History of 20th Century Totalitarianism. This course focuses on the analysis of totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, especially those based in Communist and Nazi ideology, including nineteenth-century developments of Marxism and the precursors to Nazi’s antisemitic persecution of the Jewish people. Students will also explore the Bolshevik Revolution, its assault on private property and establishment of a dictatorial one-party state. From these studies, students will develop a deeper understanding of the importance of ethical behavior and personal dignity.

1. (1) Practice Standards.
2. (A) Practice Standard 1. The student will apply critical thinking skills to address authentic civic issues.
3. (i) Demonstrate an understanding of the virtue of civil discourse to analyze and address real-world problems.
4. (I) Evaluate the impact of perspectives, civil discourse, and democratic principles on addressing civic issues.
5. (II) Engage in a range of deliberative and democratic processes to develop strategies to address authentic, real-world problems in community and out-of-school contexts.
6. (III) Gather and evaluate information regarding complex problems, assessing individual and collective actions taken to address them.
7. (ii) Develop practices which demonstrate an understanding that social studies involves the evaluation of evidence.
8. (I) Develop, investigate, and evaluate plausible answers to essential questions that reflect enduring understandings across time, real world circumstances, and social studies disciplines.
9. (II) Evaluate points of agreement and disagreement from reliable information and expert interpretations used to answer supporting questions related to content knowledge.
10. (III) Reinforce critical thinking by evaluating and challenging ideas and assumptions; analyzing and explaining inconsistencies in reasoning.
11. (IV) Demonstrate understanding of content through the development of self-driven inquiries and the completion of multi-staged, authentic tasks and assessments.
12. (B) Practice Standard 2. The student will use interdisciplinary tools to acquire, apply, and evaluate content understanding of the four strands of social studies.
13. (i) Demonstrate an understanding of the principles of government, the benefits of democratic systems, and their responsibilities as citizens.
14. (I) Evaluate various significant documents from the United States and other nations to compare civic virtues and principles of political systems.
15. (II) Evaluate the impact of the structure and powers exercised by governmental systems on public policy, using historical and contemporary examples.
16. (III) Analyze the impact of constitutions, laws, treaties, and international agreements, by comparing how various governmental powers and responsibilities have changed over time.
17. (ii) Develop skills which demonstrate an understanding of historical events and the people who shaped our history.
18. (I) Gather and evaluate the usefulness of various formats of evidence for specific inquiry, analyzing the broader historical context, and assessing potential bias and credibility of sources.
19. (II) Analyze complex and interacting factors that influence multiple perspectives during different historical eras and contemporary events.
20. (III) Evaluate how multiple, complex events are shaped by unique circumstances of time and place; construct and interpret parallel timelines.
21. (iii) Demonstrate a mastery of geographic concepts and the use of geographic tools to understand the impact of geography on the past and present.
22. (I) Actively engage in asking and answering geographic questions by acquiring, organizing, and analyzing multiple sources of data and information about the world’s past and present.
23. (II) Compare and analyze complex maps and mapping technologies to analyze spatial patterns of human and physical environments, explaining relationships between the environment and events, past and present.
24. (III) Evaluate the extent to which political and economic decisions have had significant impact on human and physical environments of various places and regions.
25. (iv) Identify the principles of economic systems and develop an understanding of the benefits of a market system in local, national, and global settings.
26. (I) Evaluate economic data from charts and graphs, noting trends and making predictions.
27. (II) Construct arguments using a combination of evidence regarding solutions used by nations to address historical or contemporary economic issues.
28. (III) Evaluate the impact, both intended and unintended, of government policies on market outcomes at national and global levels, past and present.
29. (C) Practice Standard 3. The student will engage in critical, active reading of primary and secondary sources related to social studies concepts.
30. (i) Comprehend, evaluate, and synthesize textual sources to acquire and refine knowledge in the social studies.
31. (I) Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, evaluating features such as author, date, and origin of information.
32. (II) Analyze information from visual, oral, digital, and interactive texts (e.g., maps, charts, images, political cartoons, videos, artwork) in order to draw conclusions and defend arguments.
33. (ii) Apply critical reading and thinking skills to interpret, evaluate, and respond to a variety of complex texts and perspectives.
34. (I) Evaluate the extent to which historical or cultural perspectives affect an author’s stated or implied purpose.
35. (II) Evaluate the author’s point of view, potential bias, and how authors can reach different conclusions regarding the same issue.
36. (III) Actively listen, evaluate, and analyze a speaker’s message, asking questions while engaged in collaborative discussions about social studies topics and texts.
