AP European History — Unit 9: Globalization and Greater Interconnection (c.1914–present)

What AP European History Unit 9 covers

The College Board Course and Exam Description breaks Unit 9 into 5 topics:

1. 9.1 Contextualizing Globalization
2. 9.2 Decolonization
3. 9.3 European Supra-National Organizations
4. 9.4 Social and Environmental Developments
5. 9.5 Causation in Globalization

AP European History Unit 9 practice questions

• The Big Three agree at wartime conferences that Eastern Europe will hold free elections. Stalin instead installs communist governments. What conflict does this broken promise ignite?

  The Cold War — a decades-long West-versus-East standoff. Mutual distrust over Eastern Europe sparked it, broken free-election promises and all.

• A line is drawn across Europe — not on any map, but in propaganda, alliances, and barbed wire. The West has a name for it. What is it?

  The Iron Curtain — the East-West Cold War divide. It separated Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe from the democratic West.

• The US pumps $13 billion into Western Europe after 1947. Trace the effect beyond rebuilt roads — what cultural shift does the prosperity trigger?

  The Marshall Plan fueled an economic miracle in the West. Rising disposable income made consumerism central to the culture.

• Marshall Plan money came with a string attached: France couldn't use it to rearm against Germany. What unexpected long-term institution did that condition seed?

  Spending aid cooperatively pushed states toward joint economies. That requirement planted the seeds of European integration.

• Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan — none of these are in Europe, yet they define the Cold War. What did the superpowers avoid by fighting there instead?

  A direct, catastrophic nuclear war between the US and USSR. They fought proxy wars on a global stage to avoid it.

• A communist civil war breaks out in Greece in the late 1940s. The US decides this is where the line gets drawn. What policy does this commitment launch?

  The doctrine of containment — stopping communism's spread. The US first tested it by funding anti-communist forces in Greece.

• NATO and the Warsaw Pact look like mirror images. So do the Marshall Plan and COMECON. What single difference made the Eastern versions fail to deliver prosperity?

  The Soviet East ran on central planning; the West on markets. Planning bred inefficiency and stagnation, not the West's growth.

• The US helps build the IMF, World Bank, and GATT after the war. Everyone calls them recovery tools — but what larger system were they really constructing?

  A US-led world monetary and trade system for the West. The IMF, World Bank, and GATT stabilized currencies and lowered tariffs.

+ 22 more AP European History cards in the app.

Key terms in Unit 9

These 12 terms show up in the Unit 9 cards. Each one links to its definition in the AP European History key-term reference.

• de-Stalinization
• decolonization
• ethnic cleansing
• European Coal and Steel Community
• globalization
• Green parties
• guest workers
• Hungarian Revolt
• Maastricht Treaty
• Margaret Thatcher
• self-determination
• Simone de Beauvoir