I. Unit Framing: One Long War, Not Two

The NYS curriculum titles this unit "Unresolved Global Conflict" for a specific reason. The framework wants Maria to see the period from 1914 to 1945 as a single unresolved struggle rather than two separate world wars with a quiet pause between them. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 did not really end the First World War; it suspended it on terms that guaranteed the Second. The interwar period was less a peace than an armed truce, complicated by the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, and the rise of totalitarian regimes. Maria should treat the entire thirty-one years as a single chain of cause and effect.

This is the most content-dense unit in the course. It covers the First World War, the Russian Revolution, the Treaty of Versailles, the Weimar Republic, the rise of fascism in Italy, the rise of Nazism in Germany, the Stalinist transformation of the Soviet Union, the rise of militarist Japan, the Great Depression, the failure of appeasement, the Second World War in both European and Pacific theaters, the Holocaust, and the atomic bombs. The Regents tests this material heavily and pairs it constantly with the Enduring Issues essay. Maria should plan to spend more time here than on any single previous unit.

Strategic insight: If Maria can hold one big idea in mind throughout this unit, it should be this: every major event in 1919-1945 was caused, at least in part, by the unresolved consequences of WWI. The Treaty of Versailles humiliated Germany. The League of Nations failed. The Russian Revolution produced a hostile communist state. The Great Depression destroyed faith in liberal democracy and capitalism in many countries. These accumulated failures produced the totalitarian regimes that started WWII. The chain is tight and the Regents tests it directly.

Essential question for this unit: How did the unresolved conflicts of WWI produce the rise of totalitarian regimes, the Holocaust, and a second world war that finally reshaped the global order?