37. (D) Practice Standard 4. The student will develop a variety of evidence-based written products designed for multiple purposes.
38. (i) Summarize and paraphrase, integrate evidence, and cite sources to create written products, research projects, and presentations for multiple purposes related to social studies content.
39. (I) Compose informative essays and written products, developing a thesis, citing and incorporating evidence from multiple sources and maintaining an organized, formal structure.
40. (II) Compose argumentative written products, including a precise claim as distinguished from opposing claims, organizing logical reasoning, and providing credible evidence to develop an argument.
41. (ii) Engage in authentic research to acquire, refine, and share knowledge through written presentations and products.
42. (I) Develop self-generated theses or claims related to independent research and investigations using credible and relevant sources.
43. (II) Integrate quotes and summaries of research findings into written products while avoiding plagiarism.
44. (III) Construct presentations or products for a designated audience, using research and reasoning to enhance understanding of a topic or issue.
45. (2) Content Standards. 
46. (A) Content Standard 1. The student will analyze the effects of the Industrial Revolution on Europe’s economy and society.
47. (i) Describe the growth of reformist political movements and the growth of radical and revolutionary political movements, including anarchism, socialism, and communism.
48. (ii) Explain the socio-economic ideas of Marx and Engels as outlined in their treatise The Communist Manifesto, including the claim known as “dialectical materialism,” which proposed that history must be viewed through the lens of “class struggles” between “oppressor and oppressed.”
49. (iii) Examine the claim that private enterprise is exploitative and inequality the fault of capitalism.
50. (I) Analyze the proposition that industrialization and free trade had alienated workers from the fruits of their labors.
51. (II) Describe the idea that private property is exploitative, based on selfishness, and results in inequality.
52. (iv) Describe Marxist claims related to the individual and religion, by examining the idea that law and morality are mere “bourgeois prejudices” and religion an “opiate of the masses.”
53. (v) Explain the proposition that violent revolution is needed to overthrow the oppressive classes and abolish exploitative institutions.
54. (vi) Examine the criticisms of the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
55. (I) Explain how violent revolution tends to undermine the rule of law and may empower those more capable of oppression.
56. (II) Describe how state ownership of means of production, including centralized economic planning, leads to an authoritarian state which restricts individual freedoms.
57. (B) Content Standard 2. The student will examine responses to Communist and socialist parties prior to the First World War.
58. (i) Identify political responses to Communist and socialist political parties in Europe, including
59. (I) Germany’s Social Democratic Party and anti-socialist laws
60. (II) France’s Paris Commune and the rise of the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière
61. (III) United Kingdom’s Labour Party.
62. (ii) Describe the Second International and its efforts to impose Marxist theory on the socialist parties of Europe, the United States, and Japan.
63. (iii) Trace the rise and limited appeal of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Party in the United States.
64. (iv) Explain the rise of the Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, and Socialist Revolutionaries in Tsarist Russia, the 1905 Revolution, and revolutionary terrorism.
65. (v) Describe the social reforms that responded to the intellectual and political challenge of communist and socialist parties (e.g., child labor laws, retirement pensions, accident and health insurance, expanded voting rights, establishment of unions, emancipation of Russian serfs).
66. (C) Content Standard 3. The student will analyze the effect of World War I on Communist and socialist movements.
67. (i) Examine the response of communist and socialist leaders and parties in Europe and the United States to changing conditions created by the First World War (e.g., repudiation of nationalism, pacifist movements, the Espionage and Sedition Acts, role of wartime politics, formation of post-World War I national socialism).
68. (ii) Trace the significant events of the Russian Revolution, including the
69. (I) February Revolution and the Provisional (Kerensky) government
70. (II) October Revolution, the Bolshevik seizure of power, and the establishment of one-party dictatorship
71. (III) Civil War, the Red Terror, and the Kronstadt Rebellion
72. (IV) brutal repression (e.g., expropriating private industry, rationing food, mass famine, suppression of strikes, expropriation of the Church, murder of priests)
73. (V) impact of the beliefs and policies of Vladimir Lenin
74. (VI) formal establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
75. (D) Content Standard 4. The student will analyze the origins of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) regime.
76. (i) Examine German culpability, reparations, and military downsizing as effects of the Treaty of Versailles.
77. (ii) Explain how events during the Weimar Republic led to the rise of Nazism (e.g., Ruhr Crisis, hyperinflation, Great Depression, Dawes Plan, failures of the Weimar Republic).
