Western Front
A line of trenches and fortifications in World War I that stretched without a break from Switzerland to the North Sea. Scene of most of the fighting between Germany, on the one hand, and France and Britain, on the other
Faisal I
1885-1933; Arab prince, leader of the Arab Revolt in World War I. The British made him king of Iraq in 1921, and he reigned under British protection until 1933
Theodore Herzl
1860-1904; Austrian journalist and founder of the Zionist movement urging the creation of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine
Balfour Declaration
Statement issued by Britain's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in 1917 favoring the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine
Bolsheviks
Radical Marxist political party founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1903. Under Lenin's leadership, the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917 during the Russian Revolution
Vladimir Lenin
1870-1924; Leader of the Bolshevik (later Communist) Party. He lived in exile in Switzerland until 1917, then returned to Russia to lead the Bolsheviks to victory during the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed
Woodrow Wilson
1856-1924; President of the United States (1913-1921) and the leading figure at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. He was unable to persuade the U.S. Congress to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or join the League of Nations
League of Nations
International organization founded in 1919 to promote world peace and cooperation but greatly weakened by the refusal of the United States to join. It proved ineffectual in stopping aggression by Italy, Japan, and Germany in the 1930s, and was superseded
Treaty of Versailles
1919; The treaty imposed on Germany by France, Great Britain, the United States, and other Allied Powers after World War I. It demanded that Germany dismantle its military and give up some lands to Poland. It was resented by many Germans
New Economic Policy
Policy proclaimed by Vladimir Lenin in 1924 to encourage the revival of the Soviet economy by allowing small private enterprises. Joseph Stalin ended the N.E.P. in 1928 and replaced it with a series of Five-Year Plans
Sun Yat-sen
1867-1925; Chinese nationalist revolutionary, founder and leader of the Guomindang until his death. He attempted to create a liberal democratic political movement in China but was thwarted by military leaders
Yuan Shikai
1859-1916; Chinese general and first president of the Chinese Republic (1912-1916). He stood in the way of the democratic movement led by Sun Yat-sen
Guomindang
Nationalist political party founded on democratic principles by Sun Yat-sen in 1912. After 1925, the party was headed by Chiang Kai-shek, who turned it into an increasingly authoritarian movement
Chiang Kai-shek
1886-1975; Chinese military and political leader. Succeeded Sun Yat-sen as head of the Guomindang in 1923; headed the Chinese government from 1928-1948; fought against the Chinese Communists and Japanese invaders. After 1949 he headed the Chinese national
mandate system
Allocation of former German colonies and Ottoman possessions to the victorious powers after World War I, to be administered under the League of Nations supervision
Margaret Sanger
1883-1966; American nurse and author; pioneer in the movement for family planning; organized conferences and established birth control clinics
Max Planck
1858-1947; German physicist who developed quantum theory and was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1918
Albert Einstein
1879-1955; German physicist who developed the theory of relativity, which states that time, space, and mass are relative to each other and not fixed
Wilbur and Orville Wright
1867-1912, 1871-1948; American bicycle mechanics; the first to build and fly an airplane, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, December 7, 1903