Research paper topic ideas:



Research paper topic ideas:

1. How did Benito Mussolini become a fascist, after a long youth as a socialist intellectual?

2. How and why did T.E. Lawrence, a.k.a. “Lawrence of Arabia,” conduct guerrilla war against the Ottomans in the Arabian peninsula?

3. How did the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia derail Russia’s war effort in the Great War?

4. How and why did the Japanese set up a puppet emperor in Manchuria during the 1930s?

5. What technological and strategic developments that allowed Germany to employ U-boats during the Great War? Why was this important to the outcome of the war?

6. What significance did Ferdinand Foch’s philosophy of war have on French performance in WWI?

7. How and why did the Spanish Civil War become a proxy fight between fascism and communism?

8. Explore the impact of war on the development of a prominent artist, intellectual, or artistic movement, including but not limited to the following: Heinrich Boll, Gunter Grass, Pablo Picasso, Ernst Junger, John Dos Passos, Siegfried Sassoon, John Singer Sargent, Isaac Rosenberg, Italian Futurism, German Abstract Expressionism, Soviet Realism.

9. Explore the development of any significant military operation, such as Barbarossa, Overlord, the siege of Leningrad, the invasion of Italy, the Gallipoli campaign, the Battle of Midway, the siege of Verdun, and so on.

10. What were the structural weaknesses of the inter-war Weimar Republic in Germany? How did these weaknesses lead to Hitler’s rise to power?

11. How did Hitler manipulate the democratic process to seize power in Germany?

12. What were the goals of Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? Were they entirely self-serving?

13. What caused the infamous “Rape of Nanking?”

14. Why and how did Stalin purge the top military and political leaders of the Soviet Union in the lead-up to World War II? What were the effects of this purge?

15. Why did the Nazi regime divert so many resources to perpetrate the slaughter of Jews, communists, and other targeted groups? How did they accomplish this goal?

16. Why did the United States delay so long before entering either war? What were the domestic issues that kept the U.S. out of either war?

17. What technological advances were made during WWI? … WWII? How did they transform life after the war?

18. What was life like for an average soldier? How about for a submarine sailor in WWI? Or a bomber pilot in WWII? Or a foot soldier in France in WWI? Or any other kind of fighter.

19. What happened during Germany’s 1918 revolution? How was it crushed?

20. How did Leninism and Stalinism evolve from Marxism? What do they have in common? How are they distinct?

21. How did Japan’s imperial political culture contribute to its aggressive military drive in the 1930s? How did that culture help and hurt Japan during WWII?

22. How was the Versailles Treaty negotiated at the end of the Great War? How did it lead to the Second World War?

23. Explore a major military technological development during either war for its significance, including but not limited to radar, the atomic bomb, aircraft carriers, submarines, poison gas, airplanes, and so on.

24. How did the Nazis occupy France? What was the role of the “Vichy” government?

25. What other sympathetic regimes did the Nazis establish in occupied territories and how was their role in the war significant?

26. Why and how did Stalin persecute various ethnic groups in the build-up to WWII? What were the effects of these policies?

27. Celebrities in the war, patriotism or propaganda?

28. ??????? What else do you find interesting? There’s MUCH more out there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download