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The assassination of Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Black Hand secret society, is cited as the catalyst of World War I. However, the initial purpose of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces. The movement the conspirators' motives paralleled later became known as Young Bosnia.
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Exactly one month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, World War I begins.
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Vladimir Lenin seized control of Russia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.
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On the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the Great War came to a halt. Earlier that morning, Germany, overwhelmed and exhausted, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies. Later, the Treaty of Versailles, signed June 28, 1919, ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers.
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The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed by a treaty signed by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and modern-day Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The brand new Communist Party, led by Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, took control of the government.
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Benito Mussolini was elected to the Italian parliament as the leader of the National Fascist Party by 1921. On January 3, 1925, he asserted his right to supreme power and became the dictator of Italy in a speech to parliament. Afterward, members of a Fascist paramilitary group, known as Blackshirts, marched on Rome and demanded the king install Mussolini as Prime Minister, which he subsequently did.
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The Enabling Act of 1933, passed after Adolf Hitler became Prime Minister, allowed him to constitutionally exercise dictatorial power without facing legal resistance.
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The Nuremberg Laws were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany by the Reichstag. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour forbade marriages between Germans and people of Jewish descent. The Reich Citizenship Law decreed that only people of German blood were eligible to be Reich citizens.
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Nazis in Germany torched synagogues; vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses; and killed close to 100 Jews. Afterward, some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps.
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The U.S. was motivated to join World War II after the Bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.
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The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party. Its purpose was to convert the country from an agrarian economy to a communist society.
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The war began as a series of rebellions against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979.
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