World History MCQs

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General Franco established dictatorship in Spain with the support of Hitler and Mussolini. He was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War.

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The 1973 Arab-Israeli War, also known as Yom Kippur War or Ramadan War or October War, was fought from 6 October to 25 October 1973, by a coalition of Arab countries led by Egypt and Syria against Israel. The location of the war was the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights. The USA supported the Israeli side and the then USSR supported Egyptian and Syrian side. The result of this war was a military victory for Israel.

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Denshawai Incident of 1906 was a dispute between the British military officers, the then colonial power of Egypt, and locals of Denshawai village of Egypt. Britishers unleashed severe consequences to retaliate against the incident on the Egyptian locals, which marked the turning point for the Egyptians to turn against the British presence in their country. Denshway Museum was constructed to commemorate the incident. This incident provoked Egyptian nationalist sentiment against British occupation.

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In its early period, Estonia was under the colonial subjugation of Germans, Danes, Swedes, Poles and Russians. In 19th and early 20th centuries, Estonia witnessed a movement promoting and propagating “Estonian National Awakening” in which Estonians started acknowledging themselves as a nation deserving the right to govern themselves. This lead to the Estonian War of Independence from 1918 to 1920 which lead to the Estonian victory and the signing of the Tartu Peace Treaty, finally proclaiming the independence of Estonia from Russia. After independence, initially, Estonia followed a democratic political system which got culminated into an authoritarian rule post-Great Depression period from 1934 to 1940. This period was known as the Era of Silence. During World War II from 1939 to 1945, Estonia was under German and Soviet Union occupation, which finally ended with Soviet Union subjugation of Estonia through a puppet government, so as to continue the de jure status of Estonia. Annoyed with the subjugation of Soviet Rule, Estonians started “Singing Revolution” from 1987 to 1991 seeking the restoration of independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from Soviet Rule. This lead to the formal restoration of independence of Estonia from the Soviet Union in 1991.

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Finlandization is a general term used to denote the foreign subjugation of a smaller country by another powerful country. It is a process by which one powerful country makes a smaller neighboring country abide by the farmer’s foreign policy rules while allowing it to keep its nominal independence and its own political system. The term means “to become like Finland”, referring to the influence of the Soviet Union on Finland’s policies during the Cold War.

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The Potsdam Conference was held in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, represented respectively by Premier Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman. They gathered to decide how to administer Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier on the 8th of May (Victory in Europe Day). The goals of the conference also included the establishment of the postwar order, peace treaty issues, and countering the effects of the war.

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Post-World War II reorganization of Germany and Europe was the subject-matter/agenda of the “Yalta Conference”. The Yalta Conference, also known as the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union to discuss the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe. The three states were represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier Joseph Stalin, respectively. The conference was held near Yalta in Crimea, Soviet Union. The aim of the conference was to shape a post-war peace that represented not just a collective security order but a plan to give self-determination to the liberated peoples of post-Nazi Europe. The meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe.

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The Massacre of Kondomari was an execution of male civilians from the village of Kondomari in Crete, Greece, by an ad hoc firing squad consisting of German paratroopers on 2 June 1941 during World War II. The shooting was the first of a series of reprisals in Crete. It was orchestrated by Generaloberst Kurt Student, in retaliation for the participation of Cretans in the Battle of Crete which had ended with the surrender of the island two days earlier. The massacre was photographed by Franz-Peter Weixler, a German army war propaganda correspondent, whose negatives were discovered 39 years later in the Federal German archives by a Greek journalist.

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The 1954 Guatemalan coup d’etat, code-named Operation PBSuccess, was a covert operation carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–1954. It installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala.

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The 1953 Iranian coup d’etat is also known as the “28 Mordad coup d’etat”. The 1953 Iranian coup d’etat, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup d’etat, was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on 19 August 1953. It was orchestrated by the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project or “Operation Ajax”) and the United Kingdom (under the name “Operation Boot”).