Cold War
Introduction
The Cold War was a state of political and military tension after World War II between powers in the Western Bloc. A conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in which neither nation directly confronted the other on the battlefield. Its lasted for much of the second half of the 20th century resulted in mutual suspicions, heightened tensions and a series of international incidents that brought the world’s superpowers to the brink of disaster.
The Satellite NationA Satellite Nation is a country that is dominated politically and economically by another nation. The Soviet Nations include East Germany, Czech, Poland, Soviet Union, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania. |
Policy of Containment Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam.
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Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the ideological conflict and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
The Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Europe. The United States gave $13 billion in economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II. In other words the Marshall Plan was the official European Recovery Program (ERP).
NATO AllianceThe North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. It mainly fought communism and terrorism. Now it is a peace keeping military force, like the U.N. It fights terrorism all over the world, mainly in Afghanistan. |
Truman Doctrine The Truman Doctrine was the name given to a policy announced by US President Harry Truman on March 12th, 1947. The Truman Doctrine has to be assessed against the background of what had happened in Europe at the end of World War II and in the immediate aftermath.
The Berlin Airlift / Berlin Wall Without going to war or giving up the city of Berlin, the only option the western countries had was to try and fly in all the supplies. On June 24, 1948 the Soviets blocked all rail and road traffic to Berlin. They halted all traffic going in and out of the city, the only way in was to fly. On May 12, 1949 the Soviet Union stopped the blockade and the airlift was over.
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CHINA and KOREA
According to the author of the America, "The 1949 Revolution was the culmination of the Chinese Communist Party's drive to power since its founding in 1921 and the second part of Chinese Civil War." Chinese Communists had struggled against the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek. The 38th parallel, the Korean peninsula was divided along the 38th parallel, with the creation of communist-backed North Korea and the anti-communist Republic of South Korea. On June 25, 1950, North invaded South, leading to the outbreak of the Korean War. South Korea wanted weapons and supplies from Truman and the United States government while North Korea sought help from Stalin and the Soviet Union. The United States was still war weary from the disruptive World War II campaign and refused South Korea's request for weapons and troops.
Mao ZedongMao Zedong (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976), was the principal Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who led his nation's Cultural Revolution. Leader of the Chinese Communist Party from 1935, he was chairman of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to 1959 and chairman of the party until his death. |
BRINK OF NUCLEAR WAR and SPACE RACE
Since 1942 that it was possible to create an even more destructive thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, other word the H-bomb. The Warsaw Pact linked the Soviet Union with seven Eastern European countries. Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. John F. Kennedy's purpose in his Cuban Missile Crisis address was to inform Americans of the potential danger they could possible face.
Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He used his policy of brinkmanship to help win his campaign for president. Brinkmanship was also known as a "slippery slope" because the more a nation is threatening war, the more that nation has to be willing to follow through with those threats. The threat of nuclear war was unlike any the American people had ever faced. Millions of civilians would die from the hands of the H-bomb. |
Post War and the American Dream
In 1944, the GI Bill of Rights addition to encouraging veterans to get an education by paying part of there tuition, the GI Bill guaranteed them a year's worth of unemployment benefits while job hunting. The Fair Deal was an ambitious set of proposals put forward by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to Congress in his January 1949 State of the Union address. During the early 1940s and through the early 1960s, the baby boom is any period marked by a greatly increased at birth rate. Mass media is the communication that reach large audiences, televisions developed with lightning speed. Text and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll explores the interaction between two of the most powerful socio-cultural movements in the post-war years. The literary forces of the Beat Generation and the musical energies of rock and its attendant culture. The Beats were a bad influence on teens because drug use was involved.
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