78. (iii) Analyze how the Nazi regime utilized and built on historical antisemitism to create a common enemy of the Jews in order to gain power.
79. (iv) Trace the significant events that led to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, including the
80. (I) Munich Beer Hall Putsch
81. (II) arrest of Hitler and the writings of Mein Kampf
82. (III) Reichstag fire
83. (IV) Enabling Act; Concordat of 1933
84. (V) Night of the Long Knives (Rohm Purge).
85. (v) Explain how the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and maintained power through totalitarian means, including the
86. (I) efforts of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Schutzstaffel (SS), the Wehrmacht, and the Gestapo to assist Hitler in gaining and maintaining power
87. (II) use of various forms of propaganda to indoctrinate the German population
88. (III) elimination of opposing views through book burnings, censorship, and state control over the media
89. (IV) use of education and youth programs to indoctrinate young people into the Nazi ideology.
90. (E) Content Standard 5. The student will explain antisemitic ideology and actions undertaken by Nazi Germany.
91. (i) Explain the Nazi concept of an Aryan race and how eugenics and pseudoscience racism provided a foundation for Nazi racial beliefs.
92. (ii) Examine how identification, legal, and economic status was used to perpetuate the Nazi ideology of the “Master Race” and target Jews.
93. (iii) Describe how the life of Jews deteriorated under the Third Reich through implementation of the Nuremberg Laws.
94. (iv) Analyze the effects of Kristallnacht and how it became a watershed event in the transition from targeted persecution to open, public violence against Jews.
95. (v) Describe how Jewish immigration was restricted by various nations and explain how the Kindertransport saved the lives of Jewish children.
96. (vi) Examine the choices and actions of individuals and groups defying Nazi policy at great personal risk.
97. (F) Content Standard 6. The student will analyze Nazi justification for territorial expansion.
98. (i) Examine the term “lebensraum” (living space) was an essential piece of Nazi ideology and explain how it led to territorial expansion and invasion.
99. (ii) Analyze Hitler’s use of the Munich Pact to expand German territory and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to ensure the Soviet Union’s neutrality.
100. (iii) Identify Hitler’s motivations for the annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland, as well as the invasion of Poland.
101. (G) Content Standard 7. The student will examine the meaning and effects of the Shoah (Jewish Holocaust).
102. (i) Explain the Shoah (Holocaust) as the planned and systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
103. (ii) Explain the effect of Nazi policies on other targeted groups, including Roma-Sinti, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political opponents, the physically and mentally disabled, and homosexuals.
104. (iii) Examine the role that bystanders, collaborators and perpetrators played in the implementation of Nazi policies against Jewish people and other targeted groups.
105. (iv) Explain the use of ghettos, including the displacement and deportation of Jews to ghettos, attempts at escape, and forms of resistance, exemplified by the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
106. (v) Explain how corporate complicity aided Nazi goals, including identification and record keeping, and the use of slave labor for war production.
107. (vi) Explain the purpose of the Wannsee Conference and its role in the Final Solution.
108. (vii) Describe the origins, purpose, and conditions associated with various types of camps, including forced labor camps, concentration camps, transit camps, and death camps (e.g., Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Treblinka).
109. (viii) Explain how Allied Forces liberated camps, including the relocation and treatment of the survivors.
110. (ix) Examine the settlement patterns of Shoah (Holocaust) survivors after World War II, including immigration to the United States and other countries and the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
111. (x) Analyze the international community’s efforts to hold perpetrators responsible for their involvement in the Shoah (Holocaust) including the purpose and outcomes of the Nuremberg Trials as they related to crimes against humanity, genocide, and jurisdictional issues.
112. (xi) Explain the effect of the Eichmann Trial on policy concerning crimes against humanity, capital punishment, accountability, the testimony of survivors, and acknowledgment of the international community.
113. (H) Content Standard 8. The student will trace key events, policies, and experiences of life in the USSR prior to and during World War II.
114. (i) Examine the political history of interwar Soviet Russia, including the
115. (I) New Economic Policy
116. (II) rise of Josef Stalin
117. (III) collectivization and the First Five Year Plan
118. (IV) Great Terror and the murder of foreign Communists living in the USSR
119. (ii) Describe the domestic policies of interwar Soviet Russia, including the
120. (I) destruction of individual rights
121. (II) government seizure of privately owned industry and commerce
122. (III) requirement of internal passports to control people’s movements
123. (IV) state-mandated atheism and the persecution of priests and religious believers
124. (V) cult of personality that glorified Stalin
125. (VI) development of the counterintelligence state
126. (VII) GULAG forced labor network
127. (VIII) purges of the military officer corps and terror against the citizenry
128. (IX) mass murder of peasants (dekulakization campaign) and genocidal starvation of Ukrainians (Holodomor).
