part of the claim that is supported: women's wartime work and new voting rights.
- Step 2: Add evidence that limits it: women pushed out of jobs after 1918; France's delay in suffrage; Nazi policy encouraging women to stay home.
- Step 3: Conclude with a more precise claim.
Answer: World War I did bring lasting gains for many women, such as the vote in Britain (1918, for women over 30) and Germany (1918–1919). However, many women lost their industrial jobs when soldiers returned, French women could not vote until 1944, and the Nazi regime later pushed German women back toward the home, so the war's effects were real but uneven and reversible.
Common mistakes
- Describing the situation in 1914 and in 1945 without explaining what caused the change.
- Treating all of Europe the same. Show differences between democracies, fascist states and the Soviet Union.
- Forgetting continuities. A strong argument shows what lasted as well as what changed.
On the exam
- For continuity-and-change essays, write a thesis that states the direction of change, its main cause and a limit or continuity.
- Corroborating or qualifying with evidence from a different country is a reliable way to earn the complexity point.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
4 questions on 8.11 Continuity and Changes in an Age of Global Conflict. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Which of the following best describes a change in the role of European governments between 1914 and 1945?
Which of the following represents a continuity between the First and Second World Wars?
Compared with the settlement after World War I, the Allies' treatment of Germany in 1945 differed mainly in that the Allies
Historian A: Appeasement was a disastrous mistake. Each time Britain and France gave way, in the Rhineland in 1936, over Austria and at Munich in 1938, Hitler concluded that the democracies would never fight, and his demands grew. By sacrificing Czechoslovakia, with its fortified frontier and strong arms industry, the Western powers handed Germany a strategic prize and convinced Stalin that they could not be trusted.
Historian B: Appeasement made sense to people at the time. Britain and France were still scarred by the losses of the First World War, voters overwhelmingly wanted peace, and many believed Germany had been treated too harshly at Versailles. British military chiefs warned that the country was not ready for war in 1938. The year gained at Munich allowed Britain to build the fighter planes and radar stations that later won the Battle of Britain.
Passages written for this practice set, summarizing two common historical interpretations.
Both historians would most likely agree that
0 of 4 answered