AP European History — Unit 8: Cold War and Contemporary Europe (c.1914–present)
Practice questions, answers, and key terms for Unit 8, aligned to the College Board CED.
Exam weighting: Unit 8 is 5% of the AP European History exam.
What AP European History Unit 8 covers
The College Board Course and Exam Description breaks Unit 8 into 8 topics:
- 8.1 Contextualizing Cold War and Contemporary Europe
- 8.2 Rebuilding Europe
- 8.3 Western and Eastern Europe
- 8.4 The Cold War
- 8.5 Postwar Culture
- 8.6 Technology
- 8.7 The Fall of Communism
- 8.8 Causation in Cold War and Contemporary Europe
AP European History Unit 8 practice questions
Total war and political instability dominate the first half of the 20th century. By the second half, the same continent is locked into a two-camp standoff. What political order replaced the chaos?
A polarized Cold War state order of two rival blocs facing off. It later gave way to efforts at transnational union.
Democracy, communism, and fascism all surge across interwar Europe at once. They look like three random political fads — but they're arguing about the exact same question. What is it?
How much power the state holds over the individual. Each ideology answered it differently after the economic collapse.
A single assassination in Sarajevo sets off the deadliest war in history to that point. But assassinations of European leaders had been contained before. What turned this one into a world war?
Long-term forces — militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism. They turned a regional Balkan dispute into a continental war.
Generals plan for swift cavalry charges and quick victories. Instead, armies dig in and barely move for years. Which new technologies wrecked the old playbook?
The machine gun and barbed wire made attacks suicidal. They produced the stalemate of trench warfare.
The war drags into stalemate, states demand total mobilization at home, and civilians ration and sacrifice for a fight that won't end. Trace the first ripple inside the belligerent nations.
Protest, insurrection, and revolution across the belligerents. Examples include the Russian Revolution and Ireland's Easter Rebellion.
Most students credit WWII with ending European dominance. But the global balance had already tipped earlier — the U.S. rose and old empires fell by 1918. Which war actually did it?
World War I shifted global power away from Europe. The U.S. rose, European empires fell, and the war globalized.
Russia entered 1914 with political stagnation, social inequality, half-finished industrialization, and food shortages already festering. What did WWI do to those problems?
It exacerbated all of them, exposing Russia's weakness. The strain built mass support for revolutionary change.
In March 1917, food-protesting workers force the tsar out — but the Provisional Government that replaces him doesn't last either. What hollowed it out and opened the door for Lenin?
Worker and military insurrections backed by the Soviets. The Provisional Government couldn't control them, enabling the Bolsheviks.
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Key terms in Unit 8
These 12 terms show up in the Unit 8 cards. Each one links to its definition in the AP European History key-term reference.
Drill all of Unit 8 with spaced repetition
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