129. (iii) Describe interwar Soviet foreign policy and the effect of World War II, including the
130. (I) support for foreign communist parties and popular fronts
131. (II) opposition to reform socialists that catalyzed the rise of fascist governments
132. (III) support for Chinese Communists
133. (IV) cooperation with Nazi Germany (e.g., Nazi-Soviet pact, Soviet annexations, population deportations, Winter War, Katyn massacre)
134. (V) war policy (e.g., terror, ethnic cleansing, looting operations in conquered countries, and the occupation of Eastern Europe).
135. (I) Content Standard 9. The student will analyze significant events, policies, and experiences of the Cold War.
136. (i) Examine the USSR’s occupation of Eastern Europe after World War II, including Soviet Communization of Eastern Europe, the coup d’etat in Czechoslovakia, chronic rebellions in the Eastern Bloc (e.g., East German Uprising, Hungarian Uprising, “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia, and “Solidarity” in Poland) and neutrality of Finland and Austria.
137. (ii) Explain the West’s response to communism in the early Cold War, including the policy of containment, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, formation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, escalation of atomic weapons. disarmament movements, and construction of the Berlin Wall.
138. (iii) Trace the rise of communist influence in other regions of the world, including
139. (I) Communist leadership (e.g., Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, and Kim Il Sung)
140. (II) establishment of the North Korean dictatorship
141. (III) Cuban Missile Crisis
142. (IV) Chinese Revolution (e.g., one-party dictatorship, collectivization, laogai prisons, Hundred Flowers Campaign, and Anti-Rightist Campaign).
143. (V) China’s genocidal conquest of Tibet, Great Leap Forward, and Cultural Revolution
144. (VI) Deng Xiaoping’s political and economic reforms.
145. (iv) Describe the rise of communism in Vietnam (e.g., successful communist revolt against French colonial rule, Land Reform Terror, Soviet and Chinese support for the North Vietnamese Communist forces, the fall of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and establishment of Cambodia’s genocidal dictatorship under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge).
146. (v) Examine the development of communism in the United States, including Soviet coordination of Western communist party tactics, communist front movements, and attempts to infiltrate and co-opt organized labor.
147. (vi) Examine how Marxism evolved after the West’s intellectual disillusionment with Soviet Communism and evaluate the role of Soviet dissidents, such as Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Vladimir Bukovsky.
148. (vii) Describe the decay and dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, including the effect of the Reagan Doctrine, American support for anti-communists in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, and diplomacy related to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty).
149. (viii) Examine Gorbachev’s attempt to reform the Soviet Union, including the effects of perestroika and glasnost.
150. (ix) Describe the causes and impact of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Christmas Revolution in Romania, including the trial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu.
151. (x) Examine the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the August Coup (e.g., rise of Boris Yeltsin and the pluralist movement, uprisings in Lithuania and Latvia, Gorbachev’s resignation, dissolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, declarations of independence of the now-former Soviet republics).
152. (J) Content Standard 10. The student will analyze the history of Communist China in the modern era.
153. (i) Describe the causes and events of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, including suppression by the Chinese Communist Party and the continuing denial regarding the massacre.
154. (ii) Trace the rise of China to peer competitor with the United States, including the
155. (I) retirement of Deng Xiaoping following the Tiananmen Square massacre
156. (II) rise of Jiang Zemin and the introduction of the concept of a Socialist Market Economy
157. (III) rapid growth of the economy, government debt, dependence on exports, Belt and Road Initiative
158. (IV) continuing internal repression (e.g., Christians, Falun Gong, Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang)
159. (V) social credit system to monitor the population, denial of access to schools, travel, banks, and other state institutions
160. (VI) exploitation of Western investment in China and scientific, academic, and industrial espionage.
161. (K) Content Standard 11. The student will describe the legacy of the Holocaust and antisemitism in the world today.
162. (i) Describe how Holocaust denial has helped contribute to the creation of contemporary propaganda against the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
163. (ii) Explain why it is important for current and future generations to learn from the Shoah through eyewitness accounts and survivors’ testimony.
164. (iii) Examine how antisemitism may be expressed as hatred toward Jewish people, rhetorical, and physical manifestations directed toward a person, their property, or Jewish community institutions.

Added at 42 Ok Reg, Number 21, effective 7-26-25