Course aims:

Knowing and understanding of fundamental ideas concerning concepts specific to the World History of the Twentieth Century.
Integration in a coherent structure of main theorizations and value landmarks recognised in the World History of the Twentieth Century as well as in connected domains.
A correct using of fundamental ideas concerning the concepts specific to the twentieth century.

Course Entry Requirements:

World Modern History

Course contents:

1. The World at the Beginning of the 20th Century. A general presentation of the 20th century. 2. World War I (1914-1918). How it began. Battles. Weaponry. Consequences. 3. Germany and the interwar period. From Democracy to totalitarianism. The Versailles Treaty and its consequences. 4. The Soviet Union during the interwar years. The Russian revolution. The civil war. 5. The United States of America. Searching for the old good days. The Coming of the Great Depression. The First New Deal. The Second New Deal. 6. Italy and Spain during the interwar years. B. Mussolini and his road to power. The defining characteristics of fascism. The Italian foreign policy. The Spanish civil war (1936-1939). 7. Japan and China in the first half of the 20th century. The Japanese political regime. Japan’s military aggression in East-Asia (1931-1937). The Emergence of Communist Party of China and Gomindan. The civil war 1946-1949. 8. World War II. The Origins of the Second World War. Military operations. The Teheran Conference. The Yalta Conference. The Potsdam Conference. 9. European Union. Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community. Treaties of Rome – EEC and EURATOM treaties. Treaty on European Union – Maastricht Treaty. Treaty of Lisbon. Institutions and bodies. 10. The Cold War. 11. East-Central Europe after World War II. Treaty of Warsaw. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. The Hungarian revolution. The Brezhnev doctrine. 12. The Soviet Union after World War II. Leonid Brezhnev and Nikita Khrushchev. Mikhail Gorbachev and his policies. The collapse of USSR. 13. USA and Western Europe after World War II. The European Social Economy. Changing Class Structure. Youth and Counterculture. 14. World at the end of 20th century.

Teaching methods:

Lecture, conversation, exemplification.

Learning outcomes:

Retrieval of written sources on the historical past; Establishing historical facts on the basis of historical sources and outside of these; Concrete production of new historical knowledge on the basis of deeper insights within the study of an epoch and/or of a medium complexity historical subject.

Learning outcomes verification and assessment criteria:

Oral exam – 50%; Research paper – 25%; Seminar activities – 25%.

Recommended reading:

Calvocoressi, Peter, World Politics since 1945, Taylor & Francis, London, 2009, 620.
Evans, Richard J.,, The Coming of the Third Reich, The Penguin Press, New York, 2004, 480.
Judt, Tony, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, William Heinemann, London, 2005, 878.